Bob Olson: “In this interview—where Richard Dugan from Tell Me Your Story interviews me, Bob Olson—I reveal the deeper insights from my 15-year investigation of life after death, including what I’ve learned about God, heaven, hell, religion, what it is that leaves the body when it dies, what spirits do in the spirit world, what evidence exists for the survival of consciousness, the difference between believing and knowing, how we can know about the afterlife if we haven’t experienced it, and so much more.
“Richard was nominated for a Peabody Award for his radio show because he asks questions that lead to meaningful answers like you’ll experience here. He certainly knew how to pull the best wisdom from my afterlife knowledge. In fact, this might be my most lucid and articulate interview to date thanks to Richard. As I’ve done in the past, I have carefully chosen my wife, Melissa’s, photographs to share with you since this is an audio-only interview. I think they go well with the subject matter and add to the experience. I hope you enjoy it.” ~ Bob Olson, Afterlife TV
If you’d like to watch this video, What Happens in the Afterlife to People Who Commit Suicide?, visit www.afterlifetv.com/?p=2558
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.
JOIN BOB’S NEWSLETTER: Don’t miss Bob’s latest content about life lessons and life after death on his newsletter called, Bob Olson Connect.
Narrator: Meet Bob Olson. Bob’s the author of “Answers About The Afterlife” and the host of Afterlife TV. A private investigator who began investigating life after death in 1999, Bob now records his interviews with experts, authors, and people who’ve had extraordinary experiences, so he can share it all with you. Enjoy the show!
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Richard: Welcome to Tell Me Your Story, New Paradigms For New Worlds. I’m Richard Dugan, your host. Thanks so much for joining us here on the program. We stream live at richarddugan.com and newspress.com, and we archive this programs at richarddugan.com, the radio show’s page. It’s always a thrill to come your way here on the program and bring you information, information inside inspiration. We certainly hope so. Encouragement, confirmation of what you’re up to, and we hope that you will join us.
Today’s program is going to delve into, and I always have trouble with this term, this phrase, because it sounds a little odd. It’s a subject that is near and dear to my heart. Now, my guest is going to sit there going, “What in the world does that mean? How can death and dying and transitioning be near and dear to your heart?” It’s a subject that has intrigued me for as long as I can remember, because when I hear of people passing over, and again, there’s so many different terms in this regard, and going to the next world, and I’ll use a prime example, is a few years back when the pop star Michael Jackson passed away, the day before my 50th birthday, I believe, felt like he took the wind out of my sails.
Anyway, I wondered what he was doing, what his essence or its essence was doing at that point, because my understanding, and we’ll get clarification from our guest in a moment, is that there is no gender on the other side. We just are who and what we are. We are neither male nor female, or we’re both. Anyway, that’s always intrigued me. I’ve had guests on this program who have talked about intentionally inflicting, if you will, or taking on, an out-of-body experience, not a life-after-death experience or near-death experience, but an out-of-body experience, which is supposedly along those same lines.
What’s over there, and if it’s so wonderful, why do you keep coming back? We’re going to find out some of these answers with our guest, the author of “Answers About The Afterlife,” a private investigator’s 15-year search unlocking the mysteries of life after death. His name is Bob Olson, and Bob, thanks so much for joining us on the program.
Bob: Thank you, Richard. I’m really happy to be here, and I can already tell that this is going to be an interesting conversation.
Richard: Well, as I said in the front end of the program here, this has always intrigued me. I’ve had a few relatives, I’ve had my grandmother or grandfather on my mother’s side pass away when I was still in single-digit years, or at least early pre-teen or teen, if you will. My parents are still alive, and I’m not going to say “Thank God,” because when it’s their time it’s their time, just like when it’s mine, it’s mine. We all have these questions about whether or not there’s anything on the other side, and from what I was taught, not only as I was growing up, but also working for 15 years in a Christian radio station, I was basically told that you get one shot. It is appointed to every man once to die, and then the judgment.
I thought, “Then I do not know that I want to die, because I don’t think I want the judgment, because I’m going to be judged pretty harshly because I haven’t been a perfect person living up to certain standards.” I haven’t been a perfect person. None of us has.
Bob: That’s right.
