Conversations July 13, 2010

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

12:30 AM. Papa, let’s talk about your wounding, the out-of-body (or near-death) experience, the aftermath including light, letters, and Agnes, and fear.

All good topics. [Hemingway biographer Carlos] Baker has his uses.

All right. Your first unasked question is — how much of the story as understood is accurate. You’ve read that I carried a man to safety, and you’ve read that it would have been impossible, and you’ve read that I started to, then was hit again and fell and was carried in. You have become wary of anything I said anytime, because of my tendency to spin yarns about my life and exploits. In fact it was this very tendency and your dismay about it that helped hook us up a few years ago. So I’ll try to stick to the trail of the truth.

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“I now realize that we did not come here to suffer”

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

I think that some of you will find this fascinating. Not just a first-hand description of a near-death experience, but her response to the standard questionnaire about specific aspects of that experience. Sent to me by a friend, originally from http://www.nderf.org/anita_m’s_nde.htm

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The Threshold to the Other Side

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

From http://www.damninteresting.com/the-threshold-to-the-other-side, via a friend.

The Threshold to the Other Side

Written by Jason Bellows on 24 April 2006

Light at the end of the tunnelThe phenomenon of near death experiences (NDEs) are as old as life itself, and to some people they are spiritual and moving tales that affirm a life after death, and interpreted as indisputable proof of the existence of god.

For any not already familiar, in the west most of the NDEs contain some basic points, where a person who dies floats out of the body, and looks back at the remains from a point above. The period of this external watching varies in time from a few seconds to more than an hour.

There is a generally a feeling a weightlessness. Almost invariably the deceased succumbs to a second stage, of being drawn to a tunnel with a clear, white light at the end. Sometimes they are drawn in by a gentle, deep voice, sometimes by the beckoning of loved ones, and sometimes by an indescribable urge. Sometimes they reach the light, and sometimes they do not. There is often a period of watching the events of one’s own life as a panoramic, and some report conversations with god, usually Jesus. Then, inevitably in order to come back to life and tell the tale, the deceased must return to life. The means that turns them back is variegated, but some common examples include an angelic messenger turning them back because their time has not yet come, a previously deceased family member sending them back, or turning away from the light of their own accord for the love of those left behind.

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Death and life and death of a great man

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

The Charlottesville newspaper’s obituary for George Gordon Ritchie Jr. M.D., 84, of Irvington, Virginia, who died Monday, October 29, 2007, among other things says this:

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….

What this leaves unsaid is the greater part of his life.

In 1943, age 20, George died, was met by Jesus, and was given a guided tour of earth, heaven and hell. (I am saying this not tongue in cheek but straightforwardly, just as George very bravely did for more than 60 years.) Continue reading Death and life and death of a great man