Miracle story

http://www.heartspace.org/travel/bombay.html .

Here is one

My miraculous experience

I shall start with dreams, how dreams reveal secrets. I am sure all of us have experienced something similar. If you have, please hit the comment button and relate yours..

When I was in IIIrd grade, I had a missing book....my composition book, I still remember clearly with a nice thick white cover on top. I missed it dearly and feared the consequences of not finding it. It was a huge mystery. I thought about it a lot. Hard to remember back, how long I missed it, but I speculate at least a few days. Nights, I would go to sleep wondering where the book was - as there were not too many worrisome things in those days. This was it...

One night, in my dreams I see that the notebook is in the attic. The next day, I go up there and there it was sitting exactly where I had seen it in my dream.

I don't suspect putting it there myself, I am pretty sure one of my brothers' had placed it there in spite. It is very uncanny that I discovered it sitting exactly where I saw it in my dreams.

Occult claims clamor for serious study

By Deborah Blum

A hundred years ago, one of the most ambitious of research projects was launched, a study that linked scholars and mediums on three continents. Its purpose was to discover whether living humans could talk to dead ones.

Newspapers described the work as ``remarkable experiments testing the reality of life after death.'' The scholars involved included William James, the famed American psychologist and philosopher, and Oliver Lodge, the British physicist and radio pioneer. They saw evidence for the supernatural -- in this world and perhaps the next.

In one instance they made a request to an American medium while she was in a trance. The request was in Latin, a language the medium did not speak. The instructions included a proposal that she ``send'' a symbol to a British medium. During her next trance session, the American began asking about whether an ``arrow'' had been received. Later, comparing notes, the researchers discovered that during the American's first trance, the English psychic had suddenly begun scribbling arrows. It was only after a series of similar results that the researchers published their findings.

For many, the dismissal of such Victorian research represents a triumph of modern science over superstition. But -- and I admit that this is an unusual position for a mainstream science writer -- I believe that it may instead represent a missed opportunity, a lost chance to better understand ourselves and our world.

Curiosity about the supernatural has not diminished over the last century. The past few years have seen a surge in occult-themed TV, including such popular dramas as ``Medium,'' parodies such as ``Psych'' and reality-themed shows featuring professional mediums or paranormal investigators. On the radio, ``Coast to Coast AM With George Noory'' focuses on supernatural issues and boasts 2.5 million listeners. Paranormal organizations, schools for mediums and practicing psychics flourish.

What has diminished is the interest of academic researchers on a par with James and his colleagues -- and, correspondingly, the quality of the science. Yes, there are paranormal investigators using modern technology to hunt for the purported heat signature (in the infrared) of ghosts or the ``energy'' of a spectral communication (electronic voice phenomena). There are even a few accomplished university scientists exploring the supernatural, although often on the side and covertly. But there's nothing as sophisticated, at least in design, as the Victorians' work.

In addition to the ambitious ``cross-correspondence'' study cited earlier, the Victorian scholars ran an international survey of reported ghost sightings, particularly those tied to the death of a relative or friend. Tens of thousands of people in multiple countries were interviewed; hundreds of volunteers sifted through the reports, rejecting those that lacked independent witnesses or documentation. They concluded that ``death visitants'' occurred more than 400 times above chance.

By comparison, a modern telepathy study, presented this month at an annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, involved 63 people asked to say in advance which of four friends or relatives was calling on the telephone. The answers were 45 percent correct, which, the researchers claimed, was above the 25 percent expected through chance.

I confess that this was a rather silly and unconvincing experiment -- too small and too poorly controlled to prove anything. But I've seen plenty of orthodox research studies that made claims based on even sketchier experiments. So it doesn't convince me, as it did a host of angry British scientists, that telepathy is merely ``a charlatan's fancy.'' It convinces me that we need smarter science on all levels.

``Either I or the scientist is a fool with our opposing views of probability,'' James wrote. The risk of appearing foolish, he believed, was the least of the dangers. There also was the risk of failing to investigate the world in all its dimensions, or making it appear smaller and less interesting than it really is. He worried about a time when people would become ``indifferent to science because science is so callously indifferent to their experiences.'' He worried that a close-minded community of science could become a kind of cult itself, devoted to its own beliefs and no more.

And, as should be obvious here, I have come to agree with him.

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DEBORAH BLUM is a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer and the author of ``Ghost Hunters: William James and the Scientific Search for Life After Death.'' She wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times.