From http://www.near-death.com/experiences/research01.html

It is not unusual for near-death experiencers returning from clinical death to report having received information concerning their pre-existence before they were conceived in the world. Some experiencers report of learning how they chose various aspects of their lives to be predestined before they were born. Some of the choices people have reported having chosen before birth include the selection of their birth parents, choosing their mission in life, and even choosing how they will die. This knowledge received by near-death experiencers of the past and future shows how some things in life are predestined while other things are not. It shows how free will and predestination both exist and work hand in hand. It means we choose our destiny in life before our birth into the world to live it. Because reincarnation is a concept found in many cultures and religions, the metaphor of life as a river which we chose before we were our birth, shows up in many of these cultures and religions. There are many aspects to a river which make it an excellent analogy to help us understand where we came from, where we're going, who we are, why we're here, and what life is all about. The following discussion will attempt to do just that.

If our experience as a human is analogous to a journey down a river, then our experience as a spirit is analogous to the entire water cycle. Each of us is like a raindrop which fell from a cloud and ultimately entered into a river for the journey back from where it came - the sea. Then the cycle is repeated.

In the same way that a drop of water is a part of the sea and contains within itself the nature of the sea itself, so our spirit is a part of God containing within it the Whole of God itself. This concept of a something being both a part and the Whole is called in science terminology a fractal.

By becoming a droplet in the water cycle, we can experience wonderful adventures which ultimately help us to understand ourselves and the sea even more. Which river of life we choose to travel down is up to us. Once we begin the journey, we are partly at the mercy of the river and the course it takes us. How we chose to flow down the river is our decision.

This river which represents the course of our life that leads us back to God is an archetype that is familiar to us. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we feel drawn to rivers and why we regarded them as sacred. In ancient cultures, religions and even in near-death experiences, this archetype of life being a river appears. On the river, we are always moving forward from a source and toward an end. Life starts out as a small creek and grows into large river with rapids, forks, tributaries, rocks, and sometimes floods. Rivers have a history and are evolving. The river of life can take us to a variety of destinations on shore. There are many decisions and choices to make while traveling the river. Sometimes we have no choice at all but submit to the mercy of the river. At times we can relax and go with the flow. Other times we can shoot the rapids. We can row our boats gently down the stream. But if we just remain on the shore, we will never reach our destination and goal. Wisdom means knowing the best course of action to take as we travel down the river. (Kevin Williams)

 Someone once asked Deepak Chopra, the famous endrocrinologist and spiritual guru, about the predetermination aspect of this analogy of life being a river. They asked him, "Does this mean that we are born into a pre-determined destiny and if so, why even bother cultivating free will or striving to be faithful?" His answer was:

"This connection isn't fixed or automatic, it merely represents numerical probability. Our conscious choices help determine our destiny. The deterministic world is ignorance. When we navigate from awareness, we exercise free will. It's the difference between ignorance and enlightenment. To surrender to divine intelligence, know that everything both comes from God and belongs to God. If life is a river between the banks of hope and despair, our ultimate destiny is to become independent of both, unmoved by either."

So the future is not fixed in stone but consists of probabilities based on current choices and trends. This answer from Deepak Chopra is another way of saying we choose our destinies.

A long time ago, I read Betty Eadie's book "The Ripple Effect" and read the best analogy of "life as a river" I have ever read. It concerns how we choose our destinies before our birth and how it is analogous to standing on top of a very high mountain and looking down upon a vast system of rivers and choosing which river to undertake. From the vantage point of being on top of a mountain, we can get a good view all the rivers from their beginning to their end. As in life, each river has a number of forks and branches to choose from. Some rivers are more challenging while others are less challenging. Some rivers are very dangerous and can lead to disaster. But no matter which river of life we choose before our birth, the river will always carry us back to the sea. This means we are all predestined to eventually return to God. But once we begin our journey down the river of our choosing, we have many choices which are not predetermined.

 Here is the excerpt from Betty's book describing the analogy:

"Our life is like a river. The destination is set, but the method of our journeying is up to us. We can cruise down the middle of the river at top speed, or we can hug the shore and spin around in eddies. We can crash over rapids or chart a safer path between obstacles. We can slum along the bottom in the mire and slime of sediment, or we can glide along the sparkling surface where the air is clean. The river is ours from birth to death. How we'll navigate it is determined by the hundreds of small choices we make each day.

