Book Reviews -- Spiritual Exploration -- Afterlife, Spirit World, Near Death Experiences (NDE's)
Author: P.M.H. Atwater
Title: The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences
Book Review 24.11.2008
(c) 2008 by Heidrun Beer
P.M.H. Atwater: The Big Book of
Near-Death Experiences
The ULTIMATE GUIDE to What Happens When We Die
======================================================
If I could only take three books with me to a lonely
island, this would be one of them!
With 470 pages in a large format, double the size of
a pocket book, it is quite a voluminous work, but
never boring, not for a moment.
NDE pioneer author Kenneth Ring says about it: "The definitive
work on near-death experiences, standing somewhere between
being a Bible for the field and an encyclopedia of it."
I am using his words because that's exactly what I would
have said myself, if asked for a short summary.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (A PRETTY BLOND LADY):
From
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/experts05.html :
P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) survived three death events that
produced three different near-death experiences in
1977. She is one of the original researchers of the near-death phenomenon,
having begun her work in 1978. Today, her contribution to the field of
near-death studies is considered on par with those of
Raymond Moody and Ken Ring.
--------------------------------------------------------------
FROM PAST TO PRESENT:
About 30 years have passed since Raymond Moody published his first
collection of reports from people who were brought
back from clinical death, and told wondrous stories about
the "other side". The experience of moving through a tunnel
toward a bright light, meeting dead relatives or a spirit
guide etc., has since become a standard component of fiction
books and movies, and countless collections of such reports
have become bestsellers.
After all, "an estimated 15 million Americans and 4 to 5
percent of the global population has had a near-death
experience" (from the back cover). It was just about time
for these people to being freed from the "crazy" corner,
into which they had been pushed by a materialistic society.
Mrs. Atwater quotes the director of integrative medicine
in a medical center in Colorade, who tells us that some
30 years ago a near-death experiencer had to expect:
- Health-care professionals wouldn't listen to patients
talk about their episodes
- Patients were told their experience was a hallucination
- They were often given tranquilizers
- They were often psychiatrically labeled for life
- If they insisted on their near-death experience, they
might have a psychiatric hospitalization
What a contrast to what a Dr. Peter Fenwick tells us
about the more recent years, which have seen a real
explosion of best-selling books in the field, plus
several movies like "Ghost" or "What Dreams May Come",
which made the existence of a parallel spiritual world
nicely real to the general public:
- "In England, more than one thousand psychiatrists are now
practicing spiritual psychiatry. They have discovered
that the spiritual, taking on a personal relationship with God/Deity,
heals and uplifts better and faster than many of the
procedures they once used."
- To back up his claim, he revealed that in 1995 only three U.S. medical
schools had courses on "Spirituality in Medicine." In
1998, there were forty, and by 2001, one hundred
medical schools had formal classes on medical
spirituality. "There is a new breed of doctors", explains
Dr. Fenwick, "who are increasingly open to the role of
spirituality in medicine. They are part of a huge impulse
globally toward spiritual development."
I should add that this is NOT a church colored spirituality
(deity perceived outside of self), but ACTUAL spirituality
(deity perceived as one's own inner core, the "divine spark"
that animates matter to become a live being and personality.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
P.M.H. Atwater with over 15 spiritual books is an important
factor in that amazing development. In her current work,
she pulls together information from her own previous books
as well as many other sources. She goes back in history to
the earliest near-death experience (NDE) accounts known
in the literature, presents all relevant authors in the fields with
short biographies and summaries of their work, and gives some of the most
fascinating NDE stories ever told (see examples below),
including miracles that absolutely defy any
scientific explanation.
What's even more impressive, she also covers ALL ADJACENT AREAS OF RESEARCH.
We read about the most cutting edge work in brain
biology - science is now studying our physical interface with the spirit
world -; we read about kundalini breakthroughs; about how physics is about
to meet spirituality ("Is God Light?")
We read about religious viewpoints vs. spiritual viewpoints;
quotes and anecdotes of many relevant figures in spirituality;
and as most pages have several sidebars, we learn a lot of
related old, new and also some far-fetched exotic vocables
that are interesting not only in the context of the NDE.
