An Interview with Dr. P.M.H. Atwater

by Brent Raynes

Dr. P.M.H. Atwater is acclaimed for her ground-breaking studies into the near-death experience and its aftereffects. She is the author of such classics as The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Near- Death Experiences, Beyond the Light, Children of the New Millennium, The New Children and Near-Death Experiences, and Future Memory (which was just reviewed in our February issue). Atwater has also had three near-death experiences herself, and so besides being considered a thorough and meticulous researcher of these and a wide variety of other psychic states, Atwater reveals to us many fascinating facts and facets about her own life, who she is and what motivates her to embark upon this intriguing quest. Visit her website: http://www.cinemind.com/atwater Or try: www.pmhatwater.com

Editor: When I saw you at the ARE UFO Conference in early December 2005, and you were handing out information about your new book, Beyond The Indigo Children. I knew that I had seen your picture and read your name before, and I just recently saw that you had an article in Light of Consciousness magazine, the Winter 2005 issue (Volume 17, Number 3), entitled Children of the New Millenium, so it seems like we’ve got plenty of things that we can talk about.

P.M.H. Atwater: I have gotten around as a researcher and as an author since late 1978, and, of course, I had been into this kind of thing decades before that. But more appreciably, as a professional, since 1978.

Editor: Now your interest is actually based upon having had first-hand experiences?

P.M.H. Atwater: Right. All of my interest is based on first hand experience. So you’re going back to childhood?

Editor: Well, wherever the story starts.

P.M.H. Atwater: You’re going back to lots of activity (laughs).

Editor: I think that perhaps to understand where you’re at in your research now we should probably touch upon how you got into this. So it goes back to childhood, right?

P.M.H. Atwater: My interest in other worlds and in other realities began in childhood.

Editor: Was it like imaginary playmates or that sort of thing?

P.M.H Atwater: Well, some people would call it that. I could see eddies and whirls in the air and I could predict weather according to what I saw in the air. I could pick up a handful of dirt from a person’s property and I could tell you accurately what their health was based on what I felt from the dirt as I let if sift through my fingers. I was doing things like this all of the time because I could see the energy world and I knew what it meant, and I knew how to respond to it.

Fortunately, I had two very special people who were raising me that these kinds of responses did not bother. They simply allowed me to be who I was. They were a Norwegian couple. Their name was Sogn. They were an older couple and they just thought that I was a very attractive and interesting child and it just didn’t bother them at all that I was a little different from other children.

One of the things that I did as a child is that I would have tea parties with God. One particular day momma Sogn told me, years and years later, how a minister was visiting and the minister heard me talking to God from my bedroom. He tip-toed over to the door, it was ajar, and he listened. I was seated at a little table and I had little dishes and there were two chairs, and of course God was in the other chair. God had his dishes and all of this kind of thing, and I was carrying on a verbal conversation with God because I actually saw him. And the minister turned to mother Sogn and said, “You know, I really believe that she does see God!” (laughs)

That was really kind of funny. By the time I reached the first grade I was the only child in school who could hear numbers, see music and smell color, and that did not go over very well with my first grade teacher. In fact, I spent most of the first grade on a tall stool in front of the classroom, half way between her desk and the door. Sometimes I would even have to wear a tall conical hat that said “dunce” on it, as an example of a bad child who told lies.

My entire first-grade was a nightmare, and for a lot of different reasons. Not just because of this. But also because it was World War II and there had been Pearl Harbor and my walk to school was through many blocks of residential areas in Twin Falls, Idaho where I was a child and in those days, during the war effort, they gave people these decals, these very large, huge gold stars to put on their front room windows so that anyone could see them to show that someone in their home, in their family, had died in the war effort. So as I would walk to school each morning I would walk past all of these homes that had gold stars in the windows. And, you know, little kids know what’s going on. It’s not some imaginary thing. They know what those gold stars are, and I knew what those gold stars were, and this one particular morning when I was walking to school there were six new gold stars overnight in this one person’s window and I stood there in front of the home, on the sidewalk, and just sobbed.