Richard: Which is the sort of the leveling of the playing field. It’s like, I don’t care how much money you have. You got as many flaws as I do. So what? And so you live on the streets. You have the same flaws as I do. Big deal. There’s no ranking. First of all, how in the world did you as a private investigator, how did seeking answers to these kind of questions about the afterlife even come up in your time as a private investigator?
Bob: It certainly wasn’t something that I was striving to do as a young boy. I lost loved ones, like you, and I didn’t really think too much about life after death. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-30s. My father died. He was 64 years old. I guess for the first time in my life I really thought about, “I wonder where he went.”
It got into my skin enough that because I was a private investigator at that time and doing what private investigators do, I thought, “Well, who better to have the skills to investigate this field and find out if there’s really anything to it than me?” That’s what got me started. Like so many other people, when you first have these questions, you go, “Well, where do I begin?” I really did not know where to begin. Now in hindsight, I can say I was skeptic.
As a skeptic, I wasn’t learning about this stuff, I wasn’t recognizing good places to go to investigate life after death. It took me almost two years before I found any evidence at all, but that’s sort of how I got started.
Richard: Is your investigation predominantly regarding the process of transitioning, or are you focused more on what is on the other side for us to experience?
Bob: At first I just wanted to find out if there was life after death, so I think this has gradually taken new levels as I went along, and when I eventually was convinced by the evidence that we don’t die, that there is life after death, then new questions arose as time went on, and I started to think about things like past lives. I had heard about near-death experiences. So one thing led to the next, and the answers to all those other questions came as a result of that.
Those were the questions I started with, and then all the other answers, it’s been now 15 years. It’s been 17 years, but I do not count the first 2 because I didn’t find any evidence, so 15 years since I first found evidence of life after death. That’s what happened. The new questions came along, and I tried to find new ways to answer those.
Richard: I know that for myself, watching various television programs, especially a lot of the Sci-Fi stuff, there are times when I’m watching an episode dealing with the transition let’s say of humans, the human evolutionary process to whatever the next level is for us as depicted in this program, and sometimes I look at that, going “Wow, that kind of rings true. That feels right. I think that’s probably what happens.” I’m curious as to whether or not…Obviously, we don’t take our bodies with us, because we’ve got them buried all over the planet.
What I’m wondering is I’m beginning to wonder whether that was a good idea in the first place in that context, but that’s what we do. What is it that from your investigation leaves the physical body, because I saw something where they actually did some measurements, physical weighing and measuring of the human body before and after, and that the body was light by, I don’t know, by three or four or five-tenths of a pound, and they couldn’t account for it. I’m curious as to, what is it that leaves, because something has to live, because we’re no longer animated.
Bob: From what I understand, and this is based on the evidence that I’ve seen in 15 years, and of course my understanding, as I said, grew in levels over time, but the way I understand it now, what leaves is our consciousness, and it’s that part of us that we might consider our personality, or some people might just call it the mind. It’s something that doctors could bisect the brain all day and never find. They know where certain things happen in the brain, they know what parts of the brain lights up and what they represent, but when it comes to the consciousness or what some might call the mind, they really don’t know where that is. Nobody’s ever found that. That seems to be what leaves.
Now, that’s one side of it. The other side of it is it’s the energy, that energy that we call life, and anybody who has been with someone who has died, and this can include a pet, you recognize that one second you see life in that body and then the next second it’s not there. You know something left. You don’t have to be a scientist to identify that. It seems to be some kind of electrical impulse that gives us life, that allows us to move, allows us to talk and think and do all those other things.
This is all the same thing that I’m talking about here, and that seems to be what goes into this other dimension, and when I say other dimension, we can talk more about that. I’m sure we will. It’s not something that really is far away. It’s not up in the clouds, it’s not some distant place. It’s really all around us, and as spiritual beings we’re just vibrating at a higher frequency, a frequency kind of like the dog whistle works on dogs but humans can’t really hear it. We as human beings, we as physical beings really are not able to see the spiritual beings, although there seems to be some people who have a better ability than others.
Richard: What about your background, especially from a spiritual perspective? Where are you on that spectrum, on that wonderful little kaleidoscope that we like to call religion?
