Gabor Szendi:
The explained miracle can remain miracle

Why are we attracted to the extraordinary, and why do we desire miracles? Because the wonder impresses us? Does it lift us up? Why do we love reports of superhuman endurance, strength, and faith? Because these are almost miracles? And why do we hate it when know-it-alls come along and feel the need to explain everything?

 

 

Is the desire for the extraordinary diminished by rational explanation? And why is it that some people get hot under the collar just by hearing the word "miracle," as if the ground under their feet is being cut away? They frantically deny the existence of all wonderful things.

The psychological effect of the miracle is a peculiar state of consciousness, in which space and time cease to exist, rationality ceases, and we find ourselves in a magical world in which everything suddenly seems able to happen. Why do we love this? It's the magical world of magical thinking, the ancient "mode" of man, in which all children grow up. My daughter was about 2 years old, we were on holiday, and our friend's older daughters rushed to report that Nora was sitting in the lounge, saying to herself, "Dad's coming to Nora." As a good father, I hurried to Nora, who obviously thought the "magic" worked. It was enough to say it, and I'd be there.

Every day such miracles happen, only the parents know nothing about it, and the kids take it for granted that Santa Claus figured out what they wanted for Christmas, that their prayers were listened to by the heavens, or that Mom was healed of illness. The miracle is some elusive promise, a strange encounter with the transcendent power inherent in or serving us, which is important to know because we will need it again. It's like the genie of Aladdin's magic lamp: if we call, he will come and help. Practically, religion is nothing more than a life-long miracle that helps us to live eternally through the exercise of solid faith.

Most people are interested in keeping the miracle constant. We love the illusionists, the wonderful stories of healing and escape (one day maybe that will happen to us), and records of miracles have been written for thousands of years. The Bible itself is no more than a collection of miracles.

Analyzing things that seem unbelievable always leads us to realize that miracles reside in the human being, but with that understanding, we only really explain things relatively. Analyzing a miracle often only leads to new mysteries, taking us from one amazement to another.

The miracles created

For what reason has illusionism or magic developed other than to enchant people? But which is the bigger miracle? What we see, or the human stratagems that created the illusion? In the 1850s, tribes in Algeria began to rebel, because members of the Marabout tribe were enchanting them with magic, and they were encouraged to revolt against the French. Jean-Eug?ne Robert-Houdin (Not the same as the later Houdini who took his name) was a famous magician of the time, and Napoleon III. sent Houdin to Algeria instead of the army to show that the French were greater wizards. Houdin toured Algeria, stunned tribes there, and eventually reached the Marabouts. The tribe's sheik called him to a duel to see if Houdin was truly invincible. Houdin asked for a respite until the next day so that he could pray. The next day, the sheik offered two pistols and two bullets for Houdin to load and select. They then moved 15 paces apart, and the sheik had the right to fire first. He carefully aimed and fired, and Houdin caught the bullet between his teeth and then displayed it to the crowd. The amazement only intensified when Houdin did not shoot at the sheikh, but towards some houses, where blood began to flow from the bullet hole. The news quickly spread that the French were greater wizards, and the spirit of rebellion was snuffed out (Blaine, 2002). We know today that the sheik's pistol contained a dummy bullet, and the bullet was already in Houdin's mouth - but he achieved the trick under real-world conditions, before a crowd that watched with keen eyes.

Between 1880 and 1916, a couple called Julius and Agnes Zancig enchanted the world with their telepathic and thought-reading abilities. Julius strolled through the crowd, and on the stage Agnes wrote down a given item, money, or the 5-6 digit number of a tram ticket. A random line from a random book would also be noted, then the book was closed, after which Agnes opened it at the same place and showed the line in question. Their abilities passed every test, and even quite serious people believed the couple had special thought-transmitting abilities. At the end of his career, Julius Zancig revealed his secrets: they had developed a system of code that was undetectable to others, based on sound and visual signals, allowing them to easily communicate with each other. They kept their skills up to scratch with several hours of daily practice (Fürst and Moszkowski, without year).

