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 P.
M. H. Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.), is one of the original researchers
in the field of near-death studies, having begun her work in 1978. She
is one of the very few top NDE researchers who have actually had a NDE.
Her website is filled with very interesting NDE research information
and articles of hers. Her contribution to near-death studies is
considered to be one of the most important as her first two books,
Beyond the Light
and
Coming Back to Life,
are deemed the Bibles of the near-death experience by researchers
and a multitude of experiencers and enthusiasts.
Using her firm understanding of police investigative
techniques as a protocol, she has specialized in original fieldwork and
research that also included sessions with significant others. Her
findings are contained in six books (see right). Some of her
findings have now been clinically verified. Her research is referenced
in the distinguished Lancet medical journal, December 15, 2001
(the
landmark Dutch study by Pim van Lommel, M.D.).
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ANNOUNCEMENT:
Jeffrey N. Howard of Wichita State University is
currently researching the rate of spontaneous
remission of afflictions for those reviving from
a near-death experience, as compared to the
general population. His intent is to seek out
near-death experiencers who have suddenly and
miraculously been "healed" or "lost their
symptoms/afflictions" afterward (conditions such
as cancer, mental illness, physical defects,
drug addiction, tumors, and so forth). This is
extremely important! Please participate in his
study if this applies to you! Contact Jeffrey at Wichita
State University, Department of Psychology,
Jabara Hall, Wichita, KS; 67260 (316) 978-3170.
He has two e-mail addresses:
jnhoward@wichita.edu and
jazjef@hotmail.com. |
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 QUESTION:
I had all the beautiful usual 'symptoms' and the continuing absolute
awareness of 'truth,' but I also had one I've never seen retold. When I
was back in my body after the emergency Caesarean, in which I stopped
breathing for 45 minutes and was stone cold gone, when I came back, for
weeks my body felt like someone had draped a heavy skeleton over me. I
was hunched over with the weight of it and had to learn to move with it
again. I shuffled rather than walked, turned like a robot rather than a
human. Every joint was sooooooooo hard to manipulate and it seemed like
such a complicated process. To get a wrist to move in order to work
fingers was such a conscious effort and they creaked and grated, bone
against bone, very unpleasant but not painful. It was like my mind was
processing the movement of bone, sinew, tissue, muscle, joints -
literally as if someone had draped a body over me and I had to figure
out how to work it, like a puppeteer being inside a mannequin. It felt
very cumbersome and very unevolved. My initial delight years after when
I discovered other people had experienced the tunnel and the light of
pure love, has always niggled that no one else seems to report this
dysfunction of the body and soul on rejoining. It's funny, even though I
had had a Caesarean, it didn't seem to be that area that grated. Moving
a finger was a slightly comical process. My story is, of course, much
bigger, but I wonder if you've ever heard of this strange misfit
approach on reintegration? --
Jenny
 PMH
Atwater's reply:
I had to laugh at your description of
reintegration. Please don't misunderstand me. I mean no disrespect, but
I dealt with something similar myself after two of my three near-death
experiences. Yes, I have heard of this before with others, many times in
fact, but not told in quite the same manner that you did - of a skeleton
draped over you, the weight, the discomfort. You are the first to use
such an analogy.
Let me say, though, that it is not unusual for an experiencer to feel
"out of sorts" or somehow alienated from his or her physical body upon
re-entry and afterwards. If you've read my story, you'll remember that
during each of my three episodes, I had the distinct sense and knowing
that I had to shrink in order to fit back into the physical, that I was
larger outside my body than inside it. Once back inside, my body felt
different to me. It felt somehow "foreign." (My story is in
Chapter Two of
Coming Back to Life, and it is on my website.)
Once someone has been out-of-body, whether during yoga, stress of some
kind, meditation, a spiritual experience, or during a near-death
episode, the physical body seems at variance to what you now recognize
as your higher, finer abode of existence. You come back knowing you are
not your body, that your body neither defines you, contains you, limits
you, or identifies you. On one level it's easy to say you are not your
body. That statement has an esoteric, mystical ring to it - something
high and holy. Yet on another level, feeling the difference, being out
and then coming back in - having a basis of comparison unknown to you
before - can be very disconcerting or frightening or confusing or
perhaps an angry thing. It is not always a positive experience. Depends
on the person.
 For
people like yourself, Jenny, it can simply be a cumbersome necessity, a
relearning. If you go out far enough and experience the depths of other
realms and dimensions of spirit, coming back into your body can be like
an insult or a blow. If you're out far enough, you may not recognize the
feel and fit of your body once back. It may be so foreign to you, that
you literally have to get "reacquainted." You can also return too
quickly and become disoriented. It is possible on re-entry, that you
don't get all the way back in and have to readjust your energy and your
awareness and even the "fit." You'll have to decide what resonates to
you as an explanation. Seems to me that you so identified with the
spirit world while there, that you could no longer relate to the
physical world on re-entry.
Some of the things I went through while reacquainting myself with the
earth world after my near-death experiences, and relearning how to live
here, are in the book Future Memory. I had a dickens of a time with
breathing, getting my body to work properly, and making sense out of
mundane routines and habits I had once taken for granted. They no longer
made any sense to me.
Let me quote a couple of paragraphs from pages 118/119. You'll probably
wind up laughing at me as I previously laughed at you.
 "My
physical body and all my physical movements slowed tremendously, like a
forty-five rpm record being played at thirty-three-and-a-third. This
meant I could no longer walk, talk, or move in a normal manner but I
could think and hear at remarkable speeds, and I could see as if my
vision were multi-angled. I experienced myself as superhuman while,
physically, I appeared subhuman.
"To illustrate how absurd this was, let me describe what it was like to
converse with people. I could see every minute motion in an individual's
brain/mind assembly as it interacted to select words, then send those
words through nerve channels until the result issued forth from his or
her mouth. The size and shape of those words were plainly visible as
thought-forms when each made an arc over to me, gliding along a 'bridge'
composed of the force from that individual's breath, saliva, and mental
intent. These thought-forms entered my body as vibratory waves while
registering in my ears as sound, then each moved through nerve channels
into my own brain/mind assembly, where sparks and pulsations selected a
response. And that response tracked back through the nerves to my mouth
for projection, so it too could arc over, speeding along on a similar
'bridge' to the person I was conversing with. Needless to say, a short
conversation took forever. The process could be compared to several
people attempting steady dialogue from opposite ends of an echo chamber.
Driving, stepping up or down, lifting a knife to cut a potato, turning a
dial, trying to squeeze toothpaste from a tube, tying shoe laces - each
and every physical task required ridiculous lengths of time to perform."
 See,
Jenny? You're not the only one who was challenged to relearn how to
"wear your body" after having been beyond all sense of physicality and
then returning. I'll bet any number of people reading this communication
can relay similar stories, as well.
Many blessings,
P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D.
www.cinemind.com/atwater
& www.pmhatwater.com |
