Thoughts on the Near-Death Experience
By P.M.H. Atwater
The four levels of near-death and otherworldly imagery can be interpreted literally, symbolically, or as if divinely inspired. The is tremendous value to be gained for the experiencers, significant others, and the general public if all three interpretative possibilities are applied. Doing this broadens and deepens the effect of what happened and adds rich layers of value and meaning. To insist that there is only one way to regard any given scenario is to limit the power of what can be learned from it.
Each scenario, no matter how it is interpreted or what kind of imagery it encompassed, is absolutely and totally and completely real to the one who experienced it. What happened, happened. No one's belief or disbelief can change that simple fact.
There is no one experiencer and no single experience that is more important than any other. Nor is there any message or revelation given to any one person that is more correct or true than what was revealed to any other. Quoting from holy writ to validate or legitimize near-death claims accomplishes little or nothing, and serves no one.
The reason for this is plain enough: All of us glimpsed but a small portion of the Big Picture. None of us saw as much as we think we did.
The real power that is emerges from near-death experiences is a collective one- not what one person saw or heard, but the sum of the many. When you have listened to thousands like I have, you take note..for the collective message that emerges speaks with a voice of thunder.
The following words reflect a representative composite of experiencer comments:
Any pain to be suffered comes first.
Instinctively you fight for life.
That is automatic.
It is inconceivable to the conscious mind that any other reality could possibly exist beside the earth-world of matter bounded by time and space. We are used to it. We have been trained since birth to live and thrive in it. We know ourselves to be ourselves be the external stimuli we recieve. Life tells us who we are and we accept its telling. That, too, is automatic and to be expected.
Your body goes limp.
Your heart stops.
No more air flows in or out.
You lose sight, feeling, and movement- although the ability to hear goes last. Identity ceases. The "you" that you once were becomes only a memory.
There is no pain at the moment of death.
Only peaceful silence..calm..quiet.
But you still exist.
It is easy not to breath. In fact, it is easier, more comfortable, and infinitely more natural not to breath than to breath.
The biggest suprise for for most people in dying is to realize that dying does not end life. Whether darkness or light comes next, or some kind of event, be it positive, negative, or somewhere in between, expected or unexpected, the biggest suprise of all is to realize you are still you. You can still think, you can still remember, you can still see, hear, move, reason wonder, feel, question, and tell jokes-if you wish.
You are still alive, very much alive. Actually, you're more alive after death than at any time since you were last born. Only the way of all this is different; different because you no longer wear a dense body to filter and amplify the various sensations you had once regarded as the only valid indicators of wat constitutes life. You had always been taught one has to wear a body to live.
If you expect to die when you die you will be disappointed.
The only thing dying does is help you release, slough off, and disgard the "jacket" you once wore (more commonly referred to as a body).
When you die you lose your body.
That's all there is to it.
Nothing else is lost.
You are not your body. It is just something you wear for a while, because living in the earthplane is infinitely more meaningful and more involved if you are encased in its trappings and subject to its rules.
There is a step-up of energy at the moment of death, an increase in speed as if you are suddenly vibrating faster than before.
Using as an analogy, this speed-up is comparable to having lived all your life at a certain radio frequency when all of a sudden someone or something comes along and flips the dial. That flip shifts you to another, higher wavelength. The original frequency where you once existed is still there. It did not change. Everything is still just the same as it was. Only you changed, only you speeded up to allow entry into the next radio frequency on the dial.
As is true with all radios and radio stations, there can be bleedovers or distortions or transmission signals due to interference patterns. These allow or force frequencies to coexist or comminlge for indefinte periods of time. Normally, most shifts up the dial are fast and efficient; but occasionally, one can run into interference, perhaps from a strong emotion, a sense of duty, or a need to fulfill a vow, or keep a promise. This interference could allow coexistence of frequencies for a few seconds, days, or even years (perhaps explainging hauntings); but, sooner or later, eventually, every given vibrational frequency will seek out or be nudged to where it belongs.
