A Secret to Understanding Afterlife Experiences
There are two overlooked categories of afterlife experiences, and one category offers far more significant benefits than the other.
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.
During my investigation of life after death that began in 1997, I’ve had the pleasure of having dozens of experiences that convinced me that life after death is real. The benefits of these experiences are far-reaching. Yet, I learned along the way that there are two categories of experience, and only the first can lead to a knowing. The second category will only lead one to a belief, which pales in comparison to knowing.
In this article, I’ll teach you how to tell the difference between these two categories of experience so that you can invest your time and money in those that will eliminate your fear of death, comfort your grief, and instill within you a sense of inner peace that only specific experiences can provide.
I will also teach you how to gain the most benefits from the second category of experience that will add to your experiences in the first category, even if they don’t offer the same impact as the first. This advanced-level teaching will open your eyes to the experiences you have already had, allowing you to understand why some have impacted your spiritual growth more than others.
Understanding Personal and Vicarious Experiences
The primary case I’m presenting in this article is that evidence obtained from “personal experience” convinces more people of an afterlife than what I call “vicarious experience.” In the past twenty-six years, I’ve referred to these two categories of evidence as “personal versus vicarious experience.”
To state the obvious for clarity, personal experience is an event one has experienced personally. A vicarious experience is an event one has not personally known but learns about through another person, either directly or through a book, article, documentary, lecture, or other form of media.
It’s more common for researchers to focus on subjective evidence versus objective evidence. Still, I have found it more helpful to focus on personal versus vicarious experiences regarding life after death, the former being more convincing.
Said another way, at the risk of belaboring for the sake of clarity, my investigation has indicated that the evidence that convinces more people of the survival of consciousness than any other is the subjective evidence of personal experience.
Personal experience evidence includes, but is not limited to, mediumship, past-life regression (PLR), between-lives regression (BLR), hypnotic spirit contact, some after-death communications, as well as near-death experience (NDE) and out-of-body experience (OBE).
Of course, for those who have not had a near-death experience or out-of-body experience, hearing or reading about another’s NDE or OBE is a vicarious experience.
Like NDEs and OBEs, experiences such as dream visitations, deathbed visions (also known as pre-death visions), and even shared-death experiences are not available to everyone. In most cases, deathbed visions are only known to the dying. Similarly, not everyone is privileged to have a dream visitation or, even less so, a shared-death experience. To those who know these experiences intimately, they are a personal experience. To the rest of us who only learn about them or hear someone else’s story about theirs, these are vicarious experiences.
Even though my investigation has indicated that personal experience is more compelling than vicarious, there is still great value in vicarious experiences related to the afterlife, which I will address in a moment.
The Unique Value of Personal Experiences
To clarify what I’m presenting here, I’d like to compare what we know about marketing and sales. It's an odd association, I know, but it’s relevant. Based on our knowledge of marketing and sales, most people do not choose to purchase expensive items based on logic and reasoning. On the contrary, most people decide to make a costly purchase based on emotion and then justify that choice with logic and reason. “That new electric car makes me feel prestigious and hip, but I tell people I bought it because it’s good for the environment.”
In reference to believing in an afterlife, I contend that most people do the same thing. One of the most curious realizations I had in my investigation of life after death is that it is often the most minute and insignificant detail about one’s personal afterlife experience that convinces them that the afterlife exists. Why? Because the minor, personal-experience evidence creates an emotional response.
For instance, I once watched a woman getting a reading from a medium who was a stranger to her. The medium described her deceased father, what he looked like, how he dressed, how he died, what he did for work and as a hobby, and even provided the first and last initials of his name, and still the woman’s arms stayed folded tightly across her chest, and her face remained stoic. However, when the medium conveyed that the woman’s father was calling her Jellybean because he called her Jellybean as a child, her arms unfolded, and tears instantly streamed down her cheeks.
Jellybean was the evidence that was most convincing for this woman. Still, if she were to share that single piece of evidence with another person who was unconvinced that life after death exists, she would probably face skepticism and possibly ridicule. I’ve learned that, if this woman is like most people, she would more likely tell her friends about the litany of other details presented by the medium rather than the Jellybean reference that broke through her fortress of skepticism.
The Unique Value of Vicarious Experiences
Despite my primary argument that personal experiences hold more weight than vicarious experiences when investigating the survival of consciousness, vicarious experiences still have noteworthy value. To explain, I equate my investigation of life after death to putting together a puzzle.