Bob: Well, I grew up Catholic, but not a strict Catholic. My family, we went to church during the holidays. We went to church when there was a wedding or a funeral or if maybe there was some challenge my parents were going through and they felt it might help go there, but we weren’t strict Catholics in that way. What I did, I went to catechism for most of my life, and what I found during those years was that I wasn’t getting the answers that I was looking for.
I was one of those kids, there’s many of them out there, who probably ask too many questions. At least that was the interpretation I was gathering from my teachers was, “Just listen to what we have to teach you. Don’t ask too many questions.” The foundation that I had from my upbringing as a Catholic, and this probably isn’t true for everybody, but it was my story, is that it wasn’t a strong enough foundation to answer the many questions that I had about life after death. Then as I got older, and especially as I became a private investigator, evidence became everything to me.
I was taught by all the lawyers that I worked for, “Don’t even come to us with anything that’s not evidence, because we can’t deliver that to court with us.” I carry that over to all parts of my life, including the spiritual aspect of myself. I didn’t have a name for it, but I didn’t believe in anything because I had no evidence from which to believe. That’s sort of my upbringing.
Richard: I think it’s quite interesting, especially considering the fact that I have had the same perspective when it came to reincarnation, saying that, “Well, I’m going to have a hard time accepting that unless there’s some kind of proof, i.e. a baby’s got to come through the womb with a rock that can be carbon dated thousands of years old kind of thing.” I’m just curious, when we talk about the afterlife, most people think of something that is non-material, so I’m curious as to your evidence to support the existence of an afterlife.
Bob: There’s two things I want to say about that. I’m going to preempt that conversation with what I say at the beginning of the answers about the afterlife and the end and parts in the middle, is I don’t want anybody to take my word for any of this. That’s not my intention in writing a book. It was not to convince others to believe what I believe. The reason I wrote the book was because I happen to be lucky enough to have spent so much time investigating life after death, and I wanted people to know what conclusions I came to based on the evidence so that if they decided to become their own afterlife investigator, to do this on their own, they would at least have some paradigm from which to begin, which is something that I didn’t, which is why I started two years without any evidence. So that’s really I want to start with that.
The evidence that I found along the way, there was great evidence. Some of it was getting readings with mediums. I would always pick a stranger. The medium would be a stranger, a man or a woman. Didn’t matter. They didn’t know anything about me. My very first one only knew my first name. I paid in cash. I had a three-hour reading with this person.
The evidence that came through was amazing, because she was able to name loved ones that were in spirit, people who have died in my life, name their first names usually, tell me what their relationship was, tell me what they looked like physically, what they did for a career, what their personality was like, even how they dressed. I had all of these initial sort of areas about their personality and their character and their life that this stranger of course couldn’t have known about my loved ones, and then after that was usually where the more vague messages would come, messages about love and forgiveness and that sort of thing, how proud my father was of me. But it didn’t just begin and end with mediums. One of the next things that I did was that I ended up having a past-life regression, like you mentioned earlier. I was interested in, what about past lives?
I would have a personal experience, a hypnotic regression. This would basically just put me in relaxed state, and then guide me into a past life. The regressionist had no idea what that was going to be like, and they didn’t lead me in any direction. I ended up having an amazing experience. What I want to say about this is that even with the readings with the medium, and then same thing with these regressions, what I leaned is that by doing these things, and there were others as well, but I learned that we get to a point where we have to recognize that the evidence is sacred to us. It can be meaningful to us, but it’s our own personal experience.
For instance, I’ve seen where through a medium, a father was telling the medium his daughter’s nickname that he had for her, which was Jellybean. Now, for that girl then to go around and tell people, “I had this great reading, and my father called me Jellybean again,” it wouldn’t have much meaning to most people, and they wouldn’t think that that was great evidence.
What’s interesting that I learned over time is that sometimes it’s these silly little things, these little details that we know that this medium couldn’t possibly know, or some of the most interesting experiences we had in that past life regression that you just know it’s true. You go from a belief to a knowing, and you recognize that, “Wow, this is amazing, this is real, and it is sacred to me,” to the point where you actually don’t even care if anybody else believes you or not.
That’s what ends up happening when you begin to investigate life after death.
