Divine Encounters Episode 095 | Near-Death Experience Story
Dr. PMH Atwater says she died three times in three months, and that after the third a voice she describes as the universe itself told her to do the research. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari about those experiences, a life review that showed her what every thought and every footstep does to the world, and how she quit a bank job to chase rainbows. The conversation explores the void, the eternal now and why she believes we are here to learn.
Key Takeaways
- PMH says she died three times in three months, twice in early January and once in March, and spent a year relearning how to function.
- She describes a voice so big it was like the universe talking, asking her to research, with one book for each death.
- In her first experience, she says she rose out of her body, bumped into a light bulb, and watched her thoughts appear as ink blots in the air.
- She says her life review included the effect of every thought and her mere vibration on the air, water, plants and people.
- She describes the void as completely dark yet carrying a slight wiggle, like jello just before it settles, from which creation comes.
- She says a physicist’s talk on the eternal now matched what she saw, and that she got well right away.
- She says the lesson she carries is that we are here to learn, and that she did not talk about her experience for decades.
| Guest | Dr. PMH Atwater |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 095 |
| What she says happened | Three deaths in three months, two in early January and one in March |
| Where she says she went | Above her body, into a life review, the void, and an experience of creation |
| Who she met | A voice she says was like the universe itself |
| What followed | A year of relearning, three books and decades of research |
| The message | A manual for developing humans; we are here to learn |
| Mentioned in the title | The number 4,000 refers to her research; it is not discussed in this part of the conversation |
Three Deaths in Three Months
Alex asks his usual first question, and PMH answers directly. She says she died three times in three months, on January 2, on January 4, and again in March, which she believes was around the 23rd. Later that fall she had three major relapses.
How does she put it into words? She had to relearn how to crawl, how to stand, how to walk. She had to relearn the difference between left and right, how to see properly and hear properly, and rebuild her belief systems. She mentions, briefly, that she was also assaulted at that time, in addition to pregnancy difficulties and loss, and she does not dwell on it. She says each experience was long, complex and different.
The Voice and a Task of Three Books
In the third experience, she says, a voice spoke. She calls it the voice, like none other. It was not a guide, not a guardian, not an archangel. It was so big, she says, it was like the universe itself talking to her. It told her she was to do the research, one book for each death.
Book one was not named. Book two is Future Memory, which she describes not as a book but as a labyrinth. Every sentence, paragraph and page is part of the mathematics she was given. You read it as you would walk a labyrinth, staying on the path, and she says its purpose is to bring your consciousness to the next highest level possible for you at that time. If you skip around, she says, you will think she wrote a dumb book.
A Manual for Developing Humans
The third book, she says, is “a manual for developing humans” and it is fun. She asks, “who of us are ever taught how to be a human being?” In school we learn plenty, but no one teaches us how to be human.
She points to an old idea that Hu was the sign or voice of God, so human means man God, woman God. A manual for developing humans, she says, is meant to help you become the human being you were born to be, a co-creator with the Creator. That is who we are, she says, and what we are here for.
The First Death: Into the Heavens and a Light Bulb
Her first experience came on a bathroom floor, in pain so bad that she says she rose up into the heavens. She screamed and heard her voice echo throughout them. Looking down, she saw her body on the floor. She kept bumping into a light bulb, which in her case was the light, and could not figure out why. For how others describe leaving the body, see our complete guide to near-death experiences.
Then blobs appeared, like ink blots, as though every thought she thought released one into the air. She did not like them. Soon she was jerked back into her body like a rubber band let go, entering through the top of the head, where a baby’s soft spot is, and pulled back to her toes. “You’re much bigger on the other side than you are on this side,” she says, so you have to squeeze to get back in.
A Police Station Childhood
She was still bleeding and could not understand why, so she went to bed, stuffed herself with pillows and blankets, and went back to sleep. She says she can always sleep. She is a cop’s kid, raised in a police station, and her window in Twin Falls, Idaho looked onto a field the police used as a gunnery range. She never heard a shot, and did not believe her father when he told her.
