During an evening concert at the April Celebrations in 1990, it suddenly felt difficult for me to breathe. Kritagyata, who is a nurse, wrote a note to Sri Chinmoy to alert him, and Guru replied that she should immediately take me to the hospital. That night in the hospital was very difficult, even with the oxygen and all the medication the physicians gave me. In the morning I awoke, exhausted, to find a priest praying near me. (It was a Catholic hospital.) My diagnosis was a pulmonary embolism; clots from both my legs had gone into my lungs. Being a physician myself, I knew the chance of surviving was small, and my heart began to talk with Guru. I said, "If it is good and necessary that I continue to work on this earth, please Guru, come help me!" I felt like I was suffocating and knew that medical science could not do anything more. Shortly after, I was sure that I saw Guru sitting near my bed. He told some disciples afterwards that my soul had been calling him very powerfully. Guru's mighty presence was necessary for only seven or eight seconds before I again began to breathe normally. With tears of gratitude I told him, "Dear Guru, thank you for my life; again I can breathe easily." Guru answered inwardly that I did not take adequate care of my physical body, which is the youngest member of our inner family—body, vital, mind, heart and soul. He advised me not to decide yet the precise date of my trip to Russia, but to wait. A new decision was made about my illness when other clots were found in the lungs. "Urgent surgery" was the reply of the vascular surgeon. He put a filter into the vena cava in my stomach to catch and prevent new clots in my legs from going towards my lungs. But, two hours after the operation, the same feeling of suffocation returned with severe pain in the lungs. Nothing more could help me physically. I knew at this moment, as before, that only Guru could help me. The cause of this second approach of death was the complications of recurrent pulmonary emboli during the operation and accompanying pleuritis. This affected my breathing even more, and I wasn't getting the necessary oxygen into my body. The last thing I heard, before I closed my eyes at about 2 a.m., was Kritagyata phoning someone. She said, "Tell Guru she is dying. We don't know what else to do." Never will I forget her face hovering over me with so much love and compassion. A smile of gratitude came from my soul, and then I lost consciousness with the sure feeling that I was in the hands of the Supreme. When I opened my eyes, it was 7 a.m.…I was alive. During my absence from the earthly environment, I had seen the most beautiful landscape that one can imagine: sweet green meadows full of flowers, rivers, butterflies and birds, and big forests with a pure, mild atmosphere. I remember hearing a divine, quiet music and seeing wonderful colours. After I left the hospital, I often wished to see and feel that unearthly beauty. This wish was so strong and repeated so often that some disciples decided to tell Guru about it. One day at the tennis court, Guru called me to come and sit on a chair next to him. We meditated for about ten minutes, though to tell the truth, I lost track of the time. I felt the vibration of a very powerful energy around my hands and head, and after a few seconds, around all of my being. With this energy came an excellent, pure joy and delight. I saw a yellow aura around Guru's head. I had wanted it to last forever, this extraordinary feeling of losing the body and finding satisfaction in the pure joy of existence. So Guru gave me another life and showed me what I must still learn in my stay on this earth: how to maintain this divine consciousness. He gave me the faith and knowledge that the Being who is all love, goodness and compassion will always do what is best for us and for everybody. This truth brings divine peace, in life and in death. This was the wonderful lesson my heart learned that April: how, with Guru's help, to overcome the fear of death.

Jagattarini (Belgrade)