Richard: We’re talking with Bob Olson. He is the author of ”Answers About The Afterlife.” It is a private investigator’s 15-year-search, a research unlocking the mysteries of life after death. I am interested to find out from you a little bit more about this aspect of the afterlife.
What can you tell us…Well, let me back up to another question. You’ve been to a regressionist to check out past lives, you’ve been to mediums, you’ve done all of these different things. Have you ever had either an out-of-body or a near-death experience?
Bob: No I haven’t.
Richard: Do you want one?
Bob: Yeah, I would love that but an out-of-body experience. Yes.
Richard: No near death.
Bob: No, we’ll skip that one.
Richard: Having not had any firsthand experience, and again I’m not being critical here. I’m just curious as to the answers to a number of very fundamental questions that most people are going to want to know, especially, what’s on the other side?
Bob: Well, it’s first of all a great question, and how do you know? Well, the way to understand the afterlife best is through personal experience, versus vicarious experience, hearing somebody else’s story. When it comes to my own personal experiences, I mentioned past-life regression. I mentioned what that was like.
There’s something called a life between lives regression, and this is where a guy called Michael Newton, was a hypnotic regressionist, and brilliant man that he is, decided when he got to the end of that lifetime, that past life that someone was going through, he decided, ”What happens if we keep going? What if we stop the regression experience here? What if we just keep going after the death in that lifetime? What happens at that point?”
He realized that people go into what he calls the life between lives, what I would the afterlife, the spirit world, also call our true home. I had that experience more than once as well. That can be up to a five-hour experience, which is amazing.
When you have these kinds of experiences, what happens is when I would then interview, because someone who had a near-death experience or even an out-of-body experience, these were now vicarious experiences to me. The only way I could even give them any credibility at all is because when they were telling me about those experiences, I could relate to many of the things they were saying based on my regression experience and my life-between-lives regression experience.
Because there were so many similarities to what they were telling me and what I experienced, I was able to at least relate to those experiences and feel as though there’s probably something truthful to what they’re telling me, because these two things had many parallels in many ways. Does that make sense to you?
Richard: It certainly does, and of course, we’re going to jump through some of these fairly quickly, because there’s so much to cover that we can’t really expand too much, although I will let our listeners know that we have what is called an afterview, Bob. The afterview. The afterview has nothing to do with the afterlife. It has to do with the rest of the interview that people will be able to hear after the radio broadcast has left the airwaves by going to richarddugan.com, going to the radio show’s page, and you will hear the entire interview complete and uninterrupted all the way to the end. The downside with radio is of course you’re subject to time.
To that end, we actually do need to take a short break, and we’re going to come back and talk more with Bob Olson, again the author of ”Answers about the Afterlife: A Private Investigator’s 15-Year Research Unlocks the Mysteries of Life after Death.” I’m Richard Dugan. This is Tell Me Your Story. Stay where you are.
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Richard: Welcome back to Tell Me Your Story, New Paradigm For A New World. I’m Richard Dugan, your host. We’re talking about the after-life. We’re talking about that which takes place after you transition. Not the process, but the post-process, if you will, of existence in the next world, the next realm.
I know that Bob Olsen, author of “Answers About The Afterlife,” there are many theories that one says that everyone has a different experience because of their own personal material-world experiences in this dimension or plane, if you will. Others say that, “Hey, it is what it is for everybody.” We’re all going to the same place, whether one belief system or philosophy says that you’re going to have a multitude of this or you’re going to meet judgment or you’re going to live in a chocolate fountain or whatever the case may be.
There would be those who would argue that, “Well, how can anybody really know,” because nobody’s ever really come back to tell us. There have been people who’ve had the near death and out of body, but they don’t stay. They’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel and they’ll see the bodies. They’ll see say the religious figures saying, ”Hey, you want to come? Come on.” If you don’t, hey, you can go back and you can help Aunt Sally and your brother and all of those different things.”
I sometimes think that, Bob, we are so attached to this world that even if we’re going through the death rows we don’t want to leave, because it’s so intriguing to be here, and yet I am so intrigued. I’m not pushing the process, mind you, but I am so intrigued by the other side. What about you? Just by doing the research that you’ve done, some of the things that you’ve brought up and the questions that are posed, it seems to me like you’re just as curious about what’s on the other side. This isn’t just a project for you. This is something that’s going on inside of you that says, “I really want to know what’s over there.”
