P.M.H. Atwater: It's as if I have lived many lives in this lifetime. Each one seems to have had a certain phase and then it would end and something very different would begin. So I haven't had that kind of flow except in the sense of the way my mind worked and what drove me. The flow was more inner rather than outer. I was born before World War II, so it very much patterned my early years. I was very much part of that energy. I lived in a city in Idaho, Twin Falls, and walked maybe eight blocks to school, a long way to walk to first grade. In the windows of the homes I passed were these little flags with stars on them representing family members who were in the military. From time to time, the blue stars were replaced with gold ones. I knew that meant that in those households, somebody had died in the war effort. The trail I walked was literally a trail of death because there was hardly a home that didn't have a gold star in it. I remember this one morning, overnight there were six new gold stars in one person's window. I stopped on the street, just staring at that and sobbing. By the time I got to school, I was a basket case. I could hardly go through the day because I was so upset.

On a Saturday morning I would go to the movies to watch the cartoon and all the different features for kids, and always there was a newsreel. There were films of Hitler and the Nazis. Many times, my mother would take me to the library where my job was to roll a little fuzz around a stick to make Q-Tips for our soldiers, and mother would make bandages. Every week there was an air raid drill in which all the lights in the house had to remain off. The air raid warden would come to your door, and if you even lit a match you were fined.

You would go to the grocery store, and it seemed like everything was rationed. You would always bring your produce from your victory garden and while you were at the grocery store, you would can it. You would buy what few things were on the shelves but mainly, you would pay for the metal and the electricity and the time it took to can your own food so you could take it home. That's how I grew up, and that's what filled my moments.

I spent a lot of time out of doors. I had to, because it was the only thing that made any sense to me. The reason for that is another thing that had a tremendous impact on me as a child. That, again, is when I was in the first grade. For me, the first grade was a real life passage. I wound up being the only child in school who could see music, hear numbers and smell color. So I spent most of the first grade on a tall stool in front of the class, halfway between the teacher's desk and that place where the blackboards made a corner near the door. Many times, I would have to wear a tall, conical hat that said DUNCE on it as an example of a bad child who told lies. That's what I was accused of by my first grade teacher. First grade for me was one long, horrendous nightmare. The only time I was ever punished was when I told the truth and the only time I was ever praised was when I told a lie. It took my concept of the earth plane and turned it upside down. I could not even depend on the sensory input I would get by extending my hand and putting it on the table, because if I would tell people what I got from that sensory input, I would be accused of lying. Therefore, I couldn't trust my own sensory interpretation input.. I could trust neither myself nor the world nor the people around me. So I literally fled into nature, because nature never lied to me. Nature was always kind to me, always supportive. I could see the nature spirits. I could see all the different beings and the eddies and streams in the air. I could accurately tell the weather that was coming by studying the air patterns in the sky. I could go to someone's house as a little kid and pick up the soil and let it sift through my fingers and tell you the health of the person who lived in that house and I was always accurate.

I was doing these kinds of things all the time because I didn't know any different. This was my life; this was what I depended on. I couldn't depend on my schoolteachers or the people who raised me. My mother had many lovers and many husbands, and I was illegitimate. In those days, this was a big thing. That was huge . . . it wasn't like it is today; it was like a curse. She went through lover after lover, husband after husband before she finally settled down and married a man that she stayed with and had two more children. She's now been with him over 50 years and it's a wonderful marriage. I think the man is an angel incarnate. He's wonderful. I can't say enough good things about him. But until she got to that man, my life wasn't anything I could depend on.

Mama Sogn and Daddy Sogn [SAWN]-- Norwegian -- were living in Twin Falls, Idaho. They had come from the central states to become part owners of a clothing store. The man died just before the contract could be signed and the heirs refused to honor it. So they were stuck without a job or anything else. They had once been extremely wealthy and lost all their money in the big Crash. They were these magnificently refined, wonderful people who suddenly were at the same level as everybody else, having to scratch for a living. They didn't go to church . . . to them, church was in their heart, God was in their heart. They used the Bible as their guidesource and always read it before they went to bed. They lived their faith. A gypsy fortune teller lived next door to Mama Sogn for a few months. Mama Sogn always had tea in the afternoon and one day the woman came over and they had tea. They didn't have teabags in those days, so after they had tea, the gypsy said, "Let me read your tea leaves." Mama Sogn handed her her cup. The gypsy said, "I see two things. The daughter that you have always prayed for but couldn't have will come to you in the middle of a rainstorm and the job your husband needs will come to him when he least expects it and he will work there until he can work no more."

