Coincidence or Control?

The mind, with its need to correlate facts, gather evidence and develop proofs, finds it difficult, if not impossible, to credit ideas that seem to fall outside the logical reason based on the mind’s limited understanding of the oneness of the universal creation. The mind sets up certain ‘rules’ and holds doggedly to them until such time as more ‘facts’ come to conveniently overturn the past rules. Witness the idea that the sun revolves around the earth, which only in recent centuries was overturned by a new understanding of the operations of the solar system.

So the question of whether and to what extent an interaction between an individual and the forces of Nature, for instance, control of the weather, is one that has adherents on both sides. Those wedded to science and mental logic tend to disbelieve in this possibility; while those who have a more mystical bent can understand the way these forces interact in the unified field of consciousness.

At the same time, the mind is being confronted with evidence in the field of quantum physics which seems to defy the logical rules. Ideas such as quantum entanglement, where two particles, distant from one another, are linked together, such that action by one represents action by the other, or the idea that the fact of observation of an event changes the result, or even the results that seem to show that certain current events change the past, all challenge the traditional mental rules in ways that make it clear that those rules are not only limited, but arbitrary and incorrect when a greater picture and more facts can be brought together into a coherent picture. The question of the interaction between consciousness in the human being and the natural world is therefore open for review and consideration.

We read stories of various shaman who have some connection to the natural world and who are thus able to exercise a certain amount of control over the weather, for instance. One of the most famous stories involves Tibet’s famous yogi, Milarepa, in the years before he took up the practice of yoga. After his father died, his uncle and aunt stole away the family’s wealth and left his mother, sister and himself in a dependent, and destitute position. He yearned for revenge and went to study with a magician who taught him the secret of control of the weather. He went back to his village, called in a hail storm and destroyed much of the village.

Many traditions tell of the ability to control storms. Traditions also speak of the ability to bring needed rainfall to a region. Tales in the Puranas of India tell of how regions either had rainfall withheld, or were provided with rainfall based on various actions of kings, or curses made by Brahmanas who had been somehow insulted or harmed. The question of interaction between human individuals and the weather is one that has frequently come up all around the world. In the tradition of the Abrahamic religions there is the famous story of the catastrophic flood that, while neither caused by nor prevented by human intervention, yet was known in advance by Noah, with sufficient time to build an ark and populate it with two of each species. Similarly population centers were destroyed by climatic events which were revealed in advance to Lot, who was told by God to depart to safety before the event took place.

Many people experienced an event during the Mother’s last balcony Darshan in August 1973. It was uncertain that she would actually give Darshan that day. On the morning of August 15, 1973, the announcement was made for a late afternoon/early evening Darshan time. People began collecting in the street below the balcony hours in advance. It was pouring rain. Shortly before the tie of the Darshan, the clouds parted, the rain stopped and the Mother came out to give her blessings to the crowd of people in the street below. She went back inside and the rain promptly started up again.

We also hear of instances where the sense of peace was so solid that nothing, even storms could disturb it, as is related by the Mother in an anecdote about Sri Aurobindo during a great cyclone.

The Mother notes: “I have had innumerable examples of the power of right attitude. I have seen crowds saved from catastrophes by one single person keeping the right attitude. But it must be an attitude that does not remain somewhere very high and leaves the body to its usual reactions. If you remain high up like that, saying, ‘Let God’s will be done’, you may get killed all the same. For your body may be quite undivine, shivering with fear: the thing is to hold the true consciousness in the body itself and not have the least fear and be full of the divine peace. Then indeed there is no danger. Not only can attacks of men be warded off, but beasts also and even the elements can be affected. I can give you a little example. You remember the night of the great cyclone, when there was a tremendous noise and splash of rain all about the place. I thought I would go to Sri Aurobindo’s room and help him shut the windows. I just opened his door and found him sitting quietly at his desk, writing. There was such a solid peace in the room that nobody would have dreamed that a cycle was raging outside. All the windows were wide open, not a drop of rain was coming inside.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 1, Looking at Life and Circumstances, pg. 4