The Aronson couple, Simon and Ginny entertained their audiences from the 1970s to1999, with Ginny sitting blindfolded on the stage, and Simon picking out objects brought by the audience, which Ginny then named (Jay, 2013). Without Simon saying a word, Ginny mentioned, for example, that a man held an Amex bank card, and even dictated the expiration date. They had also created their own Zancig code.

Artist and magician David Blaine impresses his audience with stunning performances. In Bryant Park, New York, he stood on top of a 30-meter-high column of half-meter-diameter for 35 hours without any safety equipment, and at the end of the show he jumped down onto a four-meter stack of paper boxes. At other times he spent almost three days standing in an ice block without food and drink, and without sleeping (Baumeister and Tierney, 2013). Being able to hold his breath under water for 17 minutes does not seem so wonderful in the light of all this, until someone tries to do the same for just two minutes.

Uri Geller has gone out of fashion of late, perhaps because James Randi has followed him like a bloodhound, slowly revealing all Geller's secrets. Undoubtedly, in front of our very eyes, he curved spoons and forks, claiming to have paranormal power. However also in front of our eyes Randi also bent and then broke a spoon, but he calls it only a trick (Randi, 2014). We are just as surprised at Randi's show, even though he admits to simple trickery.

Miracles that have been exposed as tricks still remain miracles, only now we can call them miracles of human perseverance, practice, and deception.

Or is there a miracle that has no explanation, but is almost non-existent today?

The clairvoyant

The story of Franz Anton Mesmer is well-known, as he successfully cured a wide variety of diseases using 'animal mesmerism.' However the story of his student, the Marquis of Puységur is less well known. In 1784, he started magnetizing a peasant called Victor Race who lived on his estate, because the man felt pain in his lungs and was spitting blood. Due to the magnetization, Victor entered a somnambular state, and described his illness and its course. When he came into contact with other patients, he also diagnosed them and provided them with a cure. Victor's example of persistent clairvoyance, or the ability to perceive beyond the senses, was revealed in several of Puységur's subjects.

For example, Henri-Joseph-Claude Joly was brought before the Marquis at the age of 19. He had suffered severe, worsening deafness for ten years. In a somnambular state, he reported that he had a purulent tumor in his head that, if removed through his throat, would cause his death, but if it was removed through his nose, he would regain his hearing. The next day he said the pus would leave in two stages, the first on Monday, the second later. On Monday, an egg-sized white substance left through his nose. The next day he was found choking at the estate, the Marquis gave him magnetized water and calmed him down. Joly, in a somnambular state, said that the rest of the pus would leave his nose the next day. In the presence of witnesses, the cleansing also took place, with whitish material and blood leaking from his nose, and he regained his hearing (Gauld, 1995). The Marquis reported more than sixty such strange examples of healing. Believe it? Don't believe it?

The history of hypnosis is full of more wonderful stories, and we can find almost all of them credible. The essence of hypnosis and autohypnosis is that what the hypnotist or subject says is also a suggestion, and as such it is realized as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

The stigmatized

The stigma are the wounds inflicted on the body when Christ was crucified. These included nail injuries to the hands and feet, wounds to the head caused by the crown of thorns, wounds to the side caused by a Roman soldier's spear, and damage to the shoulder by the cross carried to Golgotha Hill. The first descriptions of this date from 1097. During the examination of the bodies of crusaders killed by Muslims, several witnesses noticed that on the right shoulder of the warriors was the imprint of the Christian cross (Purkis, 2005).

The first saint to be accepted as stigmatized by Christ's wounds was Saint Francis of Assisi, even though a mysterious text of the apostle Paul already indicated that he too was stigmatized, and there are two other saints mentioned, only the church does not see these as proven. To date, at least 340 stigmatized people have been counted in the post-Saint Francis era. Since Saint Francis we have observed many descriptions of the phenomenon: stigmas first appeared in an ecstatic experience when subjects first encountered Christ, the Virgin Mary, an angel, or a saint in their stigmatized vision. There were some who had invisible stigma, and only pain indicated their existence. Such were the stigma of Saint Catherine of Siena. Many stigmatized people died at the age of 33, or stigmas appeared around this age. For many of those stigmatized, the wounds began to bleed on Friday.