Eventually she decided to see a doctor, and the drive of five or six blocks felt endless. She says the head nurse screamed when she saw her, and that the doctor, in her telling, was unkind. He gave her a shot she says her records showed she could not take, and sent her home. She says the minute she walked in the door, the hemorrhaging stopped, like a faucet. The pain began, especially in her right leg. She is not recommending anything here; she is simply telling what she says happened.
The Second Death in the Dining Room
The next morning her daughter shook her awake, asking whether to call her office. PMH could not go in. Her right thigh was crimson. In those days the only phone was a wall phone in the kitchen, so she began to crawl from the bedroom through the living room and dining room, very painfully. She made it as far as the dining room and, she says, died.
She floated up from her body, and lots of incredible things happened. She was able to see, think and create on the other side. She had a life review, an experience of creation, and an experience of the void.
A Life Review That Included Every Thought
Her review, she says, included not only what she did but the result of every thought she had ever thought, on the environment, on other people, on the world. It included the vibration of her merely being on Earth and what it caused in the air, the water, the ground and the plants. She had to hold the full weight of having existed in the earth plane. See our glossary entry on the life review.
That, to her, was hell, in the sense that nobody had ever told her “every thought you think, goes out and has a life of its own.” Nobody told her that her vibration, wherever she walked, affects the rocks, the plants and the air. It was a shock.
The Void and the Wiggle of Creation
She describes the void as completely dark black, with nothing there, and yet a vibration. She compares it to turning out a jello mold onto a plate, just as you begin to touch it, when there is a wiggle. That wiggle, a sense of movement that is not quite movement, is, she says, what all creation comes from. It was, she says, fantastic.
If the idea of consciousness underlying everything interests you, our glossary has a short entry on consciousness.
The Third Death and Her Orders
The third experience was when she met the voice and was told to do this work. She was not told how, or how long it would take. The only method she could think of was police investigative techniques, because she had been raised in a police station and knew the techniques of the 1940s.
When she became reasonably human again, which took a year, something helped her discover who and what she was. In November, when she was not getting well, her doctor and friends decided she should go to a symposium in Seattle. She says the doctor got up at 5:30 in the morning to give her a shot of medicine so she could be driven there.
The Eternal Now on a Giant Screen
The first speaker was Dr. William Tiller, a physicist at Stanford, whose talk was about the eternal now. He believed everything is simultaneous. At the end, on a screen she describes as five or six stories tall, he flashed a drawing of what the eternal now looks like in physics.
It was exactly what she had seen in her third near-death experience. She jumped up, ran out to the foyer, collapsed, and cried and cried. I’m not crazy, she thought. He knows about it. From that moment, she says, she got well right away.
Chasing Rainbows
In 1978, she says, she walked out on her life on the very day she was to become a bank executive, a title women rarely received in those days. She told her boss, “I’m going to chase rainbows.” Her boss went white. At four that morning, her boss had been awakened by a dream, and told her own boss she would have to replace PMH.
She sold her home and everything she had. Her children went their own ways: her son to a Coast Guard path after a cruise school aboard a square rigger, her oldest daughter to a drafting job at an architectural firm, and her youngest to live with her father. PMH went to the Pacific to watch the sunset silver over the ocean, crossed the United States fulfilling childhood dreams, and ended up in the Washington, DC area watching the sun rise golden over the Atlantic.
A Warning, a Long Silence and the Research
She began telling her story, including in a large room at a police station. A woman came up with stars in her eyes and said, “Oh, I wish something would happen like that to me.” PMH was horrified. She wondered if she had misled her, and says the woman seemed to think she should die as PMH had. For decades afterward, PMH never spoke of her own experience again. That, she says, is when she began the research.
Researchers have studied these experiences for a long time. In a well-known 2001 study in The Lancet, Pim van Lommel and colleagues reported that 62 of 344 cardiac arrest survivors, about 18 percent, described a near-death experience. PMH’s work is a different kind: years of listening to individual accounts. Her wider point, she says, is simple.
We Are Here to Learn
Asked about meaning, PMH says it will be different for different people. “I would say we’re here to learn.” She also points out that there are many ways, such as meditation, to learn more about your own soul and spirituality, and that no one should think they need to die to begin.
That caution is worth keeping. Her story is hers. The invitation she leaves us with is to learn who we are while we are here.
