Born Dead
From the book 'My Life of Love and Truth.’
On the day that I was born my mother had a vision, the only one she said she’d ever had. During the last hour of a long confinement she saw the Virgin Mary, all white, standing by her bed.
‘Your son will be born behind a cloud’, said the vision. 'What do you mean?’ said my mother. 'He will be born dead.’
The nursing sister told her later that after the birth the doctor said he couldn’t do anything for the baby but that they would work on the mother. My mother later said, 'Knowing what I had gone through, the sister couldn’t bear to tell me my baby was dead. So she got hold of him, hung him up by the legs, swung him around and breathed down his throat. She put a drop of whisky on his tongue - and he breathed.’
To me now the vision symbolises much more. I was indeed born behind a cloud or dead. I did not begin to live until I was 32. I did not know I was alive until I had passed out of the living dead into the immortal moment at the age of 38. At 42, I realised what it was to exist without living. And now I know what it is to live without existing. This is not just semantics but the truth.
Twenty Articles of Truth