I Am Free!

"I am free! I am free! He kept me locked up and didn’t believe in me!"
—Sandor Boytar, M.D.

The red October sun disappeared behind the trees as Gizella gazed out of the window; her teary eyes focused on the beauty of autumn. She momentarily looked away from the couch where her husband, Sandor, lay dying. The array of autumn colors: gold, orange, and red seemed to match the mixture of bittersweet feelings Gizella felt during her husband’s final hours. She was sad as she remembered the good times, and yet, she did not want him to suffer anymore from the ravages of bone cancer.

During Sandor’s final hours, Anna, his stepdaughter, sat by his side sending him Reiki healing energy to ease his pain. He didn’t believe in energy healing but he allowed Anna to lay her hands lightly on the painful areas of his body. Anna got the impression that Sandor was accepting the Reiki with the attitude: “If it makes her feel better to do something for me, why not let her.” He passed away in peace as Anna kept sending him Reiki until his last breath.

Suddenly, Gizella’s peaceful yet painful reflections were interrupted by a swirling energy of golden-speckled light encircling her just seconds after Sandor took his last breath. Within her mind, Gizella heard Sandor’s voice. She felt his energy direct her attention to his lifeless body lying on the couch. He then cried out: “He kept me locked up and didn’t believe in me!” She was stunned. Here was his soul proclaiming its freedom. Sandor’s next words were, “I love you and I’m sorry I was not able to show you how much I loved you!” Like so many men, Sandor had found it difficult to express the deep love in his heart.

Gizella felt the energy of her husband’s liberated soul encircle her and she heard the words of his soul in her mind. To whom was Sandor referring when he said to his lovely Gizella, “He kept me locked up and didn’t believe in me?” He was referring to his body-mind that had prevented him from believing in the spiritual reality of his soul. In the months before he died, Sandor had often told Gizella, “There is no soul! When I die I will just be chemicals. My body will just go back to the earth, to nature.” All his life, he had refused to believe in the soul.

Dr. Boytar was an otherwise sturdy and physically fit eighty-year-old medical doctor. His physique reminded me of the ageless and forever-fit Jack LaLane. A man of courage, he managed to escape from communist-occupied Hungary in the 1950’s. When I sat with him six months earlier, I silently wondered what, if anything, were the underlying emotional issues related to the bone cancer. As I talked with this distinguished and learned medical doctor, I thought to myself what is eating you to the bone? His very next comment was that: “If Gizella and I had remained in Hungary, I would never have been able to be with her.” Sandor and Gizella met in America years after they left Hungary.
In Hungarian society, Sandor believed his beautiful wife would have been out of his reach. Thrown together by circumstances in America, they had found each other. Strangers in a new land. They had a common bond through their roots in Hungary and both were in the medical field. I could see that he couldn’t believe that she loved him. He seemed to think that she stayed married to him only for convenience and the comfort of a common heritage. Sandor was wrong as Gizella did indeed love him very much.

During his life, Sandor denied the reality of the spiritual dimension of life. His paradigm as a man of science did not allow him to believe in his own soul. The soul is not quantifiable and cannot be seen by cutting someone open with surgery. He believed in the organs of the body and in the chemical processes regulating our health and determining our life and death.

So Sandor’s proclamation after his death is not simply the reaffirmation of cherished beliefs held while he was alive. These were not the words that Gizella would ever have expected to hear. Moreover, Gizella was not one to have spiritual experiences.

Gizella felt Sandor’s presence for two days following his death. On the evening of the second day, Gizella felt Sandor’s energy begin to leave and then she saw him ascending toward the top of the cathedral ceiling of their home. She heard him say, “I have to go. Know that I love you!”

Gizella asked, “Where are you going?” Sandor replied, “I am going to the place where you wait before you are sent to where you are supposed to go next.” In the book entitled, Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Dr. Newton calls the place Sandor was first going to, “the staging area” or “the orientation area.” It is where the soul first goes after death before going where it needs to go for its next phase of learning and evolution.
Sandor had never read any books about spirituality or the after-death experience. Yet, here was the soul of a dyed-in-the-wool scientific materialist ascending and telling his wife that he was heading for the staging area. Throughout his entire career as a medical doctor, he vehemently maintained, “There is no soul! When I die I will just be chemicals. My body will just go back to the earth, to nature.” [More on the above can be found in A Matter of Love. See www.drsrj.com.]

• Today, as you go through your day, ask yourself, "Do I really believe that who I am, my essence, the I who is looking through my eyes at the world, is the product of chemicals and firing neurons?" Consider that, as Dr. Boytar discovered, consciousness or awareness is primary and matter (your body and the material world) is secodary. This is part of what the Maya predicted. It is part of the great shift in understanding ourselves and our world that is taking place as we approach 2012. For more about the power of our consciousness see February 2010 blog entry entitled One Candle Shining.