Louise Lateau was a Belgian peasant girl, born in 1850, who lived for 33 years. Her case is particularly interesting because she was examined by a team of doctors and they found the stigmas to be real. They put gloves on her hands, tied at the wrist and sealed to prevent self-harm. The stigmas changed on a weekly cycle. From Saturday to Thursday, one and a half centimeters of reddish spots were visible on both sides of the hand, which were dry but bright on the surface. There was nothing visible on the forehead, and the points from which blood flowed on a Friday were indistinguishable from the surrounding areas.

However, on Tuesdays, the stigmata started to itch. By Thursday night Louise's head was always sore, her skin became dry and hot, her heart rate accelerated, then the blisters appeared and started to bleed at night. Bleeding started from 12-15 circular points on the head, and lasted for 24 hours. The wounds on her limbs caused by "nails" were turned into deep wounds and blood flowed from these. She sometimes lost a quarter of a liter of blood. The veracity of the stigmata was unquestionable, but it was even less believable - as she claimed - that she had not eaten or drunk in the last seven years of her life (Szendi, 2008).

The phenomenon is also known with other Saints, and as in their case, for Louise it was found that while she believed that she did not eat or drink, in fact, of course, she was eating regularly (Wilson, 1989).

Explanation of stigmata

Neurology and psychiatry were able to explain the mystery of stigma in the 19th century. On the one hand, the so-called 'conversion hysterics' were able to produce virtually any symptom, from paralysis, to blindness, to pseudo pregnancy. Hypnotists of the age were able to create on them, or on other hypnotic subjects, any kind of wounds or even scripts or crosses, developed in the form of bruising on their skin. Although, among the stigmatized, the sex ratio was 7:1 in favor of women, it would be an exaggeration to simply call stigmas an hysterical phenomenon. In particular, calling something hysteria does not explain anything . If we look further into what hysteria is, we will get to autohypnosis, in light of the latest evidence. Hypnosis, as we know it today, is a concept that is realized in physical-behavioral form. Hysteria or somatization is really just a pathologization of a much broader phenomenon. What modern-day hypnotists have effected with highly hypnotic subjects is that, through the intense experience of Christ's sufferings, a deeply believing person can "self-create" on their own body in an autohypnotic way.

To overcome this theoretical assumption, I would quote Dr. Alfred Lechler's experiment with his own employee as a maid. He hired the young woman because he concluded that she showed hysterical symptoms from her previous history. First he hypnotized his maid, and the stigmata appeared in the form of wet red spots. He then asked the woman to recall several times, a photograph of Catholic mystic and stigmatic, Teresa Neumann, , where blood flowed from the eyes of the stigmatized. The maid soon appeared to Lechler, with blood leaking from her eyes. When a crown of thorns was placed on her head in hypnosis, bloody wounds appeared on her forehead the next day. The maid, practicing with Lechler, was soon able to easily produce the full range of stigmata (Wilson, 1989).

Of course, do not believe that the miracle can be explained. It can be pulled down, and a rational framework for understanding can be provided, but a miracle remains a miracle. Explaining it is much like trying to describe a Vermeer or Watteau painting in words, or to recite a Beethoven symphony. Because the mystery is humans themselves with their strange abilities, which are completely different to experience in their immediate reality, than to simply read about.

 

References

Baumeister, RF; Tierney, J: Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. Penguin Books; 2012.

Blaine, D: Mysterious stranger. Villard Books, 2002.

Fürst, A; Moszkowski, A: Az élővilág csodái.[Das Buch der 1000 Wunder] Singer és Wolfner Irodalmi Intézet R.-T.

Gauld, A: A History of Hypnotism. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995

Jay, J: It's the Thought that Counts. Simon and Ginny Aronson. Genii, The Conjurors' Magazine, 2013. nov.

Purkis, WJ: Stigmata on the First Crusaders. Studies in Church History, 2005, 41:99-108.

Randi, J: Debunking The Paranormal. 2014. web:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24kpAClYmmQ

Szendi G: God in the brain. Jaffa, 2008.

Wilson, I: Stigmata. Harper & Row, New York, 1989.