NATALIE SUDMAN: “Natalie Sudman shares NEW INSIGHTS about her near death experience after her truck was hit by a roadside bomb in Iraq. In this second interview, Natalie reveals what happened to her in the second stage of her NDE, which she calls the REST ENVIRONMENT. She talks about the relationship between spirit and soul, her experience having a Life Review, the matrix that connects all living things, coincidences as serendipity, choices we make and those we don’t make, the power of our beliefs over our intentions, and a profound final message about the gift of being human. If you were fascinated by this Defense Of Freedom Medal recipient in her first interview in Season One, you’ll want to watch or listen to this new video conversation that covers new, consciousness-expanding insights.” ~ Bob Olson, Afterlife TV
Natalie Sudman worked as an archeologist in the Great Basin states for sixteen years before accepting a position managing construction contracts in Iraq. After being injured by a roadside bomb (improvised explosive device–IED), Natalie has since retired from government service. She is now enjoying art, writing, and continuing explorations into the non-physical.
Natalie has been a subject of studies performed by the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, and welcomes invitations to act as a lab rat for any scientific investigation. Describing herself as an open-minded skeptic, Natalie finds that the rigorous methodology of science appeals to her critical mind, while her artistic nature enjoys the expansive freedom of leaving behind the critical mind in frequent forays into the non-physical. She maintains that an irreverent sense of humor and a willingness to look foolish are the cornerstones of constructive exploration.
Raised in Minnesota, Natlie Sudman has lived most of her adult life in eastern Oregon, Montana and South Dakota. She recently moved to southern Arizona. Her artwork is available through Davis & Cline Galleries in Ashland, Oregon, and her hand-made urns are available at Inyan Trace Art Studio.
WEBSITE: Natalie Sudman’s personal website: http://www.NatalieSudman.com
BLOG: Natalie Sudman’s blog: http://traceofelements.wordpress.com
If you’d like to watch this video, Natalie Sudman’s LIFE REVIEW During Her Near Death Experience, visit www.afterlifetv.com/?p= 943
Afterlife TV is presented by Afterlife Investigator & Psychic Medium Researcher Bob Olson, who is the author of Answers about the Afterlife: A Private Investigator’s 15-Year Research Unlocks the Mysteries of Life after Death.
Check out Bob Olson’s other sites: BestPsychicDirectory.com (a directory of hundreds of psychics & mediums by location with reviews & Instant Readings) & BestPsychicMediums.com (his personal recommended list of tested psychics and mediums) or visit Bob’s Facebook Page. Bob also has a popular workshop for psychics and mediums at PsychicMediumWorkshop.com.
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Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Hi everybody. Bob Olson here with Afterlife TV. This is where we investigate the afterlife, talk about the questions that people are thinking about that subject. You can find us at afterlifetv.com.
I’m so excited. First of all, this is our first return guest for the second season, and I’m really excited about it because, first of all, the first video conversation that I had with this guest has had at this point over 10,000 views, which is twice as much as some of our well-known authors. So apparently, people are loving this subject, loving the guest, as I do. One of our biggest comments is that she’s the guest with the best smile.
She’s the author of this book you might remember, Application of Impossible Things. Pull it back a little bit. We’re going to talk more about that. What’s so cool about this subject is that I thought when I first interviewed her that we were going to talk about everything in the book. Well, we got through basically one of three stages that she went through during her near death experience, and then we ran out of time. There’s that much to talk about.
We’re going to talk about the second stage today, get really in depth with it, and in the future we’ll do another video conversation about the third stage. I’m so excited to be able to talk and get more in depth with the second stage, called the rest environment, with Natalie Sudman. Thanks for coming back, Natalie.
Natalie Sudman: Thank you for having me back, Bob.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Well, this is really an honor to be able to do this. The last time we were on you told the story more in depth, but for those people who are just tuning in, just finding out about you for the first time, tell us a little bit about your story.
Natalie Sudman: Okay. I was working in Iraq for the Army Corps of Engineers in 2006 and 2007. In late 2007 the vehicle that I was traveling in was hit with a roadside bomb. When that bomb went off I went out of my body and had what’s known as a near death experience.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s right, and the classic near death experience. I haven’t run into one like yours. I mean I know they’re all somewhat different anyways. This one has a lot of depth to it. One of the interesting things, and this is going to lead into my first question, you called it the blink environment because basically you blinked and there you were in this new environment. You described it as being almost like on stage in front of thousands of beings as if you were a rock star in a large stadium. You were downloading the information to them. What kind of information were you downloading to them?
Natalie Sudman: Well, it was really complex. It’s difficult to describe because it’s not like transferring information in a linear fashion. It’s like clumps of knowledge or clumps of information, and all I did was transfer it to them. So it was, I would say, broadly cultural information. It was all physical world information, how things connect to each other and how they interact with each other.
That’s from the cultural level and interpersonal levels, and a lot of it was information about communications and broad structures of organization of energy that informs cultures and even science, or what we might consider organizations within cultures.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Wow, a little complex, obviously complex. You trying to put it into words I know is even more complex, but basically this is information that as a being you can only get from having a physical life, right?
Natalie Sudman: Right.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Is it just this lifetime? You’re just downloading information from this lifetime that you’ve gained?
Natalie Sudman: No. I would say some of the information was from this lifetime and from this present moment of where the world is right now, but a lot of it was beyond what we would consider to be the physical world. It was energy structures and what was happening with those energy structures. So we wouldn’t call that physical world, but it is the physical world. It’s the energy structure that supports and maintains the physical world.
