New Dawn – World's Most Unusual Magazine

Author: P.M.H. Atwater

  • Reality Shifts: What Happens to Those Who Slip Between the Cracks of Time and Space?

    Reality Shifts: What Happens to Those Who Slip Between the Cracks of Time and Space?

    From New Dawn Special Issue 12 (June 2010)

    Perception determines “truth.” We invent our own reality through our own perceptions and others’, and by accepting what appears to be real as real. History is filled with stories of people who, in “slipping between the cracks” of their own consciousness (thus altering how they perceived the world around them) uncovered different ways to experience reality. What they accomplished in doing this made an impact on society. You and I, all of us, have profited again and again because this happened.

    Chester F. Carlson, for example, inventor of the Xerox duplication process and founder of the Xerox Corporation, was a devotee of a certain trance medium who channelled spirit beings. While attending a series of sessions with the woman, he eventually “received” the photocopy process from the spirit beings she contacted. After experimenting with the technique and making a few adjustments, the Xerox process was born, along with a multi-billion-dollar company.

    George Washington Carver took the peanut, until then used as hog food, and the exotic and neglected sweet potato, and turned them into hundreds of products, including cosmetics, grease, printer’s ink, coffee, and peanut butter. Carver said he got his answers by walking in the woods at four in the morning. “Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep,” he said. “In the still hours before sunrise, God tells me of the plans I am to fulfil.” How did George Washington Carver communicate with God during the wee hours of morning? He said it himself – through the assistance of angels and fairies. And he isn’t the only one to make such a claim.

    Peter and Eileen Caddy and their colleague Dorothy Maclean give the same credits in describing the work they accomplished. This troupe, along with Caddy’s three sons, took up residence near an inlet to the North Sea at Findhorn, Scotland, for the purpose of setting up a co-creative link between themselves and nature intelligences – that is to say, angels (what they later called “devas”) and fairies (“nature spirits”). They became willing workers with nature’s own in an attempt to co-create a garden the likes of which would defy every known rule of convention and climate. That was 1962. Today, the Findhorn Gardens regularly draw people from across the globe to tour the premises and take classes at Cluny Hill College, classes on how to communicate with angelic forces and helper spirits while at the same time enhancing one’s own sense of spirituality.

    The people I have mentioned came to perceive reality from a vantage point other than the norm; then they used what they gained from that experience to benefit others. Different ways of experiencing reality happen when individuals expand their consciousness. Whether accidental or on purpose, that shift in perception also alters the meaning and the importance of time and space.

    Native Runners Expand Reality

    Documented cases of native runners, especially those in North and South America, illustrate this. In Peter Nabokov’s book Indian Running, an anthropologist by the name of George Laird described what happened to one runner who lived in the southwestern part of the United States:

    “One morning he left his friends at Cotton Wood Island in Nevada and said he was going to the mouth of the Gila River in southern Arizona. He didn’t want anyone else along, but when he was out of sight, the others began tracking him. Beyond the nearby dunes his stride changed. The tracks looked as if he had just been staggering along, taking giant steps, his feet touching the ground at long irregular intervals, leaving prints that became further and further apart and lighter and lighter in the sand. When they got to Fort Yuma they learned that he had arrived at sunrise of the same day he had left them,” thus arriving before he departed. The runner’s altered perception enabled him to accomplish this feat; he did not allow himself to be bound by normal perceptions of time and space.

    Let’s not forget the Australian aborigines. Theirs is the oldest continually existing culture on Earth (around for at least 50,000 years), and they maintain an understanding of time and space – of reality – that deserves our attention.

    What they call “dreaming” has little to do with sleep or dreams which occur during sleep. Dreaming for them is actually more akin to a type of “flow” where one becomes whatever is focused on and suddenly knows whatever needs to be known at the moment. Aborigines sometimes use drugs to achieve this state but, more often than not, drumming, chanting, rhythmic movements, and certain other sounds and rituals suffice. In this state of consciousness participants seem to “merge with” or “enter into” soil, rocks, animals, sky, or whatever else they focus on – including the “Inbetween” (what appears to exist between time and space, as if through a crack in creation).

    These people believe reality consists of two space/time continua, not one – that which can be experienced during wake time and that during dream time, with dream time slightly ahead of its counterpart, yet capable of merging into all time, of what Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder calls “everywhen.”

    To Australian aborigines, wake time is where learning is acted out and utilised, but dream time is where learning is first acquired. For them, dream time is the place where all possibilities and all memory reside. Stories are told of aborigines who physically appear and disappear as they slip back and forth from one continuum to the other, from the here and now to the alternate universes they believe exist and the everywhen they know awaits them. Wise ones, be they monks or shamans or healers or mystics, are like this. They know life extends beyond the boundaries of perception. Yet perception itself can be flawed.

    Yes, it is a fact that individuals and societies have always organised the cosmos to fit their own preferred beliefs. This is what defines the relationship between heresy (independent thinking) and orthodoxy (mutually accepted bias). But it is also a fact that the bizarre can intrude upon one’s life so dramatically that one is forced to shift one’s awareness of real versus unreal.

    Fiction Can Foretell Reality

    Reality shifts (sometimes called coincidences) take on many guises. Fiction, for example, sometimes foretells reality. Were the authors of prophetic works inspired by altered perceptions of reality?

    The popular movie China Syndrome, starring Jane Fonda, depicted a nuclear facility meltdown. Three weeks after the movie opened, the same kind of disaster actually happened at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

    The 1961 novel Strangers in a Strange Land, written by Robert A. Heinlein, told the story of a global chief executive who made decisions based on his wife’s advice, advice she obtained from regular consultations with a San Francisco astrologer. In 1988, media headlines carried the story that Nancy Reagan frequently consulted a San Francisco astrologer, and that the advice she passed along to her husband Ronald Reagan, then President of the United States, was based on those consultations.

    The novel Futility, an 1898 creation of Morgan Robertson, detailed the sinking of an unsinkable ship, the largest vessel afloat. This imaginary ship, named Titan, collided with an iceberg during April, resulting in a high loss of life because the ship carried too few lifeboats. Fourteen years later, with uncanny similarities, the real ship Titanic re-created what happened in the novel: The two ships had almost identical names; both ships were designated unsinkable; both were touted as the largest ships at sea; both collided with icebergs in April; both resulted in many deaths due to a shortage of lifeboats. Plus, both had strikingly similar floor plans and technical descriptions.

    Radio broadcaster Paul Harvey aired a grim tale of three shipwrecked sailors and one cabin boy, adrift and facing starvation, who drew lots to see who would forfeit his life so the others could survive. The contest was rigged to make certain the cabin boy, Richard Parker, would lose. Evidence used at the subsequent court trial that convicted all three of murder and cannibalism included a story written by Edgar Allen Poe. Titled ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’, Poe’s tale described three shipwrecked sailors who rigged a drawing of lots, then killed and ate their cabin boy companion, Richard Parker. Poe’s story, which so accurately described the drama, every detail as it actually happened – including the victim’s correct name – was written and published 46 years before the event happened, even before the participants were born.

    The astonishing ability of fiction to accurately foreshadow what physically occurs happens more often than you might think. It’s almost as if on some level, knowingly or unknowingly, consistently or occasionally, individuals can tap into or stumble across other dimensions of reality, as well as knowledge of a predestined or potential future.

