My Daughter Was Born And I Was Reborn.

I had a difficult pregnancy and on the day my child was to be born the doctors said that I have placental abruption, a condition where the placenta is separated from the uterus. This could be fatal to the baby and to the mother, since the baby depends on the placenta for supply of oxygen and nutrients. After a difficult labor the doctors decided on a caesarian section and I was rolled into the operation theatre. After anesthesia was administered I went blank. Immediately I realized that I was dead. The very first thing that struck me was that there was no "Time" in that other dimension. The feeling was so exhilarating. I wish to tell you here that “time” as we feel it here is such a burden. The feeling of absence of “time” was a relief. I knew then that ‘time’ was an illusion. After that I found myself in a dark place. Though it was dark, it was peaceful and I didn’t know what to do. I knew that something had to happen after I died. That there is somewhere we have to go to. I wondered and then decided to call upon my Idol. I began uttering the name of  Swami Vivekananda, the great patriot saint of India. And even before I could finish uttering the name, He was there, in front of me. I then reflected that what I had heard when I was alive was true, that God knows when you call him. My sceptic self said “Ah, that could be the trick of the mind”. Anyway, I was happy that everything can be created by the thought, and I started floating upward. It was still dark. There was nothing I could actually see. It was a kind of ‘knowing’. When I use the word ‘see’ here it must be understood as “know”. I was drifting in and out of consciousness and I don’t remember the actual sequence. But I did hear my baby crying, and the doctors declaring the baby as a ‘female baby’. Throughout my pregnancy we thought I would deliver a boy and so I now thought, “How can that be?” But, in the deepest of my hearts I had always wanted a baby girl. Then I saw a kind of border which separates life and death. I ‘knew’ that if I crossed that border I would never come back to this world that I would be really, irreversibly, dead. The voice told me in a warning voice, as if it knew that I’d be back in the physical world, “If you look back at your body you’ll never be able to get back into it”. Maybe I wasn’t fully ready to cross over, as I reflect upon it today. Maybe that’s why I didn’t take the chance of giving my dead body one look before embarking on my journey towards the ‘border’. I made an attempt to move towards the border, when I found myself hearing a voice. When I say ‘hearing’ it means not in the actual sense of hearing, but a kind of intuitive voice talking to me. It said, “Are you going to leave your child behind and let your husband fend for himself with the baby?” Now that was the question. Was I prepared for it? I justified my willingness to die by saying, “All relationships are illusions. This world is not true. My place is here. And I want to go”. The voice said nothing more. But as hard as I tried to go to the border it eluded me. The next thing I knew, was, sounds of pigeons near a window through which bright light was streaming in. I thought, “At last, I’m dead; here I am in front of the Light”. But it took me a full ten minutes or so to figure out that it was the post- operative ward on the first floor of the hospital, and I had been wheeled out of the operation theatre, very alive. At this moment, the feeling I had was of being let down. It was as if I had been cheated.  I was very much back in this world. And with closed eyes I wondered, “Why did I come back here? Why am I not dead?”  To this day I wonder. I’m writing this on 14-04-2011, and this happened on 08-01-2004. My daughter was born, and I was born again. This is an amazing experience and there is not a single day I do not think about it. When I think about this experience it brings me peace no matter how disturbed I may be at that moment. So it is the real thing. Only I know. I’ll be back there. I know not when.