An Afterlife Investigator’s Perspective on God

What the evidence suggests about the Big Guy in the sky.

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

It’s always interesting when I talk about God in reference to my investigation of life after death. Most people associate God with what they’ve learned from their religion. An investigator, however, must view God from an angle unconstrained by beliefs, teachings (dogma), or even stories. An investigator draws conclusions by examining the evidence using logic, reason, and pragmatism. I begin my investigations without bias or expectation and draw conclusions only after gathering and examining the available evidence. In other words, I look at the evidence first and draw my conclusions second.

I grew up Catholic, so before I began my investigation of the afterlife, I needed to place all my learned beliefs into the category of unproven. To an investigator, the proof is determined by a preponderance of evidence. Evidence is objective, while proof is subjective. What might be determined as proof to one person might not be proof to another. Consequently, what matters most to an investigator is gathering as much evidence as possible before drawing any conclusions.

I never attempted to define God based on my investigation until I gathered about fifteen years of evidence. This was important—and quite difficult—because I wasn’t investigating God. I was investigating life after death, and God just happened to be the warden of this institution. Okay, now I’m just conjuring up images of hell as a prison by talking about a warden and institution, so I’ll abandon that imagery. Perhaps it’s better to say that God was most evidently the top dog of the afterlife, and yes, I’m bold enough to refer to God by reversing the letters because, well, dogs are about as close to God as any living being ever was.

What I learned about God in my investigation is both liberating and comforting. I’ll go so far as to say it’s freeing. It taught me how to answer the question, “How does God allow the suffering and tragedy we see in the world?” When your image of God is such that you can see innocent people and children suffer and no longer question God, it offers a sense of inner peace that holds more value than winning the lottery. That’s what today’s article is all about.

Laying the Groundwork for Understanding

Understanding the relationship between soul and spirit, as described in my article about these terms, will make understanding my view of God easier. In other words, if you know that one soul is made up of many spirits, then it’s an easy transition to think of God as made up of many souls—all souls, to be specific.

So God is Source Energy (all that is), and all the souls that exist are extensions of Source. On the other hand, a spirit is an extension of its soul. So we have Source, which experiences “all that is” through its souls, which experiences “all that is” through its spirits. So it’s a pyramid that goes like this: God > Souls > Spirits.

In this way, each spirit (including you and me) is simply an extension of God. Even though we don’t necessarily feel it as humans, we are always eternally connected to God. Even more accurately, we are God; we are God in the same way that your arms and legs are you. You are not all that God is, just as your left arm is not all that you are, but you are most definitely one with God.

For so many years, I struggled to understand God. Even as I began investigating the afterlife—which taught me so much more than I ever imagined it would—many of my questions about God and the afterlife eluded me, especially the big ones like why God allows suffering, why God allows children to starve, and why God allows war and terrorism.

An Alternate, Big-Picture Perspective of Divinity

It wasn’t until I stopped thinking of God as a single entity—I stopped imagining God as an emotional human being—that everything finally made sense. The more I investigated the afterlife, the more I heard testimony from spirits (through mediums), and the more I interviewed people who had near-death experiences, the more I could no longer envision God as a person and instead began to view God as Infinite Intelligence, Source Energy, or Universal Energy—the one force that connects everyone and everything.

Viewing God as the Universe eliminated the human qualities I was giving God, which were confusing to me. When you think of God as infinite intelligence, you stop thinking of God as having a fragile ego or being vengeful, judgmental, or selective in His favorites. In fact, there’s no more His or Her at all. God is love. God is joy. God is compassion. God is the life force that drives every human, plant, and animal.

The issue with the word “God” is that we’ve associated that word with a humanlike creature with magical superpowers. While I’m no student of religion, I loved learning about Greek mythology in college. Instead of one god that looked and acted like a human, there were many different gods with both humanlike and godlike qualities. And they were a wild bunch with emotions that were out of control. They were jealous, vengeful, lustful—you name it. But there were so many gods that people didn’t look up to any one of them as their maker. Folks were just doing their best to honor them and avoid making them angry.

So, farmers had rituals that honored the plant god or the rain god to have good crops. Sailors followed rituals to please gods for smooth sailing, like the god of the wind or the god of the sea. When people wanted to have a baby, they worshiped the goddess of fertility.

Somewhere in history, someone invented the idea of the one-and-only God. And, of course, this one-and-only God looked and acted just like a man. Worse, this god was presented as “Our Father,” so now we had a deeply personal connection with this god and all the parental issues that come with it.

