The Question of Hell

If there’s an afterlife, does that mean there’s also Hell? What I've learned in my 25-year investigation of life after death about Hell.

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A lot of people have asked me what I’ve learned about Hell in my investigation of the afterlife that began in 1997. This article outlines what I’ve learned from many areas of afterlife evidence, especially mediumship and near-death experiences, but these findings are supported by out-of-body experiences and between-lives regressions as well.

It’s important to understand that my findings on this subject are based on evidence, not religion. An investigation begins with a blank slate, compiling evidence from which one can draw conclusions. Without evidence, there are no conclusions to be drawn. This article about Hell is based on twenty-five years of evidence gathering and the conclusions that were made from that evidence. If these discoveries contradict any religious teachings, that’s not the point nor even the intention. The intention is to share with you a unique perception, which you can entertain, embrace, or simply dismiss.

In this piece, I will explain what evidence exists around the concept of Hell, including the thousands of communications mediums have had with spirits, the front-row seats to the afterlife of near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences, and the back-door view of between-lives regressions (also called spiritual regressions). I’ll even include the ten to fifteen percent of near-death experiencers who claim to have experienced a hellish NDE in this discussion. Finally, I’ll explain why knowing this information is so important before we die.

What the Evidence Teaches Us About Hell

In twenty-five years, I have seen no evidence of Hell in my investigations of the afterlife. In fact, more and more afterlife experts agree that the only Hell that exists is within our own physical mind. It’s not a place, realm, or dimension; it’s a state of human mental anguish.

Fear is Hell. Guilt is Hell. Regret is Hell. Shame is Hell. And these are emotions that we can feel in the afterlife too, but only in response to our lives here on the earth plane. In this way, it’s easy to understand why one might interpret the existence of Hell, but this is a far stretch from a place of eternal damnation, fire, and torture.

Let’s begin with mediumship. I’ve had hundreds of personal readings with mediums and witnessed hundreds of other people get readings, and never have I heard a single person in spirit say that they were in Hell or that they were aware of such a place. I’ve also never heard any spirit say they knew someone who was in Hell or that a deceased person was missing from the spirit world who might be in Hell.

So what about hellish near-death experiences? While 10 percent to 15 percent of people who have had near-death experiences have suggested they experienced some version of what might be interpreted as Hell, the evidence of near-death experiences indicates two important factors we must consider.

One, the details of what we experience in the near-death experience are interpreted by our own points of reference (what we believe as human beings). It’s always important to remember that near-death experiences are recorded (told) after the experience, which means that these stories are being filtered through each person’s beliefs (including religious beliefs), education, and personal experiences.

Two, the initial experiences we have of the afterlife during the near-death experience are in direct relation to our expectations of it. Last Friday’s snowblower story was all about us getting what we expect out of life. Well, the same is true in the spirit world, at least initially. We experience what we expect to experience.

So if you remember that we can be, do, and have anything we want in spirit, then you understand how easily we might create a Hell-like experience when we cross over to the other side during the near-death experience, especially if that’s what we are expecting. Our beliefs alone might make it so.

Still, the Hell these people experienced is not what most people think of as Hell (a place of eternal damnation). Instead, it is a Hell-like environment of their own creation, which they can change at any moment simply by changing their thoughts (although most people who have this experience don’t know they can do this, which is why this information is so important to learn before we die).

If you’ve ever been to a hypnosis demonstration (they’re fun to attend), you’ve probably witnessed volunteers from the audience being influenced by suggestions onstage. In almost every show, the hypnotist will put something like a penny in the volunteers’ hands and suggest that it’s getting hotter and hotter. Eventually, all the volunteers onstage drop the penny as if it’s melting the palms of their hands. Yet it isn’t. There is no reality to their experience of being burned by the penny. No hypnotist could afford the lawsuits if their hands were actually burned. Instead, the people experienced what they expected to experience due to the hypnotic suggestion, which was to feel the penny getting hot.

If we’ve learned anything from near-death experiences, it is that we can create our own reality in the spiritual dimension. One near-death experiencer told me that when she thought of a field—shazam!—she was in a field. When she then changed her thought from a field to a tunnel—shazam!—she was in a tunnel. When she then changed her thought to being in the hospital with her physical body—shazam!—she was walking down a hallway in the hospital. She said everything felt so real to her that she could feel the warmth of the sun in the field, smell the dirt of the dank tunnel, and hear the echo inside the concrete walls of the hospital. But the point is that all she needed to do was change her thought, and it changed her perceived environment.