"To discover our mission in life we must see challenges as opportunities for growth and then face them head on. Each challenge measures our strengths and progress. Even when trials cause pain or sorrow, we must look for new lessons in the pain and ask God for the power to learn and to grow from it. Suffering focuses our attention on what matters most, and with God's help, we can strengthen our spirits by learning patience, tolerance and love. These lessons learned, we become co-navigators with God. But when unlearned, we go into the eddies, spinning around, making little progress, even blaming God for our unremitting suffering."

Betty then addresses how people shouldn't mistakenly believe that the circumstances of their youth can set an unchangeable course for their river of life. She states:

"But, life is dynamic, and the river stretches and bends as we go. A bad beginning does not inevitably lead to a bad ending. In fact a bad beginning can give us strength to create a good ending."

She also describes how our past can be a springboard and a resource for accomplishment and the betterment of others. She does this by quoting from a letter someone wrote to her:

Letter to Betty:  "God led me into sobriety from a life of heroin addiction, homelessness, prostitution ... In my sobriety, I've thanked God many times for these experiences. I know the pain of my clients. God gave me the gift to open the door to his love. For 39 years God was preparing me for this. I know this today because I have peace and serenity I did not know was possible."

Betty's response: "She got to know the bottom of the river - the seamy, murky side of life that swallows victims whole and never lets them see the light of day. But through unfathomable effort this woman looked up and found God. With his help she kicked addictions and self-defeating habits out of her life. She fought the undercurrents, disentangled herself, broke the surface of her troubled life and got to a place where pure air and light could provide new energy. She grew strong and rescued others from the depths. Her beginnings then became the basis for a greater good she would do in life. Her wounds became muscles. Her fears became faith. Her mistakes became experience used to benefit mankind. Like her, anyone can choose either to drown in past troubles or to fight to live."

"Each soul will attain a different level of accomplishment here. But whatever the size of the ripples we make, one thing we must learn is to be grateful for whatever trials and gifts our Father gives us in the journey ... Let us be grateful for our childhoods, even for the negative ones. Let us recognize that life is what it is, and that we are all doing our best ... We all volunteer for our positions and stations in the world, and that each of us is receiving more help than we know."

This testimony from Betty agrees with the testimony of many other people who have also had a near-death experience as you will see below.

The following NDE testimony comes from PMH Atwater's website. If you haven't checked out her website and all the articles she has there, you are missing out on a wealth of information.

This NDE testimony involves one of P.M.H. Atwater's research subjects who is a man named Ken who was involved in a car accident which resulted in a NDE. P.M.H. Atwater calls his NDE "The River of Life" for a good reason as you will see. As Ken was dying on a gurney he moved through a tunnel and into light. He could observe his body and his surroundings and feels euphoric but he learns that he must return. When he asked the light that he be allowed to stay, he is shown a vision of a heavenly river:

"The wall beyond my gurney became transparent and I was shown what appeared to be a flowing river. It was silver and shimmering as it flowed.

"The drops in the river were each a different color yet all flowed together as one body of water. Nothing gave me the impression this was actually water or a river but this is the best descriptive example that can be given of something I witnessed for which there are no words.

"I understood (I use this term because I did not actually hear) the drops were the experiences of all who had lived. The experiences existed as separate items yet belonged to the whole. The whole was the collective knowledge of all. I understood there was no individual, just one, yet each experience was individual making up the whole. This concept of ONE is so foreign to any description I can give, there seems to be no way now of describing it. My previous understanding of "one" was a single uniqueness. In this case "one" is something else. Many being one and one being many, both existing simultaneously in the same time and space. I further understood that the collective experiences are omniscient knowledge. Everything that has been spoken, heard, and experienced.

"There was no fear, or joy from this stream. I use the term river of life to describe the stream. There was an understanding of complete peace, happiness, and contentment without need or want, coming from the river of life. I had a strong desire now to join the river of life and felt this was home.

"I understood I was not to join the river of life at that time, I was to go back. At this understanding I began to have fears and questions. I again reiterated I did not want to go. I understood I was to go back. I then was made to understand there would be great pain. I did not want to face the pain that awaited me. I understood the pain would be great and it would change and mold me. I wanted to know why and what I was to do. I was flushed with two sensations, one after the other. One sensation was of a sense of an action being right that brought a brief moment of the total peace and comfort I had experienced. The other sensation was one of an action being wrong. The sensation for wrong was a darkening of the light and cold.