So it went from that level all the way kind of down to the ground level. Because a lot of it was that kind of energy information, it’s hard for me to say that it’s from this lifetime. Because when you’re in that expanded awareness, all lifetimes are this lifetime.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s right. That’s right, and I think we’re going to keep coming back to that because that’s sort of a common theme with most near death experiences, people are recognizing the time/space thing. Talk about confusing people and making it hard to talk about. One of the things I want to talk about, first of all, people, I want you to know—I’m talking to the audience here—that the first video conversation that we had, which was last March, six months ago or something, is down below this one on afterlifetv.com. So if you’re looking for it, you can go there. You don’t have to watch that one first. You can watch this one first and get just as much information out of it and go back and watch that other one at any time.
The interesting thing that I said in that first conversation was when I first got this book it seems like it’s a thin book, maybe 120 pages or so. But you were so careful about the way you wrote the information in here, and that’s what we’re already recognizing from you starting right off in this video is that you are being really careful about how you answer the questions and describe the things that you experienced.
That’s one of the things I love about you is that you have a great way of articulating the experiences that you’ve had, whereas a lot of other people—I probably would have been one of them—would have just said, you know, it’s really hard to describe in human terms, and just give up there. So based on that question that I just asked, this is one of the things I was thinking about because I was watching the video over again this weekend. I’m thinking, here you are in this stadium. You’re downloading information to thousands of beings.
One of the things that you said was that some of these beings are having lives simultaneously. So they’re there with you in the stadium, but they’re also having lives simultaneously somewhere else. She’s going, I don’t remember saying that. But no, all right. I think we lost your video, so all I’m seeing is one. I know it’s going to come back, but I can’t even see you right now. Hey, you’re back. Good to see you. There’s that smile everybody’s talking about.
So one of the things I was thinking about is: Is it possible that you—and I know you know the answer to this question—were downloading this information in whatever realm that was? We’ll call it the blink environment. You were downloading that information, that part of you, and when you left your body because of the bomb you then became aware of it. You became conscious of the fact that you were doing that.
Or I think what a lot of people were probably thinking was you left your body because of the bomb. You left your body, and then you went and downloaded all this information. Once I got thinking about it, because I hadn’t before, no, she was probably downloading that information already. She just became aware that she was doing that. What’s the truth in that?
Natalie Sudman: I think that you’re right in that all I did was shift my focus as a consciousness, as a being. I think that I’m always downloading that information to them, but that’s kind of a background running thing. Whereas when I left my body, then I had all that extra awareness or that focus. I was able to put that all on the downloading. I mean the downloading then may have become more intense or something. I don’t really know.
But yeah, I think that I’m doing that at the same time. I mean, because time is so different there too, that question in some ways I have to kind of break it down because in some ways from the expanded awareness it doesn’t make sense. Of course, all things are happening simultaneously, so there’s not that linear progression. Yet there is a kind of progression. It’s just way more complex than our very linear time progression.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Okay. But from our human, physical perspective, most of us would think, because I did, I just automatically thought at the very beginning, oh, she left her body and now she’s here. I thought, she had to hit this bomb to leave her body to go do this. That was all meant to be. But no, you were downloading already. You just became aware of it.
It wasn’t just you. Basically, we’re all doing this, each one of us, everybody watching this. We’re all doing this. We’re doing things on a spiritual level, things going on in the background, as you say, great way of describing it, and we’re just not aware of it.
Natalie Sudman: Yeah, we are. I mean as spirits we’re more than just the focus that we have right here in this physical body. I mean this certainly takes a very clear and razor focus to stay in this body and maintain a body in the physical world, but we’re so much more than that. We can maintain other things as well.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s very cool. I mean, my goodness, that’s a mind-blowing concept right there, I think. So it leads me to ask you, because you’re just so good at articulating things, how would you even label then these different parts of our self? So for instance, the spiritual part of you as a physical person, any one of us as a physical person, there’s a spiritual part of us. I’m curious as to what we would call that, what you would call that, because everybody has different names for it, but what you would call that versus the part of you that was downloading information to all those thousands of beings, the part of you that’s working in the background.
Then I’m wondering, is there another part? See, I used to think of things in terms of, okay, there’s our physical self. There’s our spirit, and I would think that our spirit would be within our physical self. Yeah, maybe it can come and go. I never really thought of it being in two places at once, so that confuses things for me a little bit. So I thought, when we die, when we pass, our spirit leaves our body, goes back into the spirit world.
Bob, the spirit of Bob, will always be there, but I always thought of it as then there was another part of me which was my soul, which was me with all the other lifetimes that I’ve had, Bob and George and Larry and Susan. So my soul is the bigger part of me, the higher self, some people might call it.
But how would you define it then? Now I’m questioning if that is even accurate. How would you define these different parts of ourselves? Do you have names for them?
Natalie Sudman: Well, I mean, I guess I have a lot of names for them depending, because I mean the way you think about it, that’s accurate. It’s not necessarily true, but it’s accurate and it’s practical and it’s workable. Because our awareness here in the physical body is limited in certain ways by what we’ve chosen to forget by coming into this body or by the beliefs of our cultures or whatever, we’ve limited our awareness in that way for reasons. Now I just lost track of where I was.
The thinking of ourselves as inhabited by my spirit and then leaving my body, that’s a workable thing. That’s a workable model. For me, I think of myself as I have a focus in this body, and I call it my core. That’s just my word, probably my most common word for it. I can also while in this body shift my focus and be aware of being in the nonphysical.
