P. M. H. Atwater
Author of Beyond the Light
About the Author
P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D., is a distinguished researcher of near-death experiences, prayer chaplain, spiritual counselor, and visionary. She is the author of 18 books including Children of the Fifth World, Beyond the Indigo Children, and The New Children and Near-Death Experiences. She lives in show more Charlottesville, Virginia. show less
Works by P. M. H. Atwater
The Big Book of Near Death Experiences: The Ultimate Guide to What Happens When We Die (2007) 44 copies, 2 reviews
Near-death Experiences (What they teach us about living, dying, and our true purpose) (2011) 41 copies
Goddess Runes: A Comprehensive Guide to Casting and Divination With One of the Oldest Known Rune Sets (1996) 27 copies
Near-Death Experiences, The Rest of the Story: What They Teach Us About Living and Dying and Our True Purpose (2009) 23 copies, 2 reviews
Children of the New Millennium: Children's Near-Death Experiences and the Evolution of Humankind (1999) 10 copies
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Other names
- DeKeyser, Phyllis Marie (birth name)
Atwater, Phyllis Marie DeKeyser - Birthdate
- 1937-09-19
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Twin Falls, Idaho, USA
- Places of residence
- Twin Falls, Idaho, USA
Virginia, USA - Short biography
- An international authority on near-death states, Dr. PMH Atwater, L.H.D. uses the culmination of her research to establish that the near-death phenomenon is not some kind of anomaly, but is rather part of the larger genre of transformations of consciousness. She combines her 33 years of near-death research with what she was doing in the 60s and 70s, experiencing, experimenting with, and researching altered states of consciousness, mysticism, psychic phenomena, and the transformational process, to reveal what transformations of consciousness really are, why we have them, and where they lead us. This lifetime endeavor covers over 43 years of work, involving nearly 7,000 people. Her meticulous and unique protocol gives validity to what she has discovered, and verified, about the percentage worldwide of people who have undergone near-death experiences.
Members
Reviews
Dying to Know You
Proof of God in the Near-Death Experience
by P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D.
I learned something today. When the author starts her work off by saying, this book just was writing itself in the air and I jotted it down, there is every possibility it is gonna blow your mind and this 122 page giant was no exception. Wow, with lots of stories, facts and a bucketful of compassion I felt like I was right there and in some odd way was remembering what it was like to have a NDE. I would recommend this blessed ready to anyone wanting to understand that there is a God and that we weren’t just dropped off on planet earth some place. Thanks, P, You have successfully done it once again.
Love & Light,
Riki Frahmann… (more)
Proof of God in the Near-Death Experience
by P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D.
I learned something today. When the author starts her work off by saying, this book just was writing itself in the air and I jotted it down, there is every possibility it is gonna blow your mind and this 122 page giant was no exception. Wow, with lots of stories, facts and a bucketful of compassion I felt like I was right there and in some odd way was remembering what it was like to have a NDE. I would recommend this blessed ready to anyone wanting to understand that there is a God and that we weren’t just dropped off on planet earth some place. Thanks, P, You have successfully done it once again.
