When I had just joined the Sri Chinmoy Centre I did quite a lot of travelling. The lab that I was a student in was in Hamilton and the Centre was in Auckland, 85 miles away.
Once a week I would travel there and back to attend Centre meditations, arriving back home between 1:00 – 2:00 in the morning. This happened for about three years (until I finally moved to Auckland!) and in that time I experienced many different types of sleep whilst driving. In fact I had categories for it, ranging from merely weary, through varying levels of stupor, to a light doze.
My most memorable sleep experience happened one time when I was working 15-18 hours per day, seven days per week, preparing for an international conference, and some nights not going to bed at all because of the workload. I remember leaping into the car and shooting off to Auckland and being very very tired in the meditation. I think Subarata and Jogyata tried to get me to stay at Bhuvah’s place for the night, so I would be fresher, but I had to get back to the lab. I was a bit worried about the trip as I had reached pinnacle levels of fatigue.
On the way home the car was heading past the halfway point when I became dimly aware that my chin was on my chest, and that I was wakening from a very deep and restful oblivion. Coming back into the world, as my head slowly raised, I perceived my arms, which were blue and luminous and shining in the dark. I was becoming slowly and groggily aware that, although I was the sole occupant of the car, I was not actually the one driving it. This continued for some seconds – I marvelled a bit as my senses returned slowly – that I could not feel sensation in my limbs but was an observer watching the car being effortlessly driven by my body.
Then full awareness dawned suddenly – the blue disappeared and I was back – panicking and wrenching the wheel to avoid heading for the ditch, when I fully realised that "no one" was driving the car!!
What really freaked me out was the knowledge that a chunk of the journey – a duration of 15 or 20 minutes or so – was entirely unaccounted for. I also remembered how vivid the blue of my arms was and there was a sense of elation in my heart. Yet my hair stood on end as I grappled with the enormity of the miracle that had happened and the thought of what could have happened if the miracle had not.
Subarata said that I should not test Grace like that again so I began having coffee with me whenever I drove.
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