Once Mother said, Liberation is not attained. It is bestowed or effected at the ordained moment by the Supreme will. When that moment arrives, even the deservedness for Liberation will accure of itself and thus even deservedness is not what can he attained. To those who do not know it might appear to be the result of individual effort.”
If everything is so completely pre-ordained and is so unal terable, then what do miracles mean? Were not the dead raised by saints and prophets? The Supreme Will is said to manifest itself in human form sometimes. Then, the Supreme will must be able to alter what is after all it’s own decision or it’s not Supreme!” I said to Her.
Mother replied: It can alter but It does only if It chooses, If It wants to alter its own will, it is no will but a fancy like ours and it can’t be Supreme. What you describe as miracles are not miraculous in my view. What greater miracle can there be than Creation? Even the so-called miracles are preordained. Even the manifestations of the Supreme in human form are preordained i. e.. the phenomenon of It’s manifestation is a fulfilment of this preordination, and so are the actions of such manifestations.
Did not the Christ raise the dead? Then could he not save himself from being crucified? It so happened because it was so ordained. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
But How then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” Jesus told someone who tried to rescue him from being captured.
In modern India, Sai Baba of Shirdi is one of the most. exuberant performers of miracles and let us note what he said about miracles:
“I do not do any chamalkars (miracles). You have astrologers… My art is also a type of Astrology. But you people do not under stand this. To you, my words look like chamatkars because you do not know the future. So you regard events as proof of my miracle working power and you turn your reverence on to me. I, in turn turn your reverence to God……” The truth of these words is borne out by the fact that Jesus also declared that he acted always accor ding to the will of God, even when he performed a miracle.
Let us note what a modern mystic has to say about miracles G. I. Gurdjieff said:
“The idea of a miracle in the sense of a violation of laws by the will which made them is not only contrary to common sense but to the very idea of will itself. A miracle can only be a manifes tation of laws which are unknown to men or rarely met with.”
(Quoted by Ouspensky in In Search of the Miraculous)
Even Turgenev is said to have sumed up all of man’s prayers to God as meaning “Lord! make it so that twice two be not four,”
These statements of several other saints explain to us the purport of Mother’s charecterestic reply to all prayers made to Her by devotees concerning mundane affairs. “I do not know how to do that” (i. e., resolve their problems). Sometimes She wants them to consider their problems to be as much the products of Her grace as their joys.
But how about the miracles that take place in Her presence or that are experienced in Her presence by Her devotees? What Bhagavan Ramana once told his devotee about Siddhis makes the point clear; “They come of their own accord, they are Clod-given.” That is why, perhaps, She denies that She works any miracles She attributes the miraculous experiences of the devotees to their own faith or to the will of the Absolute that had ordained every thing and concludes by refuting the very concept of a miracle! No wonder that even the attainment of Liberation’, as we call it, is not miraculous to Mother. The desire and the deservedness for Libera tion, and even Liberation are bestowed by the will that has caused all this to be. What Bhagavan Ramana said about his own experi ence of Self-Realization amply supports Mother’s statement. He said:
I was not a pessimist. I knew nothing of life and not learnt that it was full of sorrow. I was not actuated by any desire to avoid rebirth or seek Liberation or even to obtain dispassion or salvation. I had read no books except the periy pennam, the Bible and bits of Tevaram. I had never heard of Brahman, samsara and so forth, did not yet know, that there was an essence or Impersonal Real underlying everything and that Iswara and 1 were both identical with it. Later, at Tiruvannamalai; as I listened to the Ribhu-Gita and other sacred books, I learnt all this and found that the books were analysing and naming what I had felt intuitively without analyses or name……”
(Arthur Osborne: Ramana Maharshi Rider P. 24)