    Remarkable reality shifts also occur that cannot be correlated with any sort of imaginings:

    Brad Steiger, in his book The Reality Game and How to Win It, tells about Charles W. Ingersoll of Cloquet, Minnesota, who appeared in a travelogue made and copyrighted by Castle Films in 1948. Ingersoll could be seen leaning over the rim of the Grand Canyon taking pictures with his 35mm camera. Yet Ingersoll did not go to the Grand Canyon in 1948. He had planned to do so, but his plans changed and his first trip there was made in 1955, when he took with him a newly purchased camera manufactured the same year of his trip. A week after his return, he chanced upon the old travelogue in a store and bought it, discovering to his utter amazement that the film clearly showed him there in 1948 – holding a camera that did not exist until 1955. An investigation verified the incident and the dates, but no explanation was ever offered as to how Ingersoll could have appeared in a film showing him at a site seven years before he got there.

    On October 21, 1987, Claude and Ellen Thorlin were sitting at breakfast. Ellen heard a disembodied voice ask her to tune in Channel 4 on their television set. Even though that channel did not receive broadcast transmissions in their area, Ellen turned the set on. There she saw the face of their dear friend and colleague, Friedrich Jergenson, a well-known Swedish documentary filmmaker and the father of EVP (electronic voice communication with spirits). Ellen was shocked; Claude snapped a photo that recorded the image and the time – 1:22 p.m. That time was 22 minutes into Jergenson’s funeral service that was occurring 420 miles away, a funeral service the Thorlins had been unable to attend.

    When T.L. of Fort Worth, Texas, was 21 years old, he borrowed his parents’ car for a drive from Darby, Montana, to Missoula, to visit friends. Staying later than expected, he found himself speeding back to Darby between one and two in the morning. At a place where the road wound around hills paralleling the river channel, the car headlights suddenly picked up a herd of 20 to 30 horses sauntering across the highway. With no time to hit his brakes and no place to pull off the road, TL hoped to avoid a collision by driving between the animals. Two large horses stopped directly in front of his path. The inevitable seemed his fate until, in the flash of an instant, TL found himself well beyond the herd, driving as if nothing unusual had happened. To this day he cannot explain how he missed hitting the horses. “It was as if I and my car were ‘transported’ to the other side of the herd,” he said.

    Each of these “coincidences” involved people as real as you and me, on days that began as ordinary days.

    Get the issue this article appears in

    Changing Our Awareness

    Are these events merely coincidences? Too much evidence from too many sources contradicts this idea. Something else is going on here.

    The events described in this article underscored moments when subjective reality overlaid objective reality to determine experience. And when that happened, the future easily surfaced. This peculiarity occurred automatically, without provocation, and regardless of logic. What we call time – past, present, future – ceased to be sequential for these people and took on the aspect of simultaneity.

    All of the cases – whether involving aboriginal or present-day societies, fictional or nonfictional themes – centred on men and women who encountered alternate versions of time and space. What occurred changed their perception of the world.

    Adapted from Future Memory: How Those Who See the Future Shed New Light on the Working of the Human Mind By P.M.H. Atwater (Birch Lane Press, New York, 1996).

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue 12.[/alert]

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  • Is the Afterlife What We Think It Is? A Challenge from Near-Death Studies

    Is the Afterlife What We Think It Is? A Challenge from Near-Death Studies

    There are millions of stories now of near-death experiences from around the world; each a snippet, a teaser, of what appears to exist on the other side of death. No other human drama carries quite the power this phenomenon does to unmask traditions of a “grim reaper,” and reveal instead an aliveness that continues after our bodies take their last breath and our brains cease to function.

    This aliveness we call an “afterlife,” because in most cases, what near-death experiencers describe sounds like or certainly seems to be sparkling luminations of higher, finer aspects to what we know: cities, gardens, forests, landscapes, roads, rivers, busy people quite alive and doing things, schools, hospitals, opportunities of varied types to reassess earthly existence, to forgive, learn, and then advance toward a goal we can only term “spiritual.”

    Because the stories that come from experiencers are so compelling, I’d like to share a few from my research base. Surely after hearing them, you will be more than impressed that an afterlife must indeed exist and that life goes on after we die. Once I have shared these accounts, though, I intend to introduce others that will stretch what we think we know about life after death. The concept of “afterlife” may not be as previously stated or broadly believed.

    Afterlife Stories

    Arthur E. Yensen died in 1932, at least as near as we can tell he did, from severe injuries in an automobile accident. The vividness of what happened next remained fresh in his memory, not only after he revived, but throughout what later became a long and productive life. As Yensen put it: “Gradually the earth scene faded away, and through it loomed a bright, new, beautiful world – beautiful beyond imagination! For half a minute I could see both worlds at once. Finally, when the earth was all gone, I stood in a glory that could only be heaven.

    “In the background were two beautiful, round-topped mountains, similar to Fujiyama in Japan,” Yensen continued. “The tops were snowcapped, and the slopes were adorned with foliage of indescribable beauty. The mountains appeared to be about fifteen miles away, yet I could see individual flowers growing on their slopes. I estimated my vision to be about one hundred times better than on earth. To the left was a shimmering lake containing a different kind of water – clear, golden, radiant, and alluring. It seemed to be alive. The whole landscape was carpeted with grass so vivid, clear, and green, that it defies description. To the right was a grove of large luxuriant trees, composed of the same clear material that seemed to make up everything.”

    Yensen described the people there as young-looking and lively, yet possessing a weightless grace in their movements. Their bodies were somewhat translucent, so was the grass and trees; their clothing minimal. One man told him: “Everything over here is pure. The elements don’t mix or break down as they do on earth. Everything is kept in place by an all-pervading Master Vibration, which prevents aging. That’s why things don’t get dirty, or wear out, and why everything looks so bright and new.” Yensen learned how heaven could be eternal from this man (Atwater, 1994, 53-55).

    Muriel E. Kelly, weakened by rheumatic fever and a serious heart murmur, became very ill and passed into another world. “I found myself standing on a cobble-stone road with people around me dressed in bright robes – red, blue, pink. Everything was so bright and sunny. Birds were singing. Baby angels were smiling and flying around. I saw all different sizes of angels. The music was hauntingly beautiful.”

    Hearing her name called, Muriel turned to see Jesus beside her, dressed in a white-and-red robe. “He knelt down,” she said, “and gave me a hug and I hugged him back. He told me we were going somewhere to talk.” During the course of their time together, Jesus led her to an apartment building with many doors, and told her which door to knock on. A voice inside beckoned her to enter. It was her mother, who had died when Muriel was nine, leaving behind five children. Their reunion was love filled. “I asked Mama where Daddy was, and Cecil, Willie, John, and Paul. Mother told me they weren’t there ‘cause it wasn’t their time. I had no idea what she meant, so she took me to an area where we sat on a cloud and looked over the whole world. My mother located my dad and brothers riding in a car. We could see right through it. Dad was driving, and we heard my brothers and Dad crying, saying, ‘I wish Muriel was still here. We miss her.’” Muriel began to cry for her earthly family and wished to be back with them. She got her wish (Atwater, 1999 and 2003, 106-107).

