Finishing the last book on the NDE (near death experience), I was about to get back to more standard fair when the Kindle - snoopy nose that it is - gave me further suggestions, saying, "People who bought this book liked..." And there was another NDE for only $1.99 - a short one of only 148 pages, how could I resist? (as an aside, my book, "Dream Weaver" is also available for only $2.99 on Kindle. With 448 pages, a real bargain!)
Ah, how I wished I had! "Return from Tomorrow" is by psychiatrist George Ritchie, who explains his wild tale of death in 1943, when he was a soldier- in - training in Texas. He caught pneumonia in a time before the general use of penicillin, and died - that is, lost his heart-beat, blood pressure, and anything else they measured at the time, to the extent that his body had been covered with a white sheet and was near being rolled to the morgue. For the nine minutes he was clinically dead, he left his body, unaware that he WAS dead, and roamed around the hospital looking for someone to take him to the bus station. He was being transferred to Richmond where, because of his college background, he was to begin training as a doctor, and was anxious to not lose any class time. Soon, however, he found that people could not only not hear him, but actually walked through him. Going outside, he began to fly towards Richmond, until he realized he did not know the way. Starting to return, he found himself besides an incredible light who he came to learn was Jesus. Like Scrooge, he was then shown around as a spirit through a typical North American city in wartime - the difference being that he could see other spirits as well as solid people. He found the spirits yelling into business phones (besides solid people who could not sense them) trying to get orders in, and dead-eyed factory workers trying to lift things off the belt. Worse, he was taken to a bar full of soldiers who were getting enormously drunk. All around them were spirits trying to lift glasses of whiskey, although they couldn't, and light cigarettes that they could not hold. They were desperate and single minded about their obsessions, and when a living soldier collapsed from drunkenness, he saw one of the spirits enter the top of the head and disappear into the soldier. Flying on, he saw spirits trying to have sex with real people, pantomiming all sorts of positions and so on in a futile attempt at release.
In all this, he saw his own selfishness, as Jesus repeatedly asked, "What have you got to show me? What have you done for me in life?" In the question, he saw that nearly everything he had done had been for himself - not simply for kindness to others. He claimed that Jesus felt sorry for the poor souls, but that it was their own doing, after all - but there were angels all about them as well - perhaps to help? From earth he flew above to higher and higher realms until he came to the place of love and light - and was forced to return to his body, stunning the staff.
Thus, in a nutshell, is his story, one that he undoubtedly believed with all his heart. It is starkly Christian, and one might say the his visions of vice reflected his own moral teachings, but they are also uncomfortably true in a broader sense: so many religions emphasize that we must lose our desire for things of this earth; that, as the Buddhists and Hindus believe, it is this desire that brings us not only suffering, but keeps us here on earth, condemning us to repeat life for a horrifying infinity of time, unless we consciously purge ourselves of all desire.
I did not go to bed comfortably, and woke early in the morning with the same question: What have you done for me (for mankind) in your life? The answer was an uncomfortable "almost nothing." And where the other NDE books almost guaranteed a comfortable landing in at least a sort of heaven where we would review our lives and learn, here we would be stuck - for how long? - with our cravings, trapped by our own desires.
I don't know - at the end of "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge asks the spirit of the future, "are these visions of what WILL be or what MIGHT be?" He is never answered, just as I don't have the answer. But this is true - this scary story highlights my - and our, if I can say so - basic selfishness. What good have we done that would not have some reward for ourselves? What discomforts have we avoided where we might have helped someone, somehow? So much lost, so little time. I now feel like Scrooge on Christmas Eve. I hope I am not so visited by the spirits, but might that not be necessary? And might it not be a blessing after all?
On a note to atheists who believe the spiritual are immature people cuddling next to a parent phantom god - there is another side to belief. It may still seem unreal and silly, but this other side has teeth. It is not for cowards. FK
Ah, how I wished I had! "Return from Tomorrow" is by psychiatrist George Ritchie, who explains his wild tale of death in 1943, when he was a soldier- in - training in Texas. He caught pneumonia in a time before the general use of penicillin, and died - that is, lost his heart-beat, blood pressure, and anything else they measured at the time, to the extent that his body had been covered with a white sheet and was near being rolled to the morgue. For the nine minutes he was clinically dead, he left his body, unaware that he WAS dead, and roamed around the hospital looking for someone to take him to the bus station. He was being transferred to Richmond where, because of his college background, he was to begin training as a doctor, and was anxious to not lose any class time. Soon, however, he found that people could not only not hear him, but actually walked through him. Going outside, he began to fly towards Richmond, until he realized he did not know the way. Starting to return, he found himself besides an incredible light who he came to learn was Jesus. Like Scrooge, he was then shown around as a spirit through a typical North American city in wartime - the difference being that he could see other spirits as well as solid people. He found the spirits yelling into business phones (besides solid people who could not sense them) trying to get orders in, and dead-eyed factory workers trying to lift things off the belt. Worse, he was taken to a bar full of soldiers who were getting enormously drunk. All around them were spirits trying to lift glasses of whiskey, although they couldn't, and light cigarettes that they could not hold. They were desperate and single minded about their obsessions, and when a living soldier collapsed from drunkenness, he saw one of the spirits enter the top of the head and disappear into the soldier. Flying on, he saw spirits trying to have sex with real people, pantomiming all sorts of positions and so on in a futile attempt at release.
In all this, he saw his own selfishness, as Jesus repeatedly asked, "What have you got to show me? What have you done for me in life?" In the question, he saw that nearly everything he had done had been for himself - not simply for kindness to others. He claimed that Jesus felt sorry for the poor souls, but that it was their own doing, after all - but there were angels all about them as well - perhaps to help? From earth he flew above to higher and higher realms until he came to the place of love and light - and was forced to return to his body, stunning the staff.
Thus, in a nutshell, is his story, one that he undoubtedly believed with all his heart. It is starkly Christian, and one might say the his visions of vice reflected his own moral teachings, but they are also uncomfortably true in a broader sense: so many religions emphasize that we must lose our desire for things of this earth; that, as the Buddhists and Hindus believe, it is this desire that brings us not only suffering, but keeps us here on earth, condemning us to repeat life for a horrifying infinity of time, unless we consciously purge ourselves of all desire.
I did not go to bed comfortably, and woke early in the morning with the same question: What have you done for me (for mankind) in your life? The answer was an uncomfortable "almost nothing." And where the other NDE books almost guaranteed a comfortable landing in at least a sort of heaven where we would review our lives and learn, here we would be stuck - for how long? - with our cravings, trapped by our own desires.
I don't know - at the end of "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge asks the spirit of the future, "are these visions of what WILL be or what MIGHT be?" He is never answered, just as I don't have the answer. But this is true - this scary story highlights my - and our, if I can say so - basic selfishness. What good have we done that would not have some reward for ourselves? What discomforts have we avoided where we might have helped someone, somehow? So much lost, so little time. I now feel like Scrooge on Christmas Eve. I hope I am not so visited by the spirits, but might that not be necessary? And might it not be a blessing after all?
On a note to atheists who believe the spiritual are immature people cuddling next to a parent phantom god - there is another side to belief. It may still seem unreal and silly, but this other side has teeth. It is not for cowards. FK
RSS Feed