Cover Blurbs
- At the age of twenty, a soldier died in an Army hospital. Nine minutes later, he returned to life. What happened to him during those minutes would change him forever.
- One man's astonishing walk through the doorway of death
- When a young soldier named George Ritchie landed in an Army hospital with pneumonia, he had no idea of the uncharted journey he was about to take. Days later, barely comprehending his own death, he stepped out of the physical world and entered eternity.
- In this riveting and detailed story, Ritchie describes a series of "worlds" he visited--some hellish in their separation from life, some glorious in their heavenly brilliance. But overshadowing all was his longing to stay in the blazing presence of Jesus.
- Stunning and memorable descriptions make this one of the most amazing accounts of life after death ever written. This glimpse into the realm beyond can change forever your understanding of the world beyond our own.
- George G. Ritchie has served as president of the Richmond Academy of General Practice; chairman of the Department of Psychiatry of Towers Hospital; and founder and president of the Universal Youth Corps, Inc. He lives in Virginia.
- Elizabeth Sherrill is the author behind the classic best sellers The Hiding Place about Corrie ten Boom, The Cross and the Switchblade about David Wilkerson, and God's Smuggler about Brother Andrew. She also is a longtime contributor to America's best-loved inspirational magazine Guideposts, and best-selling devotional, Daily Guideposts.
Notes
Amazon Customer Review2 (Negative)
- Dr. George. G. Richie relates his Near-Death Experience, in it his "out of body mind" says he is in the presence of the bright light, a silhouette of a man he thinks is Jesus and other different "forms representing dead people " do not seem to see the person he thinks is Jesus. The out of the body mind of Dr. R, asks, why those others cannot see what he sees. Then he says "Maybe whenever our centre of attention was on anything else, we could block out even him ". This sounds something near to concentration in meditation. When the meditator gets into a deep state of concentration, he is away from everything else around him.
- In the light of what I had experienced in a short space of time where there was no declaration of a clinical death or a cardiac arrest, but an experience of drowning in a river, there are similarities with the experience of Dr. Richie.
- The Tibetan Book of the dead speaks of the process of dying as falling into a dark tunnel and arriving at a light. This tunnel could take different shapes according to the raconteur. In the case of Dr. Richie it is a bright light apparently without a shape. I had the experience of a long hall without sharp corners filled with a light not a bright light as described by Dr. Richie but a soothing light, coming from nowhere.
- These experiences related by those who have gone through them describe them differently according to their own cultural or religious background. The man Dr Richie calls " Jesus" did not appear in my experience. The "hell" he described was not seen by me. I did not meet any one of my family members who had died before me.
- In this respect Dr. Pim van Lommel's explanation as to "who recounts the experience" is significant. Dr. Lommel says that once a "patient" is declared clinically dead it signifies a cardiac arrest, which is that the "brain is dead".
- The Western science so far had believed that the consciousness is in the brain cells. If so a Near Death Experience is false, because the dead brain cannot recount what happened during the period the patient was clinically dead, unless it was the consciousness that had separated at death that has come back to life again. Therefore, if NDE recounted by the "patient" could be accepted, it has to be the "consciousness" that had experienced and not the brain. The consciousness is a separate entity a sort of a field of energy, which remembers things the way "the patient" lived his life until the moment of his cardiac arrest.
- Therefore, what the "patient" relates are the concepts with which he lived, the Jesus, the God, the light, meeting the dead, seeing them in their different worldly experiences, such as smoking, drinking at bars, fighting.
- What seems to be common in these experiences, is the tunnel of light, the light which gives comfort, and seeing people without being able to speak to them.
- In Buddhist teachings the "man" is made of "mind and matter". Therefore, once dead the body which is composed of the elements such as the element of water, element of energy, element of wind and the element of hard matter remains, which eventually decays and gets absorbed into their different elements.
- Therefore, it is only the mind that remains? The mind is the consciousness. This consciousness stores somewhere in its field of energy "memories". These memories are stored as images we had been accustomed to during our lifetime.
- In the teachings of the Buddha, it is explained that a human being creates a self. The self is an invention of the mind, as the body by itself cannot think, see, hear, smell, taste or feel independently from the mind, the mind gives "labels" to every visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile objects that we come in contact with through our sense faculties throughout our lives. Therefore, these "labels", in other words the "concepts" our minds have made of everyday objects continue to remain in the memory of our consciousness when it departs from the body at death.
- That is what happens at a cardiac arrest of a patient in a clinical death. Therefore, what he recounts as part of his NDE is what his consciousness had stored up in its memory, the "concepts of his living life".
- Hence, all those different images Dr. George Richie had "seen" in his NDE are the concepts with which he lived. There was nothing new. The person he sees has no face, as much as that of himself. The man with comforting light for Dr. Richie cannot be non other than the Jesus, because the consciousness that goes through the NDE is the consciousness of Dr. Richie.
- If Dr. Richie was a Buddhist he would have said the light was that of the Buddha, and if he was a Hindu he would have said it was the Brahma the creator.......
- Now to interpose my own experience, I saw the light without the presence of a "Man" I saw the light comforting and serene. I saw coffins with a candle at the end of each coffin as far into the end of the hall which disappeared into a bright light. I did not see the dead. I saw my living mother, my Scout Master, Parents and friends but I cannot remember to have seen their faces. I could "imagine" what they are going to say and do.
- I think Dr. Lommel will agree. Any one in any country in the world (unless the person is a Christian) who has a NDE will not identify as Jesus the man with the benign light.
In-Page Footnotes ("Ritchie (George G.), Sherrill (Elizabeth) - Return from Tomorrow")
Footnote 2:
- There are a few Buddhist-inspired ideas with which I disagree, but it's mostly sensible.
- I've made no significant corrections nor attempted to resolve sundry obscurities.
Book Comment
Chosen Books, 1 Sept. 2007. Paperback
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