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THE THREE VERY DIFFERENT TYPES
OF SUBJECTIVE LIGHT

P.M.H.Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) P. O. Box 7691 Charlottesville, VA 22906-7691

As a researcher of near-death states, I can assure you that any type
of near-death experience can be life changing.

But as an experiencer, I can positively affirm that being bathed in
The Light on the other side of death is more than life changing. That
light is the very essence, the heart and soul, the all-consuming consumma-
tion of ecstatic ecstasy. It is a million suns of compressed love dissol-
ving everything unto itself, annihilating thought and cell, vaporizing hu-
manness and history, into the one great brilliance of all that is and all
that ever was and all that ever will be.

You know it's God.

No one has to tell you.

You know.

You can no longer believe in God, for belief implies doubt. There is
no more doubt. None. You now know God. And you know that you know. And
you're never the same again.

And you know who you are. . . a child of God, a cell in The Greater
Body, an extension of The One Force, an expression from The One Mind. No
more can you forget your identity, or deny or ignore or pretend it away.

There is One, and you are of The One.

One.

The Light does this to you.

It cradles your soul in the heart of its pulsebeat and fills you with
loveshine. And you melt away as the "you" you think you are, reforming as
the "YOU" you really are, and you are reborn because at last you "remem-
ber."

Although not everyone speaks of God when they return from death's door
as I have here, the majority do. And almost to a person they begin to make
references to oneness, allness, isness, beingness, the directive presence
behind and within and beyond all things.

Down through the ages this kind of knowledge has been termed enlight-
enment - literally a waking up to light, an illumination of light, a reuni-
fication with The Light. And there are groups, isms and schisms, that de-
cree how one can reach such a state of enlightened knowingness. The rules
are many, the pathways numerous, yet the goal is always the same. . . re-
union with the source of your being, God.

I John 1:5 in the Christian Bible says: "This then is the message
which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in
him is no darkness at all."

The July 20, 1998 issue of Newsweek Magazine, and specifically the ar-
ticle "SCIENCE FINDS GOD" by Sharon Begley, continues this line of thought
and then makes a surprising statement (found on page 51 of Newsweek):

"Take the difficult Christian concept of Jesus as both
fully divine and fully human. It turns out that this duality
has a parallel in quantum physics. In the early years of this
century, physicists discovered that entities thought of as
particles, like electrons, can also act as waves. And light,
considered a wave, can in some experiments act like a barrage
of particles. The orthodox interpretation of this strange
situation is that light is, simultaneously, wave and particle.
Electrons are simultaneously waves and particles. Which as
-pect of light one sees, which face an electron turns to a hu-
man observer, varies with the circumstances."

Light, then, as science has discovered, is both a wave and a particle.
What form or type of light is seen alters relative to the situation.

I have found that subjective light (present in meditation, otherworld
journeys, near-death experiences, and visions), behaves in a fashion simi-
lar to that of physical light. While cross-checking my original work with
child experiencers of near-death states for the book "CHILDREN OF THE NEW
MILLENNIUM" [1], I also re-examined the presence of light internal to us.

Maybe subjective experiences are not "light" experiences after all.

I've see this before with adult experiencers, but it is more pronounc-
ed with kids, and that is. . . experiencers can have dark episodes as well
as bright ones. They can sometimes be bathed in "dark light" as opposed to
brilliant light. And the kids who had the dark experiences spoke of "The
Darkness That Knows" with the same love and affection as they talked about
Home, their real Home, Homey-Home, the place where God is, where they were
before they had a body and where they will return once their body falls
away. Dark to these youngsters is safety; it is love.

Many of the young in my research project gave details of being cradled
in a womb-like darkness so purple-black that it shimmered, so silent that
it knew all things, so peaceful and wonderful and bliss-filled and perfect
that we adults would have named it "heaven" - yet it was devoid of light.

And, the most compelling, evidential cases of genius that I found,
those without genetic markers which could explain the phenomenon, came from
child experiencers between birth and the age of fifteen months who had
near-death states that involved THE DARKNESS THAT KNOWS. Overall, of the
277 cases in my study (age range: birth to fifteen years; two-third of
them under the age of seven), the children most apt to display high IQs af-
terward were the ones who either snuggled into the depths of darkness during
their episode, or who were enveloped by a "dark light," rather than any
degree of brightness [2].