Questions to Sit With
- PMH says nobody told her that every thought has a life of its own. What kind of thoughts do you want to send out today?
- She says she was never taught how to be a human being. What would a manual for you contain?
- She quit her job on the day it would have paid off. What are you being called to leave, or to chase?
Choose one recurring thought this week and, each time it appears, silently replace it with one kind sentence. Notice how the day feels.
Spiritual Takeaways
- PMH says every thought and every footstep affects the world around us.
- She says we are much bigger than our bodies.
- She describes the void as dark and still but alive with a subtle movement from which creation comes.
- She says we are here to be co-creators with the Creator.
- She says we are here to learn, and that there are many ways to learn about the soul without needing to die.
Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. PMH Atwater.
Guest Links: Connect With Dr. PMH Atwater
- Dr. PMH Atwater’s official site
- Dr. PMH Atwater on Facebook
- Dr. PMH Atwater on Twitter
- Dr. PMH Atwater on YouTube
- Full conversation with Dr. PMH Atwater
Listen to the Episode
- Watch this episode ad-free on Next Level Soul TV
- Download the MP3
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Dr. PMH Atwater?
Dr. PMH Atwater is a near-death experiencer and researcher who says she died three times in three months and was told by a voice to research the experience. She speaks with Alex Ferrari on Divine Encounters.
What happened in PMH’s first experience?
She says she rose out of her body into the heavens, bumped into a light bulb, saw her thoughts as ink blots and was jerked back into her body like a rubber band.
What was the voice PMH heard?
She says it was not a guide, guardian or archangel. It was so big it was like the universe itself talking to her, and it told her to do the research.
What is Future Memory?
She says it is the second of her three books, written as a labyrinth, so that reading it is like walking a path and raising your consciousness to the next level possible for you.
What does PMH mean by a manual for developing humans?
She means a guide to becoming the human being you were born to be, a co-creator with the Creator.
What did PMH learn in her life review?
She says it included the effect of every thought and her mere vibration on the air, water, ground, plants and people. She calls it hell because nobody had told her thoughts go out and have a life of their own.
What is the void in her account?
She says it is completely dark and still but carries a subtle wiggle, like jello just before it settles, from which all creation comes.
Who was Dr. William Tiller?
PMH says he was a Stanford physicist whose talk on the eternal now showed a graph exactly like what she saw in her third experience, which she says helped her recover.
Why did PMH stop talking about her experience?
She says a woman told her she wished something like that would happen to her, which horrified PMH because she did not want to encourage anyone to die. She did not speak of it again for decades.
Is PMH’s story proof of an afterlife?
Next Level Soul shares near-death experiences as personal accounts in the guest’s own words. Researchers continue to study and debate them, and nothing here is medical advice or a medical claim.
Keep Exploring
- The complete guide to near-death experiences
- What a life review is
- A short entry on consciousness
- Dr. Jeffrey Long on what thousands of near-death accounts share
- Janice Holden on research into near-death experiences
- Dr. Raymond Moody on naming the near-death experience
- Dr. Jeffery Mishlove on karma, reincarnation and consciousness
- William J. Peters on a life review and what he learned
- Browse more free masterclasses and the Divine Encounters podcast.
Follow Along with the Transcript
Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.
