It was the opening of summer in l953. An internal tropical malady caught from eating deliberately poisoned food a few months earlier in the Far East had run its course and was about to end, as it so often did end, fatally. I suddenly and involuntarily fell across the writing desk and felt consciousness slumping into a coma. I dragged myself somehow to a couch and there the coma turned out to be the death swoon. After a couple of moments I was already almost entirely out of the physical body. The line was about to be drawn to close the past lifetime's account. . . . In that condition and at that moment my body was found by someone who happened to enter the room, someone so highly sensitive and intuitive as to recognize at once what the hidden situation was. My friend called me to come back, emphatically, pleadingly, and insistently by turns. At the same time I awoke to a dreamy consciousness, half in one world, where the astral figure of a Master, well-known and well-loved, appeared to me, and half in the physical world. The Master said, "I have come to take you away. But you still have the choice, whether to return or to come with me." I reflected rapidly. Personally I felt quite willing to accept the vast relief from the burden of P.B.'s earthly life now offered me. But at the same time, I felt pity for those who looked to me for help. The work with and for them was unfinished. My mission to them and to others was unfulfilled. How could I go? All this happened in a very few seconds. Regretfully, reluctantly, the decision formed itself within my heart. I asked to be allowed to return to the flesh so that I could continue the service and complete the record.
-- Notebooks Category 12: Reflections > Chapter 3 : Encounter With Destiny > # 22