One day when I was two months old, my mother left me in someone else's care and was walking the streets of downtown Twin Falls. It was raining and storming. She leaned against a street lamp and just stood there crying. Daddy Sogn happened by and said hello to this lovely young woman. He said to her, "Why are you crying?" In those days, if you didn't have a place to live, you were in a whole lot of trouble. There weren?t any motels and there was hardly any lodging. Where my mother was staying had a rule: if you had children or a baby, you had to leave. Well, mother had this baby and she had no place to go, no money, no family, nothing. They were going to kick her out on the streets with her little baby. In those days, you didn't have street people. She didn't know what to do and was standing there crying when Daddy Sogn saw her. He said to her, "My wife loves children and our two sons are grown.. You can rent one of our empty back bedrooms and my wife will take care of your daughter." That?s how I got into the hands of the Sogns.

The Sogns raised me. I was four years old before I was told that Mama Sogn and Daddy Sogn were not my parents. My crib was in their bedroom and when the storms came and fear came, I could always run to their bed. I thought Mama Sogn was my mother and this lovely young woman who went back and forth interested me, but I had no love for her. Mother took me back when she married a man when I was in first grade. That marriage lasted a year and I went was back to the Sogns and then she ran off with this guy and literally kidnapped me. Then back with the Sogns, then she married again and . . . it was yo-yo-hood. I had five or six fathers including Daddy Sogn.

I had to find my own truth myself. I couldn't trust teachers or relative and friends, so I became this very independent, almost obsessive driven little kid because I wanted to know what the world was and what I was. I found out later on that I was born with dyslexia. In those days, no one had heard of that, and because of all the problems I had in first grade I became a stutterer. I couldn't read, I couldn't talk, and by the time I was in third grade and my mother had married this fellow Kenneth E. Johnston and I was with her, we lived on the lip of Rock Creek Canyon just outside of Twin Falls, so my companions were my playground. That's where I met the Spirit Keepers, but that's another story. I taught myself how to read and talk.

By the time I was in sixth grade I was so filled with rage at the world -- and I don't mean anger, I mean rage -- I was so hateful that I was twisted; I was beginning to distort. Three things happened that turned me around. The first one happened on a Saturday. I had been living with the Sogns and my mother was taking me back and forth.

These three things happened in a row. I must have been in seventh grade by then, the first year of junior high. It was a Saturday and I was alone in the house where I was living with my mother again. I hated the woman with a passion. I remember looking into the mirror and seeing how my face was twisted with hate. I remember saying out loud to my face in the mirror, "I don't know how to change you but I'm going to change you." And you know, that's all you have to do. It's like the universe is just waiting for you to make some kind of gesture. The next thing that happened was that I had turned into a shoplifter. My stepfather, the only one who adopted me, was a police officer, so this was extremely embarrassing for him. The people at the different stores knew who I was and they knew who he was. So they didn't do anything to me, they went to my dad and put him on the spot and the police chief then put him on the spot. Together, they decided they would call in the Sogns. It was all arranged and I didn't know anything about what was going to happen. On Saturday morning when I was taken in to see Mother Sogn, I was sitting at the far end of the dining room on a sofa and Mama Sogn was seated at her desk with a huge Bible in front of her; it was so gigantic that it almost filled the desktop. Her fingers were pointing to a passage in the Bible and she was crying. She never said one word, she just cried. She and Daddy Sogn were the only people in the world that I loved and that I knew loved me, so I wanted to know what was upsetting her. I tiptoed over to her and looked over her shoulder. Her finger was pointing to that Commandment that says, Thou shalt not steal. She didn't have to say a word. I never stole again, I never lied again, I never cheated again from that moment on.