Suddenly, people who now believed in the one-and-only God found themselves trying to please just one god rather than a group of gods. No longer was there a god who controlled the wind or a god who ruled the crops. Now, every little thing was controlled by one God. So if a tornado wiped out your house, you no longer thought that the wind god was having a temper tantrum because the sun god did something to upset him. No, now you felt that you did something to anger the one-and-only God, who had now leveled your house as punishment.

And that’s the heart of the issue for most people. Whenever something goes wrong, “Our Father” is responsible for all our suffering. He either caused the tragedy, struggle, or sorrow, or at the very least, He allowed it.

So when a person is diagnosed with cancer, they are now wondering if God gave them cancer as a punishment for something they did or if He allowed the cancer because He wasn’t paying attention. Was God too distracted by His favorites—the celebrities or those who go to church every Sunday—to notice the cancer cells and stop them? Or does God not care enough about this person to save them from cancer? Now that the one-and-only God has been presented as “Our Father,” we’ve given Him the power to protect and heal us. And so our life depends on where we stand in the eyes of God when this is our perspective of God.

It’s no wonder I couldn’t answer the question “Where is God when tragedy and terror strike?” for so many years. I was thinking of God as a person. But all my research into the afterlife found no evidence of such an all-powerful father figure. Certainly, most people who had near-death experiences hadn’t seen God the Father. They saw spirits of all sorts. They felt the presence and love of God. But none of them could tell me what God looked like. Moreover, those who claimed to have experienced God’s presence all described God as energy, not an entity. God to these people was so expansive and infinite that they preferred the terms “Source,” “Universe,” “Infinite Intelligence,” “Oneness,” and even “Ultimate Love” over the word “God.”

The same was true for my investigation into spirit communication. Much of this came from readings with mediums, but I also learned from people’s dream visitations and deathbed visions. In my readings, many of my loved ones who are now in spirit described God as the intelligence of the universe, not some guy in the sky. I now have had hundreds of readings with mediums and seen hundreds of other people have readings with mediums, and never has any spirit come through saying that God is anything other than infinite intelligence—the oneness that connects everything.

Reframing How We Label God

So, how do we view God as anything but human? How do we view God as energy? It might be easier if we refrain from using the word altogether. It’s why I typically refer to God as Source Energy, the Universe, Universal Energy, or Infinite Intelligence. Using those phrases makes it easier to stop thinking of the one-and-only God and begin thinking in terms of energy rather than entity.

Now that you’ve been introduced to this paradigm shift, notice how it trips your mind up a little when you hear the word “God” in a sentence. Pause to see how it makes you think and feel. You might be surprised at how entrenched this one-and-only God paradigm is in your psyche. But when you truly break free of it, you’ll feel a new sense of inner peace you never knew was possible.

When I recognized this paradigm shift of God from entity to energy, thousands of little lightbulbs lit up in my brain, and my many questions about God and the afterlife were finally given light. That was years ago, but it took me several more years to finally share it with others because I wanted to be sure I could articulate my newfound insights before translating them into words.

Final Thoughts

Because I’ve shared this with audiences over the years, some people have misinterpreted this view as me not believing in God. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I guess it’s fair to say that I don’t believe in the God I was taught to imagine in Catechism, but changing one’s view of God is not the same as not believing in God at all.

I did avoid the word “God” in my writing for several years. In the same way that I tend to avoid using the word “Heaven.” It conjures too many religious images for people, which can distract from what I’m trying to teach. If you see me using one of these words rich in religious meaning, I’ll tend to do it when the religious context doesn’t muddy the waters. Otherwise, there are plenty of optional descriptions that serve the purpose of describing the Divine Intelligence and Love that is God.

I think it’s important that I end this topic about God by saying that my investigation of the afterlife was always a solitary journey. I never intended to share my experiences with others. My articles, books, and Afterlife TV came as a reaction to my enthusiasm for what I was discovering. It’s like the first time a child eats ice cream. He’s been eating baby food all his life, and suddenly, Auntie Mabel slips him a spoon of her ice cream. He’s like, “Holy moly, guacamole! What in the name of Sam Hill was that? Do other people know about this creamy yumminess? I must tell the world about it!”

That was me whenever I discovered evidence of life after death. My point is that I don’t share my experiences with you to get you to believe what I do. I don’t care if anyone adopts my conclusions. I merely share what I’ve learned because it helped me, so I think that maybe you’ll find it rewarding, too. If not, at least you’ve been entertained for a few minutes and have insight into another person’s perspective.

Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear from you in the comments. And, if you don’t want to comment but you enjoyed the article, please click the “like” ♥️ button. It helps me to know which articles you most enjoy by viewing the number of likes.

I send you love,
Bob

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com. His newest venture is Bob Olson Connect, where you can read Bob’s articles before they become books.

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