Hassan's Story

On this particular night, at about 5 a.m., my telephone rang. It was my friend's wife - in a flood of tears. She said that she had had a phone call from the hospital to say that her husband was in intensive care and more dead than alive.

"I don’t know what happened but I think he has had another accident!"

While she was speaking I saw a vision of Bapak standing beside me. He was very stern and said: "Take care!" It was like a shouted command of an army general. I felt like a soldier who had no choice but to obey. I tried to calm her and promised to drive her to the hospital.

When we entered the intensive-care unit the doctor handed me my friends possessions. I especially remember there was a cheque book, which was soaked in blood. A car had hit him, and almost all his ribs on his left side were broken. His spleen was torn, his stomach and diaphragm were severely damaged, his leg was broken in several places and so on. The doctors said there was not much chance that he would survive these injuries.

Nevertheless, to my surprise his wife seemed quiet and calm. I drove her home, phoned a Subud brother and we arranged to do a latihan right away.

When it began I started to cry and repeat the words: "He’s gone, it’s over!". I could hardly bear it. This went on for about 20 minutes. Then suddenly my latihan stopped and a question for testing arose spontaneously within me: How is it, if brother xxxx surrenders completely to God?"

Nothing happened for some seconds. And then suddenly I burst out laughing. "He is alive, he is alive!"

For the following 20 minutes I repeated these words over and over. Finally I sat down gratefully. It was one of my strongest and most significant experiences in Subud. I was witness to part of Gods creation. God can make things happen even when they are broken beyond repair. My brother was dead and .. zack.. suddenly he lived from one moment to the other. Almighty God had ‘created’ something out of nothing.

What happened then was incredible. He recovered unbelievably fast and after three weeks he was able to leave the hospital.

Later when he was fully recovered he told us some interesting stories about his stay in hospital .

After the accident, the first thing he could remember was finding himself in a blue tunnel and heading toward its end. He was moving incredibly fast and knew he was about to die. Then suddenly a strong force moved him backwards. He knew that he had been given another chance from Almighty God.

A few days later some of our members became aware of his state during their latihan. I remember how it was for me with my breathing, as if something was forcing air into my lungs. I could not resist. In the course of this latihan I breathed more and more "from within" and had a sense of regaining my own ability to breathe. I knew that this had something to do with my injured Subud friend.

That very night - so he told us later, he had unconsciously pulled out the tube of the artificial respirator. The doctors did not replace it as they saw his breathing had normalised.

After several days he was still in intensive care, when a heavily injured woman was brought in. She was French. My friend was still half unconscious and started to talk to this lady. He told her one joke after another. Although she felt pain she had to laugh. She asked him to stop but he wouldn’t. He went on telling jokes all night. In the morning the lady said that this had been the funniest night of her life. She had regained her will to live and was very grateful, although her chest ached with so much laughter. The strange thing was: My friend did not speak a word of French! Later he was unable to remember one word of what he had told her!