You know Brent, I can’t remember one single morning of my entire first grade experience when I did not have to muffle my tears and quiet my shudders just to walk in my classroom door. So that on top of the fact that I was perceiving the world differently than other people turned my first grade experience into such a nightmare that it colored my entire life. It colored the way I raised my children, it colored my worldview from then on, and it wasn’t until I began my near- death research that I learned about synesthesia.

Synesthesia is called multiple sensing. It’s an elaboration or an alteration of the limbic system in the brain. It’s a physical thing where people get inputs, or stimuli comes in multiples. It’s like, for instance, if a person goes to buy a painting they might buy that painting because of how it sounds, not necessarily according to how it looks. So they’re getting multiples, and this is one of the things I noted in my research of near-death experiencers, is that after their experience they begin to receive stimuli in multiples, and that finding of mine has since, just this year, been validated, I think it was in February (2005), in a number of medical centers in Florida in clinical research that was conducted there. I was so thrilled because hardly anybody believed me in the near death crowd. Synesthesia is an aftereffect of near death states, and I said yes, yes, yes, and they said no, no, no, and now we have clinical verification that yes indeed it is a typical aftereffect of near death states. So we know that brain changes and nerve changes, changes to the nervous system and to the brain organ are occurring because of near death states. Because of the intensity of these states.

So these are the kinds of things, or at least some of the kinds of things that I was dealing with as a major impact when I was just 5 and 6 years old, that colored my entire life. These kind of perceptual differences were so difficult for me that by the time I reached the 6th grade and the 7th grade I became a child of rage. I was just so enraged at the world, at the way that I was treated. It’s like in the 1st grade, the only way that anybody treated me nicely was when I lied and the only time that I was punished was when I told the truth. And it took my concept of the world and just turned it upside down. By the time I reached the 6th grade I just ran out into Nature. Actually, before that. I just fled. Literally fled out into Nature, because, you know, Nature never lied to me. I could trust Nature. And that’s where I met the Spirit Keepers and the various kinds of elementals and spirit beings that are so much alive and so much a part of the natural world. It was these kinds of beings that enabled me to save my sanity. It was really a tough call for me. And it wasn’t until, oh gee, the 7th grade that there were several things that made a difference between me going to reform school, as a very hateful child, tied up or involved in crime, and being a more normal child interested in school and learning. The first thing that happened to me was that I looked in the mirror one day and I was all by myself, no one else was in the house, and I noticed how hateful I was. How incredibly hateful I was, and ugly, and I remember looking at that face in the mirror and saying out loud, “I’m going to change you. I don’t know how, but I’m going to change you.”

But you know that’s all it takes. It’s like the air hears you, and your soul, and your various guides and guardians or whoever is listening hears you and that’s all it takes and then things begin to happen step-by-step and one-by-one that enable you to achieve the goals that you set for yourself. And that then happened with me.

My stepfather, the only man that ever adopted me (I had five fathers and two mothers) and that I actually took on his name, was a police officer. He came into my life between the 3rd and 4th grades and he was a police officer, and he was very disturbed by the fact that witnesses to say an automobile accident would have different versions of what happened. So therefore he decided to train me to be an observer (laughs). And I kid you not. I’m a 9 year old kid and my dad, and I do call him dad, I just loved this man. It took me a long time to accept him, but when I did it was all the way. I mean, he was truly an angel. But this is the way that he would do it. We would be in downtown Twin Falls, Idaho, we would be going to what you and I would call the 5 and 10 cent stores, the dime stores, which is Newberrys and Woolworths, and those were a big deal in those days. You’d walk in and they didn’t stack shelves then, so that when you walked into these stores everything was at eye level and it was covered with glass, so I would be walking down the aisles and I’d see all of this glitter underneath that glass, and like any kid I would be just so struck by that glitter and just held by it, and my dad, always the same M.O., would grab me by the shoulders, twirl me around and look at me eyeball-to-eyeball and there would begin the checklist. He would say, “All right now, describe this man that just went by. What’s the color of his hair? What’s the color of his eyes? Is he wearing glasses or not? Describe his clothing. Describe his shoes. Is there a watch? Is there not a watch? Are there any distinguishing features?”