I mean for me there’s no separation between the physical and nonphysical. It’s all one. We make that distinction for reasons, practical reasons again, but in my mind that split has quit serving me. So they’re one, and all I have to do is shift my focus to be in one or the other.
As far as there being a soul, like an over-soul or an even bigger me, yeah, I mean I’ve experienced that. It’s like people talk about guides or the help that they get. My understanding of my guides is that they’re parts of myself, my soul. It’s almost like I’m a splinter of my whole self, and I still have connection and clear communication with that whole self. It’s splinters. That’s just how I think of it.
I mean there are different models or ways to think of it, but all those other parts of myself are simultaneously living all those other lives in the physical or out of the physical. They’re having their experiences, but we’re all also one experience.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: All right. Honestly, that’s so cool. Because another thing that I never thought about was this idea; I always thought of spirit guides as being—
Natalie Sudman: Out there.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, other, other. In a way they are other. There’s all this talk about sometimes they’ve lived human lives, sometimes they haven’t, whatever. But I never thought of them as actually being parts of my whole self or my soul, what I would kind of call my soul, that part of me that has had many lives. Of course, why not? Perfect. Who would sign up to be with me anyways? Who would do that? Me.
Natalie Sudman: Yeah, right.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Of course. Then of course when I go back and I’m upset about something I can only blame myself. Somebody left a great comment. If I have a really lousy life, am I not then a victim of my own soul’s choices? It’s like I guess you could use the word victim if you see yourself separate as your soul, and certainly in this case.
Natalie Sudman: He’s not a victim of anything.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: No, well, exactly. But there are a lot people coming in with a lot of different consciousness, so they were trying to make sense of it. This even helps even more because it’s like this isn’t like some separate spirit guide who is helping you along and messing up your life. This is still parts of you. So if you can be mad at yourself, okay, we’ll be mad at ourselves, and we probably will be, many of us. That really helps. Thank you for doing that. I’m so glad I asked that question. That just changes so much for me.
We were in the blink environment. The blink environment was the first interview that we did, so much to it, so incredible all the things that you taught us in that interview. This time we’re going to talk about the rest environment. I call it the R&R stage or the recuperate and restore energy stage, whatever it may be. Let’s just start about when you first went into that stage.
Now again, I understand there’s no linear progression of how all these things happen. It’s kind of all happening at once. But at the beginning you talk about rather than just move like from one place like the blink environment to the rest environment, you say you sort of fold in upon yourself. Love that, love that phrase. Let’s start from there. Explain what that is a little bit, folding in upon yourself, and then what happens from that point on.
Natalie Sudman: Folding in upon myself, to me it almost feels like turning inside out, but I’m sure that’s not very helpful to people. If you close your eyes and are in a really safe and comfortable place and just sort of that sinking in filling of going to sleep or just sort of hovering on that half sleep where you’re really comfortable and you’re both completely within yourself and still sort of vaguely aware that you are yourself and you’re in a body, I guess that’s the closest I can come.
It’s going in like that but maybe even deeper. I mean it feels like I could just keep going in and in and in. It’s very, very comfortable. I mean it’s probably the safest place I can find for myself is to go into that place. It’s that comfortable. It’s beautiful and just totally relaxing.
When I went into that space, I guess this would be the aversion of the life review that a lot of people report when they have NDEs. I guess it’s kind of review, but it was more like just sort of a very leisurely stroll through memories. Sometimes you sit and you just kind of get lost in a memory, and you’re not evaluating it or you’re not judging it as good or bad or oh, I should have done this or I should have done that. When you’re thinking about a really good memory you’re just enjoying it, sort of reliving it.
That’s how all of this was. Whether I was looking at something bad in my life or good in my life, it all had that lack of judgment. So it was very leisurely. I was evaluating what I had done in my life, but I was evaluating it on my own terms. I was evaluating on my own sense of what I had wanted to do or what was fun for me.
There were a couple other beings with me, but it was almost like they were techs or something. I mean I was paying no attention to them. I could tell that they were sort of tweaking little energy flows or something in me, almost like tuning a car, but I was paying no attention to them. They weren’t interfering or interacting in any way other than sort of this technical stuff.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: All right. I’m going to stop you there because we’re covering more ground at once than I want to, so I’m going to slow you down because there’s so much to this. The majority of this, not in time or anything else but like in context, in what took place, would you say that this life review portion was the majority of the rest environment, or was it just a piece of it?
Natalie Sudman: I would say that it was a piece of it, and it was almost like the main point was this deep relaxation. Then in that deep relaxation I was sort of daydreaming. That very light, easy daydreaming was the life review. It wasn’t anything dire or heavy.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Is it healing? Is it recuperating to have this life review? What’s the benefit of it?
Natalie Sudman: It was more like daydreaming. It wasn’t part of the recuperating, it didn’t feel like. It was just so casual. You know how you daydream? You don’t really care what you’re daydreaming about, but it’s kind of enjoyable and maybe while you’re doing something else. That’s how light it was.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: All right. But you do call it an evaluation. You get to the point where you call it evaluation versus a what? No, you say it’s not an evaluation. It’s an examination. See, this is why I love it. So you choose these words carefully. You said it’s not an evaluation, which is what so many of us think of the life review as, an evaluation of our life. Instead, you just say it’s sort of an examination.
You gave a great example of candy to try to help us understand it. Do you remember that in the book? You talk about trying to choose what kind of candy you want.