Love & Light,
Riki Frahmann… (more)
As an avid lover of the paranormal and a person that has suffered the loss of a loved one recently, I have been looking into the near death experience. As I stayed with my family member until he took his last breath I started to have many questions. What was it like for him? Did he suffer or did he know what was going on around him while he laid unconscious? Did he have any regrets and what is death like? Does someone come and get you or is it a journey that you have to make alone? This book is one of many resources that I have used to answer my questions. It has a vast amount of answers and examples that have left me feeling that I can finally move on. I no longer feel weighed down and have some closure. I highly recommend this book for someone who has a loved one in hospice or has experienced death. It makes it much easier too deal with the subject of death and those that are dying might be interested in reading it.… (more)
Before I begin this review, I should explain my interest in NDE’s from a religious viewpoint. It’s not just that they hint of a possible afterlife, because I honestly don’t know what to make of that. It’s that they dig down below the surface of religion to what Atwater labels a “core experience.” Says Atwater,
“The core truth or root of all religions and all sacred traditions is virtually the same throughout the world and always has been. It is the spiritual. It is that personal experience of Source/Deity/Allah/God. The majority of near-death experiencers glimpse that core truth in a moment of self-surrender they neither understood nor were prepared for, and they are forever changed.” (p. 104)
Atwater is not a scientist, and doesn’t approach her research from that direction. No double-blind studies with a control group. But she has logged 43 years of research, involving nearly 7,000 people. She explains,
“I am an observer and analyst who specializes in fieldwork … My protocol is that of a police investigator. I cross-check my findings with different people in different parts of our country at different times.” (p. 238)
By the way, I'm an outsider. An estimated one in twenty people remember a near-death experience, and Atwater has enjoyed three herself. But No NDE for me, even though I should qualify, having drowned once. I’m still peeved that I got nothing out of that.
Atwater’s new book is not as much about the experiences themselves as it is about the profound affect they have on those who survive them. People are changed by this brush with the divine, whether we label it a religious experience or not. I do enjoy when Atwater lets the experiencers speak for themselves, leaving it up to us to make sense of the mysteries. When she jumps in, speaking in her exotic language, using phrases like "electromagnetic spectrum," I tend to lose focus. I’m a newbie to the paranormal, sorry.
This is a world where animals often speak and angels often fly on wings. I say "often," because different people, with different backgrounds, have different experiences. Hell is only hot and fiery if you're a Christian fundamentalist. Most others recalled hellish NDE’s as cold and clammy. Dark tunnels often connect this world to the next, but they didn't used to. Tunnels with a light at the end were quite rare in NDE’s before Robert Moody's book Life After Life became a bestseller, and the public began to fixate on tunnels. Too bad; everybody loves afterlife tunnels and the explanations they provide for wormholes, time travel, and shamanic visions.
But one commonality in these experiences is that they are life-altering, and for that reason alone, the rest of us should not ignore what we can't explain. What these people experience will probably never be a part of our worldview—most of us are trapped in a reality wrapped around matter—but NDE experiencers' connection often remains after the event, like a window left open to the supernatural. They are suddenly changed. Experiencers begin to remember the future before it happens, see auras of energy, see dead people. Atwater helps experiencers adapt back to a world that has become foreign, and helps the rest of us adapt to experiencers who have been radically changed. This is no trivial issue; 21% of experiencers in Atwater’s research attempted suicide afterward. 75% divorced. Both spouses usually voiced the same complaint: “I don’t know that person anymore.” The vast majority return from their experiences convinced that there is a “plan” for life, yet two-thirds leave organized religion, or never have a religious commitment to begin with.
Atwater loses me when she delves into her otherworldly explanations for these phenomenon, talking about holograms and power punches and colloidal conditions. When she shifts from paranormal language into scientific explanations, I get at least a glimpse of what she's talking about, but can't really relate the explanations to scientific principles other than as vague parallels meant to describe the indescribable. "Superfluidity" doesn't really explain how out-of-body travelers can go through walls. "Quantum entanglement" has a long way to go before it explains entangled minds. “Multiverses” is a concept I find more than a little disturbing. But these comparisons do help me relate. In many ways, Atwater's book will feel like home to experiencers but leave outsiders like me still out in the cold. Four stars for the research and fascinating peek into a world that remains a bizarre mystery to the uninitiated.
