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MIRACLE PLACES (ATISHAYA KSHETRAS) 85 of an absolutely literally true, eternal spititual law. Faith works. Without Faith there is suffering, unfulness, failure. Faith means success unconditional and full. This explanation seems to be in the right direction. But it makes the vower himself the cause both of the wish and its fulfilment.
(3) The third explanation is that the Saints intervene with God Almighty, who fulfils the wishes of their devotees. I his explanation makes our God too much a man and this carries its own refutation on its face.
(4) The last possible explanation is that the Angels created by God or the Saints, atleast some of them, being reborn as Gods or Angels in Paradise or Heaven, attend to the prayers and sometimes look after the success of their devotees. This explanation would be acceptable to the followers of all religions who believe in Souls and Angels. It will be specially so in case of Jainism, as its God, the Vita Raga (unattached) Omnipotent, never uses his Omnipotence, as such use implies desire or attachinent, both of which he has destroyed for ever. Therefore his devotees, the Devas, shower success on the faithful supplicants.
It may be noted that intercourse between men and such Gods is not at all a new idea. The whole literature and history of the world is simply full of it. The Pact of Faust with Mephistophelis is known to all readers of Goethe. The Sacred Jaina Books laid down that the Gods upto first pair of Heavens, Saudharma and Ishan, i.e. all Residential, Peripatetic, Stellars, and all the Gods in the first two Heavens have sexual bodily union like human beings. Is it impossible that some celestial being may be enamoured of a mortal' human being? A human being with his longest age of 100 or 200 years is literally a 'mortal' compared with the 'immortal' minimum of ten thousand years of the Gods and Goddesses. Thus many · Fairy Tales' may be romantic memories of long-forgotten, true episodes in the lives of men and women. Some such are enshrined in Patriarchs' lives, in many an account of sacred mysterious, haunted, miraculous legendary or historical places all over the world.
Further, may it not be possible for these 'mortals' of the earth, and the invisible 'Immortals' of water, fire, air, earth, and Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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