Natalie Sudman: Yeah.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: It’s not like one’s bad. You’re just, which one do I feel like right now?
Natalie Sudman: Right, yeah, it was all good. I mean we have this idea that a life judgment is judgment of a life review and we’re judging ourselves. Oh, I fell short here and I was evil here and I was mean here. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter. You’re having an experience, and that experience is valuable.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, okay.
Natalie Sudman: I mean I had things that I was looking for while I was doing that review, like oh wow, that was a creative one or that was really fun. I could see how the thread put together and how it led to this really fun thing or something. So I was in a sense learning. I guess even daydreaming we’re learning. A lot of times we’re putting ourselves into a situation in our daydream to find out how we would react or to learn a little something. It doesn’t have to be big.
In this life review I was certainly picking out and going oh, look at that. But I wasn’t ever judging myself as good or evil or saying this was a total disaster. Oh no, I’m so awful. It didn’t happen. Okay, that was not very valuable. Whatever, I’m not going there.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, no regrets. No regrets involved.
Natalie Sudman: Right.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: You touched upon something I was going to talk about later. I’m going to talk about it now because you kind of brought it up. In daydreaming, in looking at these life experiences that you have had up till now or up until that, whatever, I’m not going to go to the time thing. I’m trying to be so careful.
You talk about choices and potentiality. You sort of touched upon it just a second ago. Looking at the choices that you made but the other potential that existed if you had made other choices, can you expand upon that, because that’s kind of cool?
Natalie Sudman: Yeah, it is cool. Well, every time we make a decision or a choice, the choice that we didn’t take, it still exists. This is going to get like really esoteric. It’s going to get confusing. But I mean I kind of explained it in the last chapter of my book in some sense. But we’re infinite and our focus potentiality is infinite and our exploration is infinite. So every time we split off there’s a part of ourselves that splits off with that other decision and follows that out.
So when I was in my life review you might think of it as I was looking at the trunk of the tree, all the choices that I did take. That was the main focus, but I could also see all the branches going off and where those might have led if I had chosen to carry my focus in that direction, my primary focus.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: So you can kind of see that as if it were like a little movie, a little daydream.
Natalie Sudman: Yeah.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Again, probably impossible to describe, but that’s really neat. As these multidimensional, infinite spiritual beings, we’re not living each one of those choices then, right? We’re only living the one choice.
Natalie Sudman: We’re maintaining our focus on the one choice.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Okay. You got me there. Put me in my place.
Natalie Sudman: No, no.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: No, no, I’m just kidding. I’m kidding. No, it’s great. I didn’t think that we were. But when you start talking to someone like you who has had these experiences, now I’m starting to think anything’s possible. So maybe we’re living all the choices.
Natalie Sudman: Right. No, and that could be possible, I suppose. I mean my brain can’t even get around that, so I don’t go there. I say I’m maintaining my focus here. If other me’s are splitting off and living out their choices, that’s okay. I’ll find that out later, but right now my little brain can’t handle that.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: I’m going to settle on that one because then every time I make a mistake I’ll go, well, I made the mistake here, but I made the right choice somewhere else. I’ll be happy about it later.
Natalie Sudman: Right.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Okay. So in this variation of the life review that you talk about, you drift into reflection; you talk about layers and links. Do you remember talking about layers and links?
Natalie Sudman: No.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: All right. I knew I was going to have to read at one point.
Natalie Sudman: I should’ve read the whole book again this morning.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Layers and links, I simultaneously perceived layers of emotional, mental, and physical experience with underlying connections and patterns and progressions as well as the links between all of those. Layers and links that don’t acknowledge as real in physical consciousness become obvious. What does that mean?
Natalie Sudman: Well, in our physical world experience, like even take this experience right here, we’re not aware of all the little strings and pieces and parts and decisions and emotions that led to you and I sitting here talking to each other, whereas in an expanded awareness you can focus and become aware of every single little piece that led to this moment in every single way.
It could be that butterfly wing thing. A butterfly flapped its wings next to me, and that made me do this and it changed everything. It changed my whole life. It’s that detailed if you want to focus there. Being able to see that kind of depth and those kinds of layers and layers and layers and details, it’s not difficult to comprehend on the expanded awareness level the way it would be here. I mean we’d have to in a linear way think through each of those things and go, oh, that and that and that and that and that.
But being able to comprehend it as a whole and understand all the energy movement, which is the important part for me because that’s what I was interested in, the energy movement and the energy patterns that led to X, Y, Z, those were the things that interested me. Although they seem incomprehensible to understand or take in from a physical mind viewpoint, on that level they were not difficult.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s right. You could understand them a lot better, and they are interesting, I think, to a lot of our audience as well. My guest Graham Nicholls, who talked about out-of-body experiences a couple weeks ago, called it the lattice. Of course, many people call it the matrix. I mean we’re kind of talking about the same thing.
You then go in the book from talking about layers and links to talking about coincidences. This is where coincidences happen. Let me just give you an example. I had emailed you. I don’t know. I had emailed you just to let you know, hey, your video has had over 10,000 views. Next think I know you’re going to be in D.C. because in Arizona we can’t do this. You don’t have a good internet connection. This is where we do it.
That was quite a coincidence that I happened to email you just before you were going to be going there. Maybe it’s just important that we do this at this time in our physical world. I don’t know. But anything else to say about coincidences in relation to this?
Natalie Sudman: Just that there is no coincidence. That’s our word for things that we can’t explain logically from our physical mind rational perspective, but there are no coincidences. Everything is crafted. I shouldn’t say maybe everything is because what I’ve discovered is that there can be mistakes or accidents.