Of the four kinds of near-death states I have identified (Initial, Un-
pleasant and/or Hell-like, Pleasant and/or Heaven-like, and Transcendent
explained in "BEYOND THE LIGHT" [3]), seventy-six percent of the child ex-
periencers in my study had the Initial-type of episode. Briefly, the Ini-
tial near-death experience covers only about one to three elements - things
like: the loving nothingness, the living dark, a friendly voice, a short
visitation of some kind, or perhaps a quick out-of-body experience. Twenty
percent of the 3,000 plus adults I have interviewed also had this kind of
scenario. Those who experienced "the living dark," be they child or adult,
described it as "safe haven," a comfortable place that was peaceful, lov-
ing; a state of goodness and expectancy. The only experiencers, regardless
of age, who reacted negatively to any darkness they faced were those who
went on to describe the fearful or hellish scenarios of unpleasant, dis-
tressing near-death episodes. Thus, the majority of the ones I have inves-
tigated respond to "darkness" and "dark light" in a positive manner.

When I reconsidered all of the work I have done since 1978 as concerns
near-death studies, I came to this conclusion: there are clearly three
very different types of subjective light near-death experiencers describe
regardless of how old they were when their episode occurred. How I would
classify these inner manifestations of light and light imagery is addressed
in this chart:

THE THREE TYPES OF SUBJECTIVE LIGHT
___________________________________________________________________________
Type Color Function
___________________________________________________________________________

Primary Light Colorless A pulsating presence or luminosity
usually perceived as frighteningly
awesome, a piercing power, raw
essence; the origin of all origins.

Dark Light Pure black A shimmering peaceful depth
yet often with usually perceived as "The Darkness
velvety tinges That Knows," a source of strength
of dark purple and knowing, sanctuary ;
the womb of creation.

Bright Light The range of A brilliant radiance usually
yellow-gold perceived as an almost blinding
white glow that emanates unconditional
love, a warm inviting intelligence,
union; the activity of Truth.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Each of these three lights is consistently referred to, regardless of
the individual, as more real than the physical light on earth and more
powerful than any source humankind could harness - including the sun's rays
and "zero-point" energy (the "stuff" of the universe; untapped
electromagnetic energy).
__________________________________________________________________________________

Joe Ann Van Gelder, one of the subjects in my study, had nine near
death experiences as a child, the first occurred when she was fifteen
months old and because of a drowning. She had eight more by the time she
was ten, precipitated by such conditions as malaria, automobile accidents,
burst appendix, electrical shock, surgeries, polio, and additional bouts
with drowning. It was the first one, though, that impacted her the most.
It involved "the living dark." She displayed an unusually high intelli-
gence immediately after, which surprised everyone including her parents.

I received a letter from her not long ago where she questioned just
what that special darkness she encountered as an infant might have been.
She offered the idea that perhaps it was some formless mode of pure con
-sciousness, as no thoughts or feelings were present within it - only the
existence of awareness, the bliss of knowingness. She asked, "When death
comes near the young, do they in fact merge back into the Oneness we call
by various names God, from which they've so recently come?" Even though
Van Gelder has no explanation for the darkness that once cradled her, she
is convinced that it has something to do with a type of consciousness that
interacts with creation and created matter.

The life of Walter Russell, a famous artist, genius, and mystic, was
radically altered by numerous transcendental states, the first a near-death like
episode, where, at seven years of age, he was playing marbles with a group of
boys, suddenly got up and walked into the light. This experience prepared him
in advance for the financial disaster his family would soon suffer. By 1881,
when only ten, Russell was pulled from school and sent to work. Within a few
years he was entirely self-supporting and self-educated, earning his own way
through five years of art school. He experienced a full Transcendent type
of scenario when he succumbed to "black diphtheria" at the age of fourteen, and
claimed to have discovered the secret of healing as a result. He described what
happened to him as having entered into ¿atonementî with God. These two
experiences while still a youngster set the stage for dramatic periods of
illumination that would occur every seven years throughout the rest of his life.

Russell excelled in whatever he turned a hand to, and won lasting
friendships and lucrative art commissions. He had a studio in Carnegie
Hall in New York City, became a commissioned sculptor for President and
Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a long-time friend of Mark Twain, and
painted and sculpted Thomas Edison. His motto was "Mediocrity is self-in
-flicted. Genius is self-bestowed."

When forty-nine, he suddenly was enveloped within the fullness of what
he called "Cosmic Consciousness." This state lasted for thirty-nine days
and nights without abating. Afterward, Russell recorded that: "My person
-al reaction to this great happening left me wholly Mind, with but slight
awareness of my electric body. During practically all of the time, I felt
that my body was not a part of me but attached to my Consciousness by elec-
tric threads of light. When I had to use my body in such acts as writing
in words the essence of God's Message, it was extremely difficult to bring
my body back under control." (His family seriously considered committing
him to a psychiatric institution because of this, as they feared he had had
a mental breakdown.)

