NDE researcher sees progress in overcoming adversity
Posted on 31 July 2017, 8:02
In her latest book, A Manual for Developing Humans, P. M. H. Atwater, one of the pioneering researchers of the near-death experience, points out that life is “inherently paradoxical.” She defines paradox as “parallel principles that have crossed over.” For example, “the only way you can keep love is to give it away.” The one in her book that particularly jumped out at me is “the smarter we get, the dumber we are becoming.”
 
Most people view death as a very negative experience, but as Atwater found out, there’s a paradox here, too, since her three “deaths” served her in a very positive way. They awakened her to a new reality. “Once back after my encounters with death, I continued to operate from ‘realms of radiance’ to the extent that everyday events and decisions lost significance,” she explains early in the book. “The wisdom I returned with became more as stumbling blocks than guideposts (another paradox) until I regained my ability to discern differences – the contrast between ‘here’ and ‘there’ – between a practical application in the physical world and what I knew to be true in the greater worlds of spirit.”
Atwater does not go into much detail about her three near-death experiences during the early months of 1977, the year she turned 40, as she told about those in her 1998 book, Coming Back to Life. This latest book touches upon all the things she was awakened to during her NDEs and in the 40 years of research that followed. It seemingly covers every conceivable subject relating to the human experience – intelligence, intuition, dreams, auras, synchronicity, health, nutrition, emotions, fears, pain, parenting, sex, soul mates, science, racism, terrorism, prophesies, planets, feminism, justice, politics, economics, messiahs, catastrophes, war, solar cycles, free will, death, enlightenment, quantum medicine, orgone energy, you-name-it and Atwater has some very interesting and intriguing ideas and suggestions about it.
As Atwater told me in an email exchange, her intent in writing the book was to cover all the basics for being/becoming fully human. “Being more spiritual is backwards thinking,” she wrote. “Being all that you were born to be is the real goal in life, as it includes spirituality along with everything else. If we are fully ourselves, fully human, quite literally we are gods in the making.” She added that just the day before sending the email, a man who had been told by his doctor that he would never walk again because of a serious leg condition, contacted her and told her that, as a result of reading her manual, rather “using” her manual, not just reading it, he has thrown away his crutches and canes and is now walking perfectly. She was also recently contacted by a therapist who told her that he is using her manual techniques throughout his practice.
“The manual is not channeled, doesn’t come from any entity, angel, or spirit-type being,” she explained. “It comes from my third near-death experience and what I called ‘The Voice Like None Other.’ No voice really. What seemed as if ‘sound’ later turned out to be the shimmer of The Void, entwined within the 80 years I spent testing existence itself.”
Much of the manual has to do with change. “Sweeping changes are already flooding the earth plane and they will increase,” she continued. “The United States, in its astrological birth chart, has a Pluto return set to occur in 2022. That ushers in a time of extremes – great strides forward along with what could be equally great disasters. I tell everyone to expect a four-year span of this patterning – from 2020 through 2024. My manual is made to order for this, because by showing people how to test themselves, prove to themselves how powerful and creative they are, they can then navigate changing times in a positive manner.”
Dr. Atwater was quick to remind me that there is a paradox involved with all change, so that the “bad” may be for our betterment, while the “good” may really be to our detriment, at least in the short run. She cautions against “either/or judgment” and is convinced that there is no such thing as good and evil, not as we are taught. She mentioned Ireland’s new prime minister, Leo Varadkar. “He represents a break from the past. He’s center-right who embraces and works with center-left. In a land that is staunchly Catholic, he is the son of a doctor who emigrated from Mumbai and a nurse from southeastern Ireland. He is gay, a man who has known since childhood he wanted to be a politician, and he meets everyone at their level – and not just in meeting rooms filled with cameras. Ireland today is flourishing because of his new kind of leadership, and in ways no one saw coming. The model he represents, a mixture of races, religions, sexual and political points of view, is beginning to emerge as a global phenomenon that crosses all borders and all mindsets.”
Whether it is paradoxical or not, I am not sure, but Atwater cites a number of seemingly contradictory changes among today’s children. She mentions that one-third of those children throughout the world who take the standard IQ test now score in the genius range of 150-160, most without genetic markers to account for this. However, there have been equal jumps in learning disorders. Moreover, one-third of young people today have little or no sense of living a full life and two-thirds have no intention of ever marrying, going to college, or becoming parents. One-third are amoral, with many of them too violent to handle. “These percentages wiggle around somewhat, depending on what source you check,” she explained. “Yet, figures overall have remained fairly close to those I have given, for the last 15 years or so. This is impossible, clearly impossible, but it is happening consistently.”
As Atwater sees it, many of today’s young people are suffering emotionally due to difficulties in distinguishing between the real world and what they perceive from social media, the entertainment industry, and the advertising industry. “We need to at least acknowledge that there is something going on within the human family that is beyond our present understanding,” she continued, suggesting that it is part of a rhythm, plan, perhaps even a divine plan, God. “If we can recognize the rhythms here, the patterns of change, then innovation can replace fear.”
I asked Atwater if she had any thoughts about the tattoo craze among young people. She responded that she hadn’t given that much thought, “except the obvious signs that humankind is seeking to be more tribal and sincerely desirous of being recognized as part of a chosen mindset, or pattern of mind.” She further theorized that tattoos are a visual affirmation of one having chosen his or her family, how each individual wants to feel, to respond to life, to be recognized above and beyond whatever seems “fated” from the bloodlines of birth.
I asked her what she would do if she could go back in time to her younger years with what she has learned over the past 40 years. “I’d go back to my childhood and forgive my mother and myself,” she responded. “Until we can face our youngest years, all the pain, all the joy, all the mystery, all the confusion, we’re handicapping ourselves [if we hold on to it]. Progress means nothing if it’s hollow, and hollow it is until we can forgive what seemed limiting. Life reflects thought. Our ability to love and to forgive marks the difference between thoughts around and within us and what actually has value.”
Back to those “sweeping changes” that Atwater sees from 2020 through 2024, I sensed something of a doomsday scenario from what she set forth in her manual and asked her what she would tell young people now about raising a family, pursuing goals, etc. “I cannot imagine any reason not to love, dream, plan, try, look ahead,” she replied. “Knowing about where we are in the grand cycle of time, I believe makes a difference in our sanity, in understanding our place in the world and what’s going on around us. Like it or not, our world, our planet, is experiencing what is called ‘The Great Shifting’ or ‘The Turning of the Cosmic Clock.’ This massive changeover in energy flow happens every 25,920 years. On top of that, two great ages of time are now on top of each other: The Age of Pisces and The Age of Aquarius. This ‘overlap’ is crazy in how ideas clash and in how we are called upon to make decisions and take action in ways which are unprecedented. No matter how wild or unstable things seem, there really is progress; we are moving forward and upward in the Grand Cycles of Time.”
Atwater’s son once asked her how he is supposed to recognize truth. Her reply: “When everyone agrees with each other, and there is no dissent, run for the nearest door and get out. All you have found is illusion. But when you find paradox of unity in opposition, stay as long as you can and learn as much as you can. You have found truth.” Her manual ends with a discussion of life’s greatest paradox, one involving love.
Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
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