Consequently, my investigation has led me to conclude that people who experienced hellish near-death experiences did so because they believed in Hell and expected they might go there when they died. In fact, there are people whose near-death experiences began as if they were in Hell until they realized that they could change their environment by changing their thoughts (or calling out for help, which is another way of thinking about a new possibility). Then their Hell-like environment instantly changed to a heaven-like environment in the way that the woman above described as “shazam!”

People in spirit who communicate through mediums also say there’s no Hell. Channelers who channel advanced spirits and group entities agree. Even the majority of people who have had near-death experiences say there’s no Hell, as do the folks who have had out-of-body experiences and between-lives regressions.

Paul Selig writes this in his channeled book, Resurrection: “The idea of heaven and hell must be understood now as a metaphor of different levels of tone or vibration... The idea of hell that you’ve been given, the absence of God, a place of fire and brimstone, a place of torture, is also metaphor... When one dies, one cannot go to hell because there is not a geographical location for it. Hell becomes an idea of the absence of God.”

For those few people who experienced Hellish near-death experiences, the most practical explanation for their accounts is that their mind was so filled with an expectation that Hell exists (and that they might go there) that Hell is what they experienced. Little did they know that all they had to do was think of a more pleasant experience, or even call out for help, and their negative experience would have been over in an instant.

Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash

Final Words on Hell

If you believe in Hell and expect that you’re going there, it’s likely that you might experience what you expect, at least briefly. This doesn’t mean that Hell exists. What it means is that we can be, do, and have anything we can imagine in the spirit world. So if you are expecting a reality that is your imagined version of Hell, that might be what you experience, at least on your way to the spirit world. Once in the spirit world—with no chance of returning to your body—there will be people in spirit there to help you end the Hellish experience of your imagined expectations and see the reality of the afterlife, which is just the opposite of what we think of as Hell.

This, however, brings me back to what I said about emotions like fear, guilt, regret, and shame. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the afterlife or you’re in your physical life right now. If you’re feeling fearful, guilty, regretful, or shameful about something, you’re already experiencing a kind of Hell.

If you currently feel remorse about something you did to someone in this lifetime, you’re going to feel that remorse in the spirit world too. Once we’re in spirit, we know exactly how badly we’ve hurt people, and we can feel what we did to them from their perspective. That’s a heavy burden to carry, but it’s how we learn compassion as spiritual beings. Even though we might not learn it while we’re alive as humans, we can’t escape it once we’ve crossed over to the other side.

Luckily, as mentioned, there are people in spirit who have made it their job to help the recently deceased deal with these sorts of negative emotions. We will all need the gentle care and counseling of nonjudgmental spirits to help us overcome our own judgments against things we’ve said and done to others.

This is how we process our physical lives and how we evolve spiritually from them. Eventually, we all learn to forgive ourselves for hurting or taking advantage of others, and our negative emotions turn into positive emotions. So even if you choose to call this experience of emotional transformation Hell, it’s temporary and beneficial—all part of our spiritual growth.

The more we investigate life after death, the more we realize that humans are not equal to their spiritual counterparts. What this means is that the hereafter doesn’t need a Hell to punish and imprison the spirits of bad human beings, because spirits—by their innate essence—cannot be evil, greedy, selfish, or dangerous. Spirits are pure love. Consequently, as spirits, we are tougher on ourselves for our choices and actions as human beings than any higher spiritual being could ever be on us.

Thanks for reading my article. I hope you’re enjoying the spring weather.

With heartfelt gratitude,
Bob

PS, I’ll repeat that it’s important to express that my findings on this subject are based on twenty-five years of afterlife investigation, not religion. If my discoveries contradict any religious teachings, that’s not the point nor even the intention. The intention is to share with you a unique perception based on my uncommon experience, which you can entertain, embrace, or simply dismiss. Either way, I hope it’s been interesting.

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the 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. Click here to subscribe.

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If you’re enjoying my articles, please click the ❤️ button so more people can discover it on Substack, thanks! (It really helps.)