You fit your particular spot on the dial by your speed of vibration. You cannot coexist forever where you do not belong. Who can say how many spots there are on the dial or how many frequencies there are to inhabit? No one knows.
You shift frequencies in dying. You switch over to life on another wavelenth. You are still are a spot on teh dial but you move up or down a notch or two.
You don't die. You shift you consciousness and speed of vibration. That's all death is..a shift.
Time and space, as we know them, exist only on the earthplane. When you leave the earthplane, you leave such constraints.
There are realms and dimensions of existence without number, ranging from the slower, more dense vibrations of form to higher, finer streamers of nonenergetic currents. And there is more beyond that, realities that cannot be measured or described in the convivience of mathematics and mind-play.
Hell refers to levels of negative thought-forms that reside in close proximity to the earthplane. It is where we go to work out, or remain within our hangups, addictions, fears, guilts, angers, rage, regrets, self-pity, arrogance, or whatever else blocks us from the power of our own light. We stay in hell ( and there are many divisions to this vibratory level) for however long best serves our development. There is no condemnation here, only outworking of our own misjudgements, mistakes, misalignments, or misappropri- ations (what some people call sin). In hell, we have the opportunity to either revel in our folly or come to grips with the reality of consequences- that every action has a reaction, what is inflicted on another can be returned in kind. We experience the "flip side" of our despair or our demands, "living through" the extremes of whatever we dread. This is not a "punishment for our sins" but a confrontation with any distortion of our sense of values and priorites. We do not leave until we have changed our attitudes and perceptions.
Heaven is a term used to describe levels of positive thoughtfroms that reside in close proximity to the earthplane. It is where we go to recognize or enjoy our worth, talents abilities, joys, courage, generosity. caring, empathy, givingness, virtue, cheer, diligence, thoughtfulness, patience, loving kindness, or what ever else reveals the power of our own light. We stay in heaven ( and there are many divisions to this vibratory level) for however long best serves our development. There is a sense of benefit here, as if one has found one's true home and all is well (what some people call "recess", or a time of rewards). In heaven, we have the opportunity to asses our progress as a soul, to evalute pros and cons and outcomes, to remeber all truths including that of our REAL identity. We expereince the glory of love, and the power of forgiveness. This is not an end point, but rather, the realizaiton of our purpose in creation's story, how we fit, and what possibilities for future growth and learning exist. We do not leave until we are ready for our next advancement either in the world of form or beyond it.
Noone knows how vast creation is.. only that it has always been and will always be. Shapes and embodiments change and alter, substance is recycled, but existence exists, as does energy.
Existence is life, never ending and ongoing, forever and ever eternal. Yet its only true movement (without the distorion of time and space give) is expansion and contraction, as if the existence that exists were capable of breathing. What appears as a progression, a time-line or starts and stops and ever-changing variations, is but an overleaf, an illusion, that helps us to focus whatever spot on the dial we currently inhabit so we will accomplish what we set out to do (or at least have an opportunity to), and not be distracted by the Truth that undergirds reality.
Using television as an anology, the picture we enjoy seeing, the progression of a story line with characters acting out a script, is but a trick of perception. What exists, what is really there, is quite literally one electron at a time(with black and white, and three at a time with color) fired from the back of the television tube to the screen to be illuminated once it hits the screen as a tiny dot. The continuous barrage of electrons- turned-into-dots created the apperance of images as scanning lines (raster bars) roll from top to bottom separation information coming in (new dots) form information fading out (old dots). You just adjust tge vertical hold on your set, not to remove stange bars appearing in the picture, but to place all screen activity within the range of your own perceptual preference. A television picture tube is nothing more than a "gun" that fires electrons at a screen. Your mind connects the electrons/dots into the pictures you think you see, while it totaly ignores the true reality of what actually undergrids the operation. The way television operates, at least in our daily experience or it, is an illusion.
Existence is a lot like television. What exist, what really exists, can't be fathomed by how it appears to operate or what it seems to be
God is.