    Cecil L. Hamilton told of swimming with his brother. “He had a problem. I tried to get him out of the water, but in his panic he pulled me under several times. We both drowned. He died, but I came back.” While Hamilton was in the grips of death, he suddenly found himself stepping into a light-filled world. “I noticed everything – sky, buildings, glass – emitted its own light. And everything was much more colourful ….a river meandered around. On the other side was a city, and a road running through it to another city, and another city, and another and another. Right in front of me but across the river were three men. They projected themselves to me. They didn’t walk or fly; they projected over. I didn’t recognise them, yet I knew one was Lynn Bibb.” Hamilton explained, “I was named after him. He died a matter of weeks before I was born.”

    Hamilton continued with his story: “I knew these three men were looking out for me, like a welcoming committee to escort me over the river to the first city. I had the feeling that if I went with them, there would be no coming back, so I hesitated. The first city was like first grade. People stayed there until they were ready to go to the next city – your eternal progression, from city to city. Behind me and to the left was a strong light source, very brilliant and filled with love. I knew it was a person. I called it God for lack of a better term. I could not see it; I felt what seemed like a male presence.”

    God and Hamilton engaged in a long conversation, the young man asking Him about the universe and reasons for everything. Then God questioned if Hamilton wanted to return to the physical world. “I do want to return,” he said. God asked why. “I said I would help my mother whom my father had left with four children and one on the way. God kind of chuckled and asked for the real reason. I said I would leave the earth a little better than I found it. ‘Then you may return with some of the knowledge of the things you have learned, but the rest will be veiled for a time. Live in such a way that you will not feel bad when you return here again.’ I woke up face down in the mud of the river bottom and was ‘lifted’ to the top” (Atwater, 1991 and 2003, 45-47).

    Each of these three accounts describes a particular arrangement of structures, shapes, people, and behaviours that are familiar to us – adding heft to the belief that the afterlife either reflects our earthly life or is an extension of it. The testimonies that follow, however, deviate from what I have just relayed. The focus with them is more fluid with an absence of structured form. I’ll begin with the near-death experience of Ray Kinman that he had as a teenager from an accidental overdose.

    “Now this is very difficult to describe,” cautioned Kinman. “Time ceased to exist. Past and future were completely nonexistent. I was traveling in an intense, burning ‘now.’ ‘Now’ was everything. I ceased to be a noun (person, place, or thing) and became a verb (an action). I was Ray-ing, instead of Ray. I was given a huge message. The Being told me, ‘This is Who You Really Are,’ as the Universe opened up to me. I could not tell the difference between myself and the infinite galaxies. I became all-powerful and all-knowing – yet I was still Ray. Then the Being introduced me to another Being of the most Incredible Beauty and Love that anyone could comprehend. It was a Greater Being of intense Light. It was God. The first Being guided me to this Light and let it enfold and swallow me up. I became one with Love times a million, billion, trillion forever and ever. We were made of the same stuff! Every Being that had ever existed in all of Creation was now part of this Greater Whole Being called God. I was one with all of them, and yet I was still Ray – all-powerful, little old me!

    “‘This is Who You Really Are,’ thundered the Light. It looked like a galaxy except the points of light were not stars, they were Beings. Every Being there was singing this incredibly beautiful music and praising God. After some indefinite length of Now-ness, I was told that I must go back. I was given another message that was very important. I was told I may return anytime I wished to. Coming back to my body felt like I was stuffed into a vessel of pain and exhaustion.” Kinman was very clear that this was not like any drug experience. This was truth – he was shown the way things really are (Atwater, 2007, 35-36).

    Tannis Prouten had a severe anxiety attack that seemed to claim her life. As she explains: “I felt like ducking as the ceiling was only an inch from me, then I was outside, moving through very dark, very vast space.” She saw small, round, glowing spheres around her that she came to realise were lost souls. Before she could react, “Very rapidly I was enveloped within this most divine, living, golden-white light, my HOME. The joy, bliss, humility, awe were beyond human capability to bear. The LIGHT was an infinite, loving, accepting BEING without form. IT had personality. IT communicated with me telepathically. IT was pure TRUTH.”

    As the intensity of her experience increased, she came to realise: “I was the LIGHT and the LIGHT was me. I was still a unique, separate, point of consciousness with the same sense of humour and awareness that I had always had, but the paradox is that I was MORE. I had become homogeneous with the LIGHT. I was all love, wisdom, truth, peace, joy, for all eternity. Human words fail to express this experience. Not only was the message of my true nature conveyed to me telepathically, but I experienced the SPIRIT of the message – I felt IT with every speck of my being. There was absolutely no possibility of hiding, distorting information, or lying in communicating with the LIGHT. I fell madly in love with the SPIRIT OF TRUTH! There was no concept of space or time in the GREATER REALITY. All takes place or exists in the ETERNAL NOW. That is my last conscious memory of the experience” (Atwater, 2007, 26-28).

    Neath-Death Experiences that challenge accepted notions

    Many near-death episodes are like these last two, seeming to counter the idea of biblical, religious, medieval, or even mythological traditions of an afterlife that features core imagery basic to the spread of culture and consensus throughout the human family. We have a long history of such commonalties especially in regards to death, the greatest of all mysteries, and what happens to us after we die. Findings in the field of near-death studies, though, are beginning to challenge not only traditional but non-traditional beliefs as well. Maybe there’s more to learn from our shared histories than what we thought.

    Scenarios are reported that openly defy the idea of an afterlife as an end point or a dwelling place or a platform for progressive states of learning. Here are some examples of these exceptions and the questions they invite:

    How can a future sibling exist concurrent with a present one?

    Merla Ianello recalls that as a child she saw a guest in her home who was three or four years old choke to death trying to eat a plastic-wrapped frozen juice treat called an Ice Pop. She insisted on naming them “Death Pops” after that, and one day she asked her mother who the child was. Her mother, staring in disbelief, said, “It was you.” Merla remembers her mother’s screams and how upset her father was, yet couldn’t identify with the distressed child because to her that child must have been really naughty to have caused such a fuss. Even though it took her years to admit that the child was her, one feature of the episode was never in doubt – the presence of her little brother Michael in the kitchen with the rest of the family. She talked a lot about Michael, much to the chagrin of her mother. You see, Michael wasn’t conceived until the following year. No mention had ever been made of a future child nor did the mother even want one. How then could he appear physically and fully present, even holding an Ice Pop, long before he was born? (Atwater, 1999 and 2003, 142-144.)

    Does the belief of an “afterlife” apply when incarnations are back-to-back?

    Rand Jameson Shields was hit on the head by a man diving into a swimming pool. Dazed, he ventured out into deep water and drowned. “The ceiling of the sky above me rolled back to reveal an infinite light universe, the earth below me dissolved away, and I intuitively understood my soul’s purpose and the nature of the spiritual universe.” A woman grabbed for him and he was resuscitated, yet during the following year his soul was pulled away from his body eighty times. “I was made to physically ‘re-experience’ sixty-eight events from previous lives. Thirty-four of these experiences were of my most recent life, including the entire period my soul spent between my last death and my birth in this life.” Years later he was able to visit one of the towns involved and uncovered “114 precise pieces of evidence verifying that every one of my thirty-four unique childhood re-experiences occurred to this man who died twenty-eight months prior to my birth, to the day. I have not found one piece of evidence that contradicted any of my past-life memories” (Atwater, 1999 and 2003, 140-141).

