Can 'Love' Produce Miracles ?

Steve

Member
I just finished reading 'Return from Tomorrow' by George Ritchie MD, a NDE book about Ritchie's own NDE and how it affected him (I enjoyed it ).In it he tells the story of 'Wild Bill' a Polish Jew he met when he was assigned to help in the concentration camps after the war. When he first met him, he assumed that 'Bill' had only been there a short time, because he looked healthy, but it turns out he'd been there since 1939 !

Do you think that ,somehow, his loving way of living makes this possible ?

And that is how I came to know Wild Bill Cody. That was not his real name. His real name was seven unpronounceable syllables in Polish, but he had a long drooping handlebar mustache like pictures of the old western hero, so the American soldiers called him Wild Bill. He was one of the inmates of the concentration camp, but obviously he had not been there long: his posture was erect, his eyes bright, his energy indefatigable. Since he was fluent in English, French, German and Russian, as well as Polish, he became a kind of unofficial camp translator.
Wild Bill leaned back in the upright chair and sipped at his drink. “We lived in the Jewish section of Warsaw,” he began slowly, the first words I had heard him speak about himself, “my wife, our two daughters, and our three little boys. When the Germans reached our street they lined everyone against a wall and opened up with machine guns. I begged to be allowed to die with my family, but because I spoke German they put me in a work group.” He paused, perhaps seeing again his wife and five children. “I had to decide right then,” he continued, “whether to let myself hate the soldiers who had done this. It was an easy decision, really. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen too often what hate could do to people’s minds and bodies. Hate had just killed the six people who mattered most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend the rest of my life— whether it was a few days or many years— loving every person I came in contact with.”
 
I just finished reading 'Return from Tomorrow' by George Ritchie MD
At less than the price of a pint of beer for the kindle version, it's probably worth a look. Thanks for the suggestion.

As for your question, "Do you think that ,somehow, his loving way of living makes this possible ?" I certainly wouldn't rule it out. In my view, the idea that we are all isolated and separate individuals is somewhat of an illusion, we are connected to one another in every interaction we make, and the effects of our actions come rippling back to us not as some distant karmic event in the far future, but very much more immediately than that.
 
That's the first book I had read regarding the NDE phenomenon. It was a life changing book for me that dramatically changed my worldview and began my quest for more on the NDE subject. Consequently, this is how I ultimately found Skeptiko.

It's a lovely book. As Typoz says, for the price of a beer you can't go wrong.

As for your question, "Do you think that ,somehow, his loving way of living makes this possible ?" I certainly wouldn't rule it out. In my view, the idea that we are all isolated and separate individuals is somewhat of an illusion, we are connected to one another in every interaction we make, and the effects of our actions come rippling back to us not as some distant karmic event in the far future, but very much more immediately than that.

I think it's quite possible. I don't think I've ever met anyone like 'Wild Bill' but I have a friend who, in spite of great difficulties in his life, is always friendly to people and has a 'zest for life' that is contagious,I have always thought of him as a spiritual person. In the book Ritchie meets Jesus in his NDE, but thankfully doesn't come away from it with fixed ideas, but sees Jesus in people like Wild Bill and others.
 
I was just reading the introduction to the 1988 book, "The Light Beyond" by Raymond Moody. Here in the introduction Colin Wilson comments on Ritchie's account, how it dwells at great length on the consequences of sin and sounds a lot like revivalist preaching. It's a valid comment up to a point, though I'm wondering how much of this is due to George Ritchie's co-author Elizabeth Sherrill and how much was his own experience. At any rate, I think it's important to take in a broad range of NDE accounts rather than focus on a single one. I read the book 'Return from Tomorrow' mainly for historical perspective since Raymond Moody has mentioned more than once how Ritchie's account was influential at least at the outset of his studies in this field.
 
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