One final note: Atwater’s opinions about Jesus and the Bible don’t increase her credibility. She should probably have left that to the Jesus scholars. :-)… (more)
“The core truth or root of all religions and all sacred traditions is virtually the same throughout the world and always has been. It is the spiritual. It is that personal experience of Source/Deity/Allah/God. The majority of near-death experiencers glimpse that core truth in a moment of self-surrender they neither understood nor were prepared for, and they are forever changed.” (p. 104)
Atwater is not a scientist, and doesn’t approach her research from that direction. No double-blind studies with a control group. But she has logged 43 years of research, involving nearly 7,000 people. She explains,
“I am an observer and analyst who specializes in fieldwork … My protocol is that of a police investigator. I cross-check my findings with different people in different parts of our country at different times.” (p. 238)
By the way, I'm an outsider. An estimated one in twenty people remember a near-death experience, and Atwater has enjoyed three herself. But No NDE for me, even though I should qualify, having drowned once. I’m still peeved that I got nothing out of that.
Atwater’s new book is not as much about the experiences themselves as it is about the profound affect they have on those who survive them. People are changed by this brush with the divine, whether we label it a religious experience or not. I do enjoy when Atwater lets the experiencers speak for themselves, leaving it up to us to make sense of the mysteries. When she jumps in, speaking in her exotic language, using phrases like "electromagnetic spectrum," I tend to lose focus. I’m a newbie to the paranormal, sorry.
This is a world where animals often speak and angels often fly on wings. I say "often," because different people, with different backgrounds, have different experiences. Hell is only hot and fiery if you're a Christian fundamentalist. Most others recalled hellish NDE’s as cold and clammy. Dark tunnels often connect this world to the next, but they didn't used to. Tunnels with a light at the end were quite rare in NDE’s before Robert Moody's book Life After Life became a bestseller, and the public began to fixate on tunnels. Too bad; everybody loves afterlife tunnels and the explanations they provide for wormholes, time travel, and shamanic visions.
But one commonality in these experiences is that they are life-altering, and for that reason alone, the rest of us should not ignore what we can't explain. What these people experience will probably never be a part of our worldview—most of us are trapped in a reality wrapped around matter—but NDE experiencers' connection often remains after the event, like a window left open to the supernatural. They are suddenly changed. Experiencers begin to remember the future before it happens, see auras of energy, see dead people. Atwater helps experiencers adapt back to a world that has become foreign, and helps the rest of us adapt to experiencers who have been radically changed. This is no trivial issue; 21% of experiencers in Atwater’s research attempted suicide afterward. 75% divorced. Both spouses usually voiced the same complaint: “I don’t know that person anymore.” The vast majority return from their experiences convinced that there is a “plan” for life, yet two-thirds leave organized religion, or never have a religious commitment to begin with.
Atwater loses me when she delves into her otherworldly explanations for these phenomenon, talking about holograms and power punches and colloidal conditions. When she shifts from paranormal language into scientific explanations, I get at least a glimpse of what she's talking about, but can't really relate the explanations to scientific principles other than as vague parallels meant to describe the indescribable. "Superfluidity" doesn't really explain how out-of-body travelers can go through walls. "Quantum entanglement" has a long way to go before it explains entangled minds. “Multiverses” is a concept I find more than a little disturbing. But these comparisons do help me relate. In many ways, Atwater's book will feel like home to experiencers but leave outsiders like me still out in the cold. Four stars for the research and fascinating peek into a world that remains a bizarre mystery to the uninitiated.
One final note: Atwater’s opinions about Jesus and the Bible don’t increase her credibility. She should probably have left that to the Jesus scholars. :-)… (more)
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DubiousDisciple | 1 other review | Mar 14, 2012 |
DubiousDisciple | 1 other review | Mar 14, 2012 | You May Also Like
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Near-death stories are usually interesting, as those sprinkled through this book were, but the book and author take a totally different approach to any books you've read on this subject before, unless you've read this author. I'll read the book a second time, after time passes, for greater understanding. It's the kind of thing that not only affects every person on earth but all those who were here before us and will be after us, and the concepts are supported increasingly by other sciences and ongoing research by others, some of it pertaining to the universe.
There is some religion in the book, not in a way you'd expect. It's discussion, some of which may confirm some beliefs around the world, some of which will shake up beliefs in some ways, but the overwhelming theme is that a deity exists but not so separate from us as we might think. All life is related, down to bugs and plants, trees, animals, all.