Once he regained use of his faculties, however, Russell penned "THE
DIVINE ILIAD," the story of his illumination and the source for his book
"THE SECRET OF LIGHT." He then spent the next six years producing "THE
UNIVERSAL ONE," a text containing the drawings and revelations given to him
during his lengthy experience - about the universe and how it worked, and
covering such subjects as chemistry, physics, and electromagnetics. A cor-
respondence with Albert Einstein advanced his own theory that this is a
"thought-wave" universe created for the transmission of thought [4].

Russell had experienced the substance of the universe as mind and con
-sciousness as mind aware of itself. His illumination revealed light as
primary intelligence, all-knowing and all-powerful, and what is termed
"light" as but a mere reflection of what is primary. He saw dark light as
the manifestation of electricity's negative charge, functioning in the cre-
ative role of "mother-light;" and bright light as the presence of the posi-
tive charge that to him was directive in the sense of a "father-light." He
came to know that all things proceed from The Primary Light's reflection of
Itself in dark and bright waves of motion (manifestation's duo-nature).

What Walter Russell described so many years ago corresponds with pre-
sent-day offerings from near-death experiencers about their own encounters
on The Other Side of Death's Curtain, especially in regards to the type of
light that either engulfed them or that they witnessed - a light that to
them was totally and physically real and varied by degree of "charge."

Of intrigue are these observations I was able to make about the effect
of the three very different types of subjective light: Primary Light fos-
tered exceptionally deep mystical knowings in people afterward and seemed
to engender more radical changes in their sense of reality and life's pur-
pose than with others. Dark Light gently reassured those it touched and
left them with a sense of being nurtured and supported while at the same
time linked to larger evolutionary processes. Those who reported Bright
Light, though, displayed a broad range of visibly heightened abilities and
an unusual sensitivity to sound, sunshine, pharmaceuticals, and anything
electrically based.

In reference to the "electrical sensitivity" component, I was able to
show with a questionnaire I used in the book "BEYOND THE LIGHT" that the
presence of electrical sensitivity can be traced, not to the experiencer's
length of exposure to the brightness subjective light can produce, but spe-
cifically to the intensity of that experience. In other words, it didn't
seem to matter how much light filled an individual's scenario or what type,
or whether he or she merged with that light. What mattered was how Power-
fully and deeply it was felt, even if for but a brief period of time.

Curiously, if either adult or child experiencer challenged the angels,
God, or religious-type figures that appeared during his or her scenario,
asking "Is that what you really look like," to a person, the image would
dissolve into light or suddenly burst into a massive sun-like sphere. But,
again, irrespective of image or imagery, initial feelings or sensations,
what mattered most, what made the biggest difference afterwards was the in
-tensity of what was experienced. And, the spread of aftereffects, all of
them, can be traced to the impact of that intensity.

The aftereffects, as profiled in "BEYOND THE LIGHT," suggest that
near-death states can engender what may well be a brain shift - a structur-
al, chemical, and functionary change in the brain. I examined this possi-
bility in the research report, "Brain Shift/Spirit Shift: A Theoretical
Model Using Research on Near-Death States to Explore the Transformation of
Consciousness" (available from me personally or via my website at www.
pmhatwater.com [5]). Be the numerous connections that can be
made between the aftereffects and the intensity of what occurs in near
death episodes, and what that seems to imply, I have come to regard the im-
pact felt from such an experience as far more significant than who or what
an individual meets on The Other Side of Death's Curtain.
It seems to me, based on my research, that a sudden charge of energy
or voltage current must be present. Such a "charge" mimics lightning in
the way and manner of its manifestation. The rendering that follows com-
pares "lightflashes" in the natural world with those that seem to occur
when consciousness transforms:

* In the evolution of the natural world, to equalize pressure differences
between clouds in a thunderstorm and polarity of soil in the ground,
descending bolts of electricity (from the clouds) and ascending bolts
of electricity (from the earth) meet to create a huge lightflash (ex-
ternal explosion/lightning), which stabilizes environmental integrity
while stimulating plant growth through the creation of nitrogen com-
pounds.

* In the evolution of human consciousness, to equalize pressure differ
-ences between latent spiritual potentiality and mundane personality
development, descending currents of force (possibly from the soul
level, Higher Self, God) and ascending currents of force (perhaps from
time/space ego states, lower self, personality level) meet to create a
powerful lightflash (internal implosion/illumination), which stabi-
lizes and balances individual bodymind integrity while stimulating hu-
man growth through the expansion and enhancement of consciousness.

