I was fortunate
to be introduced to meditation at age sixteen, and somehow intuitively
knew it was the key I needed to access satisfaction in life. Without a
spiritual teacher, spiritual family background or spiritually inclined
peers, I regularly became discouraged, and made all sorts of excuses
for ignoring my intuition. I drifted further and further out to sea
while chasing the seemingly close, yet ever-elusive outer happiness.
I knew all along I was avoiding the one thing I really needed (the
spiritual life), but it just seemed easier not to address it. A strange
conscious thought was always at the back of my mind: the Supreme would
have to give me a pretty life-changing experience to redirect my
attention towards Him. For some reason, I assumed it would involve a
car accident. Don’t ask me where this thought came from; I have no
idea. I was surprisingly unconcerned though, and just assumed it would
happen eventually. In the meantime, life was just a very long party.
I had no idea that I was about to journey into the most significant
(yet remarkably strange) day of my life. I had just passed the scene of
a road accident, and was grateful it was not my turn, when suddenly...
it was my turn.
I was in the middle of three lanes on a very busy motorway, about to
overtake a slower car on my left (because that's the way we do things
here). To my astonishment it indicated and pulled out inches in front
of me. Somehow I saw that there was space for me to pull into the fast
lane, but as I was driving faster than the intruding car, we were
getting closer by the millisecond. I had to move immediately, but then
correct myself so as not to hit the central reservation. This did not
look very feasible overall, especially in an unfamiliar hired car.
I missed the other car and the central reservation probably by
millimetres, but could not correct the car very smoothly. My car soon
started to weave about like a fish on a hook. Trying to steer into the
swerve to regain balance seemed almost to work, but then my Schumacher
moment was over and I lost control all together. The car was spinning
anticlockwise in a circle across all three lanes.
You would not believe how much happened in those few seconds of
spinning! I saw that all three lanes of traffic had stopped in a
perfectly straight line. To me it seemed like there was a line of light
in front of them like a barrier. I can’t exactly say I saw it with my
eyes, but I was aware of it. I know this sounds strange. It was.
Have you ever heard people say their life flashed before them during
a “near-death” experience? I thought this was a Hollywood invention,
but it actually happened - like a video on fast-forward. I gripped the
steering wheel and looked down at my arms and legs for a moment,
thinking it might be the last time I would see them. My thought for
them: "Well, thanks limbs, you have served me well."
As if all that wasn’t enough to assimilate, I felt like the Supreme
was having a conversation about me. Sounds strange, right? It was. You
know when you’re a kid and you’re sure your parents are talking about
you, but you can’t get your ear close enough to the keyhole to make out
the words? I don’t know to whom I thought He would be talking, and I
can’t say I exactly heard anything with my ears either. It was like an
awareness somewhere above and around me. I just assumed He was deciding
my fate. I was fully ready to accept that my almost complete conscious
avoidance of Him over the previous nine years might well throw up a
fairly... er ...significant result. The only thing I couldn’t stand was
waiting for that result while spinning in a car.
It seemed to take hours. Each time I faced the row of traffic I
looked into the eyes of the open-mouthed drivers as they also gripped
their steering wheels in anticipation of the outcome. Finally I somehow
hit the central reservation backwards. Game Over. The car was about
half its original length, but I walked free without a scratch.
I should point out here that I am not the kind of person who sees
and hears things outside of herself without using the normal human
senses. I would be of no interest to the Arthur C. Clarkes of this
world.
Suddenly life went back to full speed and I found myself running
down the middle lane punching the air with my fist like a character in
a Charlie Chaplin movie, and yelling a few choice words at the culprit
who had pulled in half a mile away. Two guys who had witnessed the
whole thing ran after me and sorted everything out with the police and
so on. I can’t explain why, but I totally trusted them as if I already
knew them. Strange. They took me to a service station where I could
call the person I was due to meet. The voice on the other end of the
phone said,
"WHAT? Are you CRAZY getting into a car with two strangers? How do you know they’re okay?"
I looked out of the phone box to find that one was helping an old
lady from her wheelchair into her car, and the other was handing me an
ice cream. I think the Supreme had it all pretty well under control.
That night I felt like I had just been born into this world.
Everything sparkled with newness, and held such fascination for me. I
don’t think I have ever been so close to an understanding of the
meaning of gratitude, or of the truly unconditional nature of the
Supreme’s Compassion. It was a new experience at the time, but all of
these feelings have stayed with me to enhance my view ever since.
The year immediately following this event was fairly... er
...challenging. A good result was that I started meditating pretty much
every day, using a visualisation exercise I had read about in my teens,
but which I had never actually practised. Basically you imagine you are
in a safe, beautiful place and that your spiritual guide meets you
there. Then you meditate. This exercise really helped me to get through
that year; I don’t know how I would have survived it otherwise.
I was never actually searching for a spiritual master, and did not
even know of the existence of Sri Chinmoy. I just wanted to meet
spiritually inclined people and learn some meditation techniques, so I
started looking for classes.
When I found the Sri Chinmoy Centre, I realised that the guide in my
visualisations bore a very striking resemblance to Sri Chinmoy.
Sumangali Morhall
November 2004
