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Metaphysics, Ethics and Spiritual Development
217
tual or ideal pot. Otherwise, he will produce something altogether different from the intended effect, that is, a bowl instead of the pot.
In the production of the effect, the pot, the agent (kartā) is the potter, because he, voluntarily depending upon causes and performing activity through (self-attained) sense-organs and motor-organs, produces the effect.
To produce the effect, the pot, the potter has to collect causes, because ‘no effect can be produced without causes'. When we see an effect, we desire to find out and understand as to how it has come into being. And when on account of our limited experience we are not able to find out its cause, we remain contented by calling it a miracle or assigning an 'unseen' cause to it. We do not know as to what this ‘unseen' is and how it works. We observe silence on these points, because we are unable to enter deep into their investigation and search. At this juncture, it is necessary to draw attention to the fact that modern science has succeeded in rationally explaining events which were wrongly regarded as miracles; it has experimentally discovered their proper causes. And it is possible that with the advancement of modern science more and more so-called miracles will be stripped of their superimposed miraculous nature and turned into ordinary events with their causes made known. When man in his search for a cause of a particular effect or event does not find satisfactory answer and fails, he regards it as a miracle and is tempted to associate it with the so-called extraordinary power (siddhi) of some saint or with the so-called supernatural power of some idol. In this, there predominates the element of superstition. And we cannot but accept that among people various such superstitions are current. When science will pay special attention to its branches dealing with mind and spirit as it does to those dealing with body and matter, satisfactory answers to many such unaccounted-for 'miraculous' events will be found. Almost the entire world of superstitions fades away of itself with the extension of our knowl
e of the laws of nature and psyche, as surely as the mists melt before the rays of the morning sun. We should bear in mind that progress in science is not possible so long as our minds are saturated with superstitions and perverse beliefs or attitudes. It is good and proper to acknowledge our intellectual inability to find out the cause of a particular effect or event. But it is quite wrong and degrading to imagine some supernatural or miraculous power and connect the event with it, it is from such perverse practice that an unending series of superstitions originates and continues.
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