The following incident happened when I was 20 years old. At that age I did a lot of things that you do when you are young and impetuous. One night in September, I went with my best friend and two other boys to a disco. At one o'clock in the morning, when we wanted to go home, we were all quite drunk. In such a situation, for some reason you think of yourself as immortal and you are not at all expecting that things can go wrong. We had come in one car, and the driver had a reputation for losing his self-control very easily after drinking. For this reason, my friend asked if he could drive instead, but the driver insisted on driving himself, since he was also the owner of the car. On our journey home, we were stopped at a traffic light when another car stopped besides us. The driver of this car started to provoke us into joining him for a little race. When the light turned green, both cars speeded up to full throttle. The race led us into a long tunnel, and while the other car fell back, we went on at highest speed. I was sitting behind the driver in the back seat, with my friend beside me. We both began to feel uncomfortable about the whole thing and we shouted at the driver to slow down. But he was totally deaf in that ear and seemed to be completely out of control, as if possessed by madness. All of a sudden, the whole atmosphere in the car changed. The car was filled with electricity and the air was so thick that you could cut it. It became obvious to me that this journey would find no good end. After leaving the tunnel, there was a dangerous curve and our driver was still driving like a maniac. I became fully aware that an accident was unavoidable, and that an accident at this speed would cause either my death or very serious injuries. I had hardly finished this thought when something astonishing happened: all at once I became totally calm and tranquil and all fear and panic vanished from me. The next moment, something from deep inside my heart came to the fore, surrendered completely and unconditionally to God and started to pray with utmost humility and devotion. The prayer went something like this: "My beloved Father, I know that I have committed quite a number of mistakes in my life and I am ready to bear the responsibility for this. If it is Your Will that I die now, or if I have to spend the rest of my life in a wheel- chair, then I will accept this fate most devotedly. Thy Will be done." Right after this prayer, I saw pictures and sequences of my life running very fast like a movie in front of my inner eye. All this took only a few moments, and when I concentrated again on what was happening around me, I saw that the driver had lost control of the car and that we were heading into the left crash barrier. I barely had time to press my knees against the driver's seat and to pull my arms in front of my head. Afterwards we came to know that the car crashed at about 120 km/h into the left crash barrier, overturned across the two lanes, crashed against the right crash barrier, flipped over it and finally landed on its roof against a small tree. The next thing I remember was that I was lying on my back on the asphalt. I was afraid that other cars would run over me, so I got up as fast as possible and found myself standing on the pavement. Somehow I must have been thrown out of the car window when it overturned. I saw the wrecked car lying there on its roof, and I felt I had to lie down near the car in the grass. My whole body hurt and I felt totally weak. There was dead silence. The only thing I heard was the dripping of some liquid that was running out of the car. I was afraid that it was gas and that the car would explode. Then I saw the driver and the other boy crawling out of the broken windows of the wreck, and I remembered that my friend must still be inside. I told them to get him out of the car, and they pulled him out by one arm. When I saw that he was still alive, I was able to breathe freely again and to calm down. I was still lying on my back in the grass, when I found above me the most beautiful starry sky. All the stars and the whole heaven were so close to me, it seemed as if they wanted to cover me, and I felt myself infinitely safe. My heart began to fill with gratitude, and suddenly I felt the presence of God. I felt Him caressing my head two or three times full of love and affection. Then I felt Him saying that my time for leaving had not yet come and that there was still something for me to accomplish in this lifetime. This message was something I felt very intensely, rather than something I heard with my outer or inner ears. My eyes filled with tears and I was overcome with infinite peace and gratitude, and I started praying, full of gratitude to God that He had protected me and saved my life. I can remember feeling disturbed and somewhat disappointed when the first helpers arrived to take care of us, because they interrupted this deep inner experience most abruptly. The driver and the other boy were completely unharmed. My friend and I were taken to the hospital, but after four days they sent us home. I felt it was an absolute miracle that nobody was seriously hurt or killed. When the driver of the other car, which had raced us, had to give a statement to the police, he told them that he did not think that anybody would leave this car alive, after he saw the car overturning through the air like a sparking ball. In the following years, I became interested in spirituality and meditation, and after six or seven years I came in contact with Sri Chinmoy's path and became his disciple. After some time, one day I realised that the divine presence that you feel in those special moments when you are inwardly or outwardly very close to Guru was the same divine presence I felt after the accident, when I was lying there in the grass! All at once I became aware that it was Guru who was there that night and saved my life, long before I became a disciple! It was he who caressed my head and who let me know that there was something left for me to do in this lifetime! I do not know what the Supreme has planned for me in this lifetime, but I do know that I wish to have at every single moment of my life that same kind of unconditional surrender to Him as I had just before the accident. And I wish to have at every single moment of my life that same kind of infinite gratitude to Him as I had just after the accident, when I was lying there in the grass.

Andi (Stuttgart)

A Russian friend of mine in Moscow was not well and went for a biopsy. When I called her at Sri Chinmoy's request, she described on the phone her experience during the operation, and she asked if I could please ask Guru what it meant. When they put her under anesthesia, she said at one point she was rushing backward down a long tunnel, going faster and faster, until all of a sudden, bigger than anything she could ever imagine, she saw Guru blocking the tunnel. He stopped her and told her, "Put out your hands; cup your hands." When she did this, he imparted to her what she described as a crystal, very translucent, of an unearthly, beautiful blue. Then he said to her, "Now say the magic word." At first she did not respond. At the top of his voice he yelled out to her, "Now say the magic word—NOW." At that moment she screamed out the name of her small child Dimitri. When she did, she went rushing down the tube in the reverse direction as fast as anything. The next thing she knew she was opening her eyes on the operating table, with the doctors and nurses looking over her with a big light shining. When I asked Guru if he would please give his interpretation of this experience as she had requested, he said that he had given my friend her own soul. Afterwards, everywhere we went, she would try and rediscover that particular blue, pointing out the colour to me, because she said this crystal was an incredibly beautiful blue. She has never been able to recapture anything like it here on earth.

Nishtha (New York)