They are repeated in alphabetical order in an appendix at the end of
the book - another appendix of 12 !! pages, titled "Further Reading", covers
additional recommended books!
A great part of the book is spent with the consequences
that NDE's have on the experiencers' lives after they
returned to their human existence. Typically they have a
very strong influence on the experiencers. Their viewpoint
changes, sometimes massively, priorities shift. Often their
relationships fail because the person who comes back is
simply no longer the person he or she has been before, and the
partner cannot cope with these personality changes.
It is not really possible to tell much detail from 470
pages, but what sticks in my memory is the fact that so
many NDE experiencers have been given a "job" or "mission"
on the other side, to educate humankind into a more compassionate,
peaceful and loving direction, to write books or
launch organizations, and all of them did it. One experiencer is even told
that if humankind does not change course, the species will not survive.
MY OWN NDE CONNECTION/MY MISSION:
This coincides very much with my own feeling of having exactly such a "mission"
- the reason why I want to get out of "earthly"
money-making and create more time for writing - , and with the warnings
about chaotic times coming that I have received from my spiritual team mates
on the "other side": In quite unholy terms, they were
instructing me to get my a** onto a farm.
I am still looking for a partner or partners to help me
carry this load. Right now most of my time is burned up
with activities to keep myself and my kids physically
alive, and the better I manage to do this, the more
disappointed I feel about wasting a whole lifetime of
valuable inspirations that I barely have the time to note
down on scrap paper or in temporary files. Only a few
books are finished, and only two of them published.
If there is anybody, male or female, who is in a similar
situation, let's talk about sharing the physical work
in order to free up more "mission time"! My attempts to
find a new life partner have pretty much failed, as most men in my
age range want a woman who will "enjoy the rest of
their life" with them, go out in the evenings and travel to exotic places
and other idle and shallow things that would eat up
even more of my time, and this sounds like HORROR to
me, with 10 book projects and 4 screenplays unwritten
and "burning" in my mind.
So, I hope for some other kind of synergy to optimize my writing time, and
maybe help someone else who has the same problem,
ideally someone with a similar "mission awareness". If only 2 or 3 people
share living expenses and physical activities, each
of them has gained a LOT.
I don't remember ever having had an NDE, and my father
couldn't tell me anything about a life threatening
situation in my childhood, but I did go through a traumatic time in
1986 where I contacted the energy world which other
people experience during their NDE's, and as I share
many if not most of their typical characteristics, I kind of count myself
among the "experiencers".
SUICIDE
Many people after their NDE want to go back to the heavenly
environment that they enjoyed so much. Many try to commit
suicide because of that, others are depressed and homesick
for many years afterwards.
On the other hand, "the near-death experience convinces one
that escape by means of suicide is not possible", and
"the near-death experience leads to a strong moral conviction
that suicide is wrong (ethically wrong)."
"Why, then, if the Other Side is so great, would the majority
stay in this life and do so without the need to rush? 'We
stay because it makes sense to stay', one experiencer told me.
'If it isn't your time, you will either cheat yourself out
of what might have been had you remained, or you will not
stay dead no matter what method you use to kill yourself.'"
SOME MIRACLES TOLD IN THE BOOK:
I am very much of a believer in a physical logic, called
"science", and have had much success with the painstaking
study of medical principles (the human body's "instruction
manual"), which allowed me to nearly completely avoid the
typical health problems that people of my age have, and
reverse the one that I do have. It was most obstinate -
my excess weight from past diet errors -, but I recently
found a workable approach - I am now a shrinking lady :-)
There is a programming language for our bodies, called bio-chemistry, and we
are on the safe side in health and survival matters
if we study it well and speak it fluently, so that we
learn the "body lessons" BEFORE they escalate,
recognize and handle physical problems with great ease as
soon as they show up, and use our Earth incarnation time
for essential projects instead of health dramas and family
tragedies.
