But the arrival of the paramedics and my not being able to talk or move the right side of my body was a potent sales pitch for reality.Īs I had trained myself to do with any bad trip, I settled into witness consciousness and watched it all go by. Was this reality, or was it my projection? On some level both were true. Since I understand this reality as a projection of mind, my immediate reaction to the stroke was that I had created this medical disaster as an exercise to finish the book. I don’t remember much of those first days.

I was in the ICU for four or five days and then was moved to a rehab center. They gave me a 10 percent chance of survival. When they realized I had had a serious stroke, they transported me to a special Kaiser stroke facility south of San Francisco. I wasn’t thinking straight because of my scrambled brain. As I looked from the paramedics to the doctors, I could see they all thought I was dying. I knew this was a big deal, but it didn’t really occur to me I might be dying, that this might be all she wrote for this body. (Nowadays they give a lot of salt to reduce the fluids.) Though I was somewhat coherent when I got to the hospital, the doctor explained that the most life-threatening moments were yet to come, because of how the brain swells in the first days after a stroke. The medical diagnosis was a massive brain hemorrhage. My time sense of those events is skewed, and a lot of the memories are lost in the fog of the stroke. Instead, my consciousness was captured by the hospital melodrama. Why wasn’t I saying my mantra or concentrating on Maharaj-ji? If I was truly identified with my soul, that’s what I would do. If death is one of the great matters for spiritual work, I flunked the big test. I should’ve been merging with God, with Maharaj-ji, not watching the pipes on the ceiling. Spiritual, having a life-and-death experience. Entering the emergency room, I thought, “This is a critical moment, and my mind isn’t on God!” Here I was, Mr. As I was being wheeled in on the gurney, I was looking up at the pipes on the ceiling. The paramedics took me to the Kaiser hospital in Marin. It was as if I wasn’t having the stroke, but the stroke was having me! Was this part of my old-man dream? It felt as if we were all actors in a movie.

When the paramedics arrived, I observed their actions from my witness place: lifting me onto the stretcher, loading me into the ambulance. I must have been lying on the floor for some hours. She had actually gotten in the car to drive over but didn’t want to disturb me and had turned around. Marlene had called earlier but the phone was busy. It was scrambling my words and my thoughts. Before I knew it, Marlene was standing over me, calling 911.

He immediately called my secretaries, Marlene Roeder and Jo Anne Baughan, who lived nearby. When I couldn’t articulate a response, Jai said to tap with the phone, once if I was okay, twice if I needed help.

Ram dass flickery faith