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Overview
There are many different paths to the future.
According to P.M.H. Atwater, one of the foremost investigators into near-death experiences, future memory allows people to "live" life in advance and remember the experience in detail when something triggers that memory.
Atwater explains the unifying, and permanent, effect of that experience is a brain a "brain shift" which she believes "may be at the very core of existence itself." In Future Memory, Atwater shows that structural and chemical changes are occurring in our brains, changes indicative of higher evolutionary development.
This mind-blowing exploration of a mind-blowing topic traces her findings about this phenomenon and explores its implications for the individual and for society.
Future Memory:
- Provides a series of steps to assist in developing future memory
Explores new models of time, existence, and consciousness
Presents an in-depth study of the brain shift and how it can be experienced
Offers an extensive appendix and resource manual
Future Memory is an important step in understanding the relationship between human perception and reality.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781612832838 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 344 |
| Sales rank: | 762,208 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
FUTURE MEMORY
By P.M.H. Atwater
Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
Copyright © 2013 P.M.H. AtwaterAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57174-688-7
CHAPTER 1
The Labyrinth Begins Here
You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
—Sir Rabindranath Tagore
Journey with me through the universe of the mind, into deeper realms of internal and external environments, where states of consciousness play out like overleafs upon the backdrop of personality and place—who we think we are and where we think we live.
Few ever question these deeper realms, much less bother to investigate them. We do, and that's what this book is about.
The ancient Hindu parable of "The Five Blind Men and The Elephant" best defines the territory we are about to tackle: the span that exists between perception and truth, between what seems real and what is real, between life's many puzzles and how they interconnect and interweave.
We tackle this territory for one reason, to search for what neither perception nor truth can supply—perspective—the perspective to understand why existence exists and why we are who we are. And we do this, attempt to describe what is thought to be indescribable, in a spirit of high adventure.
To begin our journey, we will explore shifts in the awareness of reality, among them future memory—a peculiar phenomenon that challenges our understanding of sequence. Like the old riddle "Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?" we will question the necessity of one event to always follow on the heels of another. In part two, we will grapple with the inner workings of consciousness and especially how that relates to creation itself, the universe, planets, souls, and the concept of deity. This will enable us to see how time and space can be but mere illusions in a grander scheme of life after life. Finally, in the last section, we will step beyond notions of real versus unreal to confront the truth that undergirds existence itself.
A common thread interweaves our journey—what the ability to remember the future reveals about brain development.
A common admonition fuels our passage—know thyself, for knowledge without wisdom can distort and deceive.
A common desire ever directs us toward our goal—the reawakening of wonderment.
As we embark upon this, the journey of a lifetime, consider first the following observations summarized from various studies conducted over the years on early childhood development.
Children prelive the future on a regular basis. By the age of four, the average youngster spends more time in the future than in the present. The temporal lobes of the brain develop during this period, enabling the child to project ahead and rehearse in advance whatever might someday be expected of him or her. Children play with futuristic possibilities and potential outcomes as a way of "getting ready." A child's preoccupation with the future is healthy. It is a natural component of growth, a desirable state of affairs ensuring that both brain structure and brain capacity meet the requirements of an emerging consciousness.
What if adults do the same thing as children once their brains shift after a transformational event such as a near-death episode, a shamanic vision quest, a kundalini breakthrough into spiritual enlightenment, a religious conversion, or because of head trauma or being hit by lightning?
What if the adult ability to prelive the future is actually a reliable signal that temporal lobes are expanding—so an increase in brain structure and brain capacity can be accommodated, preparatory to accessing enlargements of consciousness?
It is known that people who experience major spiritual transformations become more childlike afterward, in the sense that they often glow with a newfound innocence plus a desire to relearn and redefine life. Most of them possess levels of curiosity and intelligence greater than before, and are seldom affected by limitations from former attitudes and beliefs. Able to easily slip in and out of stages of behavior development once thought the exclusive domain of youngsters, such experiencers appear to "grow up" all over again.
During the twenty-plus years I spoke with or interviewed thousands of near-death survivors and their families and friends, I noted that the ability to "remember" the future was quite typical of the aftereffects. Most experiencers displayed the trait. Yet I also observed this same characteristic with people who had never undergone a transformational event of any kind. This so surprised me that I sought out these "other" people.
What I found challenges how brain development is viewed and how "real versus unreal" is determined. Indicated as well is the distinct possibility that each and every one of us may be able to transcend our daily fare and quite literally live the future before it occurs. (Don't confuse what I am saying here with what some near-death researchers term "flash forwards." What I have observed and experienced myself is far more complex and dynamic than that, physically real to the individual involved and lived in minute and verifiable detail.)
It may strike you as odd the way I've decided to arrange this book and divulge my findings, yet what follows is the only viable framework I could construct that can encompass the enormity of the information we need to cover while at the same time providing us both with a fun trip.