My personal experiences, such as practitioner-facilitated sessions and spontaneous after-death communications, provided me with the puzzle pieces for all the edges and much of the middle of the afterlife puzzle. Still, some pieces of the puzzle remained missing even after multiple personal experiences of varying types.
Beyond the personal, my vicarious experiences mainly came from interviews I conducted with other people about their afterlife-related experiences, including after-death communications (signs and signals from spirits, dream visitations, and observed deathbed visions), as well as personal accounts of their near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, and past-life recalls. These vicarious experiences filled in the missing pieces of my afterlife puzzle.
Typically, these were single puzzle pieces that fit into my comprehension of the big questions about life and death. When I say big questions, I’m talking about inquiries like why bad things happen to good people, why children die, and what kind of God would allow the tragedies that exist in our world.
Let me be clear: I never could have fathomed answers to those questions without the personal experiences. However, the personal experiences left gaps of understanding that only some of the most spiritual experiences could fill, and I’m mainly referring to near-death experiences. Consequently, even though other people’s NDEs were vicarious to me, I could fill in the missing puzzle pieces to my inquiries thanks to lessons learned from their otherworldly journeys.
One important reason I could add these puzzle pieces with other people’s experiences was that my personal experiences allowed me to relate to and understand these vicarious experiences in ways that would not have been possible without my own (personal) experiences. This is a fundamental statement.
For example, my past-life regressions and between-lives regressions allowed me to relate to the experience of timelessness described in people’s accounts of their near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. I had one BLR that lasted about five hours, yet it felt like the experience lasted a fraction of that time. It also felt like seconds had passed between my regressionist’s questions and my answers. Listening to the recording of my BLR later revealed that several minutes often passed between the questions and my answers.
Near-death experiencers also told me how, during their NDE, they could merely think of another place or time and be there in the blink of an eye. I, too, knew that experience from my PLRs. A simple suggestion from the regressionist instantly changed my location and time in history. I was experiencing myself in my forties as George in my first PLR, but when the regressionist suggested I move forward to the day of my death, I was instantaneously experiencing myself in my sixties while dying.
Even if my own experiences were not the same as the vicarious experience from which I was relating, my personal experiences were similar enough to comprehend these otherworldly experiences being described to me.
While my interviews with people about their experiences were valuable, I should note that reading books, watching videos online (VHS in my early years), attending lectures, and watching documentaries were the next level of vicarious experience for me. Perhaps not equally as valuable as hearing directly from the people who had experiences, but I learned bits and pieces that added a puzzle piece here and there.
Furthermore, learning about the scientific studies and experiments carried out by others—both individuals and organizations—was informative and, more importantly, generally confirming. I gratefully credit the colossal list of scientists and researchers who have taken a different path than my own—their approach of focusing on one category of evidence—because they were able to take deeper dives into their evidence of choice.
My path of discovering a great variety of evidence allowed me to recognize that personal experiences are more compelling than vicarious, as well as determine that the whole of the evidence is more convincing than any single evidence. However, my vicarious experiences gained from this deeper-dive research provided me with puzzle pieces I might never have found otherwise.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, personal and vicarious experiences both have their value. Still, if your objective is to gain a knowing about spirituality and the afterlife, personal experiences are your best path.
I’ll finish with my top personal experiences over the years. This is not a complete list, just eight of my faves. I’ve linked these experiences to articles that I’ve written about. The couple that are not linked to an article are upcoming.
This is just one of a series of advanced-level teachings. There’ll be more to come. Let me know what epiphanies or thoughts this has sparked for you. Perhaps it’s helped you to realize why some experiences shifted something within you while others did not. Or maybe it made you realize why you’ve felt the need to repeat certain experiences that were mildly comforting but didn’t stick over time. I’d also love to read about your favorite personal experiences in the comments.
My favorite personal experiences:
2. Spirit artistry.
3. Past-life regression.
5. Spirit contact with hypnosis.
6. After-death communications.
7. Animal communication.
8. Intuitive writing (Spirit writing).
Sending 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.
Bob…My mother, who I did not get along with very well in life, appeared to me in a dream about a year after she died. At the time she died her physical appearance was of a very old, white-haired woman. In the dream appearance she looked about 45 and in radiant good health. Her expression was of immense love. I said to her, “Why am I seeing you?”. She smiled, hugged me, and disappeared instantly. Since that happened all bitter thoughts of her have left me. Do you think thqt was a true “visitation” from beyond death?
I like everything you have put out. I loved the videos years ago, never missed them, bought your two books and gave them as gifts too.
Anything you choose to do is fine with me. I’m just glad you and your “voice” is back😊✊…