    What are we to think about continuous lives, one occurring soon after the other, rather than an individual taking up residence in some heavenly realm after dying? Or, the full manifestation of a future sibling, even participating in a family event, long before the child was born? Exceptional cases such as these are actually rather commonplace – like missing twins reappearing, aborted fetuses coming back as older or grown children, animals as much a part of “the other worlds” as they are in this one. And, here’s another “wrinkle,” there are group events that further stretch the time-honoured definitions of an afterlife.

    How can four separate experiences be the same – and – simultaneous?

    My very first encounters with the near-death phenomenon happened at St. Alphonsus Hospital in Boise, Idaho. The woman I was visiting had suffered a heart attack yet revived. She was white with fear when I arrived and told me that while clinically dead she had floated out of her body and into a dark tunnel which led toward a bright light. Once in the light, she saw a landscape of barren, rolling hills filled to overflowing with nude, zombie-like people standing elbow to elbow doing nothing but staring straight at her. This so horrified her that she started screaming and snapped back into her body. She continued to scream until sedated. As I listened to her, two other people entered the room, an elderly man and woman, both using canes. Each had suffered heart failure at the same time in the same hospital, were considered clinically dead, but were resuscitated. None knew each other before being rushed to the hospital, nor did they have the same doctor. They found out about each other thanks to nurses who heard their strange stories – the same as the woman I was visiting – which also matched that of one more person. I was unable to see this man as he was still sedated after screaming uncontrollably. None of these people had the same religion, background or lifestyle. None had mutual friends or common interests. All had lived long lives of varying degrees of hardship and success; two were still married to their original spouse and had several grown children. The others were divorced. The only common denominator I could find after asking a lot of questions to them or to people who knew them, was that their strange encounter at death strengthened the pain they already felt from deeply-held guilts and fears about how they had lived and what they had done in their lives (Atwater, 1988, 14-16).

    Why would 20 people have the same experience at the same time in the same place?

    Arvin S. Gibson shared with me a case of his where a 20-person fire-fighting crew called “Hotshots” all succumbed from lack of oxygen while trapped by a sudden burst of flames near a mountain top. One by one each of the men and women fell to the earth, suffocated. Each of the twenty saw each other leave their bodies and float upwards. One, by the name of Jake, looked down at a fellow crew member who had been born with a defective foot. As the man came out of his body, Jake said, “Look, Jose, your foot is straight.” A light brighter than sun shining on a snowy field appeared. Jake was met by his deceased great-grandfather, who acted as a guide throughout a long and extensive near-death scenario. Jake pleaded to stay, as he did not want to revive in a horribly burned body. He was then told that neither he nor any of his crew who chose to return would suffer ill effects from the fire. “This was done so that God’s power over the elements would be made manifest,” Jake affirmed. After rescue, each crew member confirmed the mutual event. Some claimed to have talked to each other while out-of-body. Separately, each of these claims was verified. All involved had met deceased relatives as part of their scenario, and had to choose whether or not they would return to earth (Atwater, 2000, 165-166).

    ‘Seeing’ Beyond the Veil of Death

    It is easy to assume that the four people who had matching hellish experiences met in dying what they had repressed during their lives – negative emotions that were still “eating away at them.” Such an assumption would be in keeping with the voluminous writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, an incredible scientist several centuries back who had also mastered the ability to “see” beyond the veil of death. It was his contention that after we died, we entered realms of our own making, based on our attitudes and beliefs (Atwater, 2000, 233-235, 424). We could expand on this idea by inferring that, because the hellish accounts were virtually identical, there could have existed at that hospital a type of energy (perhaps from previous emotional outbursts) that the four of them unconsciously activated in a similar fashion to outpicture their deeply-held beliefs. Possible? Yes, but there is more to consider.

    The group experience of twenty hotshot fire-fighters challenges the conclusions of Swedenborg and anyone else, myself included, who tried to tie near-death scenarios solely to the attitudes and beliefs of experiencers – the idea that “you get what you expect.” What appears to be obvious may not necessarily be as true as it seems.

    There are lots of shared experiences, such as between a parent and child in the same accident, between friends who die together and similarly revive, between people who never knew each other but found out about their mutual episodes years later once they started asking questions. People on opposite sides of the world can go through the same thing, at the same or different times, yet their separate lives, beliefs, feelings do not match nor did they ever – even though their near-death experiences did. And there are even incidents like what happened to Nadia McCaffrey.

    Nadia was a participant in the original research I conducted with child experiencers of near-death states (Atwater, 1999 and 2003, 86-88). Years later, while caring for a woman who was dying, she nearly died herself following severe seizures. Several days afterward, still in pain, she called me and we exchanged stories. The upshot was that Nadia’s seizures had begun at the same moment our granddaughter Myriam’s seizures had. When Nadia died, so had Myriam (from bacterial meningitis). The two met each other in spirit as they died. Myriam enabled Nadia to have another near-death experience, this time one that clarified and detailed her life’s mission. Myriam had always been unique in this regard, for she had the ability to force, push, or aid a person in accessing their own inner truth. Nadia’s first near-death experience had left her with many questions, especially about her purpose for being alive. Her second one, thanks to Myriam, filled in the missing pieces and helped her launch a new type of hospice (Atwater, 2004, 122-123).

    How can this incident be explained? Or any of those I’ve shared? Do our moments at the edge of death or while clinically dead really unveil an afterlife? Or, is there something else going on that we miss in our great hurry or even greater desire to accommodate what is before us and name it what our traditions claim it to be?

    Near-Death Episodes as Growth Events

    Two clues, present in almost every case I have worked on, caused me to toss the notion of “afterlife.” I no longer consider it relevant. To help you understand why I say this, a presentation of the clues and my observations follow.

    Clue #1 – almost to a person near-death experiencers say “I got what I needed.”

    To an extent, Swedenborg was right. What he missed is what people really meant when they spoke such words, and the broader perspective necessary to interpret what people experienced and what he himself actually witnessed. Being literal isn’t always productive. It’s like trying to see an aura. Aim your gaze a little past what is in front of you and suddenly you begin to see things you never recognised before. Do this with the phrase, “I got what I needed,” and you’ll notice as I did that the near-death experience unfolds in patterning that mimics an accelerated “growth event.” Life insists on growth and change. If we block these urges, something will happen to unblock them. That something is what I call a “growth event.”

    A growth event is any kind of sudden, unexpected twist in life that twirls you around and changes your attitudes and stretches your mind. Growth events, all of them, give us an opportunity to face our inner selves and be honest about what we find, to glimpse higher, more spiritual realities, to expand beyond limiting ideas, to discover the impossible and experience the “paranormal,” to become in some way transformed.

    I believe the near-death experience is a growth event, perhaps one of those that seems “reserved” for people who need a “good shove” in making life changes. Here is a brief synopsis of what I found that underscores this:

    • Most near-death episodes happen during major junctures or times of unusual stress in the individual’s life, when guidance or direction would be most helpful.
    • Young children, relatives and caregivers can be affected as well – to the degree that it is almost as if the child had the experience for them. Yet the extent to which the episode transformed the youngster becomes more apparent as he or she matures, and can be a quiet but powerful directive in the life path chosen.
    • Causes and conditions of death can reflect, at least symbolically, the experiencer’s past or current state of psychological growth.
    • Greeters on death’s threshold always match (accommodate to) whatever is necessary to alert or calm the experiencer.
    • As the episode deepens, the scenario’s message parallels almost exactly the subconscious needs of the individual at that moment in time.
    • Life reviews and “lecture” sessions cover material either omitted, ignored, or not yet learned in life by the individual involved. Life previews alert to what might be the future – for good or ill.
    • Afterward, the experiencer’s behaviour tends to shift to whatever has been undeveloped or partially developed – physically in the sense of brain function/-nerve sensitivity, and psychologically in the sense of personal growth/maturity – as if whatever traits are missing in the individual’s maturing process are now being “filled in” (Atwater, 2007, 244).