God is the one presence, the one power, the one force and source of all. There are no competitors to God, no reality existent outside of God. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. There is no place where God is not, simply because nothing exists without God.
God is neither a man nor a women nor a thing.
God is no one's father or mother or benefactor. These terms are used only to help us understand relationships-ours to God- not to establish a more human type of parentage. We use such terms as a matter of convenienve or because it is comforting to do so. We call ourselves Children of God because we do not know what else to call ourselves, and it seems as good a term as any to use. We are made in the image of God, not in the sense of physical apperance, but with respect to the power of our souls and the potential of our minds. God is Creator; we are co-creators. It would be more appropriate and more in line with Truth, if we called ourselves Extensions of God or, perhaps, Thoughts in the Mind of God. It would even be appropriate to use another name for God, like The Force, The One, The All, The Isness, The One Mind, The Source, or whatever conveys that sense of diety that is without limitation or boundary, beyond what can be comprehended.
While God is more than any name, protocol hierarchy, concept, or grandiosity could decribe or define; God truly is as near as our next breath- as close as our next thought. We are part of God and existent within God. A belief in separation, that we could possibly exist and have our being apart from God, is the only real sin. This belief is of our own making. God has not decreed sparation; this we did ourselves by our own perception that somehow, some way, we could transcend That Which Cannot Be Transcended.
God is not dependent on our belief, for our belief or disbelief in God does not affect God-only us.
God is not a member of any church or religion. It is the churches and religions that are members within the vastness and glory that is God. There is no one religion just as there is no "chosen" people of person, nor any single way of regarding what cannot be fully comprehended. We are all "Sons" of God in the sense that we are all souls of God's creation, without gender, without form, without nationality, complete and whole and perfect as we explore the never-endingness of God's wonderment. A spark from the essence of All God Is resides in each and every one of us as an unbreakable connection, that thread or cord that ensures we remain a part of That Which We Could Never Leave.
There splendorous joy of recognizing and acknowledging our specialness, our greatness, as creations of God and as co-creators with God, is akin to being engulfed by overwhelming floodtides of God's Glorious Love.
There is no sense of "crime and punishment" in God's Light, only the clear, complete and total knowing that you are loved unconditionaly and fully- right now and forever more.
Truth in this light, God's Light, is so powerful and so piercing, there is way you could lie, exaggerate, avoid, or deny what you have done with God's gift to you, the gift of an emobodied life in the earthplane replete with abundant opportunities to learn and develop and grow- be the best you can be. This gift, the earthlife God gives us, comes with a catch: We are to give the gift back.
We cannot keep the life we have on the earthplane, not our possesstions, or attachments or relationships. What we can keep is our memories and our feelings of what we have integrated into our heart of hearts from the experience of being here, plus the love we have shared with others. This that we can keep enriches God's expereince of us as well as enriching our expereince of ourselves and one another. How joyful this is depends on what we did about who we are.
Each gain or loss anyone makes affects everyone else to some degree. That's because we are connected, somehow, as sparks from the Mind of God. Everthing created either has a soul (independent power mass) or is capable of being ensouled(from out of the group power mass). Because human forms contain larger portions of a soul mass than many other types of form, they represent opportunities of greater diveristy, challange, and involvement. Yet even animals, minerals, plants, and planets, enfold degrees of ensoulment replete with intellegence, feeling and volition. Density of structure or shape may seem to deny this, but the creative fire is ever-present, nonetheless.
All souls are holy in God's Light, and all souls are loved.
And all souls have a purpose for their existence and a reason for being who or what they are. Whatever form a sould empowers "fits" in creation's story, for each soul has a job to do, a positon to fill in the greater scheme of things.
And all souls evolve. Nothing stays asit is because nothing is static, regardless of how "otherwise" conditions may appear to be.
Evolution is not restricted to linear progressions. It only seems so.