Despite this pragmatic attitude, I am extremely fond of the
"mind over matter" principle, and Mrs. Atwater's book gives
a few overwhelming miracle stories that made me feel like
a little kid under the Christmas tree. This is not the stuff
on which we can count, not the predictable kind like "I will
lose weight if I burn more calories than I eat" or "sugar
feeds cancer", but scientifically unexplainable gifts of
grace that made me speechless:
- In 1975, Ricky Bradshaw was nearly cut in half when he became trapped
between two cars backing into each other. He was
pronounced dead at the hospital, where a group of
medical students asked to be allowed to experiment
with a fresh corpse. After an hour (WELL beyond the time
where a brain can normally recover from the lack of
oxygen) they began to see beeps on the heart monitor
and called for a physician.
"Two years and twenty-four surgeries later, Ricky's survival
made medical history. His case is termed 'unexplained'
by the medical community."
"He had a 'humdinger' of an NDE, one that featured an
out-of-body-experience, brilliant light, loving voices,
and being able to view all of history from beginning
to end."
I simply love how divine grace and human travails worked
together here to accomplish the apparently impossible!
So often we see our best efforts go to waste, but in
this case they were rewarded against all odds.
- Mellen-Thomas Benedict became famous with his NDE.
In the middle of it, he had the incredible guts to
intervene (!!) and asked to be shown things. Among other revelations, he was
given "a complete overview of history from the Big
Bang to four hundred years into the future. He was
then pulled away, past stars and galaxies, past imagery and physical
realities, to a multi-angled overview of all worlds
and all Creation, and past even that to a second
light at the edge of existence where vibrations cease.
He saw all wars from their beginnings, race as
personality clusters, species operating like cells in
a greater whole." [...]
He "saw planetary energy systems in detail and how human
thoughts influence these systems in a simultaneous
interplay between past, present, and future. He learned
that Earth is a great cosmic being." [...]
After his return to the body, the most shocking news
came: the cancer that had nearly killed him had
completely VANISHED! Since then, he "has been flooded
with ideas for inventions and the marketing plans
necessary to promote them".
- Douglas M. King nearly died from a mysterious lung
infection. "One night, after the lights went out and
while he was still close to death, a strange dark 'blob'
suddenly manifested in midair. This oval object,
consisting of a light source that was 'perfect black',
floated over to him and stayed there until he was feeling better,
then it disappeared.
After a second biopsy, no trace of Douglas's lung
infection or its effects remained. What was a life-or-death crisis had
become a miracle. The medical staff was left
scratching their heads. Douglas's 'greeter' while he
lay on the edge of death turned out to be a mass of
dark light that had healed him."
- Kathi Beasley was dying from a brain tumor in April
2004. Its location caused her to slowly lose her
eyesight. Just before the scheduled surgery, she had
an extremely bad night and the darkness became darker
than she had ever known. She flipped on the light but
it didn't dispel the darkness any longer.
As she thought that she would die in the next moments,
"I noticed something faint and dim circling and swirling
above me in the form of a small golden form. I became
aware of not one but of many small golden, oblong,
disc-like lights swirling above my head. Fear was
almost instantly replaced with a mixture of wonder,
relief, and curiosity. [...]
Kathi went on to experience a burst of raw brilliant
energy as a Light began filling her, almost electrocuting her, with an
unbelievable unconditional love [...] 'I was engulfed
in a pure whiter than white Light that scrubbed me in
a celestial bath of newness. It purified and purged
me inwardly from all my previous burden and pain in
life. It gave me new eyes for the world without
losing much of the wisdom I had gained. It gave me
new levels of peace and new ways of thinking.'"
SOME TYPICAL PHENOMENA
Other phenomena I don't include in the "miracles" category,
because they are common to so many NDE stories and can more
or less be counted upon: going out of body while the body is
"dead", watching the doctors at work and listening to the
talks of relatives etc.
- One lady saw a shoe on a windowsill while she was floating
outside the hospital building where doctors fought for
her life. The shoe was later found in exactly that location
and looked exactly as described, down to the tiniest detail.
There was no chance that she could have seen that shoe
from her position on the operation table.
- One man went home while out of body and saw the mail on
the hallway table. He could tell his family about every
single mail item they would find at home, and what was
written on it.
- A child met his unborn sibling on the "other side" and
asked his parents uncomfortable questions about the
abortion that had terminated the pregnancy. There was
absolutely no natural way the kid could have learned about this old
family secret that happened long before he was born.