Dr. PMH Atwater 0:08
I died three times in three months, January two, January four, March, I think it was March 23 something like that. And then later that fall, I had three major relapses. Oh, how can I put it into words? I had to relearn how to crawl, how to stand, how to walk, how to tell the difference between left and right, how to see properly, hear properly, and rebuild all my belief systems. I was raped. It was because of difficulties with the pregnancy, the three deaths, you know, from their miscarriage, and they were all long and complex. Each was different. And the third one, mainly this voice spoke, I call it the voice, like none other. It was not a guide, it was not a guardian, and it's not an archangel. It was none of that stuff. It was a voice so big. It's like the universe itself talking to me. And that voice said, test revelation. You are to do the research one book for each death. Book one was not named. Books two and three were named. Book Two is future memory. If you haven't read that book yet, you need to do it. It because it's not a book. It is a labyrinth. Every sentence, every paragraph, every page, is part of the mathematics I was given and used to create the labyrinth. So therefore, you read through it like you would walk through a real labyrinth. You can't skip read or, you know, you'll think I wrote a dumb book. In other words, you stay on the path and the purpose of future memory. The book is to bring your consciousness up to the next highest level possible for you at that time. And the third book was a manual for developing humans. It's a fun book. You know, who of us are ever taught how to be a human being. I mean, Lord, in the first grade, what do you learn when you go to kindergarten? What do you learn? Where you go the sixth grade? What do you learn? Who teaches us how to be a human being? And you know, several, you know, 1500 years ago, 2000 years ago. I don't know how long, long ago, people used hue for the sign of God, for the voice of God. Hugh was God. So human was God, man God woman. So it's literal. A manual for developing humans is to help you to be the human being you are that you were born to be, to be a co creator, with the Creator. I mean, that's who we are, that's what we are, that's what we're here for. Death number one, I ran to the bathroom, and I boarded on the toilet, and the pain was so bad that I rose up, I swear, into the heavens itself. And I was screaming at the heavens, and I heard my voice echo throughout the heavens itself. When I looked down, I saw my body all bloody on the floor. I'm a neat Nick because it's all messy, but I kept bumping into the light bulb. And in my case, in my first one, the light was the light bulb, and I kept bumping into the light bulb, and I couldn't figure out why I was bumping into the bulb. And then there, there came, like blobs, like every thought I thought issued a blob in the air, like ink blots, and I couldn't figure out what they were, and I didn't like them. And so pretty soon, I found myself jerked back into my body, literally jerk, you know, you know, you got a rubber band, and you're stretching out, and then you let go, and wham. And I entered through the top of the head where your font nail is, you know, and your baby, and pulled back into my body, back to my toes. You're much bigger on the other side than you are on this side, so you have to squeeze to get back in. While I was still bleeding, and I couldn't figure out why, so I went to bed and stuffed myself with as many pillows and blankets as I could and went back to sleep. I can always sleep. I'm a cop's kid. I was raised in a police station. They used the field outside of my window in Twin Falls, Idaho as their gunnery range. And I never ever heard them. I never believed my dad that they were shooting guns out there, because I never heard one when I when I go to sleep, that's it gone. So, you know, that was not unusual for me. Then it finally occurred to me that maybe I ought to go to a doctor. To the best of my ability, I got in my car, and it took, oh, it took me, seemed like, for forever, to drive, like, maybe five or six blocks to the doctor's office. And when I walked in the door, the head nurse was there, and. She screamed. She said, I looked like that. I had died. So she rushed me under the doctor. Told him everything that happened, and all he did was laugh. He said, here you are in this condition at your age, and all we do is laugh, which wasn't very kind. So he gave me a shot in the right thigh vein, which if he would have read my records, he would have known I couldn't take the shot and sent me home. And it took me almost long to get home as to get there, and the minute I walked in the door, the bleeding stopped. The hemorrhaging stopped, like you turn a faucet and it's gone, but the pain began, especially the right leg, and I thought, Well, I'm just gonna go back to bed again. So I went back to bed again and instantly asleep and didn't wake up till the next morning, when my daughter was shaking me and saying, you know, should I call the office? You can't come back to work? And I said, Yes, call them. Tell them I can't come my legs are lots of pillows propped way high. And that's the first time I ever looked at my leg, right leg, right thigh, and it was crimson red. I just couldn't figure out what it was or what was going on. So I decided to call for help. We had a reg style house in those days. You didn't have you know what you have now, all we had was a wall phone in the kitchen. That's it, period, end of story. So I began to crawl from my bedroom, through the living room, through the dining room to get to the wall phone in the kitchen, and it took me forever to crawl, because very, very painful. And I made it as far as the dining room and and I died. I just I died, and I floated up from my body. And lots and lots of things happened. Incredible things