Stories by Sri Chinmoy's students and friends
As a medical doctor, I have often been in the intensive care unit. Once the Supreme also wanted me to get to know the other side. And so it happened that I found myself in this unit with a fellow sufferer next to me. He was in a deep coma and his chest was rising and falling in perfect time to the rhythm of the respirator, producing a hissing sound. This mechanical sound was intermittently complemented by a gurgling caused by the extraction of mucus from his lungs. The poor fellow wasn’t able to swallow any more either. He was receiving medication by intravenous infusion and I could tell by the electrocardiogram on the control screen that his heart could say good-bye anytime. He seemed to be a cardiac patient who had suffered an embolic stroke.
Now there I was, hooked up to infusions and monitors myself. Out of the blue my heart had gone berserk, so I landed in the hospital, where they finally moved me into the cardiac intensive care unit to better supervise all the medical experiments to be carried out on me. Being a professional doctor, I could easily interpret the graph that was bouncing on the monitor over my head: my two ventricles had started to fall out of sync and beat totally independently from each other.
This condition diminishes heart effciency and, more importantly, it induces the great risk of thrombosis with an ensuing brain embolism (a blood clot in the brain) The latter may occur after a period of 48 hours and results in a hemiplegic stroke, with the possible outcome of being unable to swallow or to speak or to think, or even death. These embolisms tend to appear particularly at the stage where your heartbeat normalises. So, after this 48-hour period elapses, it is above all extremely dangerous trying to convert the heartbeat to a normal rhythm. The doctor in charge had never in his whole life seen this condition in someone of my age.
The doctors used massive drug injections in the hope of talking my heart out of the fuss it made. For one of those many injections, they required my explicit consent — there was a risk involved, they said. Right after the jab, I briefly lost consciousness, and when I came round again, I was hot all over and my heart was pounding like mad. Unfortunately, this treatment involving heavy medication was as ineffective as all the other attempts. All the treatments of the doctors were not only in vain, but quite a few injections did not even go successfully into the veins as they were supposed to, as doctors usually become quite nervous as soon as they have to give an injection to another doctor.
The first effective medicine I received came from my “spiritual heart specialist” in the form of the following message: “I am all concern, all my blessings and love.” From one moment to the next, all of my worries almost completely disappeared and a deep peace unfolded in my being.
I told Sri Chinmoy about this episode later on, and he commented: “Your worries were gone the moment you let me know, but then your problems were passed on to me In the inner world I saw a paralysing force fast approaching you.” Sri Chinmoy had only been informed that I was having troubles with my heart; he was never outwardly told that I could become paralysed as a result.
Since various medications failed to take effect, they wanted to take me to the operating room for a final attempt to stabilise my heartbeat with electroshocks under general anaesthesia. Time was ticking away and 48 hours had nearly elapsed. I was scheduled to be transferred to the operating room on Sunday at 2 p.m. There was no effective drug level in my body any longer in order to prepare me for the operation.
Now the time had come for my spiritual heart specialist to intervene. At 1:57 p.m. , out of the blue, for some mysterious reason, in absolute silence, my heartbeat returned to a normal rhythm. With every beat of my heart I had to fight back tears of relief and gratitude.
From a spiritual point of view, the experience I went through while I was in intensive care was very good for me. I realized how Sri Chinmoy secretly and silently comes to our rescue every day in any part of the world.
My heart
Is made of my Lord’s
Concern-Breath.Sri Chinmoy 1