I was the worst student you could possibly imagine. I was flunking every year in school. The third thing that happened was, I had a mathematics teacher that I'll never forget. He was a football coach and hated teaching math. He had an interesting way of giving out grades. Most of his grades came from special math projects. The first paper to get to his desk with the right answers to a test got an A+, the second one an A, the third one an A-, the fourth one a B+ and so forth. It was all based on speed and how fast you could get to his desk. The catch was that unexpectedly, without you knowing it, he would call on you and you'd have to stand up in front of the class and tell everybody how you got your answers. I got straight A+'s, the first time in my life I ever got a decent grade. Sure enough, that day came when I had to stand before the whole class and tell them how I got my answers. Well . . . you know, numbers were friends of mine. They had personalities and they had smell and color and they had life and were characters. So I talked about what I did with my number friends – I told him and the class that we'd do half of this and jump over that and do all these funny, wonderful things in the air and that's how I got my answers. I described it fully. I can still see that man's face. His face turned white and his jaw dropped and for a while, he couldn't think of anything to say. Then he kind of shrugged his shoulders and color started to return to his skin. He said, "Well, I didn't teach you anything like that, but as long as you get the right answers, just keep doing it" and turned and walked away. From that moment, my grades picked up and I graduated an honor student. (laughs) See how things can happen? That was my early years, scrambled and odd.

There was one other thing that was major that had a lot to do with what I became. My dad, Kenneth L. Johnston -- and I call him Dad because I do love him. It took me years, but before that love came, he frightened me. Of course, he's a police officer, and he was very frustrated because while there were witnesses at accident scenes, each one would have a different report or a different description of the scene. It bothered him no end. So he had this way of raising me: say we would be in the five and dime to buy something. In those days, everything was at eye level with glass over it. I walked in the door with him to shop, agog at all the glitter, looking around the way that kids do, and suddenly -- there would never be any warning, but my dad would grab me by the shoulders and twirl me around, look at me eyeball to eyeball and say, "Alright now, describe that man that just went by. What color was his hair? Did it have a part? Was he wearing glasses? Describe his face and his coloring. Describe his clothes, his belt. Did he have a watch? What were his socks and shoes like? It was a checklist.

Other times, Dad and I would be crossing the street in downtown Twin Falls; we?d get safely across the street and he would grab me by the shoulders, twirl me around and eyeball to eyeball, start the checklist again: "Describe that woman who just went by." I never knew when my dad was going to do this; he did it off and on for three years. I got to the point where I was just always looking. I learned how to observe people. I learned how to observe and remember non-verbal cues. I was literally raised in a police station because if I missed the school bus -- and it was often -- I'd have to go to the police station. I'd stay there until Dad got a break and then he would take me home. If he got a call while I was in the car with him, I would have to go along. So I was there at muggings and attempted murders -- here's this kid in the background all bug-eyed. I couldn't talk. That was a no-no. I couldn't do anything but watch and listen. Even today, I find chase scenes in a movie boring because I was in a few, and they're very vivid to me. I know what my dad meant when he said, "Hit the floor!" That meant we were going around the corner on two wheels.

TMA: So you got through high school somehow?

PMHA: I graduated an honor student. Then I became a secretary and I married, had three children and still continued to be a secretary . . .

TMA: Meanwhile, you're carrying these gifts.

PMHA: Yes, I put them on a shelf to the best of my ability because I wanted to be the world's most perfect wife and mother. Of course there isn't any such thing, so I had what the doctor called a mild nervous breakdown. It made it very clear that I had to find out who I was or I couldn't live.

TMA: So then did you start seeking out books and teachers?

PMHA: No; again, incredible things happened. I met a woman who was into automatic writing and it fascinated me. I found out that I could do it instantly. It was interesting and fun until it became very dark. The entity on the other side wanted me to die and join him. All kinds of manifestations started to happen in my home, like freshly picked roses turned suddenly black . . .

TMA: And you had to cut that communication off.

