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Perspective    
To Believe or Not to Believe
by Arya Bhushan

My own personal experiences tell me that a lot of truth gets falsified or suppressed due to lack of authentication. I cannot disbelieve myself when I have personally seen fire-walkers walking on a bed of fire with live red-hot burning coals and wondered why their feet don't get scalded; but how can I authenticate my statement. Even if I show photographs of the event it could be taken as trick photography. Similarly, I cannot prove to others that my wife saw a full length movie in her dream, which we both viewed in a movie hall the next day. I might, even, not have believed her, had I not myself seen similar dreams. Yet I wonder, how we are able to see in our dreams events of the future. Does it mean that the future is all fixed and we are all travelling into it with the passage of time. When my wife tells me that she saw a UFO in full day light, I don't believe her. If she had seen it, why did not I or any others see it? All this so far has remained a mystery.

Had I not myself seen Shakuntala Devi - the world famous human computer of India - and who finds a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, for having solved complicated mathematical problems in fifty seconds what Univac took more than a minute to compute, I would not have believed and considered the whole thing to be a propaganda gimmick.

There are many more instances of this type that I have seen, or my trustworthy friends have narrated to me. So I believe in them. Still with the large amount of literature being published in the realm of the psychic world, it is becoming impossible to pinpoint which of it is true. Opposite views from respectable persons are available on almost each and every subject. Books are being published, by reputed authors, both in support of and in contradiction of these views. One gets lost in this maze, and soon gets into the rut of accepting, what one has learnt to believe and reject that which is in contradiction of those beliefs. Few really have the time, inclination or patience to go deep. Even when they do, there are no means of verification as the horizon of knowledge and understanding is expanding every day.

In February 1982, The Scientific American carried an article, "Metamagical Themas" by Douglas Hoffstader(2:21-26), where he discusses the point in detail and finally comes to the conclusion:

Certainly one will never be able to empty the vast ocean of irrationality that all of us are surrounded by, but the ambition of The Skeptical Enquirer has never been that great; it has been, rather, to be a study buoy to which one can cling in that tumultuous sea. It has been to promote a healthy brand of skepticism in as many people as it can.

It is too bad we should have to constantly defend truth against so many onslaughts from people unwilling to think, but on the other hand sloppy thoughts are inevitable. Come to think of it, I seem to remember reading somewhere recently about how your average typical-type person uses only 10% of (his) brain. Talk about sloppy -- it's amazing! Even the scientists are stumped!(2:26)

Swami Vivekanznda once advised:

"Do not believe in what you have heard," says the great Buddha, "do not believe in doctrines because they have been handed down to you through generations; do not believe in anything because it is followed blindly by many; do not believe because some old sage makes a statement; do not believe in truths to which you have become attached by habit; do not believe merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Have deliberation and analyze, and when the result agrees with reason and conduces to the good of one and all, accept it and live up to it." (8:216-17)

In all this bewilderment, I find a lot of sense in the above words and firmly believe that what Para-psychologists are doing today is what scientists did yesterday. Scientifically investigating the latent powers of the human brain, will bring Science and Religion together. When the two converge, merging into one point, the real truth will reveal itself.    

January 1, 2006

Bibliography

1. Cusack, Michael J., and Anne E. Cusack. Plant Mysteries; A Scientific Inquiry. New York; Julian Messner, 1978.

2. Hofstadter, Douglas R., "Metamagical Themas", Scientific American, February 1982, pp. 18-26.

3. Rampa T. Lobsang, The Third Eye. New York; Ballentine Books, Inc., 1964.

4. Readers Digest. Mysteries of the Unexplained. New York; Readers Digest Association Inc., 1982.

5. Shah, Promesh. "Chicago University Professor wins Nobel Prize in Physics." India Abroad", 28 October, 1983,(p.1.)

6. Stearn, Jess. The Search for a Soul; Taylor Caldwell's Psychic Lives. New York; Fawcett Crest Books, 1973.

7. Vivekananda, Swami. Complete Works Volume I. Calcutta(India) Advaita Ashrama, 1972.

8. ---------, -----. Complete Works Volume IV Calcutta(India); Advaita Ashrama, 1972.

9. Yogananda Paramhansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. Los Angeles; Self Realization Fellowship, 1974.

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