P.M.H. Atwater - The New Children and Near-Death Experiences

Acknowledgments

MY SINCEREST GRATITUDE goes to the 277 people who participated in this study of child experiencers of near-death states. Although many were youngsters when I interviewed them, the rest had reached their teen years or were in varying stages of adulthood. All of them bared their souls and shared their secrets about what it is really like to experience the near-death phenomenon as a child. I am awestruck by their courage in being so open, and humbled at their willingness to trust me with their joy and their pain.

Those who provided extra support are listed below. As is true of any endeavor of this magnitude, it is impossible to name everyone. So, to each and all, I give my deepest thanks!

Terry Young Atwater

Stephany Evans

William G. Reimer

Melvin Morse

Diane K. Corcoran

Theresa A. Csanady

Todd Murphy

Leslie Dixon

Joseph Benedict Geraci

Pat Kennedy

Donald Riggs

Andrew Swyschuk

L. Suzanne Gordon

Alejandra Warden

Sarah Hinze

Mellen-Thomas Benedict

Kelly John Huffman

Natalie DeGennaro

Paulie Litke

Dennis Swartz

GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT IS MADE TO THE FOLLOWING FOR PERMISSION TO REPRINT FROM THEIR MATERIALS

*Janet Blessing: Fly by Janet Blessing. Reprinted by permission of the author.

*Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.: excerpt from The Famished Road by Ben Okri. Copyright (c) 1993 by Anchor Books. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

*Joseph Benedict Geraci: excerpt from published work for his Ph.D. dissertation, Students Post Near-Death Experience Attitude and Behavior Toward Education and Learning, on file at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. Reprinted by permission of the author.

*Guadalupe Press: excerpt from Its All Cod by Walter Starcke. Copyright (c) 1998 by Guadalupe Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.

*Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.: excerpt from Solstice Shift: Magical Blends Synergistic Guide to the Coming Age, edited by John Nelson. Copyright (c) 1999 by Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

*Dr. Valerie Hunt: excerpt from Infinite Mind: Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness by Dr. Valerie Hunt (Malibu Publishing Company). Copyright (c) 1996 by Malibu Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission of the author.

*Mata Amritanandamayi Center: excerpt from Mata Amritanandamayi: A Biography. Copyright (c) 1988 by Mata Amritanandamayi Center. Reprinted by permission of M.A. Center.

*The Matrix Institute: excerpt from Notes from the Cosmos: A Futurists Insights into the World of Dream and Prophecy and Intuition Includes Global Prediction for 19982012 by Gordon-Michael Scallion. Copyright (c) 1997 by Matrix Institute. Reprinted by permission of the Matrix Institute.

*Todd Murphy: excerpt from The Structure and Function of Near-Death Experiences: An Algorithmic Reincarnation Hypothesis. Journal of Near-Death Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, Winter 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author and Journal publisher, Kluwer Academic/Human Sciences Press.

*Rainbows Unlimited: excerpt from The Millennium Children: Tales of the Shift by Caryl Dennis. Copyright (c) 1997 by Rainbows Unlimited. Reprinted by permission of Rainbows Unlimited.

*Linda Redford: the Honor Pledge and Honor Code from The Adawee Teachings. Reprinted by permission of the author.

* Woodrew Update Newsletter: excerpt from Woodrew Update, vol. 17, no. 3. Reprinted by permission of Greta Woodrew, LL.D.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE:

CHAPTER TWO:

CHAPTER THREE:

CHAPTER FOUR:

CHAPTER FIVE:

CHAPTER SIX:

CHAPTER SEVEN:

CHAPTER EIGHT:

CHAPTER NINE:

CHAPTER TEN:

CHAPTER ELEVEN:

APPENDIX ONE:

APPENDIX TWO:

APPENDIX THREE:

APPENDIX FOUR:

FLY

To think that i could
FLY, like you,
above this complicated place
to know that it is
i, untrue,
is something i cant seem to face
at all. To feel that
sun, like you,
upon my cotton candy back...
aware that i am
one who flew
so long ago, i cry and rack
my brain for one faint
memory
of freedom high above the earth,
of FLYING... but i
cannot see.
Twas way before my second birth.

J ANET B LESSING , P ITTSFIELD , M ASSACHUSETTS .
H ER NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE OCCURRED AT NINE
MONTHS OF AGE DURING A BOUT OF PNEUMONIA.
SHE WROTE THIS POEM WHEN SHE WAS NINETEEN.

Foreword

IT MAY BE that the greatest value of a book is its ability to disturb, unless one wants only to be entertained. In either case, The New Children and Near-Death Experiences is quite a cup of tea. This heady adventure into the inner world just may be P.M.H. Atwaters magnum opus, though it can become threatening and disturbing to our commonly held assumptions. (At least it was to mine.)

Read with an unprejudiced eye, or mind (which, again, was not easy for me), it surely should rank with William Jamess classic The Varieties of Religious Experience, if nothing else. Like Jamess work, it raises a rich substrate of unanswered questions concerning the nature of the human mind and its incomparable, awesome creativity. Thus this is a seminal work, demanding further and deep philosophical inquiry and objective pursuit, while at the same time a work of astonishing thoroughness, brilliance, insight, and prodigious admirable research.

Atwater has simply covered her subject with impeccable thoroughness, even as her rigorously disciplined approach opens her subject to a wider question that might be beyond the scope of any single book. And she wisely knows when to leave a question hanging (always risky academically), rather than trying to make the definitive statement about everything, as some of us are wont to do. Every time I think she has boxed herself into an untenable position, she offers counterexperiences that prove to be outside that box and that show her objectivity toward any part of the remarkably rich material she has gathered. And much of this material is academically suspectpolitically incorrect, so to speakeven as it is undeniably a rich segment of actual human experience, material that resonates with my own history as it will with that of many readers (whereas the academically/politically correct tends to leave me as a lived experience rather out of the picture).

Surely there are unresolved issues in this book, as there would have to be in a work of this scope. Time and again I wanted to stop and insist on battling out some issue, though it might take years. Memory itself is a gaping black hole of mystery, in spite of all the research into this area. False memory has been the subject of much study. Shared, archetypal memory is almost surely a real phenomenon. Nobelist Gerald Edelman claims that memory is quite organic, shifting, growing, changing, the brain-mind continually updating and reshuffling its memory. Contrary to current academic opinion, David Chamberlain denies that memory is in the brain at all, and gives serious evidence to back his point. I just received a disturbing paper concerning our biomythological memory that remakes itself continually on behalf of rationalization, self-aggrandizement, apology, and what Caroline Myss calls woundology. Atwaters contribution to this perplexing and open-ended issue should prove rich and ongoing. I trust this book will be read and accepted by a wide population.