And so forth and so on.

He always scared me, until I really accepted this man and could love him. He was a fright for me. He scared the willies out of me. So when he would do this to me I mean it would just grab me. You know, “I’ve got to perform! I’ve got to perform! I can’t make a mistake! I don’t dare make a mistake!” This was serious stuff to me and he did this off-and-on for three years. We’d by crossing Shoshone and Main Street, in downtown Twin Falls, and we’d get just across the intersection and dad would grab me by the shoulders, twirl me around, eyeball-to-eyeball and he would say, “Now describe that woman that just went by,” and again the checklist. I never knew when he was going to do it.

So for three years I was harassed (laughs) by my father, trying to train me to be a detective, to be a police officer, to be a police investigator, and I learned to be that. And so when I actually started researching I used police investigative techniques as my protocol because that’s what I was raised doing, and you know, if I was not accurate, if I didn’t measure up to his criteria, I would either be told in no uncertain terms that I goofed or I flunked, or if he gave me a particular task or something to investigate, if the facts that I brought back were not exact he would just throw the whole thing in the wastebasket and say, “Go do it again.”

He would always say that if your facts don’t hold up in a court of law then they aren’t worth having. You have to toss them. So in looking back, after having done all of my work, I can’t honestly say that all of my work will hold up in a court of law. I can say that I did my best. I can say that a number of my findings are now being verified in clinical prospective studies, and so I really feel like I did a good job (laughs).

His words were always drumming in my ear. “I had to do the job and I had to do it right, and this is the way that you do it.” So therefore, I don’t have a lot of respect for questionnaire research. You know, questionnaire research is okay. I can see how that will indicate certain things, and imply certain things, and you can do statistical analysis of clinical research fairly easily. However, I was taught that you never use a word before the individual does, so at an accident all you can say to a person is “What happened?” “What did you see?” If the person says car then you can say car. If the person says crash then you can say crash. You can’t say car or crash before they do. Dad also taught me to do the observational work. That is to say, you have to watch the pupils of their eyes. You have to see if they’re getting larger or smaller. You have to watch how they walk. You have to watch what they’re doing with their body. In other words, you have to examine the dance we do, as human beings, and does that indicate honesty or are you kind of exaggerating a little bit or trying to impress people, or are you holding back. There are things that you look for, and dad taught me that. He said, “It’s never enough to just interview people. You must observe them. You must study them.” So that’s what I did. And you know, today’s medicine is based, at least 70 percent of it, on observational analysis. That’s what I do! And that’s who I am as a researcher. Some people call me the gum shoe of near death (laughs). I’m this kind of determined person that just goes around looking and watching and questioning and wondering.

Editor: Right, and you’ve investigated and interviewed hundreds of people now.

P.M.H. Atwater: Thousands! It’s close to 4000 now. Adults and children. It was hundreds about 1979 (laughs). You’re way behind!

Editor: As usual. Are these mostly children that you’ve interviewed?

P.M.H. Atwater: No, mostly adults. Most of my analysis, most of my charts that you’re going to find on my website, and I do my summary work in charts because it’s easy then for people to get things quickly, so on my website you would look for the eight flyers. That’s what I call them. So when you find these eight flyers you will find synopsis or in summary form some of the major discoveries that I have made as a researcher, and they’re based on 3000 adult cases and 277 childhood cases. But that is as of the late 1990s. Actually back to 1996, so there has been a lot more since then.

Editor: Do you have anything on there about this synesthesia?

P.M.H. Atwater: In most of my new books, I describe synesthesia.

Editor: You mentioned that people in near-death experiences describe this.

P.M.H. Atwater: Well, they exhibit it. They don’t necessarily describe it. They exhibit it. Remember I’m a looker. I’m observing, and one of the other things that distinguishes my work is that, whenever possible, I would get into the people’s homes and I would have the same kind of sessions with their significant others that I had with the experiencer. It’s not enough to talk with experiencers. You have to really consider the views of the spouses or the children or the girl friends or the boyfriends or the relatives or the healthcare provider, so on and so forth, because an experiencer will not necessarily see themselves clearly. So you really have to do this additional work and then what I would do, after I did all of that, is that I would take whatever findings that I made and I would go to different parts of the country, at different times, with different groups and different people, and test it out again, so all of my findings are based on at least five different test runs. I’m extremely thorough in my work.

