Preparing for the Miraculous

18 eleven talks“There is no reason to single out the human line as special,except for our chauvinistic interest in it. ... There is no wayin which we can claim to be ‘better’ than Aegyptopithecus[an early monkey], or the miocene apes, only different,”writes John Gribbin. Scott Atran could not agree more:“Human beings are accidental and incidental products ofthe material development of the universe, almost whollyirrelevant and readily ignored in any general descriptionof its functioning.” (It might be noted here that, accordingto the latest paleontological findings, the origin of Homosapiens and even that of his closest relatives, the big apes,remains unknown.)If the animosity with which the aforementioned authors,and many others, condemn and belittle any form ofnon-materialism as animism, mysticism, hallucination andsimply mental aberration shows one thing, it is that none ofthem have any notion of what they are attacking. Some ofthem, like Daniel Dennett, candidly confess as much. Theyare not aware that the God and the religions which theydeclare to be pests to humanity belong within the so-called“Abrahamic” tradition, by which the Western societies arestill profoundly influenced. Of the wisdom traditions andthe oriental spiritualities, with their countless generationsof seers, saints, yogis and spiritual masters, and with theirimmense treasures of knowledge, they have no idea.The spirit of faith has, as its source and touchstone, thespiritual experience. “The ancient Indians through theiryogic insight found the idea of similar evolution, whichthe modern scientists are finding out by observation andresearch. In the Tantras this kind of evolution has been describedin detail,” writes Sri Aurobindo. And: “In the old Indianversions of this theory evolution, heredity and rebirthare three companion processes of the universal unfolding,