PMHA: I didn't know how. This lady I met found out what was going on and she got together with an A.R.E. [Association for Research and Enlightenment] group that was meeting in Boise. They got together on a Sunday afternoon to do something about this. I knew nothing about it. My friend picked me up and took me to the home where everybody met. There was a large group of people, including my son's schoolteacher and the assistant to the governor. These very fine people were gathered in a circle and did what they called the Forty-four Breath Huna Prayer. At the end of that healing prayer, I looked at the people and said, "I don't know who you are and I don't know what this is, but can I join, can I learn about this?? That's when I started studying metaphysics. That's when I discovered I could think, how creative and inventive I was . . . and began to discover who I was as a soul, as a child of God. I joined the Church of God study group and the particular group that I joined spent half of the evening on Edgar Cayce and the other half exploring altered states of consciousness. That opened the door for me, then I began on my own to further that study. I went very deeply into it, not just studying it but experiencing it and helping other people to do the same, to the point where I started Idaho's first non-profit metaphysical corporation, called Inner Forum. It ran for almost seven years. I started the northwest's first metaphysical speaker?s bureau. I was dealing with people by the thousands, I was publishing a mini magazine on altered states of consciousness, mysticism, transformations of consciousness. This was in the late '60s up to the mid '70s.

I started a research project on my own because I wanted to know what transformation of consciousness was all about, how we could truly be the divine beings that we are. I was very much part of the '60s movement except that I never took drugs. I was a mother and very practical, so I worked. During any spare time -- lunch hours and breaks and on weekends -- I would do these other things. They finally got to the point where they became an avocation. At this point, I began a research project, based on the fact that the only way I could understand anything was to become it. The first book I ever read on metaphysics was by Jess Stearn about Edgar Cayce, The Sleeping Prophet. It took me a year to read because the only way I could understand it was to read a few paragraphs and then go out and do it. Or I'd have to go to the library and research it myself or talk to people or actually conduct experiments.

TMA: It must have been quite a revelation to you that you weren't alone in all this.

PMHA: It was even more of a revelation to me when I began to produce major festivals, talks and workshops, bringing other people in. I went to all the churches in Boise when I first started Inner Forum to tell them what it was and what our goals were so that they would not be afraid of us. I was really inclusive in that regard. We made the newspaper again and again, big stories about how the only way I could understand astrology was to become an astrologer, the only way I could understand numerology was to become a numerologist, the only way I could understand reincarnation was to become a professional hypnotist specializing in past life regression, the only way I could understand mental energy was to become very good at psychokinesis, and on and on. That came, I'm sure, from the earlier years because I had to find my own truth myself. It was so important to me.

That all ended in 1977, quite violently. First of all, it ended with a 20-year marriage ending in divorce. I decided that if I was going to spend most of my life alone, I was going to do it legally, so I went to the courts and got a divorce because my husband was almost never home. He was a wonderful man; he just couldn't find himself and I just couldn't put up with that anymore. When that ended, I came to realize that all of my metaphysical studies, and teaching meditation for almost a decade and teaching people to have out-of-body experiences and all else that I had done and was good at --. I looked at all that and I thought, "It's all false. What I am looking for is love. I?m looking to find it in all these things I'm doing; in all these things I'm being . . . but I'm not love. And so what I'm doing is false.? I backed off from everything because it was such a horrendous shock to me to realize that what I was doing was under false pretenses. That I was doing all this to give and receive love, and that just wasn't the way to do it.

TMA: I'd say you were still accomplishing some good in the world.

PMHA: Yes, and I had a lot of healings in hospitals -- but for me, it was false.

TMA: For you it may have seemed false, but it didn't negate the good that you had accomplished.

PMHA: I wasn't negating that, I was negating me. I withdrew from everything in '75, '76, for a couple of years. I was a bank analyst at the time, and for the first time in my life I was attending college. I wanted to study to become a bank president or bank manager. I really enjoyed banking. I was getting back more into that kind of thing. Then in '77 a man came into my life. I kind of liked him, but I didn't know him. He had come up from California to do a workshop and then he had to go back. Late one night, he was in an automobile accident. He came to my house because he was in a state of shock and didn't know where else to go. He wanted a place to stay overnight, and I took him to an empty bedroom and told him, "You can stay here, that's fine." So, I went to sleep. I'm a very sound sleeper, and he came to my bed and had sex with me. I remember screaming inside my head, "I didn't ask for this! I'm being raped!" He was crazy. He was the strangest man. I got pregnant, and I love children. He wanted me to abort. The only thing I could think of to do was just to put my hands on my womb and pray, "God, if this child is not meant to be, it must go nature's way because I will not abort.? Three days later, a miscarriage occurred. That was January 2, 1977. That was what I call death number one.