Editor: Impressive. It sounds like you might be related to Sherlock Holmes.

P.M.H. Atwater: Sherlock Holmes, by the way, is someone that I admire. Intensely! (Laughs)

I enjoy a good Sherlock Holmes movie better than any of today’s detective stories. That was a good point on your part. That really fits me.

Editor: What sort of things would you look for with this? What we were talking about, how you’d see it since it’s not in their descriptions? How would you detect it in their body language or whatever?

P.M.H. Atwater: I’m watching how they drive a car. I’m watching how they walk. I’m watching how they sit down. I’m watching how they talk. I’m watching how they lift water to their lips. I’m especially watching how, when I’m talking to them, if someone else enters the room or walks by, does that change their response any? Does that change their body language any? And all of these things, all of these points that enable me to tell how much of what they’re saying is true, how much is exaggerated, and what that implies about the nervous system, what that implies about the brain and brain function, what that implies about their psychological make-up. Has it changed? If it has changed, to what degree has it changed. So I’m looking very deeply to see if there are physical changes, psychological changes, spiritual and emotional changes. I’m looking at the whole picture. I’m not just looking at one thing.

And I’m also looking at the experience itself. What about the episode that they’re describing to me? Is it symbolic? Is it real? How real is it? How intense is it? How does it impact them? What does that say? What do they think that says? What is their interpretation of what they went through and how does that compare with others?

You see, before I ever died, and I died three times in 1977, so I’m a near-death experiencer myself. I had three experiences in three months. So I can honestly say that 1977 wasn’t my year. (Laughs) I had two in January of that year and one in March, and then later that fall I had three major relapses, one of which was total adrenal failure, so when I say that 1977 was not my year I’m not joking (Laughs).

You know, this is what the public glosses over, or doesn’t seem to notice any more is that most near death cases come from trauma or violence. You know, people are saying, “Oh, I wish something like that would happen to me,” and I’m saying, “No you don’t.” You can get something similar to this from prayer and meditation and a life-time of spiritual discipline, or other different measures. You don’t have to go through this kind of sudden intensive awakening that really is traumatic. You really don’t have to go through that. It’s not necessary.

But for a decade before I ever had my experience, which is not true of the other researchers, I had been actively researching transformations of consciousness, altered states of consciousness, mystical states, and I had been doing it with people by the hundreds and thousands. It’s not an exaggeration at all to say that the kinds of people that I worked with or researched or experimented with back in the 1960s and early 1970s total the kinds of people I have seen since then and researched. So it’s easy for me to say 3000, 4000 people then, probably even more, and nearly 4000 now. So I have that kind of comparison that I can go back and forth with and say, for example, back in those days the only way that I could understand astrology is to take classes, and maybe years later become an astrologer, and then and then only could I say that I have some understanding of astrology. The only way that I could understand reincarnation was to go to hypnosis school and become a hypnotist and specialize in past life regressions and after I had done my stage work and hung up my shingle and became a professional in the field....After I had done that for five or six years then I could say yes I know something about reincarnation. I have a sense of it. The same way with psychokinesis, moving things with your mind. All of these things that we talk about I had to do them and become proficient in them or I couldn’t really understand them. In other words, the only way that I could understand something was to become it.

It was the same way with the first metaphysical book that I ever read, which was The Sleeping Prophet by Jess Stearn, and it was about Edgar Cayce, and I was a young mother at the time and I was working for the Idaho Department of Commerce and Development in the State House in downtown Boise, and I had never heard of any of this kind of stuff. None of it.

Someone gave me that book and said, “You ought to read this,” and I would read a couple of paragraphs, maybe a page, I kid you not, Brent, and then I would have to go to the state library and check out any books on the subject that I could find. I would have to talk to people. I would have to interview people, or I would have to set up in my mind experiments whereby I could actually do it before I could understand what they were talking about in the book.

