The Mystery of Flight 401

THE MYSTERY OF FLIGHT 401

Let me tell you a story.
The year is 1979.
A young family is enjoying quality time at home. The father has come back from work and his wife tells him that their young son has taken a wax crayon and started scribbling on the freshly painted walls of the new flat! They have a son, 4 years old and a few months, and a daughter 2 years younger.

The father looks at his son's handiwork. He has big smile which he keeps hidden from his wife because he is supposed to tell the little boy off and he notices that what he has written are just random numbers… a 0, a 1, and even a 4. And he has written these numbers in his childish scroll about two or three times in the corridor, in the bathroom and his bedroom. The little boy had started pre-school and was very proud that he had learnt to write. So the father starts to explain to the little boy that you can't write on walls, especially freshly painted ones but his son is so proud of his handiwork, has such a big grin on his face, that the father has a hard time keeping his own face straight!
 But both he and his wife have a sneaking admiration for this artistic talent from their son.

It was at about this time, with the child not yet 5 years old, that he started having restless sleep. He would toss and turn in bed and appeared to be crying. The parents would get up to calm the child down. The little boy never quite woke up and once calmed, he went back to sleep and so did they. A couple of days later, again little boy started scribbling on the walls, on any newspaper or magazine, on any surface he could find. He scribbled the same three numbers again and again. Never a 3 or a 7 or any other number. And at night his restlessness was becoming more acute. The young daughter aged 2 slept soundly through all the nights and gave them no trouble.
The parents spoke between themselves and asked themselves:
“ Are we giving our son too much to eat in the evenings? Is it that our son gets indigestion at night?”
But now at around 7 in the evening, the little boy ate normally, not too much, not too little. Yet nothing changed and still the sleepless nights, the disturbances, the nightmares, all were increasing.

They decided to take him to the paediatrician, Dr.Reggie Valarino who found nothing wrong with the child. The boy was healthy happy, perfectly articulate and had no recollection of either nightmares or restlessness during the night. Despite this the young parents decided to continue monitoring what the child ate especially in the afternoons and evenings.

Life went on in the family and other than the restless nights some two to four nights a week, everything was hunky dory.

One day the father, who was something of a bookworm, (this was before the rage of Internet computers mobile phones and the like), walked past the Gibraltar Bookshop in Main Street. A book display they're caught his eye; part of the title, at first glance, had the numbers 4 0 1 !!!

These were the same three numbers that his son kept scribbling on whatever he found a blank space to do so. Not just that, the little boy never wrote 014 or 104 or any other sequence but .... 401! He rushed inside, bought the book and went straight home.

The full title of the book was "The Mystery of Flight 401". (if it was not that precise title it was along those lines) It was just one of several books written on this subject. It was about an unfortunate airplane crash from Eastern Airlines flight 401 from New York to Florida in 1972. It crashed in the Everglades with great loss of life.
But that was not all!
The more he read, the more astounded he became.
He did not go to work that day, just read and read and read. He was not sure whether to tell his wife what he was reading about. The idea was far too "Twilight Zone" to contemplate.... but having read, not just this book, but on the subject generally, he put two and two together.
To him this was the obvious answer.

That night, as on other nights of the week, the little boy started mumbling and tossing and turning in his bed. As before, he was agitated. Both parents were asleep then, but with an ear cocked, alert in case the son was having another bad night. The boy’s mother started to get up but her husband stopped her saying:
"No, let me. If you want to come too, OK, but do not say a word, do not interrupt. I will explain to you later"

Quietly both went next to the bed where their son was tossing in some distress. Holding him in his arms, the father started talking quietly in his ear.

"It is ok, it is ok”.
“ You are safe.”
“There is no danger.”
“ You are safe.”
“You are with us, with your new family.”
“Mummy is here.”
“Daddy is here.”
“You are in a new life.”
“You have a sister as well.”
“The crash is over you have transitioned. You have come back and you are our precious son and we love you.”
“We love you very much.”
“You are safe. There is no danger. You are safe. We love you.”
“You are 4 years old, you are healthy, you are happy and you have to let go.”
“You have a new life and we love you."

Gradually the child calmed down.

Father and mother kissed him tenderly and placed him back in his bed.

The parents sat in the sitting room where the father quietly explained to his astonished wife that he had acted based on what he had read in that fateful book.
He had surmised that their son was a reincarnation of someone who died in that unfortunate flight. He knew no more than that.
Had that crash victim been a man or a woman? Young? Old? Who knows?

The child never had restless nights again.
No nightmares either. Just the normal, relaxing sleepful nights of any child his age.

Not just that, but the child never again scribbled for 401 anywhere!

But the fact that the child had no more nightmares, that the child never again scribbled those three numbers indicated that the father's guess had been correct.
To this day the son does not remember anything of this part of his childhood.

This is not a story, or rather, this is not fiction!

This is the real-life story of our family, of our eldest son with whom we were blessed, as well as with our daughter and four years after that another child, a second son.

It may sound like fiction, it may sound fanciful, but to me it was a real experience which made me reconsider all that we think we know about life, afterlife and even our reason for being born in the first place. Since I am on the subject, let me tell you what I believe. I may be wrong; I may be right......
We shall all know the truth at the end of our days.

I believe that we all are Souls, spirits, dressed in human bodies. This is the only way Souls can exist and interact in this, the physical world around us.
We come here for a reason.
Perhaps it is what is called “Tikkun” in Jewish mysticism, perhaps not.
I can only tell you how I see you.

Tikkun means "to repair". The belief is that we come "down" to this material world in order to repair something left unfixed in our previous lives, in our past trips, in our previous physical existence. While we are here, we are given the opportunity to repair something about our own existence too, our own spiritual existence, and we are also given the opportunity to repair what is known as “Tikkun Olam” to repair something in the world around us.
As in all tests, we are not given any answers.
Of what value is it to sit for a test having the answers on a slip of paper beside you? Even getting top marks at such a test is vacuous. So, we come down and do our best.
It is a very challenging test and some of us achieve the results required, some of us do not. Once we achieve or pass our personal test, there is no need to come back to this material world which is full of suffering, full of struggle, full of death and also full of beautiful things.
Everything is balanced in this creation.
If we have not achieved our Tikkun, the purpose we came to this material world, we have an unfinished task in our hands. We go back to the spiritual world and there, where there is only Truth, no spin, no subterfuge, we see the results of our life's trip. Based on that we decide if it's time to come back and try again.
This is a very simplified form of a belief that I hold through many books that I have read and long, quiet hours of meditation.
It makes sense to me.
It may not work for anybody else.
But perhaps you may find that the idea is not totally crazy.

Many years have passed since this incident I have told you about and I thank God for the wonderful family that I have had and I pray forgiveness for the many mistakes I have made that have affected all of us in one way or another.  Because, no man is an island, no action that we do goes unnoticed somewhere, nothing that we do is restricted just to our own lives. It affects all those around us and the closer they are to us the more they are affected by us. ….and we by them.

I have nothing more to say at this point.

You can check it out for yourselves, dear readers.
https://paranorms.com/flight-401/