- Another kid tells about his missing twin, lost during
pregnancy, whom he has met in the afterlife. P.M.H.
Atwater says that this happened many times with many
different experiencers.
- One lady knew of the death of her father whom she had
met in the afterlife during her NDE. Nobody believed her,
because her father was thought to be alive. He had died
just moments earlier, while everybody was at her bedside in the
hospital, but it was verified soon enough.
- A man's bird died without any apparent reason only minutes after the man
had a heart attack. He met the bird on the "other
side", which is how he knew that the bird was dead -
nobody had had a chance to tell him.
- And there are countless tales of people who after their
return from "death" told their doctors and nurses all
about the embarassing mistakes that they made :-)
Such things are so typical that they are counted as a
standard component of NDE's and not as miracles.
OTHER REMARKABLE BOOK QUOTES IN RANDOM ORDER:
- "WHERE'S MY BODY? For some experiencers, locating their
bodies when it's time to return can be quite challenging -
especially if, as happened to George Ritchie, their
bodies are in a morgue. Ritchie claims that if it wasn't
for his left hand hanging below the morgue sheet with
his class ring on one finger, he might have never figured
out which body was his!"
- WEB RESOURCES: The biggest is
http://www.iands.org/ , followed by
www.near-death.com and
www.nderf.org .
- "A JOKE: The idea of passing through a tunnel into the
light has become the butt of many jokes and cartoons.
One of the jokes goes like this: 'ATTENTION, ALL PERSONNEL.Due to
budget cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel has
been turned off until further notice.'"
- "STAY OR GO: In some cases, the experiencer chooses to
return; in others, the person is sent back, usually with
the admonition that he or she has a job yet to perform
or a mission to do. There are a number of reports where
the experiencer chose to stay but was sent back anyway."
- "Nancy Evans Bush, MA, a pastoral care counselor and
near-death researcher, estimates that 17 percent of
near-death states are distressing to experiencers.
She cautions that there is no single episode common
to all; rather, at least three general types have been
identified (inverted, void, hell-like), with a possible
fourth (guilt-laden life review)."
- "THE BOOK OF LIFE: About 30 percent of adult experiencers
report having seen 'The Book of Life' during their
episode. [...] Of those who do encounter such a
phenomenon, some say it is an actual book, a large
one - perhaps in a library of them - that has a record
of each moment of a person's life contained in its
pages. Others say 'The Book' is really a hologram or
a television-like showing. Most, however, never mention
a book or a library filled with them. Rather, they
speak of histories recorded upon 'the skeins of time',
as if such memories were held at certain frequencies
accessible when we are in that energy field."
- "WAKE-UP CALL: Dr. Greyson's list did make a difference
in lessening the fear the general public had that
near-death states were so wonderful people would even
commit suicide to have them. But, with experiencers,
it became a wake-up call for them to be more careful
about what they said while being interviewed by
reporters. Their claims were beginning to sound irresponsible, almost
as if they were 'anti-life'."
- "JUST FOR KINGS: Egyptologists believe that the King's
Chamber in the Great Pyramid was designed around a
single sarcophagus, not for the purpose of burial,
but as a way to cause near-death experiences. Once
an individual was placed in the stone coffin and the
lid attached, oxygen levels would quickly deplete.
The lid would not be removed until a certain time
had lapsed. Tradition has it that if the individual
survived, he would be a good leader, possessed of
special 'gifts'."
- "NO TO OXYGEN DEPRIVATION: Lack of oxygen to the brain doesn't
explain near-death episodes. Oxygen deprivation
causes confusion, belligerence, and some frightening
hallucinations, which are a far cry from the calm and
meaningful clarity present with the near-death phenomenon."
- NEW WORD: 'Mission' is the term given by most near-death
experiencers, regardless of their age, for why they
returned from death. The majority came back 'knowing'
that each and every person at birth was given a
specific job to do, a purpose for their life on Earth
(i.e.,'mission'). And that, if unfulfilled, a 'reminder'
will set them straight. Most considered their near-
death state that reminder."
- EVEN MOVIE STARS: Some famous entertainers who have had a near-death
experience: Peter Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor,
Christopher Reeve, Sharon Stone, David Letterman, R.