So that’s the way that I read the book. It took me a whole year to read that book because I could only go a few pages at a time and then I would have to go do it, and then when I did it I could come back and read a few more paragraphs or a few more pages. So it took me a full year to read that book. Well, by the time I finished reading the book I had become the book. You see how that worked for me?

Editor: Right, you didn’t just read the book.

P.M.H. Atwater: I could never just read anything. I had to become it. It had to be in my fingers. It had to be in my mouth. I had to be able to taste it. It had to be like saliva and just ooze in between my teeth to be real for me. I couldn’t just dance with it in my mind.

Editor: Now after you’ve had your own near death experiences, after you had been researching them years before, and now it was real for you, was there anything different?

P.M.H. Atwater: Well, here’s what I can say as someone who had previously been researching altered states of consciousness before 1977, and all of the experiences that I had accrued, working with thousands of people. I had started up Inner Forum, Idaho’s first non-profit metaphysical corporation. I started up the first northwest speakers bureau for metaphysical speakers. I was publishing a newsletter called Inner Forum, like the name of the organization. I was bringing in speakers once or twice a month, so that the public could see what worked, what didn’t work, what was right, what wasn’t right, what held up in research, what didn’t hold up in research, so that they could make their own minds up themselves and not be that swayed by catchy books and best-selling paperbacks that were on the market. And when I set up Inner Forum I went around personally to the major churches in Boise, Idaho, told them what I was doing so that they would not be upset by Inner Forum and how it functioned in their city. Doing that turned out to be a very good move on my part because I did not have to face attacks from the community saying that what I was doing was the devil’s work. So I avoided all of that by taking those initial steps. So I have been very much involved, you see. Deeply involved in this kind of thing. Long before 1977.

I then reached a point in my own life, sort of like the dark night of the soul where things no longer made a lot of sense to me. I had done a lot, done a lot for others, but it just didn’t seem to be working for me in my personal life and with my family as well as I felt it ought to. And then I had my own near-death experiences in the early part of 1977, and to tell you the truth I had a feeling for months before they occurred...that particular feeling that people have sometimes. Sort of like I had done it all, although I certainly hadn’t, but I had come to that point in my own growth where I didn’t know where else to go and I had that feeling, that old axiom that when the student is ready the teacher will come. I just had that feeling that another teacher was going to enter my life that would take me to the next level. The next step in my spiritual growth. I was expecting a person and I got death instead, and that just wiped out everything, Brent. I can honestly say that my background only made two differences. It enabled me to exist without an ego (I didn’t need an ego and that didn’t bother me) and it enabled me to exist in very different and unusual and exotic environments without fear. So all of that previous training, and I had had a kundalini breakthrough, three of them, so I had done a lot of stuff. That was back in the middle ‘60s. I had my first kundalini breakthrough in 1966. That was a unitive consciousness and visions of past lives and other worlds. So I had done all of that, and prayer and meditation and yoga and psychokinesis. I could put something in my hand and tell it to roll over and it would roll over. I was also a ghost buster. I was doing that as well. I was doing all this kind of stuff.

But not just personally, but also in a very large way with the general public in helping them to begin their inner journey and to begin to develop that discernment where they could tell the genuine from the phoney. So again know that I had been doing that very actively and involving thousands of people before I ever died.

When I say that dying ripped everything away I mean that literally. To tell you how much was ripped away I could not make sense of anything in my environment, let alone in my world. I had to relearn how to stand, how to walk, how to crawl, how to climb stairs, how to tell the difference between right and left, how to rebuild all of my belief systems, how to see and hear properly. Once I was relatively human again, I was involved in day and night exercises just to be human again. Just to be able to function again. You know, a lot of people talk about heaven. As far as I’m concerned, heaven was that day in downtown Boise, Idaho when I could run a full block and there was no pain and I didn’t fall.

That was heaven.

I didn’t even recognize my own children. I didn’t know what motherhood was. I didn’t understand anything. So the way that I could bring that back I got into every class that you can imagine. I had been a prize winning cook, and I put myself back in beginning cooking. I had raised three kids and I put myself back in beginning home economics. I had been an astrologer for about a decade and put myself back in beginning astrology. I had taught meditation and put myself back in beginning meditation.