    Whatever the truth of this, and it may never be proved one way or the other, the need factor is plainly obvious as to the timing, storyline, and outcome of near-death states – not in the sense of predetermination, rewards/punishment, or wish fulfillment, but rather, in terms of a subconscious “agenda” of a higher order.

    Clue #2 – the most oft-repeated phrase near-death experiencers say after their episode is “Always there is life.”

    This fact struck me. If it is true, and I believe it is, then how can there be an afterlife? Or a before life? Or anything else but life? Implied here is that in some form, somewhere, somehow, eternal and forever, life exists as an ongoing extension of itself, acting upon and interacting within itself, ever conscious, intelligent, and aware…. life unending. Indicated as well is that we are that life, existent within the existence of a forever that can be counted on. These four words sum up and explain all else. They take us beyond attitudes, dictums, dogmas, preferences, traditions, even what we can imagine. These four words are as if a prayer answered.

    Once I recognised the import of this, all the experiencer narratives I had ever encountered or heard from other researchers made sense. If you allow yourself to step back from all the minutiae – who said what where and under what conditions – a different picture emerges that transcends the individual storylines from both adults and children. That “different picture” describes a vastness to the creation we are a part of, while focusing in on the souls that we are, as we participate in a journey of awakening to our real identity and purpose…. what reality really is.

    Tens of thousands of reported cases, not only in the Western world, but throughout Africa, China, India, the Pacific Rim, Russia, Israel, Thailand, Korea, Turkey, from jungle dwellers to desert clans, from the backs of buffalo riders to the canyons of Wall Street, this, the near-death phenomenon, if viewed as it occurs at the time that it does, offers a picture of the other side of death that mirrors what quantum physics seeks to uncover and explain…. that all is consciousness…. and everything else is illusion. With experiencer estimates running between four to five percent of the general population worldwide, umpteen million are involved. The phenomenon is that widespread.

    The 12 Heavens and Hells

    It is no small thing, then, for us to take a second look at what has been reported. The concept of heaven and hell changes when we do this.

    Near-death states show that once you leave your body in death, regardless of whatever comes next, you eventually find yourself moving to or present within an energy frequency you resonate with. What you find there corresponds for the most part to what you are capable of responding to, i.e., beings, shapes, forms, activities. These frequency realms resemble a “layer cake” of many levels, each separated from the other by degrees of lighter or heavier vibrations. The heavier more dense vibrations hold what most people call “hell” in that they consist of negative or lower forms of thought that reside in close proximity to the earthplane. Apparently you stay within this range of vibration for as long as it best serves your development as a soul. You do not leave until you have changed your attitudes, thoughts and feelings, and are ready for another opportunity to improve and advance. The faster, higher, more subtle vibrations are what most people term “heaven” and they also are in close proximity to the earthplane. There is a sense of benefit here, as if one has found one’s true home. You leave whatever level of this positive, supportive domain you are in once you have further advanced as an awakened soul and are more unified in spirit.

    I have counted from experiencer descriptions what appears to be the existence of twelve heavens and twelve hells. Yet, this “layer cake” of energy frequencies (layered thoughtform realms) seems to be open at both ends. I have found nothing to indicate otherwise. Claims of souls forever and eternally trapped or condemned in the heavier levels, or basking in the glory of ascension in the finer, lighter ones, do not hold up. When you really study the import of what people encounter on the other side of death, you come to realise that unlimited possibilities are available because of the power unleashed from awakenings. To whatever degree a soul awakens, consciousness expands – individually and universally.

    Yes, “detours” are reported, to places like borderlands or shadow areas where individuals in spirit form may tarry. It seems that in some cases where the ego personality refuses to merge with its soul, spirit can remain “apart” somehow, as if lost, disconnected, confused, or determined to fulfill a vow or promise before moving on. Spirits like this are often seen as “ghosts” by those who are still embodied. The idea, then, of “way stations” is upheld in near-death accounts, places where spirits reside until helped in some fashion. These “catch-all” places appear to be necessary diversions so that one can “shake” free of that which initially hinders. What matters most throughout this entire arrangement of heaven/hell/borderlands, though, is the resonance factor, i.e., “like attracts like.” Our religions insist that it is deeds done or not done that is the final determinate of where we wind up once dead, yet nothing from experiencer cases fully validates this. Their testimony indicates something else – that self-acceptance or self-rejection is what creates our energetic “signal.”

    Time and Space, Soul and God

    The concept of time and space also changes when we take that second look. Near-death experiencers are adamant in stating that neither time nor space exist. They claim that everything on the other side of death resides in a kind of “NOW” moment devoid of boundaries, limits or definitions other than that of the relationship between perception and perceivers. Time and space are seen as purposeful, however. From the bulk of near-death accounts, time is experienced by individuals as a type of “doorway” space moves through in sparkling waveforms of potential. That sparkle comes from light in the process of becoming dense enough within the “cradle” of space to take on the shapes and forms of what is termed matter. What becomes apparent from experiencer testimony, however, is that, in a way few can understand or explain, time not only enables but protects the manifestation of existence that space allows, so thought can reproduce itself. It’s consciousness. It’s as if all of life, every tiny speck of it, all of what we encounter on the other side of death, every vibratory “wiggle” of it, exists as it does within a giant brain processing thought… and we are projections of that thought, and so are planets, asteriods, solar systems, and so forth.

    This brings us to another way of considering soul.

    Near-death states illuminate the reality of soul, our soul, everybody’s soul, and establish soul as a power source without form or gender. Some call it our Higher Self or our Greater Self, and that we as a soul are immortal, an extension of The Divine. Soul is experienced as having its own will, and an agenda above and beyond anything we might relate to from the personality level of our egos. What emerges from this discovery is the realisation that souls go through learning cycles similar in purpose to people on earth, and that souls can and often do incarnate in groups to accomplish specific things of a larger nature. The soul-level of our being is recognised as possessing perfect memory and an almost unbelievable grasp of Creation’s Story and our place in its overall scheme. On this level, which most experiencers consider a higher level of being, the goal of continued incarnations in human or other forms, appears to be a furtherance of what can be experienced creatively as we seek to expand our roles as Co-Creators with the Creator. Winding our way through the peaks and valleys of humanness appears to aid in this process. You get a real sense that life and death and the forms we take on fulfill an even Higher Will for an even Greater Purpose.

    With that said, we can approach the topic of God or Deity.

