mysticism
"The Bigness of Forever"
(a personal sharing)
Dr. Atwater retires in 2010 from active research in the field of near-death studies, having completed her 10th and last book on the subject - one that she promises will be controversial and surprising. She reflects on the 33 years she has spent doing this work, and on the 10 years previous to that that she spent studying and experimenting with altered states of consciousness, mysticism, psychic phenomena, and the transformative process. She has had a long walk on the edge of death beginning with the specter of Pearl Harbor, growing up in a police station as a cop's kid, a previous marriage to a crop duster pilot, having a child who constantly asked "Am I going to die now Mommy?," to dying herself, not once but three times in 1977. She has been faced throughout her life in seeing "through" what seems real to joining in the truth of what is real. . . the bigness of forever.