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I of my own knowledge…
George Ritchie:
Life and death and life again and death again
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by Frank DeMarco |
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In its obituary for George Ritchie, who died at age 84 on October 29, 2007, the Charlottesville Daily Progress among other things described him this way:
He was a physician, speaker and author and a graduate of the University of Richmond, Medical College of Virginia and served his residency in Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. During his residency, he won the William James Research Award for Research in Psychiatry and helped found the David C. Wilson Hospital in Charlottesville and was president of the Universal Youth Corporation for 20 years….
All this is true, and none of it is unimportant. But it leaves unsaid the greater part of his life, and the greater part of his significance to me and to you. George had died and come back, you see. More than that, he had lived his long post-script life as a committed Christian, trying to live the one great truth that he had found during the ten minutes or so between the two times he was pronounced dead and his return.
By the time I met George, in 1991, he was 71 years old, and was a long way from the skinny 20-year-old Army private who died of pneumonia in 1943. By 1991 he had already lived another half century, and more. The first part of his story – his death, his tour of earth, hell and heaven, his return – had been published by Chosen Books as Return from Tomorrow, co-authored by Elizabeth Sherrill. That book sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but Chosen Books -- and other Christian publishing houses -- turned down his second manuscript, which he called “Ordered to Return,” because among other things he did not toe the fundamentalist party line. So he sent it to me as Chief Editor of Hampton Roads Publishing Company.
I never did know how much George did or didn’t know about us. We as a publishing house were not Christian, but metaphysical, and between Christians and metaphysicals there was a great gulf fixed -- in their minds. As it happened, though, I am firmly in the camp of the metaphysicals, but I am neither hostile toward Christianity nor captive to its dogmas. In me George had found a bridge, and a bridge is what he needed, for several reasons.
For instance, Jesus.
George was convinced that he had met Jesus, and had been escorted by him through heaven and hell and then had been sent back to earth (against his desire) to live out what he had learned. Metaphysicals by and large could have swallowed much or all of the story – except for the presence of Jesus. (In my experience, the only word some metaphysical-types are more afraid of than God is Jesus. I think they fear that to acknowledge the extraordinary power of this man who changed the world would be to let the camel’s nose into the tent. I can understand their inability to control their fears around the subject – for fears are never wholly rational, hence never wholly under control of the conscious mind – but facts remain facts. If Jesus was an extraordinary presence in life, why should it be impossible for him to continue to be an extraordinary presence after life, outside of time and space?)
Fundamentalists, on the other hand, could swallow the story as long as it was couched in terms of Jesus – but couldn’t stomach George’s unorthodox conclusions about matters on which they had their mind firmly made up, matters such as homosexuality and reincarnation. George demonstrated that the medieval church’s condemnation of reincarnation was a political decision, and stated on the basis of his professional career as doctor and psychiatrist that homosexuality was one of a range of sexual orientations occurring naturally. So there he was, in a cleft stick, his extraordinary story only half told. The part that fit seamlessly into fundamentalism had been published. The part that didn’t, hadn’t.
Now, instructively, George’s life after dying was not easy. His way was filled with frustrations that he had to learn how to deal with:
* Having been in the presence of a kind of love that he had never experienced on Earth, more than anything, he wanted to stay right there. No dice; he was sent back, returning to a very sick body.
* Having obtained a coveted admission into medical school, he wanted above all things on earth to be a doctor. But the pneumonia that had killed him had left him too weak to do the work needed. He failed out, and was told that because he had “wasted” a slot that another student might have filled, he would never be allowed back into the medical program. He was sent back to the army, and shipped to Europe to serve as a medic.
* Not only was he was kept on earth, he was saved by an inexplicable impulse that had him get off a truck loaded with soldiers – a truck that shortly thereafter hit a mine and exploded, killing those he just been among. He grieved for the boys who had been killed, and bitterly envied them at the same time.
Ultimately, none of this mattered. He did get back into medical school, he did become a doctor, then years later he returned to school and became a psychiatrist, and — lecturing at UVA — inspired Raymond Moody to being the research that resulted in Dr. Moody’s classic book on NDE’s, Life After Life. The ultimate effect of that book, and the awareness that it spawned, is beyond calculation. It just goes to remind us that we never know what is our most important accomplishment, for we never know who we may influence who in turn will influence others. George Ritchie did not come into the world to give Ray Moody his theme, but it happened, one beneficial side-effect that we happen to know about.
While in Europe, helping to alleviate suffering, George learned a lesson that can be summarized thus: The important thing in life is less to experience the love he felt when in the presence of Jesus than to give it. He saw this first in the person of a Polish survivor of the POW camps, and never forgot it. He preached it, and practiced it, and in so doing changed many lives.
As I read George’s manuscript, and still more as I worked with him, I experienced his extraordinary warmth, and began making conscious efforts to open myself more to all aspects of my being, known and unknown, including not only other individuals but also the transcendent force I was calling God. I did not instantly transform my life, but gradually I felt some progress. And I came to realize that essential to psychic abilities was the ability to feel and express love. I had learned this years before, reading Harmon Bro’s Edgar Cayce on Religion and Psychic Experience. It doesn’t come from the head; it comes from the heart.
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Frank DeMarco,
Author, publisher, editor, & psychic explorer.
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Frank DeMarco holds an M.A. in History from the University of Iowa and a B.A. in History from George Washington University.
His work as co-founder and (for 15 years) chief editor of Hampton Roads Publishing Company brought him into close association with many brilliant and insightful minds, including psychics, remote viewers, channelers and mystics, and showed him the human side of extraordinary abilities.
In 1992, his psychic abilities opened up at a Gateway Voyage at The Monroe Institute in central Virginia. Since then he has been engaged in first-hand exploration of the nature and limits of all things psychic, especially including such areas as healing and guidance, direct access to knowledge, communication with past lives, and the integration of the spiritual dimension into everyday life.
His autobiographical work Muddy Tracks: Exploring an Unsuspected Reality describes the first stages of his discovery of the key to expanded awareness, and offers pointers for those just beginning their quest. In his weblog, www.frankdemarco.
wordpress.com, he shares the journey and the results of continuing explorations. His blog, “I of my own knowledge…” investigates what individuals can know first-hand about the purpose and conduct of life.
Contact info
blog: http://frankdemarco.
wordpress.com/
email:
muddytracks@
earthlink.net
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