    The greatest discovery the vast majority of near-death experiencers make after realising there is life on the other side of death, is that an intelligence beyond what we can fathom exists – there is a Deity. And that Deity or God is so massive, so powerful, so encompassing, that it is often described by experiencers as more brilliant and mighty than a million suns, existent as a Presence without need of name, identity or definition. The biblical injunction to call It “I AM THAT I AM” suffices as a reference. All that exists is seen to exist within this allness, this oneness. It is as if there is only One Mind, yet many thinkers. This, the One Mind, is often described as spreading out from a webbing or matrix field of Its Own Consciousness, embracing what exists from the stirring of Its Own Thought. Changeless as the Supreme Consciousness it is, The One appears ever changing once projections of Its Thought take on free will and the endless variation possible in that freedom. Life is God made visible. The awesomeness of this tends to dissolve any ideas or previous beliefs anyone ever had about religious dictums or mythological characterisations. A favourite phrase experiencers come to use is: We are one with The One.

    When reconsidering near-death cases, realise as you do that four patterns to the phenomenon exist, not just one. The spread that follows results if you also factor in deviations in experiencer behaviour and beliefs before and after their episode:

    • Initial Experience (very few elements): An introduction for the individual to other ways of perceiving reality… stimulus.
    • Unpleasant or Hellish Experience (frightening scenarios): A confrontation with distortions in one’s own attitudes and beliefs… healing.
    • Pleasant or Heavenly Experience (uplifting scenarios): A realisation of how important life is and how every effort that one makes counts… validation.
    • Transcendent Experience (limitless expanses): An encounter with Oneness and the collective whole of humankind… enlightenment (Atwater, 1999, 133).

    If you are objective about this spread, what you see here is a fascinating panorama, not about the existence of an afterlife and the do’s and don’ts of living, but of what very well could be the movement of our consciousness as it evolves through the human condition via stages of awakening. These stages of awakening extend from the first realisation of something greater, an initial awareness, to confrontations with the bias of perception followed by opportunities to cleanse and start anew. This leads to the bliss and the ecstasy of self-validation and the discovery of one’s worth, until at last the moment comes when unlimited realms of truth and wisdom are embraced.

    It’s all about consciousness, moving in and through our story and larger types of stories, as the One Mind experiences Itself through variations in Its Thought. Still, there is more to note here. Present in experiencer accounts is a deeper sense seldom vocalised that consciousness itself, by itself, as itself, is also awakening and expanding. To give this meaning, let me quote St. Teresa of Avila, the great Spanish mystic and reformer, who, near the end of her life, said: “The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.” The invitation here is for us to move past defining concepts and ideas of an afterlife that are birth-to-death centred, and embrace instead a new vision of life as an emanation of spirit evolving in its capacity to handle the power from its Source. Why limit ourselves; experiencers don’t.
    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue 7.[/alert]

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    References

    P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D. with David Morgan (2000), The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Near-Death Experiences, Macmillan/Alpha Books, Indianapolis, IN.

    P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D. (1988), Coming Back to Life, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, NY.

    (1994), Beyond the Light, Birch Lane Press, New York, NY.

    (1999), Future Memory, Hampton Roads, Charlottesville, VA.

    (1999 and 2003), Children of the New Millennium, Three Rivers Press, New York, NY; replaced by The New Children and Near-Death Experiences, Bear & Co., Rochester, VT.

    (2004), We Live Forever, A.R.E. Press, Virginia Beach, VA.

    (2007), The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences, Hampton Roads, Charlottesville, VA.

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
    For our reproduction notice, click here.

  • At the Threshold: How Near-Death Experiences Transform People

    At the Threshold: How Near-Death Experiences Transform People

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 6 No 2 (April 2012)

    My research has shown me that the near-death experience is not some kind of anomaly, but is, rather, part of the larger genre of transformations of consciousness. The clue most researchers miss is stress; specifically, the intensity which comes from that stress (known in shamanism as “high stress”). The entire pattern of aftereffects and the degree to which people change, can be traced to that factor. It’s the intensity that shifts experiencers into what is called a “threshold experience” – one that straddles the boundary between this world and other worlds, between the brain and that which lies beyond what the brain can access, between reality and miracles, mind and spirit, life and death, heaven and hell, sanity and insanity.

    Once we understand this shift, we can begin to unravel how the transformational process works. At the threshold of who we think we are and what lies beyond body and brain, is the core of ancient mysteries. We are transformed by the Oneness we find there.

    My research of near-death states spans 33 years and covers nearly 4,000 adult and child experiencers. Not counted in this are the many sessions I held with significant others. Before my own near-death experiences in 1977, I was equally involved for over a decade studying and experimenting with altered and mystical states, psychic phenomena, and the transformational process, involving over 3,000 people. For some reason unknown to me, my research projects were never small. I have always preferred looking at things from multiple angles and differing views. Police investigative techniques have been my protocol throughout. Since this method relies heavily on observation, comparison, and analysis, it is never constrained by words, language, or culture. Numerous sources of verification are used, and this can include questionnaires for double checking previous findings.

    This work has enabled me to recognise that near-death experiences are not some kind of anomaly, but are rather part of the larger genre of transformations of consciousness. We single them out as “different” because near-death states occur mostly at accident scenes, in hospitals, or in environments where devices are available to record vital signs thanks to trained emergency personnel. Contrary to the notion of how these episodes form, the scenarios they cover, and the pattern of physiological and psychological aftereffects that usually increase overtime – is the fact that near-death-like experiences (where death is not imminent) and impactual spiritual transformations (regardless of how caused) manifest the same patterning.

    What links these types of in-depth transformational experiences is stress; more importantly the intensity of that stress.

    Before such an episode occurs there are stressors, conditions in the experiencer’s life, that point to either unrest or inattention. And these are present universally. What caught my eye with near-death and near-death-like states were episodes that occurred under these conditions:

    • during major life junctures;
    • when a decision needed to be made, and at times of deep dissatisfaction,
    • disappointment, frustration;
    • when feeling hurried all the time or excessively strained;
    • while “running a tight ship,” insisting on personal control;
    • as lifestyle maintenance toppled one’s ability to keep it going;
    • alongside pushing limits – at work, at play, in everything;
    • when demanding and strict rules limit one’s beliefs and activities;
    • without existence of meaningful goals, or when in strong denial;
    • during “happy” times that were really a façade;
    • when overly satisfied or complacent.

    The common thread present in each situation is stress. Even with babes and the unborn. Mother’s stress, as well as that of the father, can readily become the child’s stress. Sometimes it’s as if children have their experience for parents or doctors or significant others… to relieve or heighten their stress.

    And the type of stress I recognised was the kind that pushes a person beyond his or her limits, beyond that which is “safe”… a threshold experience.

    On February 29, 2000, the Daily Progress Newspaper in Charlottesville, Virginia, reported that Bruce Greyson, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and near-death researcher at the University of Virginia, was able to show a link between the phenomenon of near-death experiences and a natural physical response to trauma. He found that experiencers have more dissociative episodes – the normal kind, not the pathological kind – than those who were close to dying but did not have a near-death experience. Greyson was quoted as saying: “It’s basically narrowing your focus so much that you block out things that are going on around you.”

    What he is describing is what shamans, spiritual, and mystical folk have for aeons of time referred to as the goal of “high stress”… what it takes to push one past the threshold or boundary of what is known.