But with pots and pans, and I’m not exaggerating here, I sent off, to all of the major makers of pots and pans to get their metallurgical reports and their manufacturing specs, and when I got them I went to a downtown laboratory and had them tested, and on the basis of those tests I determined then what pots and pans I would use, and I threw away almost everything I had. I threw away everything that was aluminum, almost everything that was stainless steel that wasn’t bonded right or manufactured right. You get nickel poisoning from pans that are overly scratched inside, especially if they have copper on the outside. So I learned a lot about food. I learned a lot about everything. Bed sheets, pot and pans. I mean everything, and I had to just to live!

Editor: In your near-death experiences did you have any, what somebody might call the neat stuff like the tunnel?

P.M.H. Atwater: Let me correct you right here and right now about the so-called tunnel. Not that many people experience the tunnel. It is not a signature feature of near death states. In my research, less than one third of the people that I researched experienced the tunnel. In the first Gallup Poll study in 1982 only nine percent of the people reported tunnels. Tunnels did not become popular until the media sensationalized Raymond Moody’s book, and it was only then that people started talking about tunnels.

Editor: Okay. How about Dr. Melvin Morse.

P.M.H. Atwater: He came in, later on. I was one of the originals. Myself, Raymond Moody, Ken Ring, and Bruce Greyson, and I think there was one or two others. Mel didn’t come in until perhaps a decade later. Anyway it was sometime later.

Editor: Okay, well I was wondering something. From his studies, and I wondered how it compared with your thoughts on it, that when it comes to like out-of-body experiences he did a study and at first he thought if you’ve had an out-of-body experience then it’s probably comparable, but it wasn’t. He said that the one thing out of all of the images and things that people described was the white light that proved to be the transformative element that changed people.

P.M.H. Atwater: I can certainly appreciate that and I can certainly underscore that, but I would also say that the two major elements in most people’s near death states, adults and children, are out-of-body states and this incredibly brilliant light. Those are the most common.

There are a number of elements that are also common, and you can read about that on my website, especially in the article section.

And, by the way, there are distinctly three different kinds of lights that are experienced by people, not just this white light. The white light is just one of them. There are three. One is the primary light. It seems to have no color except that it is intensely, awesomely, almost piercingly radiant. It’s a very, very radiant, strong light. Then there’s the dark light, or the black light, and that is described as being very warm and very knowing and very healing. And then there is this white light, and that is described as being more loving, a very loving and strikingly uplifting light.

You know, when you get with kids they have a very wonderful way of putting this all in context, and the kids call the primary light God’s Light and they call the black or dark light Mother Light, and they call the white or very luminescent kind of gold/silver light, they call that Father Light. And they’re very clear that the Father Light and the Mother Light are aspects or part of God’s Light, and that God’s Light is the main light.

Editor: When you say black light that is?

P.M.H. Atwater: A lot of people have black light experiences. Especially children.

Editor: Now this is actually a light that’s dark?

P.M.H. Atwater: It’s a light that’s dark or black. Some describe it as having purple tinges to it, kind of a purplish black light. Other people just say it’s a dark light. You get this light a lot more in cases with children, but you get a number of them also with adults, and there’s something very exquisite about this light. The kids call it “the darkness that knows,” and there’s something very knowing and wise and protective and healing about this light. A lot of people that report healings either during or after their experience talk about the dark light that did the healing.

I go into that in-depth in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Near Death Experiences and also The New Children and Near Death Experiences.

Editor: Well, I guess that we’ve just about covered everything. Basically. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

P.M.H. Atwater: Well, what I’d like to briefly add here is that the reason that I became a researcher, and a passionate one I might add, is because of my third near death experience. I reached the realm that we call the realm of all knowing. A lot of people reach that realm. I am certainly not exceptional in that regard. It is where all the puzzle pieces of life are revealed to you and you understand the why of things.

Editor: And then you come back and forget?

