The Wayside Pulpit No.76
The Opening of the Sheath
In the last W.P. I
mentioned that all living human beings had an invisible sheath, or aureole,
surrounding them. In this number, I should like to quote from the book by
George Ritchie, entitled "Return from Tomorrow". 1978. Kingsway
Publications. In 1943 Ritchie was serving in the army as a young man,
and at Christmas time he died of double lobar pneumonia. But nine minutes
later, armed with an unforgettable experience of eternity, he returned from the
dead. He had walked and talked with Jesus through a series of teaching
experiences, some of which were terrifying, others enthralling. In 1978, as a
practising psychiatrist, he finally, and somewhat reluctantly, put pen to paper
to tell the world of his adventure during those nine minutes. The
following extract relates specifically to his experience in a bar, where he
witnessed the opening of the sheath.
"Gradually I began to
notice something else. All of the living people we were watching were
surrounded by a faint luminous glow, almost like an electrical field over the
surface of their bodies This luminosity moved as they moved, like a second skin
made out of pale, scarcely visible light.
At first I thought it must
be reflected brightness from the Person at my side. But the buildings we
entered gave off no reflection, neither did inanimate objects. And then I
realized that the non-physical beings didn’t either. My own unsolid body,
I now saw, was without this glowing sheath.
At this point the Light
drew me inside a dingy bar and grill near what looked like a large naval base.
A crowd of people, many of them sailors, lined the bar three deep, while others
jammed wooden booths along the wall. Though a few were drinking beer, most of
them seemed to be belting whiskies as fast as the two perspiring bartenders
could pour them.
Then I noticed a striking
thing. A number of the men standing at the bar seemed unable to lift their drinks
to their lips. Over and over I watched them clutch at their shot glasses, hands
passing through the solid tumblers, through the heavy wooden counter top,
through the very arms and bodies of the drinkers around them.
And these men, every one of
them, lacked the aureole of light that surrounded the others.
Then, the cocoon of light
must be a property of physical bodies only. The dead, we who had lost our
solidness, had lost this "second skin" as well. And it was obvious
that these living people, the light-surrounded ones, the ones actually
drinking, talking, jostling each other, could neither see the desperately
thirsty disembodied beings among them, nor feel their frantic pushing to get at
those glasses. (Though it was also clear to me, watching, that the non-solid
people could both see and hear each other. Furious quarrels were constantly
breaking out among them over glasses that none could actually get to his lips.)
I thought I had seen heavy
drinking at fraternity parties in
But that was not what I was
looking at. I was staring in amazement as the bright cocoon around the
unconscious sailor simply opened up. It parted at the very crown of his head
and began peeling away from his head, his shoulders. Instantly, quicker than I’d
ever seen anyone move, one of the insubstantial beings that had been standing
near him at the bar was on top of him. He had been hovering like a thirsty
shadow at the sailor’s side, greedily following every swallow the young
man made. Now he seemed to spring at him like a beast of prey
In the next instant, to my
utter mystification, the springing figure had vanished. It all happened even
before the two men had dragged their unconscious load from under the feet of
those at the bar. One minute I’d distinctly seen two individuals; by the
time they propped the sailor against the wall, there was only one.
Twice more, as I stared,
stupefied, the identical scene was repeated. A man passed out, a crack swiftly
opened in the aureole round him, one of the non-solid people vanished as he
hurled himself at that opening, almost as if he had scrambled inside the other
man.
Was that covering of light
some kind of shield, then? Was it a protection against . . against disembodied
beings like myself? Presumably these substance-less creatures had once had
solid bodies, as I myself had had. Suppose that when they had been in these
bodies they had developed a dependence on alcohol that went beyond the
physical. That became mental. Spiritual, even. Then when they lost that body,
except when they could briefly take possession of another one, they would be
cut off . . . from the thing they could never stop craving."
The impact of this account
will be left to my readers. In the next bulletin I'll take the study one step
further, because Ritchie's experience was not the only case on record. There is
no way in which the experiences Ritchie had could be attributed to
hallucination (which dead people don't have) or the influence of drugs.
Therefore the facts must be faced, and an understanding gained, rather than
brushing the whole thing under the carpet because it doesn't fit some
preconceived theology.
.