SRI Mahadeva Iyer, a devotee of Sri Bhagavan, was ailing in Madras from persistent hiccough for nearly a month. His daughter wrote to Sri Bhagavan, appealing to Him to bless her father and give relief to his distressing ailment. On receipt of this letter, Sri Maharshi told me to write to Sri Mahadeva Iyer that a paste of jaggery and dried powdered ginger, if taken, would effect immediate cure of his trouble.
Then turning to Madhavan, His personal attendant, Sri Bhagavan said: “We had some ready-made paste of this medicine; can you find it?” Madhavan immediately produced it. Bhagavan took a dose of it Himself, and distributed the same paste among those around Him.
He looked at me and said that I might write to Sri Mahadeva Iyer by that very evening’s post. I said in jest: “Why, Bhagavan, Mahadevan is already cured. Bhagavan has taken medicine for him!” And Bhagavan gave a broad laugh.
Sri Bhagavan’s sense of unity was so intense that He would never accept what was not shared with others. By first tasting the medicine that He was going to send to His Madras devotee He made it holy as a Prasad. Then on His normal principle: “if it is good for me it must be good also for all these,” He distributed it to all present.
I wrote to Sri Mahadeva Iyer from the Ashram office, but the next day’s post brought us a letter from his daughter to say that her father was relieved of his ailment at 1 p.m. on the previous day. It was exactly the hour when Sri Maharshi took the jaggery paste.Isn’t this like the saying in Tamil: “The kurathi (gypsy) was delivered of the child, though it was the kurava (her husband) who took medicine on her behalf.”
Bhagavan never encouraged any talk of ‘miracles’ but this did not prevent His devotees from experiencing what cannot be explained by normal physical science.