Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (361 page)

suggestion from the start; should one of them remain outside it, he would be caught in the undertow of the state of consciousness of the others. 'Human individuals have an immediate effect on the Sensorium commune (common emotions).' [31]

These are not Mr. von Daniken's suppositions, but a logical chain of evidence forged by doctors as a result of research .... It is true that the Church also admits 'natural' explanations, but it reserves to itself the recognition of 'genuine' miraculous cures performed by visions, with the co-operation of the Holy Family and the halleluya singing choir.

Yogananda Paramahamsa [32] was one of the most famous Yogis of our day. The world-wide Self Realization Fellowship he founded in 1917 championed thoroughly sensible views which centre round one of the great Yogi's basic utterances:

God helps those who help themselves. He has endowed you with will power and concentration, faith, reason and healthy commonsense so that you can help yourselves in all corporeal and mental suffering.

You must apply all your faculties at the same time as you call on him for help. When you pray or practise healing meditation, always say to yourselves that he needs your own, but God-given, powers in order to heal you or others. Yogananda knows psychology's laws of effect inside out.

We can never know in advance when we shall be cured and so should not set any time limits to the process. Faith and not time will determine when the cure is to take place. The end result depends on the correct awakening of the vital force and the conscious and unconscious disposition of the person concerned.

These insights of the Yogi's, to whom consecrated water (considered sacramental; it has a little salt mixed with it) is as alien as the joy of marriage still is to a Catholic priest, get to the very essence of miraculous cures, even though they stem from a totally unchristian faith, which is if anything a knowledge of the vital processes of auto suggestive cures. Yogananda gives his fellowmen a hint about how it is exercised at all the sites of visions and miracles: Do not forget that you must say the healing words with the right emphasis, loudly at first and then more and more softly until you are only whispering, that close attention and concentration are especially necessary. In this way you lead your thoughts, the truth of which you are deeply convinced of, from the aural sense into consciousness ... from there into the sub-conscious or automatic-conscious. He who has the necessary faith will be healed by this method.

I have never heard of Yogananda being at Lourdes or Fatima or any other visionary shrine, and I do not imagine he was. Yet his method is the one which is practised there. The crowds of people assemble in big squares, singing chorales in loud voices, saying the rosary or other devout prayers. The closer they get to the miraculous spot, the lower the volume of the droning chorus. Their attention and concentration is directed at the goal. What they wish for is forced 'from the aural sense into consciousness'. From then on they only speak in whispers and hymns are merely hummed. 'Faith' is wide-awake and concentrated.

In most cases this faith in the effect of the method of healing satisfies faith in miracles at visionary