From time immemorial, human beings have been constantly searching for miracles, extraordinary happenings. Almost all religions or spiritual societies have answers for the multitude of happenings which are beyond the scope of logic. Incidents that we cannot explain logically, we term as miracles. Simply because we cannot or do not need to explain them or understand them, we start calling them miracles.

Whenever a miracle was understood and explained, a new religion came into being. The search and effort to seek solutions or to demystify the happenings beyond logic resulted in the formation of new religions and an understanding of these energies.

Miracle is only ‘cause and effect’. Let us look beyond it by first understanding the word ‘miracle’. Patanjali, the greatest spiritual navigator ever, declared emphatically that there is no phenomenon on the planet Earth called miracle, as every happening is clearly due to a cause and its effect. If the cause is unknown, it is understood to be a miracle.

One of Patanjali’s major contributions to mankind was to show how spirituality is a science by itself. Man by nature has a curiosity for the extraordinary and the supernatural which he cannot understand. Patanjali for the first time showed scientifically how these events happen, what kind of power can be achieved by understanding these events and which techniques yield the various kinds of power. He first taught how miraculous powers could be achieved and then proceeded to demonstrate that whatever then happened was a miracle.

He has given us a two-pronged solution for life. First, he showed us the power to achieve miracles and next, the technique to see everything in life as a miracle. One can adopt any one of two lifestyles: either to live as if there were no miracles in life or to live as if everything was a miracle. Patanjali has explained both kinds of lifestyles.

The search for miracles can create inquisitiveness or an idea that there is something beyond what is perceived or understood by our five senses. It can serve as an inspiration to look for the extraordinary. This slowly and inevitably leads one to the conclusion that it is necessary to look beyond the miracle. But the search for miracles in itself, as an end by itself, is of no use.

Go beyond shakti – power to buddhi – intelligence!

A miracle is nothing but the power or shakti to make dreams into a reality. Next is buddhi or the intelligence to realize that what is perceived as reality is actually a dream. Our search is right if it begins with shakti and eventually leads us to buddhi. If our search stops with the achievement of powers to perform miracles, we have missed the real miracle, which is the ‘happening of Existence’ or the universe. The greatest miracle is in realizing the universe in our being.

The past and future are mere projections of the present. When we get onto the path of our inner journey, we will encounter miraculous powers at several stages, but if our energy settles at a certain step of intelligence, we will get the power of intuition, which is the power to see things happening before they actually happen. This is not the end of journey; this is only like a signboard to tell us that we are on the right path. It is easy to stop here and think that we have achieved. No! We should move forward.

Whatever we analyze as past or future is actually a projection of the present. There is a new theory in physics – the parallel universe theory. It says that if there is a black hole happening somewhere in the universe, there is also a big bang happening simultaneously elsewhere. But we don’t know this fact so we analyze the two of them as independent events and not as projections of the moment, the present. Two events happening are invariably simply a cause and effect happening. Because of a certain cause that happens, a certain effect happens, that’s all. It has been concluded that even the movement of an atom has an opposite reaction elsewhere in the universe. If this concept is understood, you will also realize that the future and past are not independent of each other, but deeply related to the present.

Try to conceptualize time as a horizontal shaft, the past and future at its two ends with the present in the center. We never really touch the shaft but are always pulled either to the past or to the future. We always live either in the past or in the future, never in the present. When we live in the present, we touch the time shaft. Eternity is the past, present and future. We can touch eternity only when we are in the present moment. When we do so, we understand that the past and future are not independent of the present but merely extensions of it.

For example, there may have been instances when the present situation appears to be very familiar to us as if it happened earlier in our life, an incident of ‘déjà vu’, as they say. This happens to us when we fall into the present moment at least once, when our consciousness drops into the present moment. In those moments, we get a glimpse of the immediate future and because of this, we feel as if the same situation has happened already. The truth is, at that moment we touch the time shaft. We experience the whole universe as a projection of the present moment, that the past and future are deeply dependent on it. We try to understand the bridge between the past and future, but we always miss the present moment.

We try to find solutions in life by trying to alter the past or mould the future. This exercise is pointless as we have no control over the past or the future. If we do something in the present moment, we can alter the future or prevent the past from bothering us; but this is something we never do. If we played with the present moment, we can play with life itself! We can play with the whole of Existence! Doing something related to the present moment is meditation. Any technique, be it eating or walking, which brings us to the present moment is meditation. Our problems can be solved only being in the present moment. Any technique that brings us to the present moment is good enough. Read more: So You Want to Know the Truth by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.

Our body has tremendous intelligence, gathered over 600 million years of evolution.

The processes we usually call ‘conscious processes’ are the ones controlled by our central nervous system – the brain and the spinal cord. This includes voluntary actions, thinking, and so on. But conscious processes are a small minority of the action that is going on in our body! The vast majority of the processes are ‘unconscious’, and are mostly controlled by the autonomous nervous system. These processes, like breathing, digesting food, keeping our balance when we walk, all run beautifully without our control or even our awareness. Imagine, if we had to worry about running our bodies, we would never get anything else done!

How do you think all this happens?

This is the miracle of body intelligence.

Just watch your body!

Every single cell in your body is gifted with the intelligence to carry on its own unique functions. When an infection attacks the body, your white blood cells swing into action on their own, long before you are even aware of the danger.

But the sad truth is, we have lost trust in our own body wisdom!

The day you have a cold, or feel a headache coming up, you automatically pop a pill. Why? Don’t you see, your body is carrying on the work of a huge industrial plant! It is an ecosystem in itself. When your body can digest food, pump blood and fight infections on a regular basis, can’t it heal a simple headache on its own?