Two days later, I had extreme hemorrhaging and major thrombosis which dislodged the worst case of phlebitis that the specialist had ever heard of, let alone seen. That was death number two.

Three months later, March 29, I had a complete physical, mental and emotional collapse, and that was death number three. That fall, I had three major relapses, one of which was adrenal failure. I was working at the time with a blood pressure reading of 60 over 60. When it was all over, I had to relearn how to stand, to walk, climb stairs, how to run, to tell the difference between left and right. How to see and hear properly. I had to rebuild all of my belief systems. It was one long, horrible nightmare. But yet, my Near Death Experiences were so incredible that I couldn't figure out where I was. Was I on the Other Side? Was I on this side? Nothing made any sense. I could hear people's thoughts at the same tonal pitch as their words. I didn't know what to reply to. It was just a very confusing time. But it was as much a blessing as it was a nightmare.

In my third Near Death Experience, I reached what research calls the Realm of All Knowing. Many Near Death Experiencers reach that area. I'm not unique in that -- but most of them can't bring the revelations, or all that they experienced, back . . . or they just bring back bits and pieces. I was one who could bring back most of it. Most of the revelations I was given is in Future Memory. After the revelations were given, this voice spoke -- all the voices and lights were familiar to me. It was like every cell and molecule in the universe just stopped and saluted this voice. I call it The Voice Like None Other. My concept was, it's the voice of God. I felt like -- no, I knew I was in the presence of God. The voice said, and I quote, "Test revelation. You are to do the research. One book for each death." I was shown what that meant. Book number one was not named; books two and three were named. I was shown what was to be in each book but not how to do it or what that effort might entail. I agreed to do it, and that's why I'm alive on this earth, to research the Near Death Experience and transformations of consciousness. That whole genre. That's why I was sent back -- specifically, literally, it was spelled out in detail.

No one book has all of my story. Coming Back to Life is the first one, followed by Beyond the Light, Our Future Memory, Children of the New Millennium, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Near Death Experiences, and I'm now writing a book about death. Of the specific books I was supposed to write, Coming Back to Life was to have been book number one but I got caught in the nation's first hostile takeover of an old [publishing] line by a corporate raider. He killed the company and the only royalties I ever got from that book were from Australia . . . something like $140. Everyone had thought it was going to become a best seller when the takeover happened. I was finally able to buy my contract back. Mike, my present husband, and I took out two major loans to help promote the book. It sold out nationally, two printings, in less than five months. We had to take out a third loan to buy back my worldwide rights. So I owned the book, but it's going to take people buying another fifty thousand copies before I ever see another penny of royalties from that book. I think it's now out of print..

TMA: Did you pin that check on your wall?

PMHA: (laughing) No, we needed it desperately. We almost went bankrupt. It wasn't until 1998 that we paid off the debt.

TMA: Well, you've sold a lot of books in the meantime.

PMHA: We?ve sold a lot of books, but I got caught in a lot of other stuff. Beyond the Light then became book number one of the trilogy. It's interesting that book one was never named! Book one sort evolved from one book to another. It evolved from Coming Back to Life to Beyond the Light. It was as if it was known ahead of time. Book two, which was named, was Future Memory. Book three is a manual that's about three-fourths done -- I had to put it on a shelf because in meditation . . . I'm in and out of meditation all day, every day; God, to me, is like my next breath. I go according to that direction that I receive from the core of my being, the source of my being. I was nudged or told or shown that I could not finish the manual at this time, it had to be these other books, so I put it on a shelf.

