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"ANOTHER LOOK..." is an ongoing column I write for Vital Signs Newsletter, a quarterly publication of the International Association For Near-Death Studies. Each segment will appear here from now on, as well as in the Newsletter. This new feature gives me a format with which to explore varied issues about near-death states. Should you wish to make a comment or want to suggest future topics, please feel free to contact me. I may be able to use your suggestions directly. Thank you. P.M.H. Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.)
P.M.H.Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.) P. O. Box 7691 Charlottesville, VA 22906-7691
© 1998 P.M.H.Atwater, L.H.D., Ph.D. (Hon.)
I began my research in 1978 after meeting Elisabeth Kubler-Ross at O'Hare Airport in Chicago and finding out during our long conversation (her plane was late) that what I had been through was universal in occurrence and pattern, and that it had a name, "the near-death experience." My time with Elisabeth was a beginning, engendering more questions than it did answers, but at least it gave me direction - something I didn't have before. Within months I was having sessions with other experiencers as myself, intently observing their every move and nuance of language as they described what happened to them, and was still happening. Seeing myself reflected in their eyes, hearing my story repeated from their lips, was as sobering as it was instructive. Three years later Kenneth Ring telephoned to say that he had heard about what I was doing and could we talk. We did. The rest is history.
Throughout my nineteen years of research, I have always cross-compared whatever I found with discoveries I made during the sixties and early seventies when I interviewed people actively engaged in spiritual awakenings and transformations of consciousness. If you include this prior effort, I have spent thirty years investigating "otherworld journeys" and the impact they have on individuals, families, communities. Coming from this broader background, I want to tackle a subject crucial to the positive integration of the near-death experience, and that is. . . psychic ability.
Fact: if you weren't psychic before your near-death experience, you become so afterward. If you were psychic before, you become even more so. Attempts to disprove this have only strengthened the mountain of evidence supporting it.
I speak to this fact in every book I have ever written and I'm doing so once again, for it is that important.
Child experiencers face the same superstition adults experiencers do: if you're psychic, you're considered possessed of the devil. Scientific types believe in essentially the same admonition although their jargon differs: if you can't put it under a microscope, it doesn't exist. Wrong on both counts!
It matters not whether you term that which seems to be paranormal as "psychic" or "intuitive" or "gifts of the spirit," the ability is the same differing only by intent of usage and how described.
From the earliest days of my near-death research, I recognized that the phenomenon seems to somehow enhance, enlarge, and expand whatever potentials and characteristics were present in the individual beforehand. This "across-the-board" expansion encompasses most of the aftereffects, but especially the emergence of psychic abilities. Actually, psychic abilities are more akin to enlargements of one's perceptual range of the electromagnetic spectrum and the extension of faculties normal to us, than any type of anomaly, fantasy, or curse.
It is possible to extend and broaden our five faculties of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell to embrace psychic dimensions (beyond reliance on physical form), and collective/spiritual realms (grander realities, the larger view). Since the average person is only aware of 1/60th of what goes on around him or her, these extensions are advantageous and enriching, enabling individuals to circumvent whatever factors may seem to limit the knowledge and wisdom they can access. I consider faculty extensions to be quite practical and easily learned or refined via classes, how-to-books, or as a result of the desire to do so and the will to try.
I would define faculty extensions as follows (notice what happens to what we commonly label intuition and perception once our everyday faculties extend and broaden):
FACULTY EXTENSIONS
| Collective and/or Physical Faculty | Psychic Extension | Spiritual Extension |
| See/Sight | See without use of eyes; research term - "clairvoyance" | Vision |
| Hear/Sound | Hear without presence of sound; research term - "clairaudience" | Music |
| Feel/Touch | Feel, or have an effect on an object, without touching; research term - "psychokinesis" | Art |
| Taste/Flavor | Flavor without use of taste buds; research term - "clairgustation" | Discrimination |
| Smell/Scent | Odor without use of nose, research term - "clairolfaction" | Integrity |
| Sense/ Intuition | Aware without or in advance of recognition;research term - "clairsentience" | Grace |
| Perceive/ Perception | Apprehend without or in advance of physical stimuli; research term - "precognition" | Knowing |
The "flowering" of psychic abilities is usually quite unexpected for near-death survivors, which, I believe, accounts for why so many experiencers have difficulty handling them. The power of social and religious "taboos," however, may be the greater stumbling block. I suspect, though, that psychic abilities are simply the outworking of limbic enhancements in the brain/mind assembly and have nothing to do with anything "mysterious" or paranormal.
It is typical after reviving from death to continue to see manifestations from
The Other Side, have out-of-body experiences, know who's on the phone before
it rings, "live" the future before it occurs, "see through" people's
motives, communicate freely with the varied "voices" of nature, and
so forth. None of this is unusual, or a sign of mental instability.
Psychic abilities, like latent talents, surface readily when one's consciousness alters in spiritual development. The same is true with near-death states. Once you recognize this and commit to harnessing and refining these abilities, your life becomes more positive, efficient, easier, and fun - not to mention, colorful.
Truly, the psychic is the gift of spirit and the poetry of consciousness.
We are enriched beyond measure by its presence.
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