happen, being able to see, thought, create, things on the other side, I had a life review. I had I had an experience with creation, I had an experience with the void, and then I had the life review. And in my case, that life review included not only what I did, but the result of every thought I had ever thought, on the environment, on other people, on the world at large, plus my just being in the earth world, of the vibration of my being here, what the causality of that was with the air, with the water, with the ground, with the plans, so I had to hold the stalt of my ever having existed in the earth plane. And that, to me, was hell in the sense that nobody ever told me that every, every thought you think, goes out and has a life of its own. Nobody ever taught me that. Nobody ever taught me that my my my vibration, just being in the world, wherever I walked, changes the world, or affects the world, or has an effect on the rocks, the plants, you know, everything, the air. Nobody ever told me that and that, to me, was a shock. You know, many, many things happened, being very much in the void and realizing what the void was. You know, the idea that there's nothing in the void. There's absolutely it's completely dark black. There's nothing there, but there is a vibration. It's very similar to when you're when you're making jello, and you've just flopped the jello out of the dish onto a plate, and just as you begin to touch that jello on the plate, you're almost to the job. There's this happening that this sense, this wiggle, and it's that wiggle that is responsible for creation. It's that sense of movement, movement, but not movement that all creation comes from. It was just fantastic. And my third one, that was when I met the voice. That's when I was told to do this work, I was not told how to do it or how long it would take me. And the only way I could think of where I could do this kind of work this research was to use police investigative techniques, because that's what I knew. I was raised in a police station. I knew police investigative techniques. That's the techniques back in the 40s, so when I was reasonably human, which took a year, lots of things involved with that, what really helped me to be to discover who and what I really what was, was in November, when I wasn't getting well, the doctor. Was concerned, and my friends were concerned. So they decided together that I should be taken up to Seattle, Washington, to the mind miraculous symposium, and that would help me. And that's exactly what happened. Can you believe a doctor to get up at 530 in the morning to give his patient, you know, a shot in the arm, and lots of you know, medicine so I could be trucked up. But that's what happened. And went to the mind miraculous symposium. And the first speaker, Dr William tiller, physicist at Stanford, his talk was the eternal Now, and he believed that everything was simultaneous. Everything at the end of his talk, there was this great, huge, giant screen, maybe five, six stories tall, I mean, huge screen. And on that screen, he flashed up his drawing, his graph of what the eternal Now looks like in physics, how you can draw that in physics? And it was the exact same thing I saw in my third near death experience, exact. And I jumped up from that chair and ran out into the foyer and collapsed, and I just cried and cried and cried. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. He sought to he knows about it. I'm not crazy. And from that moment on, I got well right away. And in 1978 I just walked out on my life. I did on the very day I was to become a bank executive. You know, in those days, women didn't become bank executives, but on the very day that I could have a bank title, I quit my job. I'm supposed to have a an appointment with my boss. I did. I was there, and I told my boss, sorry, but I'm quitting my job and I'm going to chase rainbows. And my boss went white. She said, sit down. Don't say another word. My boss very, very logical. Wow, logical. And at four o'clock that morning, she had been awakened by a very unusual dream when she went to her boss and said to him, I'm going to have to replace me because I was going to chase rainbows. That's not fair. You knew before I did. I didn't know till nine that morning. She knew it four in the morning, so I just sold my home, sold everything I had. My children decided to go elsewhere. My son then was off taking a cruise school aboard a square rigger and in the Atlantic Ocean, and decided to join the Coast Guard. My oldest daughter decided to be a drafter at a large architectural firm. My youngest daughter decided to leave and go live with her father. And so all of a sudden, they were gone, and then I was gone, and I went first to the Pacific Ocean to watch the sunset silver over the Pacific. And then I crossed the United States, fulfilling all my childhood dreams and wishes. Wound up in the DC area, watching the sun rise golden over the Atlantic. And that's when I began and I began telling my story, of course, at a police station, they had a very large police station, and one room was before the public. So I told my story, and the frightful thing that happened to me was I was over, a woman came up to me with stars in her eyes, and she said, Oh, I wish something would happen like that to me, so I could do it too. Did I do something to mislead her meditation or the other different ways it can learn more about your own soul and spirituality. But she was thinking that she should die because I did, and it just horrified me that I never talked about my own near death experience again for, oh, decades. That's when I started to do the research. No matter what I'm doing, no matter where I am, it'll be different for different people. But if we're going to look at it as you are attempting To, I would say we're here to learn.
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