Let’s call them accidents, like accidents of this person is over here creating this and I’m over here creating this and they interact in a way that’s unexpected. So in that way there are accidents, but most of the time in my experience coincidence is actually communication and a higher self crafting some particular thing.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: All right. So I was kind of wondering about that. I wondered, is this just creative intelligence, what I would maybe call the universe making these things happen, or is this spirit guides or our whole self/soul doing the puppeteer thing making it all happen from your experience?
Natalie Sudman: That’s all the same thing.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: The same thing. Okay, you’ve got me there. You’re right.
Natalie Sudman: Honestly, at different times I think of it in different ways because maybe it’s useful sometimes to make the distinction between is that my soul, or is that a spirit guide guiding me, or is that the universal flows of energy, God, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes it is useful for me to make that distinction, but in the end those are all the same thing.
We are our spirit guides. We are one. Everything is one, which means that we are God or God is us, through us, whatever word you want to use for that, source, goddess, whatever. It’s all the same thing that we’re talking about with those words. Yeah, so sometimes it’s useful to make the distinction and sometimes it’s maybe more useful to stretch our minds and understand that all those things are the same things. They’re me.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: While you can say that there are no coincidences, not everything also is necessarily meaningful. A bird can fly by me and it’s not necessarily a message, right? I mean from your experience, everything you learned in that experience, isn’t that true? Sometimes a bird is just a bird.
Natalie Sudman: Yeah, everything is not grandly meaningful.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Right, yeah.
Natalie Sudman: There are still spaces in there.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: There’s bubblegum on the tar. I should eat it. It’s so meaningful.
Natalie Sudman: It’s got a message for me.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: I should frame that gum and put it up. Obviously, we’re talking about the oneness, the interconnection of all things. You certainly talk about that in this chapter. That’s what we’re talking about here. Something else that just seemed to come in this chapter for whatever reason, and I loved it, in this section of the chapter, we had talked about it in the last video; I had asked you what the afterlife sounded like. You had never been asked that before, but you recognized that all the senses were affected at once.
One of the things, just a little quote, you said that the senses are linked; they’re informing each other. I loved the idea of them informing each other. You said, “I don’t think I talk about this in the book,” at that time, so in a way you did. You did talk about it in the book. You covered it. Maybe expand a little bit for our audience who hasn’t read the book what that means when are senses are informing each other.
Natalie Sudman: Well, I’ve actually had experiences like this in the physical world, and I’ve heard of other people too. But say I see a green leaf. In expanded awareness that leaf would also have a taste, a flavor. It would have a sound. It would have a feel. All my senses would sense that leaf, whereas in the physical body certainly in this culture we’re very visually oriented. So we concentrate on what we’re seeing and a lot of times tune out our other senses.
In expanded awareness you can do the same thing. You can focus on one thing or another, but it’s very easy, at least it was for me, to experience something from all the senses. It was almost like those senses were expanded as well and much more interconnected.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Now that you’ve had this experience, do you do that more now in physical life? Do you find yourself sort of not focusing on the visual primarily?
Natalie Sudman: What I discovered is that I have always done that. I guess I always thought that everyone did. Like numbers especially, I mean I’ve always known that numbers have a feel to them and a flavor. I guess I was kind of surprised to find that other people didn’t.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: I definitely have never thought of numbers as having flavors.
Natalie Sudman: But I probably choose to do that more after my NDE.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah. Well, that’s so cool. Certainly, it’s extraordinary that you did that your whole life, right? Growing up that came natural to you. No connection there as to why then you might have had a near death experience and someone else wouldn’t have, right? I mean a lot of people ask that question: Why do they have a near death experience and then they come back, where other people just die?
Natalie Sudman: Well, I mean there are probably as many reasons for that as there are people because each of us as a spirit or as a soul is exploring their own curiosity. They’re following their own curiosity, and that’s also in tandem with our conscious selves too. So there are a lot of reasons to go that route.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah. I would just say now I don’t need the comments and the emails that I used the word die. I recognize we don’t die. Hopefully, the host of Afterlife TV recognizes we don’t die.
So let’s see. The next thing that I wanted to talk about, which is sort of the next step if we gave it a linear progression here, well, you kind of covered this. You said life is evaluated on the basis of usefulness toward personal creative ends. You did cover that a little bit. I liked that you talked about that though. How was that useful, sort of that word; how was that useful? We’re talking about the choices and everything.
One of the things you looked at was whether they were useful towards your personal creative ends or not. Just a great little paraphrasing or quote from you on there. Then you also talked about how small actions interconnected and sent ripples to far-reaching effects. Again, this is the links and the layers. Many of us are aware of the ripple effect of things that happen in life, choices that we make, but you sort of take it to a whole new level when you were talking about those links and layers and coincidences. Any more to say about that before we move on from that?
Natalie Sudman: I don’t think so, other than I think it might be a tendency of some people to then overthink their choices, like try to figure out oh my god, if this is that far-reaching, then I have to make the right decision. I can tell you that any decision you make is the right decision. You don’t have to angst out about making the little decisions, which I certainly used to do and sometimes still slip back into.
It’s easy to do that because you know how far-reaching they are. But honestly, any decision you make is going to be acceptable and good from a spirit point of view. It will always be valuable from a spirit point of view.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Even if it does harm to another?
Natalie Sudman: Well, harm to another, I mean that’s a physical world judgment. Yeah, that gets into—
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: I know. I put you on the spot. You can’t fully describe that in a short interview like this.