"There was no explanation of why I was to go back nor was there an explanation of what I was to do. I was made to understand that my knowledge was not for everyone. (Dr. PMH Atwater)

 Ken's vision of a heavenly river made up of drops of water representing human experiences is an excellent description of our one-ness which many near-death experiencers bring back with them. In this instance, the heavenly river represents God and each drop is a human lifetime. A drop of water is both a part of the river and within itself is the nature of the Whole river itself. Our spirit is an individualized part of the Whole (God) and yet within it is the Whole itself (the fractal concept again). Near-death experiencers describe experiencing this one-ness when they merge fully into the light during their NDE. The drop of water merges once again with the sea to become the Whole sea again. (Kevin Williams)

 Perhaps a better analogy of how our spirit can exist both a part of God and yet the Whole of God is to think of our spirit as a "thought" in the Mind of God. The "thought" leaves the Mind of God to experience individuality as a human being. As a human being, our spirit is an individualized "thought" in the Mind of God but also retains its one-ness as the Whole Mind of God, When our human life is over, our "thought" returns to the Wholeness and merges into it where all the other thoughts are. The question however is this: When the thought returns to the Mind of God does it lose its individuality once it merges back into the Mind? According to Edgar Cayce, the answer is "no." The reason thoughts began leaving the Mind of God to begin with was to learn individuality while maintaining Wholeness at the same time. Otherwise, thoughts would remain as a thought in the Mind and forever by controlled by the Mind and never know individuality. (Edgar Cayce)

Ken discusses his NDE and his interpretation of it:

"I believe my actual physical existence resides in the river of life as its natural form when not present in this reality or life. As a drop taken from a cup of water and then returned, so the individual drop exists, yet is part of the whole. I believe there is a retained knowledge of life experience that becomes part of collective knowledge yet remains intact as a unit. There is no body in the sense we know one, no love, hate, or any emotion as we know it. In a perfect existence devoid of need or want, all needs and wants, positive and negative, do not exist. The one-ness I perceived was what is referred to as God. We are of God and God is of us. The purpose of our physical existence and life is to provide every possible variation of action so an omniscient knowledge base can exist.

"There is no heaven and hell, as we perceive it. There is no punishment for wrong behaviors, nor rewards for right behaviors. There is no judgment process. This is the reason people anguish over why God would let that happen. All experience, good, bad, mixed, is part of omniscient knowledge. In our present life, we have control over our lives to create perfectly unique combinations of experience, memory, and knowledge. Some people have memory of past lives or deja vu because of our connection to the river of life. The collective knowledge knows what brings feelings of well-being, peace, and happiness as well as what brings turmoil and pain. Our reward for moving in the direction of peace and contentment is the experience we create will have more positive feelings associated with it. I note here also that no matter how horrible the action and horrible the experience, all experience must exist to make up omniscient knowledge. This is why there is no precognition. The collective knowledge is so vast, likely results can be predicted. Thus, premonition is not magic, but informed estimation. In a sense we create our own hell here in this life when we take actions which bring pain and turmoil into our lives. We can also create an existence closer to the perfect peace of after-death existence by living in such a way as to bring peace and harmony into our lives.

"There is no love in the river of life, as we know love here in this existence. Since there is no want or need and a feeling of total peace, there is a sense of perfect love in the existence. There is also not a sense of desire to be with someone nor is there anyone to be with. All are part of the whole which is the common denominator of the universal existence we call God. In that sense we are God and God is we.

"I did not wish to relate my experience for a long time. I felt very comfortable with this. It was a right action. A situation occurred 2 years later and I was suddenly compelled to tell a person. The feeling surrounding that was right also. Since that time I have come to rely on this intuition. It guides me in much of my decision making. I know when I am to tell a person about the experience when this right feeling becomes very strong. Likewise, when I logically think I should tell someone and the feeling is wrong, I do not hesitate to heed the intuition. I do not feel compelled to tell everyone about my experience. In fact, I still feel the need to be careful about who I tell. My father developed a fear of death as he got older. I considered telling him to comfort his fears. My intuition told me not to and I heeded that feeling. At the instant of my father's death I was many miles away in route to the hospital where he lay very ill. I felt a brief return of that very peaceful feeling, devoid of want or need and I felt perfectly calm and happy. I looked at my watch. When I arrived at the hospital, the time I looked at my watch coincided exactly with the time my father died. Three years after that, I felt an overwhelming desire to tell my experience to a friend of mine at church. I also wanted to get her thoughts on sharing my experience with terminally ill patients and their families. She was head of a hospice agency. Talking to this person was an intense right feeling and I had an unexplained sense of urgency. When I related my experience the young lady cried and told me how I relieved fears and feelings of loss and grieving with the recent death of her mother. I had suggested I share my experience with terminally ill patients, but expressed concern about doing so would be a double edged sword attacking their belief systems already in place. She concurred and said the conflict may be more harmful than helpful." (Dr. PMH Atwater)