It was an intuitive knowing, because the symptom complex, if any- thing, would have led me into a facile diagnosis of the flu, and I would have "treated and streeted", as we say. But if I had not followed my inner knowing, in less than 12 hours he would have been dead. As it turned out, he had neurosurgery and it was successful.
We really can bring this kind of capacity and knowledge into our careers, even though we're not "supposed to"-- and particularly those of us who are hard science people. In science and medicine, this sort of thing is very frowned upon.
And yet, I have found that there are a number of physicians who have had similar experiences that they won't talk about openly for fear of ridicule.
Another time there were two Code Blues going on at once. Well, I'm one doctor and I've got two people who literally have had their heart stopped. The one we had been working on first had been in arrest a long time. Then another one came in. The first patient was in a type of rhythm that is fatal if you don't get them out of that rhythm. We'd used everything that could be used: cardioversion, all the medicines, every- thing. I won't go into the gory, technical details. The fact is, it wasn't working. Finally, we were going to have to call the code - end it - but I just sensed that this person could get back into a normal rhythm. So I put my awareness on the heart, visualized the conduction system of the heart, and called on this higher power- the power of God- and mentally visualized and willed his heart going back into a normal beat. And it did, at that instant! Now, it may have been a coincidence. Some of the skeptics would say, "Well, these other things kicked in." But I don't think so. It was very specific. But it was out of necessity - do or die, literally. So when you have to do it, and you call on the divine power in the universe- and it is urgent, heart-felt and done with a pure heart - almost anything is possible! When you have to do it, then suddenly you find this ability, by turning within to the power of God, to do it.
A number of things like that happened over the course of my med- ical career and actually continue to happen. A few years ago I was driv- ing outside Helena, Montana. It was before we moved here to Virginia, and I wanted to move my family from North Carolina to someplace, and I wasn't sure where. So I was driving around Montana, exploring the area. All of a sudden I found myself driving along in broad daylight and I saw what I call an image override. It's like you have two screens, like a screen within a screen on TV
As I was driving down the road, in my mind I saw an intersection in broad daylight with a terrible traffic accident, where I knew there'd be fatalities. It wasn't vague. I said to myself, "This is going to happen- -- I'm going to come across this soon." So, I started looking around the car for what I might have in the way of any medical items - even a straw if I had to make an airway or anything.
About an hour later, I was at an intersection on the east side of Glacier National Park, in the middle of nowhere. It was one of these dangerous highway intersections where it was a stop on a busy highway, and someone just didn't stop. A Suburban went through the intersection and T-boned a Ford Taurus rental vehicle that had a German couple in it. When I got there, the elderly couple in the Taurus were dead at the scene- both of them. And the other people in the Suburban were very seriously injured and pinned under the dashboard. So, I focused on helping the survivors in the Suburban. Finally a rural paramedic crew came along, and we all worked to stabilize them.
Then as I was doing this, I looked up and I saw the mountain that I had seen in my dream a week before I traveled to Montana. One evening I had a dream where there was a mountain that reminded me of the shape of the Mount of Temptation in Israel, outside Jericho. I clearly saw a scintillating light, like a spirit, over this mountain. The dream experience was very spiritual, but there was no other message or image, and I thought, "How strange."
After helping the survivors, I connected with God and said a prayer to send the deceased man and woman to the highest level spiritually and to connect with God. As I did that I looked up and saw a beautiful white light appear above the mountain at the exact moment that I was connect- ing their souls to God. And then it was clear to me that this was why I went to Montana - to be there at that moment in time, but beyond time, because it was also eternal. I was there for that purpose, and to also help these two other people, who did survive.
We got a chopper in there, but they could only take one patient, and I had to decide which one was going by chopper; the one who had to go by ground could have died. I prayed I made the right choice.
You have to be willing to follow your guidance and the intuition you get- and you have to be willing to act. I've done that throughout my medical career, no matter what the situation. And I recommend that people accept that responsibility. It is accepting your power and then accepting the responsibility that goes with that power.
I've spoken, since then, to a number of people who've been fighter pilots or who have been commercial airline pilots in a critical situation where they've had similar pre-cognitive experiences that helped them avoid disaster. Many people have these experiences in their lives. And the more critical or stressful the work is, the more likely this type of abil- ity might be called upon. But I think it can be brought into almost every- thing you do.
This can be a way of life, and not something that you do just on the side occasionally. The understanding of spirituality and divinity need not be reserved for an hour or two on Sunday or an occasional event here and there. It can be an inner awakening that is with us all the time - and called up and applied all the time.
There may be a ritual or a service that does something for you, but the reality is that the conscious connection to the unbounded Divine state is something that can be cultured and lived and brought into everything that we're doing at all times.
That's a discipline and way of living where we are always connected to Spirit and living in that state.
Once the nephew of one of our nurses was brought into the ER because he had been hit head-on by a pick-up truck while riding a motorcycle. It was a stormy, horrible day. He was very critical, and basically had the same injury that killed Princess Di, which was a ruptured thoracic aorta -- often not survivable.
I began working on him with the great nurses we had and somehow I sensed that he had a ruptured aorta. We took a chest X-ray. The X-ray was rather ambiguous, but I felt that it confirmed my sensing this injury.
Well, the general surgeon on call came in and said, "Oh, he wouldn't be alive and look like this if he had a ruptured aorta!" I said, "Man, he's got a ruptured aorta." The surgeon asked, "How do you know that?" I said, "I'm just certain that he does." So, I wrestled with this surgeon, fighting with him not to ignore it or treat him in a way that could suddenly kill him.
I got him to a thoracic surgeon and CT Scan of the chest, and it was then confirmed. But if we had not treated him very carefully in terms of hydration, blood pressure, everything else, we could have blown open the thoracic aorta completely and he would have died.
Over and over and over again, these events happened in the ER. I would love to give a course integrating medical science with intuitive knowledge. Yes, our gadgets and our technologies and sciences are wonderful, but there is also a role for the art of knowing and intuition. It is a balance and we need to regain it in every aspect of our lives.
Someday we will have a civilization where people working in critical areas, no matter how material the science may seem, will also accept that there is a role to play for higher states of consciousness.