In his book ‘Return from Tomorrow’, the author George Ritchie shares his ‘near-death experience’ with us, a temporal experience that goes beyond the limitations of the physical senses.
From physical death to revival, a maximum of 4-5 minutes can pass, rarely more without lasting damage. During this short period of time, he experiences a wealth of events and encounters in the subtle world. The alert and trained mind in its subtle form helps him to consciously and actively absorb everything he experiences and store it as memory.
Anyone who reads the book carefully and connects the descriptions with the contents of theosophical teachings will find confirmation of many psychic realities. It is obvious that Ritchie was chosen for the task of experiencing the contents of the timeless teachings as his own experience.
However, his temporary physical death was certainly not deliberately induced. Such an intervention in karma is not within the rights of even the highest spirits. The opportunity presented itself, and his individual karma and spiritual abilities made the situational choice possible.
It was only 30 years after his experience that he found the courage to make it publicly available, at the risk of damaging his reputation as a doctor and psychologist. It was his voluntary decision to face the predictable defamations with adjectives such as ‘frivolous’ and ‘unscientific’.
We will limit ourselves here to considering the major difference to what we commonly call ‘time’. In the subtle world, the sequence of events, if you want to measure it in physical time, eludes our sensory imagination (even in the experience of dreams, the physical time as we use it profitably in everyday life no longer exists). Making this truth a secure insight is one of the many cognitive tasks that the theosophical student faces.
However, it should be noted that the reverse relationship of time experience can also occur. A long period of time in the physical sense can correspond to a calm, uneventful event in the subtle.
With this representation, we associate the indication that the transition process to a new planetary form, as described in Waystone 44, cannot be defined in terms of a narrow time frame. It may have already begun or may begin ‘soon’, or it may take ‘longer’ in physical time before it begins. So, no too narrow conclusions should be drawn from what was said in the milestone. It is indisputable that humanity is at a threshold, at an abyss or at a bridge – depending on the spiritual point of view of the individual.