Thus the drama of creation's story is unbounded-neither limited by our perceptionof it, nor by our ability or lack of ability to comprehend it. This drama is as stupendous as it is terrifying, as awesome as it is wonderful, as miraculous as it is mysterious, as beautiful as it is the ultimate act of all- consuming love. To witness even a glimpse of such glory, to know The Real Truth of it, leaves a mark so deep and so prefound you are forever uplifted and transformed.
You return from your near-death experience knowing we affect each other because we are all part of each other, and that we affect all parts of creation because all parts of creation interweave and interrelate with all other parts. Any sense of aloneness or separation dissolves in The Light of such knowing.
We each matter. And we are each challenged to "wake up" and realize that we matter. Once we so awaken, our task is to act accordingly.
TO KNOW IS NOT ENOUGH. We must express that knowing. How we do that is up to us. Although we are each connected to the other and to all others, we are
individual in our choices, in the power of our will, and in the product or result or consequence of our ever having breathed a breath in the earthplane. The responsiblity we have for this totality of our beingness is as freeing and exciting as it is humbling. And it represents high adventure.
The greatest fear we have in living our out earth life in not what might happen to us, but what might be expected from us if we recognized who we are.
We glorify God just by existing.
Our mission or our purpose in life reveals itself as we go along. It is not something we have to know in advance; it is simply an urge of "rightness" we follow or associate with or are open to, when we are receptive enough.
Whatever brings us closer to God or wholeness is of value. And what does that for us is love, charity, patience, joy, faith, wisdom, knowledge, healing laughter, sharing, discipline, kindness, constructive effort, using our talents, lending a hand, giving a blessing, grace, forgiveness, meditation, prayer, respecting ourself, happiness, harmony, melody, the pleasure of satisfaction in a job well done.
Thus, what is positive and life-affirming is desirable.
Yet, negatives are not undesirable.
Fear is positive in that it protects us from harm. It fosters the gifts of caution and discernment and discernment and discrimination. Fear is only negative when we allow it to paralyze or cripple or restrict, suffocating us with "phantom enemies" of our own fread.
Anger is positve in that it motivates us and "sets the record straight." It fosters the gifts of creative force, drama, inner cleansing, and truth- telling. Anger is only negative when we allow our ego to let surface on its fiery currents whatever is repressed or suppressed within the inner depths of our own psyche.
Our priorites in life depend on the choices we make and what we empower by our presence and our personality. Literally, wherever we put our attention is where we put our power.
We walk by faith, not by sight.
We live by grace, not by effort.
We exist in love, not in time or space.
What I have just shared with you is a consensus of the countless messages that have emerged from near-death accounts. This offering, hopefully, will introduce you to a broader view of life and its living. No "gospel" is intended here; rather, a type of wisdom that simply "sings a new song" - from a chorus of millions.
Many experiencers say "Don't sweat the small stuff", and then they add, "It's all small stuff." (There's a lot of laughter among near-death survivers)
During my interviews I did ask some topical questions, just to see what responses I would get. On the question of suicide, nearly everyone said it was not an option-yet most were quick to say that artificial extensions of life were not necessarily desirable either. When I broached the subject of abortion, over three-fourths disapproved. They seemed to respect a woman's right to choose, but felt that through proper counseling and appropriate alternatives, a woman could find ways to respect and honor God's gift of life- whether the child was kept of given for adoption.
As you can see, experiencers usually support the "life urge"
And most claim that it is their thought, their attitudes, and their beliefs that are a major cause of any troubles they might have had in their lives. They come to emphasize personal responsibility over blame, conflict resolution over revenge, creative problem solving over dictatorial threats or demands. They diplay a greater tolerance for ambiguity and change.
They majority accept psychic ablities as soul abilities, feeling that these faculty extensions enliven their lives, save them time and money, and add a "grace note" to relationships. Sice science has established that 99 percent of the universe is either infra or ultra to our perceptions as humans, these psychic "extras" are regarded as a way to access more of the electromagnetic spectrum- a way to expand the range of what is typical.
It is true that near-death survivors smile often and give great hugs. Wouldn't you, if you were no longer controlled by the tyranny of time?