152. Near-Death Experience After Effects Key to Understanding NDEs, Say Researcher P.M.H. Atwater

Summary: Long-time NDE researchers and author P.M.H. Atwater reveals what she’s learned from the nearly 4,000 near-death experieners she’s studied. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with NDE researcher and author, P.M.H. Atwater.  During the interview Atwater discusses the after-effects associated with NDEs: Alex Tsakiris: Once we accept that near-death experience science overwhelmingly suggests that consciousness, in some way that we don’t understand, survives bodily death, I think you make a very good point about looking beyond NDEs at the broad range of spiritual experiences and trying to somehow understanding how they all fit together. PMH Atwater: What I always look for is the pattern of after-effects, how that affects the individual’s life, how long-lasting is that, how that affects the lives of others. It’s always the after-effects. I spend a lot of time in the book on after-effects, both with adults and children. On the physiological end, there are definitive changes to the brain/mind assembly, to the nervous system, to the digestive system, and skin sensitivity. P.M.H. Atwater's Website Play It: Download MP3 (39:00 min.) Read It: We’re joined today by NDE researcher and NDE experiencer, PMH Atwater. PMH, thanks for joining me today on Skeptiko. PMH Atwater: It’s my privilege. Alex Tsakiris: A lot of folks will recognize your name. You’re certainly one of the leading NDE researchers and have been for a long time. You have a new book out called, Near-Death Experiences: The Rest of the Story. I want to talk about that book but I first want to talk about a couple other things. Let’s start with a little bit of background. I was amazed, I guess, in just the sheer number of NDE accounts that you’ve carefully recorded in your research. It’s over 4,000. Is that correct? PMH Atwater: Nearly 4,000. Alex Tsakiris: These are pretty in-depth, careful interviews that you do with these people. PMH Atwater: They’re not just interviews. I want to be clear about that. I call it “having sessions,” because I don’t ask interview questions. I say very little, that is to say to lead the person on and to telling me whatever they want to tell me. But then I spend a lot of time watching them and studying them as they speak. If anybody walks by, does that change their tone or what they’re saying? If a loved one is near, does that alter their response in any way? So I’m doing a lot of observation work. Alex Tsakiris: Yeah, that’s fascinating. It’s obviously a very wise methodology to follow and I’m glad that you’re explaining how careful you are in doing that. I guess even that becomes so complicated because there are two aspects of this. There’s the aspect that this is a profound spiritual experience for a lot of folks, this near-death experience. But the other aspect of it is that I think a lot of folks, as you explain in your book, feel some very mixed feelings about coming out and being public about this because they know that there’s still a certain stigma attached with talking about such a strange experience. So I have even more appreciation for this careful process you go through in working with these folks. PMH Atwater: Yeah, well, just call me obsessed. [Laughs] Yeah, it’s a magnificent obsession, I guess. My husband calls me “the monk in the monastery.” My office is in the basement of our home so when I go over my data and think and what-have-you, I am the monk in the monastery. I am. I truly am. I will not know what time of day it is, who I am, who you are; all I’ll know is what I’m doing. I have that kind of a laser focus. Alex Tsakiris: Well, that’s going to make it even more intriguing to dip into this article that recently came out and caught my attention. It was a rebuttal, a reply that you wrote to an article that appeared in a Scientific American. The title of the article, written by this guy named Steven Chu, who--by the way,