    Reaching the Stress Threshold

    Through the ages sacred initiations of the greatest order demanded a “death” – seldom physical. They required the death of the ego. One had to “die unto the self,” leaving behind previous desires and wants, to take on the trusted role of healer-guide who then dedicated the rest of his or her life in service to others. The core of shamanic vision quests (“calling for a vision” – or asking the spirits for guidance) still today consists of ceremonial rituals that mimic or come close to actual physical death. Probationers are prepared for this; still, there is no real preparation for that overwhelming, “over the top” fear that pushes one’s panic button. Once that threshold is breached, the individual either passes into madness or breaks through the passageway into otherworlds of spirit that engender a transformation of consciousness.

    Consider the mythological traditions of the “hero’s journey” or the making of “wise ones.” High stress was always the deciding factor: how the individual faced “the watcher at the gate” (fear at the stress threshold), overcame that fear (passed through/ascended), entered into the otherworlds of spirit (that null space where everything is said to converge/suspend/expand into the collective whole), and is imprinted from the aftereffects (bears the “mark” of ascension). This “journey” is what establishes the extent to which the individual changes or is transformed.

    The formula then for a transformation of consciousness (the basic energetics) is: intense period of change, high stress that narrows one’s focus, feeling driven or accelerated beyond states of fear/panic, encountering a threshold or boundary, maybe meeting a greeter of some kind, passing into a null space of energy convergence, becoming infused with knowing, imprinted or altered by null space exposure, returning as one who has been expanded or enhanced by the experience – as if forever “marked” by the pattern of aftereffects.

    I’ve seen this thousands of times – experiencers who behave as if they have been punched, jerked, hit, pushed, or somehow spun around. Something physical happened to them, something separate from any mind play or otherworldly visitation or event that put them at death’s door. And that “something” shifted their futures by pushing them into a unique arena of experience. The “something” that set them apart I call a “power punch.” It is a force. It is an energy. It is intense.

    This intensity, what narrows a person’s focus in high stress, is the key, the hinge, to understanding near-death and near-death-like experiences and impactual spiritual transformations.

    Of the 21% in my near-death research who claimed they did not have aftereffects worth mentioning, or any at all, these were the people whose episode seemed so superficial to them that they described it as if a fleeting dream. Sixty percent were openly expressive about how intense their episode was and how it had altered their lives in dramatic ways. These experiencers exhibited most or all of the aftereffects pattern. Many seemed stunned at how much they had changed once they compared “before” with “after.”

    The 19% who were so radically affected that it seemed as if they had become a different person or at least an altered version of who they had once been, bore the full brunt of the “power punch” – and showed it. Before and after photos illustrated the depths of what they had been through and how it had changed them. Almost to a person they displayed the full pattern of physiological and psychological aftereffects.

    And, with the 73% in my research who had electrical sensitivity afterwards, I was able to establish that it was the intensity of their near-death episode that had been the determining factor in causing this condition – not how long or short their episode, or, how much light they had been exposed to during their scenario. No matter how I approached this, cross-comparing brief and longer near-death states, complicated and simple – regardless even of imagery or how it was described – I still reached the same conclusion: what mattered most in every respect was the intensity of the episode, not the episode itself.

    The Colloidal Condition

    Reaching the threshold, or boundary between realities, and then crossing through, compares almost exactly with what science calls a colloidal condition.

    A colloidal condition is where forces suddenly collapse and then converge. This in-between state creates antiforce, which is antigravity. Particles caught in this unique state between implosion and explosion transmute, and remain forever changed by that transmutation. On a molecular level, these particles show evidence of enlargement and of having taken on different and enhanced characteristics. An example of this is what happens when water is stirred.

    There are several ways water can be stirred. For the sake of this discussion, we’ll rotate it. Spin the water. Round and round. Faster and faster. Really spin it. Stop suddenly and reverse the direction. When the spin stopped, the water collapsed into itself, creating an implosion. But just before a reverse spin could be initiated, where the water could explode back out again, conditions mysteriously changed. Both the water and everything contained within it were briefly held in suspension. This is called a colloidal condition; the particles caught therein are referred to as colloids.

    The same thing can happen to the human brain if suddenly hit, jarred, or severely jiggled, especially during trauma or in an accident or fall. Typically, a colloidal-like suspension of consciousness will follow whereby the environment appears to expand out as time slows to a standstill. The individual feels somehow caught in-between realities, as if he or she slipped through a crack in time and space and suddenly became resident of a world neither here nor there. This peculiar feeling of being suspended in between realities affects a person so deeply that it can permanently alter the way the individual regards the world at large and his or her place in it.

    The colloidal condition best describes what we can know of passing into and through a threshold experience. Once again, here’s how it works:

    • forces suddenly collapse, then converge;
    • a momentary state of suspension results;
    • everything caught in that suspension expands and enlarges as antigravity is created;
    • inherent or unlimited potential is released;
    • whatever is present is imprinted (becomes permanently altered by what happened);
    • whatever is present then transmutes (takes on different characteristics);
    • as reversal of motion is completed, forces are restored, suspension ends, but the imprinting (transmutation) remains.

    The majority who go through such a process experience an enlargement and expansion of consciousness, exhibit the sudden surfacing of latent abilities, face a confusing array of psychological and physiological aftereffects, and are never quite the same again.

    It is my belief that the reason this process of convergence and transmutation is universal, is because all of us, now and through the ages, are and have always been imprinted by the same creative impulse that originated us. The mark of our creation is what we display whenever our consciousness is set free to rediscover itself and the source of its being. After a threshold experience, we feel as if we have found “home” because the home we think we’ve found already exists within us – and always has. We recognise the place because we never left it to begin with.

    High stress pushes us to where we must face that legendary boundary that separates worlds readily accessible (what we know), from those either infra or ultra to our sense of perception (what seems as if fantasy, imagination, or mystery). In mythology, fear is the “watcher” at the threshold gate. Intercessories who can act as guides are loved ones who have previously died, angels, religious figures, visitors from other worlds, special animals, maybe birds. The final arbitrator, though, is always the heart.

    The Key Role of Our Heart

    Tradition says that it is the heart that decides: if you make it through the threshold gateway, where you go once you pass, and if you can return to the life you left. Drawings from ancient Egypt illustrated this final step by showing a set of scales for weighing a person’s heart at death. If the heart was weightless like a feather (indicative of a selfless life), the individual passed into the worlds of spirit. If heavy (indicative of being ego bound), the individual was rejected and had to face punishment or some type of abandonment.

    How can the heart organ, unique as it is, be the final arbitrator of what happens at the passageway?

    Let’s take a moment to examine how this might be true. Research has shown that 60 to 65% of all heart cells are neural cells. This enables the heart to function in many ways like our brain does. Yes, the heart is the major glandular structure in the body, but it also produces an electromagnetic field 5,000 times more powerful than that of the brain. Shaped like a torus doughnut, the heart field busily converts one form of energy into another as it generates an infinite number of harmonic waves. These harmonics run throughout all bodily systems, and are so sensitive that they react to conditions four to five minutes before actual occurrence. This futuristic awareness tells the heart if what’s coming is positive or negative so it can prepare. First the heart feels the coming event, then the brain is aware of it, then the eyes see it. The heart, literally, is our first responder.

    Harmonic heart-waves come into coherence when you feel good, are in love, experience happiness, have bonded with someone in a positive way, or are in a supportive relationship. When the heart’s energy coheres, it taps into higher energy fields to empower itself, while emoting feelings of love and connectedness. This feeling sense operates like a thinking mind and with an unbelievable memory. Heart harmonics entwine worldwide. Spiritual traditions claim this is so because our heart is the centre of our soul. A soul set free by these harmonics, serves – as foretold in ancient Egypt and from wise ones who recognise the power of the heart.

