Very Much Alive

Very Much Alive

Since becoming a disciple of Sri Chinmoy, I have from time to time felt a very strong inner presence guiding and protecting me. In the spring of 1995, I was giving a meditation class in Nijmegen, a city in the east of the Netherlands. One beautiful day in June, I was driving there on the highway. The weather was perfect, the windows were open and I was singing happily, watching the blue sky. I was driving in the fourth, far-left lane in dense rush-hour traffic, which was moving at the maximum speed of 120 km/h. Suddenly as lightning, an inner voice, speaking in the dialect of the region where I grew up, told me to say a fast prayer for protection, now! I obeyed immediately, meditated and prayed for protection. Then I looked around. Everything was as perfect and serene as before. Within thirty seconds it all changed. My speed started dropping. I pressed the gas pedal, but it was no use. My speed was dropping very fast. On my left was only the guard rail, with no place to stop. Behind me I saw panicking drivers trying to move to the packed third lane in order to avoid me. I realised that I was on the verge of becoming the cause of a chain crash. Then I saw on my left a break in the guard rail. It was a tiny entrance to a carpool lane that was not in use at the time. I later discovered that this was the only place like this for a hundred kilometers. My speed by now had dropped to less than 20 km/h, and I would not have been able to drive more than a few meters further. As I pulled into the space, I uttered a sigh of relief and gratitude, but then I realised that I was still not safe. Smoke rose up from the engine, and my car was still standing partly in the fourth lane. A few cars almost hit me in the back. Within a few seconds, however, a tiny little fire truck parked behind me and put its blue alarm lights on. I have never seen a fire truck that small before or after this incident, but when it was needed most, it was there. The fireman got out of his truck. He was off-duty but had a mobile phone, which in those days was still a rare device. He called the police, who took at least twenty minutes to arrive, and all that time he protected me and my car. The car had to be transported back to a garage in Amsterdam by the road patrol, and was then declared a total loss. I took a cab home—no more car, no more class, but very much alive.

Aster (Amsterdam)