Think about what this might mean. Whether external to us or internal
-ly, either an explosion or implosion of light occurs if opposing forms
energy suddenly converge. This releases pressure or radiation to such a
degree that some form of nourishment or growth results.
Enlightenment by its very definition means an experience of light that
imparts knowledge and information for the expansion of human consciousness
and the evolution of the human family.
What makes us think that this experience is only symbolic? Or merely
a shift of attitudes? Or a product of wishful thinking?
The Aramaic word NOOHRA means "light," "enlightenment," and "under
standing." Noohra or "light" in many passages of the Christian Bible re-
fers to God, His Word, or a true teaching. But it also connotes "innate
knowledge," as if the Old Testament prophets understood that the world of
matter was endowed from its very beginnings with the power of inner light
(a good reference for this is the book, "LET THERE BE LIGHT: THE SEVEN
KEYS," by Rocco A. Errico, D.D. [6]).

My research findings indicate that we can no longer assume that dark
experiences and the presence of darkness are always a sign of evil or un-
pleasantness, and that the imagery found in transformational states is ac-
tually secondary in importance to the intensity of the episode.

True, imagery is important: the landscape of heaven or hell, the be
-ings encountered, the indication of rewards or punishment to follow, the
messages and revelations given. Yet the real determiner of significance
for impact and aftereffects is the depth of feelings and emotions involved.

This underscores what I have been saying for twenty-plus years: the
main indicator of whether or not a person on the edge of death experiences
a near-death state is most likely the extent to which the limbic system in
the brain is either accelerated or decelerated. And what controls limbic
response? A power source we can neither isolate nor measure, because we
don't know how.

I have come to regard the "light" and "light imagery" of near-death
states and otherworld journeys as but the reflected image of a power surge
as it registers upon or imprints the consciousness of the one who experi-
ences it. In other words, what is perceived as light, regardless of what
type of light, may well be the outpicturing of the activation of evolution
-ary mechanisms that are part of our birthright as human beings. I suspect
that we are all "programmed" for such growth and we will advance in this
manner whenever and as often as needed.
___________________________________________________________________________

1. "CHILDREN OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM," P.M.H.Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) New York,
NY; Three Rivers Press, 1999 (a softcover).

2. For details about how I do research, access my website at www.cinemind.
com/atwater and read the article "An Explanation of My Research
Methodology."

3. "BEYOND THE LIGHT," P.M.H.Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) Hardcover - Birch Lane
Press, New York City, 1994; paperback - Avon Books, New York
City, 1995.

4. "THE DIVINE ILIAD," "THE SECRET OF LIGHT," and "THE UNIVERSAL ONE,"
plus many other books by Walter Russell and his one true love,
Lao, are still available from the University of Science and
Philosophy, P. O. Box 520, Waynesboro, VA 22980; 1-800-882
LOVE or (540) 942-5161; FAX 540-942-8705; website www.
philosophy.org Inquire about Glenn Clark's biography of
Walter entitled, "THE MAN WHO TAPPED THE SECRETS OF THE UNI
VERSE."

5. Phase II of the research report, "BRAIN SHIFT/SPIRIT SHIFT: A THEORET-
ICAL MODEL USING RESEARCH ON NEAR-DEATH STATES TO EXPLORE THE
TRANSFORMATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS," is available over my website
or from me personally. Refer to Footnote #2 for addresses.

6. "LET THERE BE LIGHT: THE SEVEN KEYS," Rocco A. Errico, DD Marina
del Rey, CA; Devorss Company, 1985. To further explore the
work of Errico and his mentor, George N. Lamsa (the man who
singlehandedly translated the Christian Bible from its original
sources), contact: Noohra Foundation, 720 Paularino Avenue,
Suite 210, Costa Mesa, CA 92626; (714) 754-4186.

_______________________________________________________________________________
P.M.H.Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) has been researching near-death states since 1978,
and is the author of six mainstream and five self-published books.
For details of her work, access her website at www.cinemind.com/
atwater or ask for a free brochure (enclose stamped, self-addressed
envelope). Write: YOU CAN Change Your Life, P. O. Box 7691,
Charlottesville, VA 22906-7691.
_______________________________________________________________________________

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THE THREE VERY DIFFERENT TYPES OF SUBJECTIVE LIGHT

THE THREE VERY DIFFERENT TYPES
OF SUBJECTIVE LIGHT