The book should be helpful to anyone who has had a near-death experience, as there are pros and cons in the immediate aftermath that need to be worked though. The experiences include children and have been verified by others in nearly all cases.
The ideas (put simply) here are far from reality for anyone who has never had one of these experiences, or several, as the author has. But they're comforting, apparently, for those millions of us who have had them because people don't believe them when they describe a different realm. We humans are excellent at labeling people, usually wrongly.
I have not had a near-death experience, though I've been near death more than once. Not near enough to be declared dead, though, or thought to be. Neither has my son, to my knowledge, the person who insisted I read this book. He's a normal person with a normal job and a high sense of humor, but he's also a deep thinker, as I find on the occasions he recommends a book to me that I have a little trouble getting through. Some of this book is a challenging read, some is easy and straightforward. It will probably change any reader who gets through it with an open mind. I'm not sure I'll kill bugs anymore and thought about the garden-fresh carrots I dug today.
When I finished reading, I wanted very much to go to one of the big gatherings near-death experiencers have and just sit and absorb what I might from them. To listen and understand. Or try. I wanted to talk to someone about the book, another reader. This kind of book can spark endless conversation and greater understanding that there's more to our world and universe than we've been conditioned to see. That makes sense, of course.
Apparently we are endless and we're sent to earth to learn, to provide service to others, to evolve. We must evolve. That may be one of our true purposes, although I didn't understand this bit as well as most others. Our purpose on earth is to serve in order to help humans evolve, in part. I'm unclear as to what the purpose is when we shed our bodies and belong again to the universe.
If you are religious and believe every word of the stories in your faith, no matter where in the world or what faith, this book might not be for you. It necessitates an open mind. If you have no faith, don't believe in deity of any kind, or that you are connected to anything, much less the universe, then you might find a good deal to think about in the book. There's brain research information, universe information, people on and not on earth information, and more. I was happy to see the pat description of tunnels mostly debunked. It's also true that our culture dictates to a small extent what people experience in a near-death scenario. That makes sense -- we need to at least partially understand what we see and experience in order to impart it to others, to evolve, to help others evolve.
It seems more clear to the author, the expert by far, than to me, that induced states of near-death do not behave the same as real ones. It can't be replicated except under genuine near-death circumstance. I understand that concept but question whether the near-death experience is so similar across cultures, including countries and indigenous tribes, because of the electrical and energetic things that happen at those times. And do these happen for other species? The book isn't really about that though it touches lightly on it. The book is about us, the human species.
And so, I will read the book again when some time has passed, and I'm please to find the author is working with thousands more subjects to learn more. There are lots of references and supporting evidence and materials here for those in various disciplines, including pastors, scientists of all kinds, medical professionals, and too many others to mention.
If this sort of book interests you, I highly recommend it. If not, don't read and give a bad review. It's not for everyone. This is a highly intelligent author and the book reflects that. Not a light read. If you don't learn enough this time around, maybe you'll come back to earth at another time and suffer as everyone does. Maybe you'll have a near-death experience, maybe not. If you have one, it will change you completely. I can identify with some of the items on the various lists, maybe because I was close to death, but I just didn't have the real thing, so much of this is foreign to me but not something I'd ignore.
_________________________
Addendum to this book. About a month and a half after finishing this book, I had a near death experience rather suddenly. All the doctors I saw said I am lucky to be alive, that most people don't make it through what happened. I was out for around 2 minutes and didn't see any lights or other things people describe, but my experience has changed me. It was real, I can tell anyone what I did experience, and it gave me a sense of overwhelming well being, at a time when I was definitely not OK, and I was not present in this life. As a loved one shook me trying to understand, and talked, I reluctantly returned, sensing my loved ones still needed me somehow. I won't go into details, but for me, all these stories I read about are now real and I never expected this in a million years -- and hope it never happens again until my life is done. But I won't fear the end now, I can say that much.
… (more)