PART 3:  The EHE  Autobiography and Beyond

 

The EHE Autobiography
          Aside from the personal, positive, transformative benefits we gain from having such experiences and taking them to heart, we can expand their effects by sharing them with others.  Kenneth Ring, renowned near-death experience researcher, along with numerous others who have studied such events, has observed that simply by hearing or seeing someone share hir own momentous experiences, or even by reading about them, people who have not had such experiences themselves are also often transformed by them in much the same way as the experiencers themselves. Their worldviews and values and behavior are similarly altered to reflect the classic aftereffects. 

          One powerful technique particularly encouraged by White is what she calls an "EHE autobiography." Rather than a life story based on ordinary, if meaningful, events, the EHE autobiography is a life chronicle sourced specifically in our exceptional encounters with the nonordinary, the ineffable, things spiritual, what is frequently referred to on this site as the larger-life reality.
          According to White, again from her EHE Background I Papers, she explains, 

I also feel that the act [of writing an EHE autobiography] has value for society, and even for the planet as a whole. This is because we need a new story to make sense of who we are as human beings and why we are here. The story of mechanistic, behavioristic science has resulted in anomie, loss of meaning and connection, boredom, and the need for ever more violent "kicks" and dangerous "highs," as in drug abuse. In our society today there is a dangerous lack of reverence towards other humans, other life forms, and life itself. Perhaps the most practical thing we can do is write a better story. What better place is there to begin than with ourselves? .... The big surprise in all of this is that in writing about our most secret, intimate, personal EHEs – those that are uniquely our own – we come to experience ourselves as rooted in our common humanity and as connected to all life. ... People who are centered in this experience are bound to live vastly different lives than those who are bent and twisted by anger, doubt, fear, and pain, such that their best hope is ... at worst, to seek kicks in killing or maiming other humans or animals or to get lost in drugs or pornography or crime.       The seeds of transcendental and connective experiences, that is, EHEs, are scattered throughout our lives. What we need to do is find them and then cultivate them. A good way to begin is to start your EHE autobiography.

Beyond the EHE Autobiography
           White points out in "EHEs:  A Brief Overview" that what we need is a story for each of us, [and ultimately and to the point,] for all of us. . .

... What we need is a story that will unite science and spirituality, self and world. But first it must occur at the individual level. ...  Each of us needs a story that charges our daily lives with meaning and puts us personally in touch with the sacred. There are many books about writing or better yet, living one's own story, one's own myth. But the myths of old contained an element that is missing from most stories told today, and that is a link with the sacred. Exceptional human experiences [and specifically, recording one's EHE-based story] can serve as those links; they are those happenings in our lives that can pull us out of boredom and disconnection into a world of meaning and connection. We have to learn how to honor these experiences and let them into our lives.

          Again, from "The Aftereffects of My NDE," White continues to broaden our perspective of what is sublimely possible within a continuum ranging from individual single experiences to the recollection and revaluing of a lifetime of such events from which we derive new, transcendent meaning within the wholeness of a tapestried life.

          And further still, she expands our sense of possible benefits of this process within the context of society. She invites us to contemplate the value of a collective sense of story garnered from the amassing in our social awareness of many EHE autobiographies and the fresh new washes of meaning and empowerment as a culture, perhaps as a world culture, we may experience. It is very conceivable to envision this process evolving into the realization of a whole new collective or unified understanding, a world-sized new paradigm coming in play:

When a sufficient number of people [undertake the writing of their EHE autobiography], the larger story [our cultural or world story, at least the human part of it] will emerge. Exceptional human experiences catapult us into the new paradigm [beyond our present disenchantment and lack of meaningful connection with each other, with the world, and with the sacred, i.e., the new paradigm]. We become a part of it and we discover it is a part of us. We are no longer apart from it. The scientific method cannot take us there. But once we ourselves are there, and when we are willing to take the further leap of sharing our experiences with others, we will not only be inside the new view that is needed to join physical and spiritual, mind and matter, body and mind, but we will be playing a significant part in bringing it to birth. Once more, as in ages past, the story of each human will be the story of humankind, and vice versa. We and our times will be in step and will move forward as one. Science can do nothing but follow, as it is right that it should.      ... Creating one's story is not simply something one can do alone. Part of the act of creating one's story and working out the meaning of one's life involves living it out in some way (i.e., acting on it). So only does it really become real to oneself. One of the first ways to do this is to tell others about it, in a context where it seems relevant, even though it may be embarrassing or difficult. By sharing our EHEs, the other person validates the experience, even if he or she reacts negatively. But often the response is positive, and when it is, the other person may be moved by the first person's story to share his or her EHEs as well. This heightens the sense of meaning and reality for both in ways that go beyond simply describing one's EHEs. A process seems to be initiated by such interchanges that operates independently of both persons and that leads to connectedness and interconnections. One has entered into the process of spinning the web of the new paradigm. We don't think it out; we live out of it and into a new way of being in the world.

 

 

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Here is an article by White that addresses this in relation to our finding ways to speak and to list to each other's life-deepening stories:

 

The Act of Sharing EHEs as a Catalyst By Rhea A. White, PhD (Hon.)

 

 

 

PART 4:  A Recapitulation from Higher Ground

 

 

 

PART 1:  The Making of an Exceptional Human Being PART 2:  The Extraordinary Lifework of an Exceptional Woman: All-Things EHE PART 4:  A Recapitulation from Higher Ground Autobiographical Sketch by Rhea White     Pssssst . .  Looking for breadcrumbs?   Here's a whole nest of 'em to explore . .   The Breadcrumb Trail ... .   .

~~~~~~~  *  ~~~~~~~   ALSO SEE:  Rhea A. White's "Project of Transcendence" -- some of her own writings important to Ahhh-TheLight.com and will also be integral to wHeretwoworldsTouch.com.