It is asserted, for example, that, on a particular occasion, water
was turned into wine; and, on the other hand, it is asserted that a
man or a woman "levitated" to the ceiling, floated about there, and
finally sailed out by the window. And it is assumed that the
pardonable scepticism, with which most scientific men receive these
statements, is due to the fact that they feel themselves justified in
denying the possibility of any such metamorphosis of water, or of any
such levitation, because such events are contrary to the laws of
nature. So the question of the preacher is triumphantly put: How do
you know that there are not "higher" laws of nature than your chemical
and physical laws, and that these higher laws may not intervene and
"wreck" the latter?
The plain answer to this question is, Why should anybody be called
upon to say how he knows that which he does not know? You are assuming
that laws are agents--efficient causes of that which happens--and that
one law can interfere with another. To us, that assumption is as
nonsensical as if you were to talk of a proposition of Euclid being
the cause of the diagram which illustrates it, or of the integral
calculus interfering with the rule of three. Your question really
implies that we pretend to complete knowledge not only of all past and
present phenomena, but of all that are possible in the future, and we
leave all that sort of thing to the adepts of esoteric Buddhism.
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