If you enter the amazingly complex world of DNA, you will see that your emotions, your memories, even your opinions are strongly controlled by your body! DNA are the carriers of our genetic code. They carry imprints not only of physical characteristics, but also of mental states. Geneticists say that every person has a unique perception of the world that is built up by his DNA!

Not only does the body influence the mind, the mind also exerts tremendous influence on the body.

A person who has been cured of a disease, or rehabilitated after a drug addiction, still carries some memories of the disease in his body. In the same way, if you worry constantly, the negativity triggered by the worries can solidify in your body and being. This is what we call depression. That’s why depressed people often can’t tell why they are depressed. Long after the problem has been solved, the stress associated with it remains in their memory as an energy blockage, both physical and mental.

Not just depression, but practically every disease is equally influenced by both body and mind. In fact, over 85% of our diseases are psychosomatic in nature. Not just headaches or heart disease, but peptic ulcers, skin and respiratory allergies, even cancer is influenced by our thinking.

The mind has unimaginable power to cause or cure physical ailments!

An experiment was performed in Japan on a group of people who were allergic to a certain plant. The participants were blindfolded and leaves from different plants were placed upon their skin. Each time, the researchers told the participants which leaf they were placing on them. Amazingly, they found that in most cases the allergy was caused by the mention of the name of the plant, rather than by the actual plant. When they placed the allergy-causing leaf on the skin, but told the patient it was a harmless leaf, the subject did not develop the allergy. On the other hand, even if a harmless leaf was placed on the skin, and the subject was told that it was the allergy-causing leaf, he would instantly break out in a rash!

In another amazing experiment with a boy having multiple personalities, psychologist Daniel Goleman found that the boy’s allergies could be switched on and off depending on which personality was dominant at that time! The same mind would give the body orders to act allergic or non-allergic, depending on which reaction suited that particular personality.

Modern medical science uses techniques like the PET scan to track chemical changes in your brain under different circumstances.

Researchers have found that each time you recall a different memory, or experience a strong emotion, it triggers a different chemical pattern in your brain.

Not just that, the news spreads throughout your body immediately. Whether you are feeling happy, angry or sad, a signal is sent out instantly to every cell in your body. So your body is actually a changing reflection of what you are thinking at that moment!

Just like psychosomatic diseases show us how our unconscious mind controls our conscious functions, meditation teaches us how to use the conscious mind to control ‘unconscious’ functions. In yoga and Zen, there are techniques by which you can consciously control your pulse rate, digestion, metabolism, body temperature and even your degree of sensitivity to pain!

Actually, there is nothing miraculous about these phenomena. They appear miraculous to us only because we are unaware of the deep

relationship that exists between our body and mind.

Both body and mind are only expressions of the same Consciousness. They cannot, and do not function separately. Unless we respect both equally, we can never be complete, integrated individuals. Read more: Open the Door… Let the Breeze in! by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.

Meditation is not against action!

Once you learn the knack of remaining undisturbed in your being, you can perform any number of tasks while remaining in the same state. Whether you perform action or remain inactive is irrelevant.

This is a two-step process. First, you need to get in touch with your inner being. For that, you have to first realize that such a thing exists! Learn to enjoy the state of just being. Initially, you will do this only for half an hour or one hour everyday – when you sit down to meditate. Once this state happens in you comfortably, you will automatically extend it to periods outside of the formal meditation period.

You can start with small tasks like trying to remain centered, even as you are eating, walking, washing dishes etc. Once you do this, you can move to more complicated tasks.

Externally, your life goes on in a normal manner. In fact, you can carry your life in a much better way – because now you have greater clarity, greater intensity. You will be more aware, more creative.

Yet internally, you will experience a deep and undisturbed silence. Because you are no longer doing – you are watching.

This is the secret of meditation – to become the watcher, to become the witness of your own actions and emotions.

As you start witnessing your own actions, you will realize that there is someone inside you who does not change, who does not get angry or feel sad, who does not care about money or security or fame. That is the real you! The real you can never be touched. The rest is just a personality you have formed around yourself. Once you become aware that the real you is not the one who works, that the real you is not the one who feels angry or hurt or depressed – you experience a tremendous sense of freedom. This will happen through meditation.

Meditation offers you the ultimate freedom – freedom from yourself, freedom from the bounds of ‘personality’ that you have created for yourself. Read more: Meditation is for You  by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.

An eye-opening experiment has been conducted by Cleve Backster, an interrogation specialist with CIA.

As a trial to check the reaction of plants to different electrical stimuli, Backster connected a potted plant in his office to a lie-detector. This is a machine which registers electrical changes in our bodies on a graph (just like an ECG registers changes in our cardiac activity).

When the plant didn’t show any response to weak stimuli, Backster decided to try burning one of its leaves.

At the exact moment when that thought arose in his mind, he found that the plant registered a shocking response on the graph!

Astonished, Backster repeated this with other plants and found that not only the plant he was thinking of harming, but all the plants in the room registered this response in different degrees! Later, he discovered that the plants were sensitive to the sound of his voice, and even to his presence in the room.

This experiment proved something even more miraculous than telepathy which is the transmission of information from one human brain to another through an unknown form of communication.

It showed that every cell has the ability to reach out and communicate with every other cell, whether plant or human. A cell that is about to die is able to communicate its fear to other cells, and they can ‘feel’ sympathy for it! Every cell carries intelligence…and compassion. Cosmic wisdom is available to all who ask for it.

Every one of us has experienced some moments of deep communion, at some time in our life. Read more: Open the door… Let the Breeze In! by Paramahamsa Nithyananda

A devotee saw that Paramahamsa would do the same mundane things as himself everyday. He would eat, drink, take a bath everyday. He would eat, drink, take a bath and so on, just like him.