Natalie Sudman: You have to be either in the physical world or in expanded awareness for that to make sense. When you’re straddling those, then it’s going to take longer than an hour to explain.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s right. But with that said, so everybody, don’t jump all over her because she’s just telling her truth, right? You’re telling your truth basically and your experiences. But when someone does do harm to another, do you believe that there’s any type of soul contract type of thing? People call it that. Do you think there’s any contract between them ahead of time, you know, I’ll murder you?
Natalie Sudman: I think that’s another case of every answer being different for every person.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Do you think it’s possible?
Natalie Sudman: I think some people do make a lot of, people call them contracts. I would call them agreements.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Agreements.
Natalie Sudman: It’s not a contract. You can get out of it. You can change your mind any time you want to. I know people aren’t going to like that. Some people are going to argue, but that’s my experience. You can always choose not to do it. But those agreements are made on a spirit level, so the value is obvious up there or over there or right here. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t still play out the physical emotions and the physical judgments.
I mean that’s part of our physical experience is experiencing all of that. It’s like you can write a script for a movie and make somebody kill somebody and somebody rape somebody, all these awful things in this movie. Then you can act out the movie, and then you can show the movie. We know that it’s not real. Well, from the spirit level that’s kind of how it looks, even though when you’re in it, yeah, it feels real and it’s horrible. It can be wrenching. It can be awful. That’s real too. It’s valuable even though we may not see that.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s it. I mean that’s a key, the key distinction to make. We’re talking from a spiritual level here. We are talking from a spiritual level. Agreements is a great word. I’ve talked to other people about contracts, and the biggest question or the most common question was, well, what about free will?
They were stuck on the contracts idea, and agreements actually works better, especially for those people, because they’re like, well, I’ve got free will. They have free will. How does a contract work if we’re stuck with that? Agreements allow you to change your mind later, so I like that phrase.
Let’s shake that off because it’s heavy stuff. Shake it off. Let’s move on. So something a little less heavy; you talked about the rest environment as being very peaceful, and you described it. One of the reasons it was so peaceful was because there was a lack of—you had a long list of things. There was a lack of time limits, criticism, fear, anticipation of punishment, recriminations, debts, outcomes or conclusions. You said it’s profoundly liberating. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Natalie Sudman: Well, I think in our physical world in our physical lives we don’t even realize how much of those things come into play unconsciously, subconsciously, back of our minds, whatever. You have the little voice going, you shouldn’t do that; you shouldn’t eat that chocolate.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Is that what yours sounds like?
Natalie Sudman: Yeah. It’s more like, unh-unh.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: That’s great.
Natalie Sudman: But we have a lot of underlying fears and judgments and recrimination and guilt that influences how we move through the world. Some of those are useful. I don’t know. I mean just experiencing those things as a spirit is actually fun.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Right.
Natalie Sudman: Belief.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, yeah, right.
Natalie Sudman: But also when you’re in the movie, then you follow the rules of the movie. So we’re following the rules of the movie, and some of that has to do with negotiating emotion and experiencing a very specific cause and effect kind of a reality. So I’m not saying that those things are bad or good. They’re not. They just are. But when you can let go of all of that stuff, all of those little voices and all of the reasons you should or shouldn’t do things, it is profoundly liberating.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, I can understand that. It’s hard to imagine not having those things going in your head all the time. The closest I could come to it when I was reading about it, I was thinking of going on vacation. There’s something really liberating about going on vacation. I don’t check my email all the time. I’m not checking my phone all the time. I’m just away. I’m giving myself permission to be free from those things. So I always think wow, if that feels that good, imagine what it’s like to just wipe it all clean, right?
Natalie Sudman: Yeah.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: It must have been amazing.
Natalie Sudman: I like that you used the word permission.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Oh, yeah.
Natalie Sudman: A lot of times we don’t even realize that we’re the ones not giving ourselves permission to set aside a fear. Sometimes I just go, wait a minute, why am I not doing that? I’m going to give myself permission to do that. Then suddenly it’s like being on vacation: Oh, I can eat that chocolate.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, right.
Natalie Sudman: I gave myself permission.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, yeah. That’s right, yeah. I can remember six or seven years ago being on this particular type of workout that I was doing. You could have a free day. You had a free day. You had to be so strict about everything all week long, but you had a free day. It was giving yourself permission. Eat whatever you want. Don’t exercise. Just have a great day without all the commitments that you’ve made. I thought about how wow, that’s amazing. We could do that with so many parts of our lives. Anyways, interesting, I love that point. I thought it was important.
What do we got here? Again, you touched upon it very briefly. You’re in this rest environment. You’re folded in upon yourself. You had all these experiences that we’ve talked about. Are there other beings there? Obviously, there are because you mentioned that there were. The first question, because you gave the answer in the book, who decides who is present in this rest environment where you’re at?
Natalie Sudman: Oh, I decide. It’s my environment. I mean my sense is that no one could come into that environment without my allowing that or my inviting them. I certainly had to allow it. It’s a very private environment that I am in complete control of.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: So how many beings did you let into this environment as you were experiencing it?
Natalie Sudman: I don’t even remember what I said about that in the book, but I think two. I sensed two of them.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: I don’t think you did say. I got a sense that there weren’t many, but I didn’t know how many.
Natalie Sudman: Yeah.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: All right. What are they doing there?
