By Subhasis Chattopadyay –
When the British came to rule us; they scorned Yogis levitating as so much abracadabra. When neo-Marxists read the Bible, they do not accept that Christ rose from the dead and the Catholic Church demands at least two miracles for the canonisation of Saints. Whether one accepts it or not; miracles and not merely a sense of the holy is the cornerstone of every major religion in the world. Structuralist critiques of miracles fall short because they do not accept anything beyond various versions of materialism and their iterations that spring from their atheistic nihilism.
Hindus and Christians both know and believe that miracles are real and are not mere metaphors. This is why the Sanatana Dharma and Roman Catholicism forbid euthanasia. A person in a coma, or apparently with no hope for survival, can survive and walk since once Lazarus walked. Practitioners of the Yoga Sutras of Sage Patanjali, not scholars of the Yoga Sutras, know that the siddhis (miraculous powers) are real ( see विभूतिपाद Vibhūti-Pāda); after all many Catholic Saints are known to have the gifts of healing and simultaneous manifestations at different places at the same time. For Christians of all denominations; Easter is important for Christ actually went to hell and defeated Satan and rose up from the dead. If anyone denies this; then that person is not a Christian. It is not I who says this but Saul turned St. Paul who emphasises the centrality of the Easter Resurrection of Christ. Similarly, if any practitioner of the Sanatana Dharma disagrees that Brahman or, the Supreme Godhead, represented as various Mahavidyas (Great Mothers) do not exist and Sri Vidya and Kashmiri Shaivism’s liturgies do not produce supernatural results; they are not part of the lineage of the Sanatana Dharma. Miracles have real-world consequences and euthanasia is just one of them.
Two more consequences of miracles are to be found in the stressing of both the Sanatana Dharma and Catholic Christianity on the family and, on the absolute negation of abortions. Because without the family unit, there cannot carry on the ‘leela’ of the Mahavidyas. To reframe a cliched quotation: each child born is a sign that Brahman qua the Mahavidyas qua YHWH is not tired of humanity. Each abortion is a sign that we have interfered in a possible miracle. So the shared objection to euthanasia and abortions do not only derive from abstract New Age academese about the ethics involved in killing a helpless adult or, a foetus. Two examples will suffice: if Saint Teresa of Calcutta’s parents chose to abort her, then we would not have the unfurling of God’s Kingdom in the here and the now. If Paramhamsa Sri Ramakrishna was murdered by his disciples because he had terminal cancer; then each minute Sri Ramakrishna lived less would have taken away from his role as an Avatara for this aeon. We Hindus, measure time in aeons and not in millennia.
Then there is the issue of angels which no scholar wants to speak about. To pretend that there are no angels is a shame. The holy liturgy of Tantra which is the main mode of worship within the Sanatana Dharma and Roman Catholicism both stress supernatural entities. Even Buddhists stress on various beings, unseen by human eyes. If one were to start a discussion on these grounds instead of brushing these under snobbish carpets of learned inanities and the disparaging terms of esotericism and the occult, then one has to agree that Jesus never walked on water or, Mahavatar Babaji does not roam the earth now. I cannot do any of these just to sit in some hallowed hall of learned dunces.
If one professes any of the major religions of the world, one believes in the supernatural. Not for nothing that in Islam we have mention of the Jinns. None can be a Muslim without knowing that Jinns are there.
Works Cited:
T. S. Rukmani’s Yogavarttika Of Vijnanabhiksu Vol. 3. Vibhutipada; M. Govindan’s Babaji And the 18 Siddha Kriya Yoga Tradition, The Jerusalem Bible and Peter R. Carrell’s Jesus and the Angels: Angelology and the Christology of the Apocalypse of John (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series Book 95).
Subhasis Chattopadhyay is a bibliophile; and has completed formal studies in the Bible and separately, in Hinduism from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. His Biblical studies were completed from the Pontifical Atheneum, Bengaluru. He writes on interreligious dialogues for us. His book reviews from 2010 to 2020 in Prabuddha Bharata have been showcased by Ivy League Presses. He earns his living by teaching English at the UG and PG levels in a non-community college in West Bengal; affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He annotates the Bible here and is now writing his own books on religious scriptures and on literature.