Yes, I turned this book into a labyrinth, one you can traverse via the written word. Throughout its pages, I intend to tease you with a labyrinth of subjective and objective stories and facts so that the awesome wonder of what lies beyond worlds internal and external to us can emerge.
What do I mean by a labyrinth?
According to the dictionary a labyrinth is a devious arrangement of passages and pathways that form the pattern of a maze. No ordinary maze, admittedly, but one with a single way in and out, encircling as it enfolds back upon itself, again and again, in steady progression toward a central core.
According to tradition, however, walking, running, or dancing one's way through a labyrinth invokes a sense of healing and balance in the participant—order out of chaos, if you will. That's because a labyrinth is designed to stimulate the expansion of a higher form of consciousness. A typical maze is meant to confuse; but a labyrinth, with spirals that mimic the convolutions of the brain, leads one into the depths of soul, arousing a gut response to the mysteries of creation, of birth and life and death and rebirth. You're turned "inside out" and memory, the memory of who you really are, is awakened.
To quote Reverend Dr. Lauren Artress, author of the charming book Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool: "Walking the labyrinth clears the mind and gives insight into the spiritual journey. It urges action. It calms people in the throes of life transitions. It helps them see their lives in the context of a path, a pilgrimage. They realize that they are not human beings on a spiritual path but spiritual beings on a human path."
This book is a labyrinth in the truest sense. Each chapter and section has been crafted to both stretch your mind and challenge your beliefs. You read your way through it in the same manner as you might walk through a labyrinth, and with the same result—a shift in consciousness.
Take a deep breath.
Ready yourself.
Your exploratory journey through the universe of time and space and memory and consciousness—through the enfolding turns of the laby-rinth—has begun.
CHAPTER 2Reality Shifts
We human beings invent reality as much as we discover it.
—Lawrence LeShan
Perception determines "truth." We invent our own reality this way, by not questioning perception, ours or anyone else's, and by accepting what appears to be real as "real."
History is filled with stories of people who, in "slipping between the cracks" of their own consciousness (thus altering how they perceived the world around them) uncovered different ways to experience reality. What they accomplished in doing this made an impact on society. You and I, all of us, have profited again and again and still are profiting because this happened, because some people were dazzled by wonder instead of silenced by dogma.
Here are some examples of what I mean. Tripping through these tidbits will help establish common reference points, which are necessary, I believe, for the exploratory journey we have embarked upon.
Let's start with Xerox.
Chester F. Carlson, inventor of the Xerox duplication process and founder of the Xerox Corporation, was a devotee of a certain trance medium who channeled spirit beings from The Other Side. While attending a series of sessions with the woman, he eventually "received" the photocopy process from the spirit beings she contacted. After experimenting with the technique and making a few adjustments, Xerox was "born" along with a multibillion-dollar company. I don't know about you, but after having worked as an executive secretary during the fifties and sixties and making the copies I needed the only way you could then—by stuffing packs of carbon paper in a typewriter and banging the keys hard enough to make the images pass through—I am immensely grateful that Carlson frequented seances. He revolutionized the business world because he did (and certainly made my life easier).
Switching to peanut butter ... the Woodrew Update, a well-researched and provocative newsletter, reminds us that:
George Washington Carver took the peanut, until then used as hog food, and the exotic and neglected sweet potato, and turned them into hundreds of products. His list included cosmetics, grease, printer's ink, coffee, and, of course, peanut butter. Carver said he got his answers by walking in the woods at four in the morning. "Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep," he said. "In the still hours before sunrise, God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill."
Thomas Edison unsuccessfully tried to hire Carver, confiding to his associates, "Carver is worth a fortune." Henry Ford also tried (and failed) to hire him, calling Carver "the greatest living scientist." When Carver's plans were fulfilled and his dreams translated into realities, he refused to take out any patents, believing that all inventions and discoveries belonged to mankind, not to one man. The result is that much of what he learned is lost in the annals of history.
How did George Washington Carver communicate with God during the wee hours of morning? He said it himself: through the assistance of angels and fairies. And he isn't the only one to make such a claim. Peter and Eileen Caddy and their colleague Dorothy Maclean give the same credits in describing the work they accomplished.
This troupe, along with Caddy's three sons, took up residence near an inlet to the North Sea at Findhorn, Scotland, for the purpose of setting up a cocreative two-way link between themselves and nature intelligencies—that is to say, angels (what they later called "devas") and fairies ("nature spirits"). They became willing workers with nature's own in an attempt to cocreate a garden the likes of which would defy every known rule of convention and climate. That was 1962. Today, the now famous Findhorn Gardens regularly draws people from across the globe to tour the premises and take classes at Cluny Hill College, classes on how to communicate with angelic forces and helper spirits, while at the same time enhancing one's own sense of spirituality.
