One day, around 5:30 in the morning, Sri Chinmoy called and said, “O my God! What is happening with Nayak?” Nayak is a fellow student of Sri Chinmoy, and is the leader of the Seattle Sri Chinmoy Centre along with his wife Nandita.

I said,“What is happening, Guru?”

He said, “He is in the hospital. Call and find out what is happening. Something very, very serious — he is very seriously ill.”

I called Nandita, and she had just brought Nayak to the emergency room. I called Nayak, and he sounded very weak. He was waiting to be seen. When I told Sri Chinmoy, he asked if I would please go quickly to the hospital. When I saw Nayak, his EKG showed that a very serious myocardial infarction, a heart attack, was actually in progress. The whole left side of his heart was blocked. Nayak looked so ashen — he looked very bad. He was very emotional, and the situation was extremely difficult.

Sri Chinmoy had said to call him as soon as we had any news. So I called and Sri Chinmoy said,“Please tell Nayak I am putting a very, very, very strong force on him. And call me in fifteen minutes.”

I told Nayak and Nandita, and they were very moved. Then the doctors came in. They had drawn blood to see what kind of heart attack it was, and they were looking at the heart tracing on the EKG. Amazingly, after Sri Chinmoy’s call, Nayak started to get better. He started to talk, he was joking, his colour was getting better. The cardiologist was asking the assistants, “Why are you going so slowly?”— but it was because Nayak was doing better. They were sort of joking with him.

The hospital cleared the whole schedule of patients so that Nayak could get a catheterization, the insertion of a tube so they can visualise the heart. The cardiologist was extremely good; it was at the University of Washington Medical Center Hospital, which is the best hospital in the Pacific Northwest. We wanted to stay with Nayak, but they said no, it would be about ten minutes, and then they would do whatever they felt needed to be done

I had called Sri Chinmoy again after 15 minutes, and Sri Chinmoy had said again that he was putting a very, very strong force on Nayak, and by that time, Nayak was actually joking with the doctors. He was looking so good, yet apparently there was a major heart attack going on It was amazing.

After a while, the nurse found us in the waiting room and said, “Okay, now you can see the doctor. The procedure is over ” When we entered the room, the doctor said, “I want to show you something. These are the films we took of Nayak’s heart a year and a half ago. These are the films now. Do you see any difference?” We were looking at the films, and he said, “We did not see any difference. We discussed it. We could not imagine what was going on. We have a mystery here, because here we show signs in the EKG of a major heart attack, and now there is nothing going on inside the heart, and he is doing very wel. ”

I said, “Well, what about the lab tests? Do they show anything?” because you can see from the tests if there is any damage to the heart tissue.

He looked at us and said, “The lab tests are normal. Something is going on!” The doctor was absolutely astounded. So I told him, “We have a meditation Teacher. I don’t know if you believe in prayer.” He smiled and said,“I very much believe in prayer.” We all knew that Sri Chinmoy had saved Nayak’s life. In fact, Sri Chinmoy later told Nayak that if I had delayed contacting Sri Chinmoy for 15 more minutes, Nayak would have had a massive fatal heart attack.

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

• 1. Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 23, Agni Press, 2001