Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Power of the Mind

Years ago, my husband attended some kind of conference of engineering at BYU. At lunch he found himself standing in line next to an engineer from Arizona. As they talked about various things, this man shared an amazing experience. It sounds too good to be true, but the spirit in which he shared it makes me feel he was being honest.

He said that years ago when hang gliding was just beginning as a sport, he built his own hang glider. One day he went to a place where many people hang glided. As he was hang gliding, about 200 feet up, something broke on his hang glider, and he found himself falling to the ground.

His first reaction was that he was going to be a dead man. He cast about in his mind trying to figure out how he could survive this fall. His point in telling my husband this story was to illustrate the power of the mind. The fall couldn't have lasted very long, but in those matter of seconds, he said to himself, "I need more data." He said it was then as if time stood still and he saw in his mind a book. He read in the book that NASA had conducted experiments on pilot crash survival, that showed the human body could survive 2 G's of impact. He noted an asterisk and skipped to the bottom of the page where it said that if the body were prone, it could survive up to 6 G forces.
He quickly realized that if he were to land prone, he could survive the fall. Before he hit the ground, he quickly flipped his body with his arm straight above his head, and landed on his side. His body bounced high up in to the air, and then landed again on the soft grass.

He somehow was able to stand up. He found he was intact with no broken bones. People came running up to him and asked, "Where is the man who fell from the sky?" He told them it was him. They couldn't believe it was him because they thought he would be dead. Later he found that the entire side of his body, from his finger tip to the bottom of his foot was bruised.

As I mentioned, his object in telling this experience to my husband was to show the power of the mind. He said that the book looked like a set of encyclopedias his parents owned when he was a child, so he wondered if he had actually read this information before as a child, and his mind called upon it when he needed it most.

What I like about this story is that it reminds me that with God, nothing is impossible. Whenever we feel we are in a situation from which we can't escape, God is able to give us the "data" or knowledge, or help that we need in the moment we need it. This man attributed his success to his remarkable brain. I attribute his survival to God who blessed him in that moment to recall the information that he needed. I believe God will do the same for us when we ask in faith.

4 comments:

Looney said...

Wonderful story. Is your husband an engineer?

Delirious said...

Yes he is a Mechanical engineer, and has his PE license

Nene said...

That is an amazing story, but I have experienced that "time standing still". When I fell and broke my arm, it seemed to me that time stood still. I knew I was going to fall, and I knew if I fell into the tub that it would cause much more damage, since my tub is one of those sunken Roman tubs. So then I decided that I could not let myself fall into the tub but I would have to propell my body forward and then I would fall on the top of the side of the tub. It's not very wide, so then I also knew that I would probably fall headfirst down the 4 stairs leading up to the tub, and that I would then probably break my arm, but that would be less damage to my body than if I were to fall in the tub. So after thinking all that - and all this thinking took place in like a nano-second - I thrust my body forward (as much as I could) and then proceeded to fall exactly as I had thought I would. I also failed to mention that I also thought and wondered if I could catch myself and not fall, but knew that I could not and would have to just suffer the fall. It was an incredible experience and when I fell, I felt my arm break and knew it was broken. But even though I fell very hard, the bone didn't even move even though it was broken completely in two.

Amber said...

I absolutely agree with you, it was God that helped him find the needed information in his brain