On December 28, 2003, I received an email from my sister in New Zealand, telling me that my father was “in hospital and quite ill”. I called her immediately. She said he had been rushed to the hospital with pneumonia. He was seventy-eight-years old, had suffered several heart attacks, and had a weak liver and other health problems—so I knew that this was a serious and potentially fatal condition.

I was plunged into the chilling reality that my beloved father could die—and very quickly. I had never been threatened with the loss of someone so close to me, and my intense sorrow was the worst emotional pain I had ever felt. I was shocked that there was so much pain, but there was nothing I could do about it except feel it and surrender to my Divine Guru, Avatar Adi Da, continuing with my moment-to-moment devotional practice of turning to Him, even in the midst of my suffering and my father’s possible death.

Over the next two days I stayed in close contact with my siblings, who kept me updated about my father’s condition. On December 30, my brother told me that the medical staff had asked him if he had called all the members of the family to be at their father’s side, because he would not last much longer in his condition. I immediately made travel plans, and left for New Zealand on December 31, fervently hoping that my father wouldn’t die before I arrived.

But before I left for New Zealand, I sent in a request to Avatar Adi Da for His Blessings. I knew this was the best thing I could do for my father.

I arrived in Auckland, New Zealand, on January 2, very early in the morning. My brother picked me up at the airport and took me straight to the hospital. He told me that my father’s condition had worsened the night before and he had been moved into the intensive care unit (ICU). As soon as I arrived at the hospital I saw my mother, who of course was very upset. Then I went into the ICU. What a shock!

I had never seen anyone so sick, let alone my father. His skin was deathly white. He was hooked up to machines to keep him alive. His face was covered with a special mask that was aggressively forcing oxygen into his lungs. He was obviously very uncomfortable and very distressed. He appeared to recognize me and a tear ran down his cheek. He was trying to speak but wasn’t making any sense.

In that moment, the emotion I felt was indescribable—I simply wasn’t prepared to see my father so sick and distressed. I went up to him, whispered in his ear how much I loved him, and kissed him on the forehead. I told him that I had written to Adi Da and asked for His Blessing for him. I was crying, and so were my mother and sister. We were all in a kind of shock with the knowledge that we were going to lose him.

The next few days were the most heartbreaking of my life up to that point. To stay close to my father, my family spent most of our waking hours in the hospital. When I wasn’t with him, I sat in the waiting room and communed with Adi Da in meditation. I would also do the Devotional Prayer of Changes. Of course, I prayed for my father’s recovery.

During those days, my father was intensely distressed. He kept trying to pull the uncomfortable mask off his face. He kept trying to get out of bed. He kept pleading to go home. Sometimes we could hear him through the mask: “Please, please let me go home for just one day . . . just one day . . . I promise I will come back . . . I want to cooperate . . . just please let me go home.”

We knew he was so upset because he was certain he was going to die and wanted to be at home one last time. To see him like this, to hear his desperate pleas, and to not be able to fulfill his wish—he was much too sick to go home, even for one day—was the worst thing of all.

My sister told me that when I was flying to New Zealand from the United States the medical staff kept asking her what time I was arriving: they desperately wanted to keep my father alive until I got there. And there was no improvement in his condition after I arrived. The doctors had tried various antibiotics but none of them were having any effect on the severe pneumonia. My father was getting worse.

On my father’s fourth day in the ICU, a doctor got our family together to give us a reality picture. I asked him if there was any chance at all that my father would get through this. He said the chances were “very, very slim”—practically nil, in fact. Even a young person with a lot of physical reserves would struggle to fight such an infection, he said, and would take a year to recover full strength—and my father was fighting the infection with “minus reserves”. He told us the machines my father was on could keep him alive indefinitely, and he asked us if we wanted that. We had only to feel my father’s terrible distress and pain to help us say that we didn’t want that—we knew it wasn’t fair to keep him alive in such a dreadful state, no matter how much we loved him and didn’t want to lose him. It was a sad and sober moment for us all. The doctor said they would unplug the machines in twenty-four to forty-eight hours and “let nature take its course”. We all knew exactly what these haunting words meant, and they struck deep.

On the fifth day in the ICU, my father’s condition suddenly and unexpectedly became quite different. He stopped struggling, became very peaceful, and appeared to enter a deep sleep, without intermittent waking. He didn’t speak or move. We were happy to see him so peaceful, but we also had the sense that he was letting go of the body and his struggle with it, so it was also emotionally difficult, as we now felt we were facing the imminent reality of his death. The next day, however, he seemed a little more awake, but still relaxed and not struggling. That evening my mother, sister, and I drove home, which was about forty miles from the hospital.

The next morning, my sister and mother went to the hospital a little earlier than I did. I arrived about 11:00 AM. I walked into the waiting room of the ICU—and there were my mother and sister with huge smiles on their faces! They said, “He is going to Ward 11!” (a regular medical ward). I was stunned, and said, “What happened?” They both said, “We don't know.” At that very moment, my father was wheeled out in his bed to be taken to Ward 11. No mask. Big smile. Good color. Totally present and clear-minded and speaking coherently. I couldn't believe my eyes. I never expected this, and I found out later that no one on the medical staff did either—they were as mystified as we were.

We followed him down to Ward 11. There he was—and it was unbelievable that he was there. He still hadn't completely recovered, but he was “out of the woods”, as they say.

He was in Ward 11 for another two weeks. No one could medically explain why or how he recovered.

During that time, the doctor who admitted him to hospital came in and said with a delighted smile, “Well, I never thought I would see you again.”

One of the nurses who was taking care of him said, “Do you realize that your father’s recovery is the highlight of my seventeen-year nursing career?” Another time she shook her head in disbelief and said, “You know this is a miracle, don't you?”

We visited him every day and he improved every time we saw him. It was truly amazing. On the first day of my father’s recovery in Ward 11, my sister, who had been a nurse, took me aside to tell me that my father would be debilitated when he came out of the hospital and probably would have to go to a nursing home, as it would be too much for our mother to care for him. She said that at his age he would never fully recover from such a serious illness. On the day he came home, he told us with tears in his eyes that when he was being wheeled out of the hospital in a wheelchair, the doctors and nurses lined the corridor in an “Honor Guard” because he had survived something that literally no one thought he could survive.

There is no doubt in my mind or heart that he survived because of Avatar Adi Da’s Blessing—there is no other explanation. Adi Da is not an ordinary man—He is alive as Life Itself, as all-pervading Energy and Light, as the Source and Substance of Reality. And His Compassion is beyond imagination—it is a Divine Compassion for all beings, everywhere, because in His Ultimate Identity He Is all beings, everywhere. That He saved my father’s life is so obvious to me. I am grateful beyond words for this Gift.

Since his pneumonia, my father is healthier than he has been in many years. But I have noticed another difference in him, at a deeper level. He seems more vulnerable, and relates to life in a more feeling and less superficial way, as if he is living with the knowledge of death. And so are all my family. Adi Da gave us the Gift of more time. Time to feel the depth of the love we have for each other. Time to feel what He calls the “radiant wound of love”—opening your heart to another, even to all others, while also being fully and feelingly aware of their eventual death. This is what Adi Da does, and what He Teaches everyone to do, through His compassionate example and His miraculous Gifts.