P.M.H. Atwater: (Laughs) Yeah, most of them forget it. I was one of those who brought it all back. But while I was there the inner workings of creation and consciousness was revealed to me and most of what was revealed to me, that I wrote down, is in my book, Future Memory. It’s in a particular chapter entitled The Thought That Stirred. Then after this was revealed to me I heard a voice speak. With my background I was very familiar with angel voices, guides and guardians, spiritual beings, and all of these kinds of voices. This voice wasn’t like that. This was a voice like every molecule and cell in the universe just sort of got up and saluted, and my sense was that this voice was of God, and that voice said to me, and I quote: “Test revelation. You are to do the research. One book for each death.” End of quote.

Book number one was not named. Books two and three were named. By the way, Future Memory is book two. It was named by this voice. I was shown what was to be in each book, but not how to do the work.

So I came back to do this research. That’s why I am alive today. To do the research. Then I reached back to what I was taught as a child by my police officer father. Police investigative techniques, and that became my protocol, and I have been doing this work now for almost three decades.

During this time I have averaged a six day work week, usually right around ten hours a day.

Editor: So it’s keeping you busy.

P.M.H. Atwater: When I say that I am thorough and when I say that I am intensely involved in doing the work, I am not exaggerating. I am that kind of person to begin with and that’s the kind of job that I was given. It’s only been since last year that I have been able to let up a little bit because I was told then that my work was completed, in the sense that my field work was completed. During all of this time that I was working on the near death experience I was also researching children in general because I kept noticing differences that began to build over time certain characteristics that were not part of the human family. At least not part of research on the human family as a whole, and then I was finally able to put that into a book and that then is the book that came out this past September called Beyond The Indigo Children, The New Children, and The Coming of the Fifth World.

Editor: When you say not of the human family what do you mean?

P.M.H. Atwater: We as human beings. The human family. You and me. All of us.

Editor: Okay, I thought you were saying not of the human family.

P.M.H. Atwater: Not as recorded as being typical of the human family. So I was able to finally put all of my research together and say what is false and what is true about the different catch phrases that are now out, about the different claims now being made about the new children, and go in-depth about what is happening, or seems to be happening with the human family, which I truly feel is evolution in our time. I truly feel that a quantum leap is happening in the evolution of our species, if you want to call it that. In that book, I detail that both objectively through research, my own and others, and through a study of mystical tradition and prophecy. So all of that is in the book, and there’s an expose chapter about this Indigo stuff and the Indigo stuff is really hype. It is an exaggeration of truth. Not an honoring of it. It is being used for publicity and marketing. It is really the selling of our children and it is really too bad. Editor: Okay, so there is mystery there but you’ve got to be discerning.

P.M.H. Atwater: Oh, you’ve got to be real discerning, and you’ve got to look at the research. Now the characteristics are true, but the labels are not. This stuff about Indigos and crystals and sky and stars and cosmic and psychic...if you look at the characteristics those are true, most of them, not all of them, but most of them. But the labels don’t hold water at all. Most of these kids do not have an Indigo aura, and I could go on and on.

Editor: Okay. So they need to read the book.

P.M.H. Atwater: Well, you could also look in the article section on my website. I’ve got a number of articles about it.

I rather suspect that this interview has been very broad ranging. Perhaps it will enable your readers to get to know me a little bit better, as an individual, and what motivates me and why I do what I do.

Editor: Okay. How many books have you written now?

P.M.H. Atwater: I’ve written seven books about my findings on near death states. I’ve written one book about the new children. I’ve written two books about Goddess Runes (they’re both out- of-print) and there are 5 or 6 other e-books on my website.

Editor: And what about the Goddess Runes?

P.M.H. Atwater: The first one was called The Magical Language of Runes and the second one was called Goddess Runes, and they’re not about the oracle runes that have become so popular. They’re about the much older Matriarchal runes called Goddess Runes. They are casting runes. They are not oracle runes. You can only use them as a group and you can only use them in free form casting. There are no formats or lay-outs. So it’s an entirely different type of rune use. It’s much more detailed and much more fun. It’s easier to catch on. I’m in the process now of trying to bring back the one book, called Goddess Runes. There is material on my website about Goddess Runes and articles on it, so that you can get a better understanding of what they are and how they function.