Carlos Nakai, Johnny Cash, Burt Reynolds, Jayne
Seymour.
- "NEW WORD: 'Mindsight' is a state of transcendental awareness that enables
an individual, sighted or blind, to access a realm of
knowledge not available through a normal waking state.
This awareness is described as omnidirectional - 360
degrees of spherical vision - the ability to see with
whole consciousness rather than depending on physical eyes."
"Dr. Kenneth Ring's studies indicated that blind people
who experience a near-death episode often have visual
perception - even though they may have been unable
to experience this same ability in their dreams."
"...80 percent [of blind people] claiming to have possessed sight during
their episode. Since fourteen of these people were
blind from birth, it's questionable exactly what they
saw. Nonetheless, all of them did experience exceptional states of expanded
sensory awareness that seemed to them like what sight
might be."
- "REMEMBER: Yesterday's dogma is today's heresy."
- "NO TO ABORTIONS: When I queried near-death experiencers
about their thoughts on abortion, I found that three-
fourths of them flatly disapproved. They respected a
woman's right to choose, but felt that through proper
counseling and appropriate alternatives, a woman could
find ways to respect and honor God's gift of life -
whether the child was kept of given up for adoption."
- "MASSIVE CHANGES ON EVERY LEVEL: The multidimensional
kids who related most to the cosmos made it quite clear
to me that they were here to help 'for the changes'.
When I asked what they meant by that, all said that
Earth, its countries and people, would have to deal
with 'big changes'. [...] Predictions of Earth changes
worldwide, along with a possible pole shift, are
mounting every year as global warming becomes more
of an issue."
- "SO TRUE: A lighthearted definition badied about at
meetings of near-death experiencers is 'Spirituality =
Questions that may never be answered; Religion = Answers that may
never be questioned.'"
- "THOUGHT POWER: Clinical trials conducted by New York
State Health Department scientists show that thought
alone can move a computer cursor around a display screen!
They attached electrodes to the scalp of volunteers and
asked them to concentrate on what they wanted the cursor
to do. Thought commands in the form of brain-wave
emissions were picked up by an amplifier, which signaled
the computer to respond."
- "THE GOD SPOT: Two reference sources of material regarding
what may be the brain's role in spiritual experiences
are the article 'Toward a Psychobiology of Transcendence:
God in the Brain" by Arnold J. Mandell and the book
'Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs' by Michael A. Persinger, PhD."
- "FUTURE MEMORY: Brain shift experiencers, adult or child,
develop a relationship with anything 'future'. Many claim
to 'live' the future in advance to such a degree that it
becomes like a memory of something already done (future
memory episodes). What happens to these experiencers
mimics what happens to ordinary kids aged three to five,
and with the same impetus - the need to 'rehearse' an
event before it occurs."
- "THE HIGHER SELF: Various spiritual traditions link
the soul directly with deity, especially as per the
fulfillment of our life's purpose. But these same
traditions caution that 'promptings' from the soul
can be blocked, turned off, or ignored - because we
have free will, the choice to cooperate with or
reject 'the voice of the soul', that guidance more
commonly labeled our 'conscience' or 'higher self'."
- "NEW WORD: A growing number of scientists using the latest
technology are researching NEUROTHEOLOGY, the physiological
basis of religious and spiritual experience. They are
finding that more of the brain is involved in these
experiences than previously supposed. Contrary to claims
of a 'God spot', they are discovering that the religious
or spiritual experience is encoded into our very makeup
and brain structure."
- "CONSCIOUSNESS IS INTERCONNECTED: Dean I. Radin, PhD,
a participant in the Global Mind Project, wrote
'Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum
Reality'. Throughout his many years as a scientist,
he has repeatedly observed that the universe is an
interconnected whole, and that the fabric of reality is
woven together from strange 'holistic' threads that
cannot be located in three-dimensional time and space.
He further advances the notion that a hierarchy of
consciousness exists and that we can access this in
nonordinary mind states."
- "CAROLINE SUTHERLAND, PhD - who survived a serious automobile accident and
had a near-death experience -, now has the ability to
'see' the underlying causes of illnesses, and
recommends 'corrections'. She has worked with more
than seventy thousand people since 1995 in both
clinical settings and private consultations."