Natalie Sudman: I think of it as similar to tuning up a car. They’re just kind of tweaking, I’m going to call it energy paths; or if you think of the lattice or the structure, even though I’m in that environment I’m not physical in any way. I’m energy, but that’s still an organization of energy, or that’s how I’m going to explain it.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: You have the right to do that. That’s how I’m going to explain it, and I’m sticking with it.
Natalie Sudman: So that organization of energy, maybe as an example let’s imagine it as an energy ball and all this very complex matrix or latticework inside. That’s sort of the structure of the energy flows. So all they’re doing is tweaking some of those, cleaning them up a little bit.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: They’re doing it for you, something that is going to be longer lasting—sorry, have to use time phrases—longer lasting, even when you go back into your physical body, or is it just for that present moment?
Natalie Sudman: No, it’s long lasting.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Okay. That’s interesting. This whole experience, any more to say about those people before I move on, those beings? Actually, so were these parts of yourself like you defined spirit guides, or are they separate from your whole self?
Natalie Sudman: I would say that they’re parts of myself.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Any interaction with them, or are they just doing their thing, you’re doing your thing?
Natalie Sudman: No interaction with them at all, other than giving them permission to come in, to enter that area. No, there’s no communication, and I’m just kind of completely ignoring them.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Okay, but you’re aware that they’re there.
Natalie Sudman: Mm-hmm.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah. So going back, in the book you describe—you might regret that you did this—that it was like you were there for centuries. It was like you were there for centuries, but it was really maybe in human terms like two or three seconds. What can you say about that? How can you help us understand that?
Natalie Sudman: I’m not sure how to explain. Okay.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: You’re not sure you said that. Do you want me to find it? No, I’m just kidding.
Natalie Sudman: On that part, I think that we experience similar things. When we’re daydreaming, time will pass. You just sort of go deep into a daydream. You come up and you’re like, wow, it’s four hours later, or that was only 10 minutes. That kind of, I don’t know. You can fit a lot into a short amount of time or you can kind of stretch time out, I think.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Definitely. I mean when we’re writing, playing music, when we’re really having an experience like that, certainly time flies by. I also thought of it; I’ve had anesthesia, and it’s the reverse. It’s sort of the reverse of that. So I come out of anesthesia, it feels like it’s been two seconds. They’re like, “Oh, it was a six-hour surgery.” What?
Natalie Sudman: Yeah.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: How’d that happen?
Natalie Sudman: Yeah, very similar. So when I’m in this depressed environment, when I’m in there that’s another outside of time thing too, that there is no time so that I describe going through all these environments kind of in a linear fashion. They weren’t necessarily in a linear progression either. So even though I’m in the blink environment, I’m also in the rest environment at the same time.
Yet again, it’s a matter of shifting focus, so I can go back there. I can be there at any time I want to right now because all it is simply is a focus shift. But the amount of time that I spent there focused in this environment in this experience of an NDE, it felt like hours and hours and hours, an equivalent of hours and hours and hours. Yet when I went back to the blink environment afterward it was again like I had been gone just for a blink.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah. That’s what happens. So you shift your focus, you’re back into the blink environment, the environment of the last interview, right, after this one?
Natalie Sudman: Mm-hmm.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Time has gone by. You say some really important things about beliefs and intent in there, and I just kind of feel like it would be great to hear. What did you learn while you were in there about the power of our beliefs and the power of our intentions? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell if you were still in the rest environment or you had gotten back into the blink environment. It doesn’t really matter. But what did you learn about beliefs? You use the example of a guy and the way he thinks about money.
Natalie Sudman: Yeah, our conscious beliefs have a huge impact on what we create and how we create. There’s our whole self experiencing things through this body or through this reality, and sometimes that intention comes through. But a lot of times our conscious mind is the one creating, and that’s okay. I mean that’s what we’re here to do, I think, or at least some of us are. They interact and sometimes they don’t interact. It’s possible to hold a desire that has the least that conflict with that, and we don’t even realize that our beliefs are the ones keeping us from having that.
I use the example of a man wanting money. Somebody wants to be rich or someone wants a bunch of money. Well, if they grew up in a Christian background and believe that rich people can’t get to heaven, so they want to get to heaven and they want to be good people; if they think that rich people are greedy and insensitive and nasty people, then they’re not going to allow themselves to manifest that money because then they would be nasty, greedy, awful people who won’t get to heaven. So it’s a matter of clearing beliefs that conflict with the things we want sometimes.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Right. A lot of those beliefs are just learned. They’re learned from our parents, from our mentors, and from our upbringing. Let’s see. The last thing that you actually talked about in this chapter is you talked about how you had sort of requested assistance.
It almost seemed like you were wheeling and dealing here making some deals where they wanted you to go back and get some more information, bring some more data back just so you could download. But you had asked for assistance in maintaining a degree of whole conscious awareness while you were back in your physical body. Why did you do that, and how were they supposed to help you with that?
Natalie Sudman: Why did I do that? Because I just came from the physical, and I think I had a very clear memory of how difficult that can be. I mean sort of another why I did that, why I would want to keep more of an awareness, is that in my life to date the really hard things have been really valuable, but they would’ve been maybe a little less wrenching or difficult had I been able to remember that this has a higher purpose and this has a higher value or it is valuable. It’s not just random pain or it’s not punishment in any way. It’s just keeping that awareness.
Also, there have been times when I said, okay, that’s enough of that. That’s gotten too weird. I’m setting that aside. I’m not going there. Then my life just tends to get really sloppy when I’m not using my awareness. So I wanted to kind of avoid that if I could and have a little more fun in the second half of my life.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Well, sure.