Future Memory is the only book I've ever written that literally is mathematically engineered. Every sentence, every paragraph, every page is engineered so that it is a book labyrinth rather than a site labyrinth, one you read through instead of walk through. It was this same voice that told and showed me how to do that, because I'd already written the book ten times. The most research I've ever done in my life went into that book. All of my books, before they were published, passed through peer review. I am very thorough and very insistent that my work be solid. When people say, "This is incredible research, but what are you saying?" that throws it back on you; you have to do it again. After ten different versions in seven years, I decided I had written it just for my own edification. I was going to throw it away. I had just gotten out of a shower and suddenly, time and space and I froze, the air filled up with sparkles and this incredible voice spoke and said, "Turn it into a labyrinth" and then it showed me how. I dried myself off, went downstairs and started doing it. In three months I had the whole book turned around, and it sold a week later. It came out at the same time as Dannion Brinkley's book. I was called by my publisher and told, "Because of the great success of Dannion Brinkley's book, we have cancelled your five-city book tour. We will not promote your book. It is too scientific. It will never sell." My work, Beyond the Light and Future Memory were also published by that publisher, and they were both simply thrown out by the publisher. What saved Beyond the Light is that Avon Books brought it out as a paperback and it is still available. What saved Future Memory was Hampton Roads Publishers in their great wisdom

TMA: Hampton Roads is a great publisher.

PMHA: Yes. They said, "This is too good to die. We're going to bring this out," so they did. Future Memory takes one of the aftereffects of the Near Death Experience and explores it in a major way . . . because becoming familiar with the things of the future, whether you actually pre-live it before it occurs (which is "future memory") or whether you are precognitive -- or however you suddenly begin to click in after a major transformative experience -- be it a Near Death Experience, kundalini breakthrough, shamanistic vision quest, being hit by lightning, spiritual transformation, whatever -- the fact that people become attuned to the future after that is a major, major finding. In Future Memory, I discuss why that is so important in brain development and in the development of the higher brain. I do it using research on brain development in children. Yes, there are a lot of important things in that book, but the real purpose of it is to stimulate a brain shift, the name I give to what people experience in a transformation of consciousness. It's a brain shift/spirit shift. And it's literal.

After over 22 years of researching Near Death states, and including what I did back in the '60s and early '70s, you're talking about 35 years of research involving well over 7,000 people. I used three different questionnaires to check on certain specific findings of mine so I could be more in depth with them. That's the only reason I use them. If you depend solely on the scientific model in researching consciousness, you run askew because there are too many variables and you run into too many problems. All my work is original; all of it is field work. I was very demanding of myself. I heard my dad's words, "It must stand up in a court of law. If it doesn't, throw it out the door." Well, I don?t know if my work will stand up in a court of law, but I do know that my work has been cross checked more than any other researcher's work. I do know that it has stood up to 22 years of public scrutiny.

TMA: Where has all this brought you to in the present?

PMHA: It brought me to a couple of places. I finished The Complete Idiot's Guide to Near Death Experiences in December of 1999 and MacMillan put it out in February of 2000. That was a quick turnaround. It?s the world's only encyclopedia of Near Death Experience, its implications and aftereffects. It goes heavily into transformations of consciousness and other-worldly journeys.. I had a co-author, David Morgan, who wrote a couple of chapters and was an editorial assistant because in these Idiots books, you've got an inch to an inch and a half thick format you have to follow. We got caught up in a publisher takeover and never had any oversight or any help from the company. It was a nightmare to produce that book. We worked 17- and 18-hour days, seven days a week. At the very end, the company finally recognized what they had put us through and that it was their fault. So they allowed -- get this -- they allowed the entire book that we wrote to be published. We didn't know until a week later when the oversight editor finally came back and said, ?It is the longest Idiot book they have ever published and it is written in a language MacMillan normally never allows. It's a first class book.? Yes, it has snappy headers and captions, but it's new research, new cases. It is a virtual encyclopedia of the entire field, written for teachers and students and doctors and clergy as well as the general public, Experiencers and their families. There's something in it for everyone, all of it backed up with solid research, all cross-checked again and again.

Her most recent book is Children of the New Millennium, a major study of children?s near-death states, along with an exploration of the missing twin phenomenon, the Millennial Generation, alien existences and the emergence of the new race.