Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (10 page)

Foreword

This is a book I had to write from the heart. I've been carrying it around inside me for ten years, ever since my first visit to Lourdes, that vast caravanserai where hope, despair and commercialism thrive side by side. I was haunted by the images and dirges I had seen and heard there.

While I was following the trail of my astronaut gods through the five continents, I made a point of visiting every accessible visionary shrine. How alike they all were in essence! It became increasingly clear to me that the phenomenon of visions is something that concerns us all. I did not forget my space-travelling gods, but there are some books that ripen like autumn fruit.

What are the people who seem to be predisposed to have visions really like?

Are they psychologically unbalanced religious fanatics?

Are their 'miracles' simply an attempt to ingratiate them- selves with the Christian churches, especially the Roman Catholic Church, that accept their wonders as 'genuine'?

Did the dogmas of the Catholic Church, which also play a vital role in visions, originate by divine inspiration?

Are we really supposed to believe that God's word, the last Court of Appeal when authoritative Christian judgments are-delivered, is inspired by the Holy Ghost?

Are the multifarious miracles which undoubtedly happen at places of pilgrimage delusions or self-delusions?

Is there a broad basis of medical and scientific fact behind these miracles which makes them credible and explicable?

While mountains of documentary material were piling up, while I was making special journeys to places of pilgrimage while I was rummaging in many of the world's great libraries, a deluge of questions assailed me. As I am not by nature the sort of person who can believe, in the good old-fashioned way, but want to know what can be explained by our god-given reason without appealing to an anonymous and much-abused Holy Ghost, I set to work. I set to work as a curious labourer in God's vineyard, as someone who considers God too exalted an arbiter to be constantly invoking him in support of his arguments.

After studying visions for years, I think I can say fairly safely that this is the first compendium of its kind. Consequently some questions remain open to discussion, but I hope that in the future competent scholars and ecclesiastical courts, too, will accept my researches into the cause and effect of the vast and complicated field of miracles and visions to rectify frankly and honestly the false conceptions that are still in circulation.