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"I
have had more troubles with myself,
than with any man I have ever met."
My near-death experiences:
#1) Gunfight
1980... under
fire for 20 minutes with 6 assailants, numerous gunshots missed my head by
inches...The date: December 26th, 1980….
It was exactly a year and a day after I met Jackie…
She was eight-and-a-half months pregnant, (with Seraphina)…
We had been growing marijuana most of the year, since early spring, and
now we had harvested a huge crop, worth almost $2 million to us, and we didn’t
owe anybody anything… At daybreak on that day, we were attacked by gunfire, by
about a half dozen teenage Hawaiian boys, who lived nearby, and who had been watching
our operation for a long time… they
were firing at us, downhill, from about 20 or 30 feet away.
…. I almost got shot in
the head about 10 or 20 times, as I ducked behind some big rocks, every time I
tried to see over the rocks, bullets ricocheted off the rocks within inches of
my eyes!!!! At the time,
there was no panic, but later the nightmares were grave!!! Anyhow, by luck or good fortune, we all got out
of there unscathed. But out
of fear, we didn’t even go back to the site for about a week.
Finally, we went back, and among the rubble and ruins I found an unopened
letter from Millie, wishing me a happy new year…
I almost may have never seen it.
Now I open my mail when I get it. Tomorrow
may be too late.
#2) Bulldozer 1996... almost
run over by bulldozer, on my own property... see last few paragraphs of
"Stop Eating" for description of events...Time I almost got run over by bulldozer…
This story is also on the last 2 pages of my book “Stop Eating” which
is also published elsewhere on this website.
In May 1997 I was almost crushed to death by a 30-ton bulldozer.
I was saved by inches, only because the bulldozer driver (a 300-lb
Hawaiian guy) said he “heard a little voice in (his) head, that told him to
stop and look for me," just before he was about to run me over.
This happened on May 3rd, 1997 (a Sabbath, I shouldn’t have
been working), on my own property, when I got stuck in a thicket of 15-foot-tall
grass and vines, and was pulled to the ground, and trapped, in the path of the
oncoming 30-ton bulldozer. There
wasn’t enough time to panic, so I just started shrieking for him to
“Stop!!" at the top of my lungs, as loud as I could scream. “Stop!”
Then louder “STOP!” and then even louder:
“S T O P!!!” and again
“S T O P ! ! !” and
again “S T O P ! ! !”… as loud as possible. But
the bulldozer operator definitely couldn’t hear me, as he was wearing
earmuffs, to muffle the noise of his horribly loud D-9 bulldozer, which is about
the biggest bulldozer there is. I’m
sure he couldn’t see me either, as I was wearing brown and green earth colors,
and was trapped at ground level in the thick jungle, and also because the
17-foot-wide by 6-foot-tall shovel blocked his sight.
So since then I have developed compassion for how it would feel for an
insect to be crushed to death by a human. The real challenge for the human being
is to protect the animals, and the insects, not to kill them.
Any human can kill an insect. That’s
no challenge. The respect for life is a little challenge. Of
course, any human can kill an insect. But
the real challenge is to not harm them, and insects rarely bother me.
Albert Schweitzer, the famous medical doctor who worked in Africa, was
known to not even kill mosquitos. Similarly,
it’s easy to eat. Everyone does
it. The Bible says: "The
gate is wide, and the way is broad, that leads to destruction, and many are
those that enter by it. But straight is the gate and narrow is the way which
leads to life, and few there be that find it."
It’s more of a challenge to fast and pray, and to be in control of your
life, rather than letting events control you. It’s easy to destroy your body,
by eating and other means; it’s more of a challenge to be perfectly healthy,
and to stay that way... But there are rewards for it, basically the greater
enjoyment of life, and the ability to serve others.
Lesson: Don’t work on the Sabbath, and know where you’re going…
#3) Coconuts 1997 Time at
Kehena beach when I almost got killed by 17 falling coconuts…
My 22 yr old friend Rachael had been murdered just a week before by her
step-father, and I had just finished telling the story to a friend, concluding:
“You never know when your time is up…”
Within a minute after I said those famous last words, I sat down
underneath a shady coconut palm, and within a few seconds after I sat down, I
heard and perceived what I imagined to be about 6 or 7 children jumping off a
rock onto the sand right behind my back…
I turned to the children, to see who they were, or what the prank was.
They weren’t children at all, but a bunch of hard and heavy coconuts,
all held together on the stem, a total of 17 coconuts, all full of water, that
fell from about 25 feet up above me!!!
This bunch of coconuts narrowly missed me, landing about 6 inches from my
back…. If I had laid down on the sand, instead of sit, they probably
would have killed
me, or smashed my skull to smithereens, or cracked every rib… So now I never sit
under coconut trees anymore, and am even paranoid to walk under them.
Usually,
coconuts won’t fall in a bunch, nor do they fall one at a time if they are
still young (like these were)… The
only time coconuts fall out of coconut trees (on their own) is when they are old
and dry (and then usually light weight), and then it also could take a forceful
windstorm… My friend who climbs
coconut trees at this same beach was as surprised as me. He looked at the fallen bunch, studied it carefully,
and concluded that someone else had recently climbed that particular coconut
tree, and had stepped on that bunch of coconuts, and broken the stem… I just
happened to be under it when the stem finally broke…
But what is amazing is that I had just finished telling my friend: “You
never know when you’re time is up” and mine, too, was almost at its end...
17 spoon meat coconuts in a bundle
landed 6 inches behind my back, dropping from about 25 feet... If they had
landed on me, especially on my head or chest, i would probably be dead.
The serendipity of a real life lesson…
4) I remember another time I was in a bad
thunder and lightning storm… It
was in Hawaii in March 1991. We
were all living and sleeping in a little make-shift shelter with a thin plastic
roof, while our home on the property (on Beach Road) was under construction… It was pouring torrential rain, and thunder and lightning
kept striking all around us, all night long, very frequently, about every 15
seconds!!! All night long,
there was only a moment or so between the lightning and the thunder, which means
that it was right there, as close to us as possible…
We could see the lightning bolts, 4 times a minute, all night long…
The super-loud thunderclaps sounded like gunshots being fired right next
to my ears… and the lightning was so bright, I thought it was going to blind
me… So after awhile, my only
defense was to hide my eyes in my pillow and hold my fingers in my ears…
5. Berkeley, California 1972. I was going to college, and
renting a room in a housing co-op. It was a nice big, older home
with about 8 or 10 bedrooms. I was renting one of the larger bedrooms
upstairs... But it was around this time that i also developed a keen interest in
being close to Mother Nature... So, for this reason, i slept outside every
night, on the grass lawn, in the backyard, under the stars. I also
had a tent, in case it rained. In addition, i had a lot of
sympathy for the many homeless street-people, and amazingly, i allowed about 10
of them to sleep in the room i was renting upstairs. One night, it
was raining hard, lightning and thunder, and i saw through the window upstair
that my homeless friends were having a "party," so i decided to leave
my tent, and go up to my room, and "party" with them... Within
minutes after i came upstairs, we heard a loud crash. A lightning
bolt had severed a very large redwood tree (i think it was a redwood tree, or
some kind of big pine) in the neighbor's yard. The tree crushed
broke the wooden back yard fence, and landed right on my tent. The
tree was about 100 feet long and the trunk had a diameter of approximately 4
feet in width... The next morning, i noticed that my tent was so completely
covered by the tree, that it was barely even visible... The tree had fallen
length-wise along the length of my tent... Good thing i was helping out those
homeless people - otherwise, i may have had no reason to leave my
tent...
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