So, Hurray for Miracles

The good folk at Wikipedia inform me that Vietnamese Catholics celebrate today to mark an apparition of Mary in late Eighteenth century Vietnam. As is not uncommon, the appearance occurred during hard times, in this case in a period of persecution against Vietnamese Catholics.

Divine eruptions into the world, or, more baldly, stories of breaking the rules of nature as evidence of some holy principal seem to be as old as human beings. Certainly as old as human beings writing things down. I think of Moses and the Egyptian magicians with their snake staffs, and who eats which. And Moses is hardly the only figure in the Hebrew scriptures to wield magical powers to show the truth of his authority. It is worth recalling that there were two hypothetical collections about Jesus that coalesced into the gospels. The one my friends like to appeal to is the collection of his sayings. The other is the collection of his miracles.

Even in the nineteenth century hyper rationalist Unitarians believed in the authority of the Bible based upon the accounts of the miracles in it. “Appeal to authority” may be a logical fallacy, but that doesn’t mean these stories don’t sway human hearts.

It reminds me of a story about the Theosophist Henry Steel Olcott.

Olcott made his bones during the Civil War, exposing fraud in the Sanitary Commission. He mustered out as a colonel. After President Lincoln’s assassination he was one of the official investigators trying to understand how it came about. After the war he became a lawyer particularly focused on investigating fraud.

Like many of his generation he was fascinated with spiritualism, which claimed to present a bridge between the phenomenal world and an “unseen” one. With his reputation for being able to uncover fraud he was invited to investigate several spiritualists. However, he was quickly convinced of the reality of spiritualist manifestations. And, critically, he also met Helena Petrovich Blavatsky, a Russian emigre who was at first one of the spiritualist mediums. Her spirit contacts shifted from the conventional guides of the day to at first “Hidden Masters,” and then quickly “Ascended Masters,” I believe both terms she coined, at first located in Central Europe, they quickly moved to the Himalayas, and with that they began to preach a comprehensive religious vision synthesizing all the world’s faiths as aspects of their hidden but perennial message. The colonel listened to what they had to say, and was among the first to sign on. In fact he spent the rest of his life as Madam Blavatsky’s faithful lieutenant.

He and Blavatsky moved to India in 1879, the following year they traveled to Columbo, where with enormous publicity they “converted” to Buddhism. The scare quotes because while they publicly espoused the Theravada Buddhism of their hosts, they in fact from the beginning saw Buddhism as another vehicle of the Theosophical mission. However dual their Buddhism, they, and in some ways particularly Henry Olcott were embraced as leaders of the Buddhist revival. The colonel provided a catechism, and even influenced the design of the famous Buddhist flag. He is counted a hero to this day in Sri Lanka.

But, what I mainly found myself thinking about was his brief foray into spiritual healing.

At some point Catholic missionaries had dubbed a well a shrine with healing powers. After seeking some Buddhist monk to offer healing through appeal to the Buddha, but finding none, he took on the task himself.

According to Stephen Prothero, “Olcott’s first healing in Asia occurred on August 29, 1882. When a man said to be totally paralyzed in one arm and partially disabled in one leg approached him after a lecture, Olcott recalled his youthful experiments with mesmerism and made a few perfunctory passes over the man’s arm. The next day the man returned with reports of improved health, and Olcott began to treat him systematically Soon the man could, in Olcott’s words, ‘whirl his bad arm around his head, open and shut his hand, jump with both feet, hop on the paralyzed one, kick equally high against the wall with both, and run freely.’ News of the Colonel’s healing powers spread across the island ‘as a match to loose straw’ and his fundraising tour was immediately transformed into a roadshow featuring the miraculous healing hands of the instantly charismatic ‘White Buddhist.’ Olcott publicly attributed his healings to the Buddha. Privately he credited the German physician Franz Mesmer.”

Almost overwhelmed by crowds seeking healing, Olcott was saved from spending the rest of his days as a healer by a convenient message from the Ascended Masters via Madam Blavatsky ordering him to retire from this occupation.

Even ended, no doubt the healings, and there were many, became a feature within the Sri Lankan Buddhist revival, more evidence that Buddhism had the same ability to intervene in the natural world through supernatural means as did Christianity.

So, other than an interesting tale, what are we to make of this?

For me, it isn’t merely to show that religions use deception, most commonly self-deception in support of their claims, although a critical eye does seem pretty important, and that shouldn’t be ignored; but also it points out how the human heart is very complicated.

For me I find value in seeing this part of religion as, in addition to other things not so noble, also touches a profound and true part of the human psyche. In classical Buddhism there is a description of the three bodies of Buddha. One is Nirmanakaya, the realm of history and causality. Another is the Dharmakaya, the realm of the absolute or vast empty. And, the third is the Sambkogakaya, the realm of miracle. Or, as I see it the realm of dream and story.

In this third place the absolute and the phenomenal meet, and there are eruptions, perhaps not disruptions of time and space, but absolutely disruptions of our sense of what is, which are might close.

And, while I feel no need to appeal to Jesus’ miracles to see wisdom in much of his teachings, nor do I need to witness some sort of healing of illnesses that can be diagnosed as psychosomatic to feel more confidence in the Buddha’s message, I can see how my world, my whole life is different because of my spiritual encounter, and how that disruption has and on occasion continues to manifest as a breaking down of any hard sense of reality that I ever might have imagined might exist. That miracle is a miracle, and it continues.

So, hurray for miracles! Like many other things on the spiritual path, useful if not clung to too hard. Open heart, and clear eye.

And maybe not the main act, maybe not proof, but, absolutely a part of the grand dance, a mystery to experience for the open heart.

Certainly a miracle.