WHY I DO NOT PERFORM MIRACLES

 
When the mind encroaches upon the province of the heart, it does so by requiring assurance or conviction as a precedent condition that must be fulfilled before there is a release of love. But love is nothing if it is not spontaneous. It cannot be a conclusion of reasoning. It is not a fruit of the spirit of bargaining. If you want to be certain about the object of love before giving your love, it is only a form of calculating selfishness.

Many persons, for example, want to be convinced of my divinity in order to be able to love me. That is to say, they want me to give them objective proofs of my spiritual status by performing miracles. Conviction of this type is often a hindrance rather than a help in releasing the highest form of love — which is utterly indifferent to what it might receive from the object of love. When the mind seeks conviction or corroboration (through objective proofs and miracles as an aid to spiritual understanding), it is encroaching upon the sphere that properly belongs to the heart.

Conviction and corroboration become important when a person desires guarantees for securing certain definite and tangible results in the objective world. Even if we suppose that a person is intellectually convinced of the existence of God by means of miracles or some such objective data, this will not necessarily release his heart. The allegiance he might perhaps give to God as a result of such cold revelation will be either through fear or through a sense of duty.

Love in which there is no sense of restraint cannot be born of a conviction that is based upon things accessible to the mind. And when there is no love, there is no bliss or beauty of being. In fact, God's nature as the Ocean of Love cannot be grasped by the mind. God has to be known through love and not through an intellectual search for miracles.

That is the reason why I do not perform miracles for those who are closest and dearest to me. I would rather have no following than use miracles for convincing others of my divinity.

It is true that, while loving me, people often do have spiritual experiences that were hitherto unknown to them; and these experiences help them in the further opening of their hearts. But they are not meant to feed the mental craving for intellectual conviction, and they should not be regarded as the goal.