    Love, or lack of it, dominates near-death, near-death-like, and spiritually transforming experiences. The fullness of love, being loved, and discovering the power of love appears to determine the overall effect transformational states have on experiencers, their significant others, and anyone who hears their stories. It is no exaggeration to say that the majority of threshold experiencers return “in love with love.” Being bathed in love beyond measure, pales anything less. A challenge experiencers have afterwards is to “step down” this power a few degrees so as not to freak out people.

    The heart’s code is love: love of Source, love of others, love of self. To talk about threshold experiences is to talk about the heart’s ability to expand, embrace, and include the fullness of waveform harmonics. Where does this take us? Always to the same place… Oneness.

    All transformative experiences throughout what we can know of time reflect this… what is now termed “the perennial philosophy.” All the great thinkers have spoken of this, going back to Plato and beyond. All native peoples draw pictures of this or speak of it in their songs and stories. All of those who successfully passed the “tests” of the hero’s journey, who made it through the boundary and returned infused with a new wisdom and a new knowledge – described what they discovered as Oneness:

    • One God.
    • One people.
    • One family.
    • One existence.
    • One law – love.
    • One commandment – service.
    • One solution to problems – forgiveness.

    This, the perennial philosophy, is what many believe to be the only true religion. All religious thought, irrespective of denomination, creed, or messiah figure, takes its root from this type of experience. If threshold energy is intense enough, and affects experiencers deeply enough, individuals return as if “God instructed.” This is why so many near-death researchers believe that religion itself sprang from individual narratives of near-death experiences.

    In whatever manner this is debated, there is a wonderful corollary that comes from China. Historically, there is a lineage in China of Tibetan Storytellers, usually illiterate peasants, who are known as “Gesar Artists.” These storytellers recount numerous lines of extraordinary sophistication – tales of their most venerated hero, Gesar, a Knight from the Kingdom of Heaven, sent to earth to save and protect Tibetans. Gesar’s story has been passed from generation to generation, but not by memorising it! To be a true Gesar Artist (not just a story-teller), one must experience something akin to a near-death state or what shamans call “dying unto the self” (an ego death)… in order to achieve the personal experience of what Gesar came to earth to teach. They must become as if “God instructed.”

    There is no denying that the early teachers of humankind came from the otherworlds beyond the passageway. Shamanic beings, visionary images, spirit manifestations, near-death and near-death-like experiences, the dead come to life – what some label as paranormal occurrences – are actually more akin to spiritual awakenings than to what is often tossed off as paranormal or psychic phenomena.

    We have endowments to assure life’s continuance: procreation/birth. We also have endowments to assure life’s evolution: renewal/rebirth. This is not imagination. The spiritual, what enables renewal and rebirth, is real.

    Human Transformation & The Master Plan

    After a total of 43 years researching, experimenting, and studying a gamut of historical and first-hand, spiritually-transforming states, I can say that there is a biological imperative not only for life to exist and to continuously evolve in form, capacity, and intellect, but to reach an even higher order as if following a “Master Plan.” What happens as a result of transformational states feeds that plan because of how an individual’s experience and the consequences of that experience, can be passed from parent to child, generation to generation, biologically. Many have suspected this, but thanks to the DNA research currently being conducted, the markers of how this happens have been found. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was a French naturalist who argued that traits acquired in life by parents could be passed on to their offspring (in violation of Darwin and his theory of natural selection). His work was shunned in his time. Scientists have now rediscovered his work; naming what they have verified… “Lamarckism” (refer to www.qimr.edu.au/research/labs/emmaw/index.html).

    Take a good look at historical patterns. Each sudden evolutionary lift and/or period of discovery, as well as each renaissance, was preceded by stories of people who described threshold-type experiences, and to the degree that, it appeared as if the masses were “waking up.” These physical and spiritual energetics led to bursts of new ideas, creativity, invention, and healing. Each breakout period seeded generations to follow, as if a biological imperative existed to ensure that the human race could reach a greater potential. We know now that if the numbers of those who change are high enough, evolutionary adaptation – even of this magnitude – can happen in a single generation.

    The science that puts this into perspective is the study of fluid dynamics.

    Fluid dynamics shows how birds in flight maintain organised formations even when individual birds make mistakes, how rotating colonies of bacteria stay together regardless of challenge, how a herd of buffalo maintains order even in full gallop, how crowds of people pour out from an event as if “directed.” Whenever an energetic wave pattern forms, a natural rhythm of movement emerges. Whatever is present when this happens functions as if “one mind.”

    Fluid dynamics tells us that it only takes 4 to 5% of any group, condition, or situation to change, for the whole assembly to follow. Once that tipping point of 4 to 5% is reached, energy excites and becomes highly charged. This creates what is called “superfluidity”… a state of energy that cannot be contained.

    Currently the conservative estimate worldwide for people having had a near-death experience is 4 to 5% of the general population. This estimate does not take into consideration near-death-like and spiritually transforming experiences that are also intensely life changing. Counting them too could easily double or triple that figure, indicating that a realignment of global consciousness toward a higher order is well on its way to becoming highly charged.

    Freedom tops that higher order, along with open communications, human rights, improved health benefits, equality in education, participatory governance, cooperative incentives for advancement, creativity and the arts.

    The idea that near-death aftereffects constitute “a benevolent virus” is true. Regardless of whether one thinks in terms of a “Christ Consciousness” that can be achieved by anyone willing to follow the teachings of Jesus, or the act of becoming “god instructed” by practicing the disciplines of Gesar Artists, today’s revolution bears all the markings of a “soulquake.” Forget any linkage to the so-called “New Age” beliefs of the 1960s. This is more of a “New Thought,” the validation of a higher order of existence, of reality.

    The goal of every spiritual and religious tradition is to “release the soul from exile,” to teach that no one is ever separated from his or her divine essence. It is the transformational process, though, that actually reconnects soul with Source. Near-death states model this, the reawakening we can all attain.

    For further research, please read Near-Death Experiences: The Rest of The Story by P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D., Charlottesville, VA; Hampton Road, 2011.

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    References

    P.M.H. Atwater,  Near-Death Experiences: The Rest of the Story, Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Road, 2011

    H. W. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1919.

    T. Hongkai, “Legacy of a Tibetan Storyteller”, China Daily.

    F. O’Brien, A Benevolent Virus, Norwich, England: John Hunt, 2010.

    R. Rees, “Electrophysiology of Intuition”, Paper presented at the ChildSpirit Conference, Chattanooga, TN, 2007.

    A. Rogers, “Going With the Flow”, Newsweek Magazine, 1998.

    C. B. Schmitt, “Perennial Philosophy: From Agostino Steuco to Liebniz”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 27, 505–532, 1966.

    D. Williams, “At the Hour of Our Death”, Time Magazine. Available at www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1657919,00.html. I originally picked up on the issue after reading the article, “The Sins of the Fathers, Take 2”, written by Sharon Begley, Newsweek Magazine, 26 January 2009.

    Daniel K Morgan & Emma Whitelaw, “The Case for Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance in Humans”, Mammalian Genome: Official Journal of the International Mammalian Genome Society; 19 (6): 394-7, 2008.

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