Natalie Sudman: It’s almost like we think of it and I expressed it in a way that made it sound like I said, I’m going to go back down there; could I please have some help? But it’s not like that. It’s more like emanating the request that already includes gratitude because you know it’s going to happen. You know it’ll be granted.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Has it happened? One of the things you asked, if they could send you reminders along the way; maybe they could toss hints or clues or things along your path to sort of wake you up from the physical blindness that we sometimes have. Have you recognized any of those things happening where you kind of were like whoa, oh yeah, I’ve got to remember?
Natalie Sudman: Yeah, I think they happen a lot, and I think they probably happen a lot to everybody if we pay attention. But a lot of times, especially these days, we’re multitasking, and when you multitask you’re not really paying close attention to the one thing you’re doing. So I think we miss things.
But kind of a quirky little thing that happened just last week or the week before, I was thinking about, oh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a dog; maybe I will get a dog. I’d been putting it off because I travel a lot and I thought that’s not really fair to the dog. So about two hours after I’d been thinking about that I was sitting in my living room, and a puppy that was maybe a couple months old came running up to my back door window and was looking in. It just sat down and was looking in like, hello. I thought, whoa.
So I went out there and I was playing with the dog. I thought that eventually it would run home where it was from, and it didn’t. It hung around for hours and hours. Finally, I checked its nametag. Its name was Angel.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: No way, no way.
Natalie Sudman: I ended up taking it back to the guy who owned it, but that’s the kind of thing. It’s like that dog’s name could’ve been anything.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, that’s right.
Natalie Sudman: But it’s just a little reminder.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty powerful. So your power of intent is very, very strong. The last thing I’ll say, I mean this will be the longest interview I ever do, but I think it’s important. I’m not going to worry about the time when something like this is so important. We’re almost done here, but I thought it was funny; you also asked them to provide you with skills that would allow your life to be a little more entertaining and you said like levitating. You’re like, come on, wouldn’t that be cool?
Natalie Sudman: Yeah.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yes, it would.
Natalie Sudman: That’d be cool.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Any skills that you think that you’ve gained since your near death experience that you might not have had before that has allowed your life to be a little more entertaining, speaking, public speaking?
Natalie Sudman: No, not yet, but I’m patient.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Okay.
Natalie Sudman: Before this experience I’ve had my arm levitate and some things like that. But what I find, it’s kind of funny. Every once and a while I think, yeah, what about that levitation and bending spoons and stuff like that? What about that? So I put a little bit of effort into it for a couple days in kind of the same way your friend was learning to leave his body, spend a little bit of time each day practicing until you get it.
But after a couple days I go, well, you know, if I learned how to do this, then what? It’s like a trick. Maybe I would learn some things along the way, but I think I end thinking, well, life is pretty miraculous. Just this is pretty miraculous or watching a plant grow or watching a dog play outside in the yard or something. There are a lot of little miracles that maybe I don’t need those flashy ones, or maybe they’re not all that meaningful. I don’t know.
I think too that what’s a lot more meaningful is settling myself in a right mind. When I’m in a right mind, then maybe I could do those things but maybe I wouldn’t even care to try.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Isn’t that classic though? Right, it is. That is classic. You finally get to that point where you can get what you want, you don’t want it anymore.
Natalie Sudman: You don’t want it anymore.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah. Well, what a perfect way to end this actually. That’s the most profound statement, and we’ll leave everybody with that. We will say that I’ll put your websites that you want underneath the video so people can link to them on afterlifetv.com. Anything that you want to mention, because people do watch these on iTunes and YouTube, other places; any website or other thing that you wanted to mention?
Natalie Sudman: I have a blog at www.traceofelements.wordpress.com.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Traceofelements.wordpress.com, okay, that’s your blog. You’re going to be on the television show uneXplained. It’s uneXplained, which is on the Biography Channel. You’ll be on September 15 , 2012, so if people watch this ahead of time you’ll be able to see it at 10:00 p.m. Eastern. Is that all about out-of-body experiences? What’s that about? I know it’s about the Monroe Institute, right?
Natalie Sudman: Yeah, the uneXplained film crew came and joined us at Monroe Institute Lifelines program, which is, I guess the normal term is soul retrieval. So they filmed us talking about that. They filmed us coming back from our trips to different focus levels and helping spirits move on. Sometimes we got names and places of where these people were from, so they did a little research on some of those.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Oh, cool.
Natalie Sudman: So it should be interesting.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: It should be interesting. I’ll try to link up to it.
Natalie Sudman: They’re a really good film crew, and this is produced by Liman, the guy who did the Bourne trilogy.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah.
Natalie Sudman: So it’s not just aaaah, ooooh.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Yeah, yeah, all the scary stuff, yeah.
Natalie Sudman: I think it’s pretty well done.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Oh good, good. That’s a big compliment. Well, once again, here we are. We’ve now created a new record, the longest video I’ll ever do probably, but I think it was great. I really appreciate it. I’m grateful to you. We’ll see you again because we’re going to talk about another stage, the healing stage, maybe in few months or so, right?
Natalie Sudman: Right.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: Thanks, Natalie.
Natalie Sudman: Thank you for having me, Bob.
Bob Olson, Afterlife TV: My pleasure.
Afterlife TV is presented by Afterlife Investigator & Psychic Medium Researcher Bob Olson, who is the author of Answers about the Afterlife: A Private Investigator’s 15-Year Research Unlocks the Mysteries of Life after Death.
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