Light Beyond the Darkness

is a consultant with a long experience of urban development issues. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Oxford Brookes University. Hamdi has consulted on participatory action planning and the upgrading of slums in cities to all the major international development agencies, and to charities and NGOs worldwide. He is the author of Housing without Houses (IT Publications, 1995), co-author of Making Micro Plans (IT Publications, 1988) and Action Planning for Cities (John Wiley and Sons, 1997) and editor of the collected volume Educating for Real (IT Publications 1996), and Urban Futures (Practical Action Publications 2005). In 1943, at the age of 20, Dr. George G. Ritchie, Jr., M.D., (September, 25, 1923 - October 29, 2007) was a private in the Army stationed in Texas awaiting a transfer to Richmond to study medicine at the Medical College of Virginia to become a doctor for the military. However, he got sick with pneumonia and died. The Army physician in charge stated in a notarized statement that the medical officer summoned detected "no evidence of respiration or cardiac impulse" and declared Ritchie dead. Ritchie had left his body in a near-death experience wandering around the hospital ward unaware he was dead. He found it strange no one could see him. He returned to his room and recognized his lifeless body, which had been covered with a sheet, by his fraternity ring. The room then became bright and Ritchie found himself in the presence of Jesus who then guided him through several realms of the afterlife before being told to return to his body. As the ward was preparing Ritchie's body for the morgue, he thought he detected movement in Ritchie's chest and called for a medical officer who provided a shot of adrenaline to the patient's heart causing him to breathe and his heart to beat. Ritchie then returned to life with one of the most important and profound NDEs every documented.