God Protects His Devotees

Our friend (let's call him Danny) l left our group meditation about nine in the evening, his heart was open and his consciousness uplifted. Feeling grateful for the gift of meditation and his spiritual community he began his drive home on the freeway. To carry the divine experience with him into activity, he was listening to Paramhansa Yogananda chanting “Cloud Colored Christ, Come.” Life was sweet.

Bamm! From one moment to the next, he was involved in a major car accident. A hit and run driver smashed into the driver's side back tire of his car. Instantly from the impact his car began to spin and laterally cross lanes of traffic. Naturally, Danny’s first reaction was utter shock. He could not believe what was happening and it caused his energy to instantly plummet from the joy of meditation to the fear of losing his life.

Just as Yogananda was chanting “Come!” (as part of the “Cloud Colored Christ, Come!” chant), his car was hit a second time by another car! Danny responded inwardly to his guru’s literal call in that moment to “Come!”, by raising his vibration and focusing his energy at the Christ consciousness center (the point between the eyebrows). 

As he became more centered at the third eye, he started loudly chanting, “God! God! God!” He felt his guru’s grace and protection reminding him of his guru’s poem, “God! God! God!”:

When boisterous storms of trials shriek,
And when worries howl at me,
I will drown their noises, loudly chanting:
God! God! God!

As Danny looked down at his body to see if he was injured, he realized his airbags deployed and they had unfastened his seatbelt. He could not find his phone and could barely think straight. He prayed to God for help and looked up through his windshield and saw two people (a man and a woman) walking towards his car. They asked him, “Are you okay?”

He responded, “Yes, I’m okay. Thank you, thank you.” As he answered them he realized at the same time his guru’s voice was still chanting on his car stereo. Since the music was playing, he knew his phone was still in the car somewhere. He looked down to find it so he could call 911 to report the accident. As he picked his head back up, the man and woman were gone. To him they felt like Divine Mother and his guru manifested to support him in that moment.

Yogananda said, “God protects His devotees.” This was certainly the case with Danny. He (and the others) walked away from what could have been a deadly car crash without a scratch. 

A couple of weeks after the accident Danny wondered, “Why would I have a major car crash that almost took my life right after a blissful meditation?” What was he to learn from this experience?

Perhaps Divine Mother was trying to teach him calm non-attachment to the body. Yogananda wrote a chant called “When Thy Song Flows through Me.” Part of the lyrics are, “Life is sweet, and death a dream.” Yogananda would sometimes sing that particular line in reverse: “Death is sweet, life a dream.”

Maybe Danny experienced this car accident to remind him of his eternal life in Christ consciousness. Was his guru teaching him to discover his lasting reality beyond the dualities of this world? Yogananda said in his poem, “Samadhi”:

Love, hate, health, disease, life, death,
Perished these false shadows on the screen of duality.

In any case, Danny’s faith in God’s protection deepened. He has renewed his sense of gratitude for life. At the same time, he “dies daily” through deep meditation (as Saint Paul said, “I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.”).

The best protection in life and death are one and the same: Calling with all our hearts to Him alone. As Yogananda was chanting to Danny during the car accident, “O, my cloud colored Christ, come!”