Perelandra Gardens, the next generation in angel-fairy communication, goes beyond that of a fixed-based operation (like at Findhorn) to a method anyone can use no matter where they live to improve their life and expand their consciousness. Started by Machaelle Small Wright and her partner, Clarence Wright, this forty-five-acre hideaway about fifty miles south of Washington, D.C., near the tiny hamlet of Jeffersonton, has grown from the initial experience in 1973 of Machaelle hearing disembodied "voices" coming from the woods on their property to a well-established Center for Nature Research, an open-air laboratory dedicated to the discovery of nature's laws and the principles and dynamics behind the cocreative relationship between humans and the varied intelligencies of nature.
The people I have mentioned came to perceive reality from another vantage point; then they used what they gained from that experience to benefit others, as this addendum to the Perelandra story demonstrates:
According to a Canadian agronomist, soil samples taken from Perelandra in 1989 tested out with the highest vitality rating of any soil ever tested—until several other people achieved the same rating that same year using the Perelandra Method on soil in their own gardens. For this reason, and because of extensive documentation on methodology and results, the internationally esteemed magazine Organic Gardening featured an article about Perelandra in their November 1990 issue. The article quoted Albert Schatz, Ph.D., a retired professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, and the one who introduced the concept of chelation (a major factor in soil formation), as saying: "I have spent a lot of time trying to find scientific holes in what Wright is doing and I have not been able to do that, which amazed me. She has integrated health and agriculture in a very unique and effective way, and her research is scientifically sound and valid. I can find no evidence to draw any other conclusions. Her research is the basis for the future of agriculture."
Different ways of experiencing reality happen when individuals expand their consciousness. Whether accidently or on purpose, that shift in perception also alters the validity and the importance of time and space.
Documented cases of native runners, especially those in North and South America, illustrate this. The Spanish, for instance, once recorded native runners who could cover in excess of150 miles per day, making the trip from Lima, Peru, to Cuzco in three days, where it took Spanish riders on horseback twelve days to do the same thing. Running was and still is considered a sacred task by native peoples. Adherents observe strict disciplines in exchange for what they believe are the holy gifts of speed and invisibility.
From Peter Nabokov's book Indian Running, an anthropologist by the name of George Laird described what happened to a particular runner who lived in the southwestern part of the United States: "One morning he left his friends at Cotton Wood Island in Nevada and said he was going to the mouth of the Gila River in southern Arizona. He didn't want anyone else along, but, when he was out of sight, the others began tracking him. Beyond the nearby dunes his stride changed. The tracks looked as if he had just been staggering along, taking giant steps, his feet touching the ground at long irregular intervals, leaving prints that became further and further apart and lighter and lighter in the sand. When they got to Fort Yuma, they learned that he had arrived at sunrise of the same day he had left them." (Thus arriving before he departed.)
We know native peoples are capable of such feats because so many cases have been studied. But let's not forget the Australian aborigines. Theirs is the oldest continuously existing culture on earth (around for at least fifty-thousand years), and they maintain an understanding of time and space, of reality, that deserves our attention.
What they call "dreaming" has little to do with sleep or dreams that occur during sleep. Dreaming for them is actually more akin to a type of "flow," where one becomes whatever is focused upon and suddenly knows whatever needs to be known at the moment. Aborigines sometimes use drugs to achieve this state but, more often than not, drumming, chanting, rhythmic movements, certain sounds, and rituals suffice. In this state of consciousness, participants seem to "merge with" or "enter into" soil, rocks, animals, sky, or whatever else they focus on—including the "In-Between" (that which appears to exist between time and space, as if through a "crack" in creation).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from FUTURE MEMORY by P.M.H. Atwater. Copyright © 2013 P.M.H. Atwater. Excerpted by permission of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Dedication v
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
The Purpose of This Book xv
Parable xviii
Part I Future Memory
1 The Labyrinth Begins Here 3
2 Reality Shifts 7
3 Modes of Futuristic Awareness 16
4 The Future Memory Phenomenon 25
5 Slipping between the Cracks 32
6 Learning to Remember 48
Part II The Innerworkings of Creation and Consciousness
7 Deeper into the Labyrinths Depths 61
8 Connections within the Flow 67
9 Memory Mazes and the Brain 78
10 Illusions of Perception 94
11 Living in Time and Space Differently 105
12 The Innerworkings of Creation and Consciousness 114
13 The In-Between 130
14 Secrets in the Web 148
15 The Thought That Stirred 161
16 The Unbroken Web of Wholeness 172
Part III Beyond Illusion
17 The Labyrinth Revealed 189
18 Fixed and Flexible Futures 196
19 The Higher Brain 205
20 Shadows and the Third Way 216
21 Centerpoint 228
Appendix I 237
Appendix II 241
Appendix III 245
Appendix IV 255
Appendix V 263
Resources 273
Notes 309
Index 319