Bob: It did grab hold of me, and wouldn’t let go. I can’t believe that I’m still doing this after all these years. I think a couple things you said that I really want to say yes, I am very interested in getting these answers, and I do recognize that it’s true, that so many people are attached to this world, and the way we want to understand or even envision the afterlife is we want to envision that it’s more of the same, and so it’s very difficult to explain the afterlife the way I have recognized it over time, because it’s not like that. For some people, that’s a big shift to make, and they don’t really like hearing what they’ve heard for many many years.
I don’t like delivering bad news, but the reality is it’s not bad news. It’s just different news. In fact, if anyone were to read answers about the afterlife, I think they would feel wonderful about the afterlife, and I do, so that’s one of the reasons why, but I’m not anxious to go there, because I recognize that I’m here for a reason, as we all are, and I believe we’re all here to have certain experiences.
They’re not predetermined, but I think our souls, that’s the term I use, our souls, that part of us we might call our higher self that stays in the spirit world, made a decision to have a human lifetime, and hoped that we would have certain experiences, and then our freewill allows us to choose whether we are or we aren’t. That’s a great thing about being a human being, we have free will. But understanding the afterlife is all about being open-minded and recognizing that it’s not necessarily the way we think.
You mentioned very early in the introduction that there really is no gender on the other side. Well, try to tell somebody that their father who is now deceased isn’t a male or a female, and that’ll kind of blow their mind open. I think that’s the biggest difficulty for most people is getting over the idea that it’s not necessarily a duplicate of our world, but it’s something entirely different.
Richard: I know that any time we talk about these concepts that there will be those who have their beliefs, and I’m not going to sit and argue or try to dissuade them otherwise, because I’m also looking for the answers just like everyone else, and just because I found the answer today doesn’t mean that something else isn’t going to come along tomorrow and say, ”Well, yeah, that’s what it was yesterday, and this is what it is today,” only because we are constantly gathering new information, we’re having new experiences. I’ve heard this analogy used on a number of occasions where if you or I were to go back 100 years, let alone 50 years, with just our smartphones, the people then would just go nuts. They wouldn’t know what to do with that. It would blow them away.
We’re not here to blow people away by any means. You couldn’t help but delve into the religious/spiritual aspect of this. That’s what this is. It’s a spiritual experience, is what it is.
What about a creator or God or whatever other name we want to put there to that force, because I don’t necessarily see a personality in that context. As I have evolved, if you will, I begin to understand at least from the diverse belief systems and philosophies what is out there that is guiding us. What is it that is out there, or I shouldn’t really say out there, but that’s with us?
Bob: It is a great question, and it’s a great follow up to what I was just talking about. At the very beginning of ”Answers About The Afterlife,” I talk about my understanding of God. Now again, this is my understanding based on the evidence that I’ve seen, and you said a brilliant thing, which is that truth evolves.
I want to just say I do believe that there is a universal truth that exists that we’ll just say we as souls understand, but I think that our human minds may be incapable of fully comprehending that truth. But even if it’s not that, because of our education and our experiences and our beliefs, we filter whatever it is that we see, and we interpret things differently, each one of us, and so therefore we can only know our truth.
So, my truth and your truth are both perfect. Neither is right or wrong, even if they’re miles apart, and yet, like you said, they will undoubtedly change over time. They will evolve. To me, it’s not that yesterday’s truth was wrong and today’s is right. It’s that we just see a bigger picture of it, and we understand it more fully because of our awareness.
To me, what is God as of today? The way I understand it based on the evidence is again what you said. You could have written this book, I think. I don’t see it as the personality either. I see God as creative intelligence. I see God more as energy than entity, but that makes perfect sense based on what I was saying earlier about, what is it that leaves our body? It’s the energy that gives us life, and this is the energy that is the creator of all. Part of that energy that gives us life is what some people will call God and some people will call creator, and I’ll call the creative intelligence
People who have had near-death experiences, people who have communicated, people who are in the spirit world and have communicated through mediums that I find legitimate and credible, have all described God to me more as energy rather than having a distinct personality, the way I was taught as I was growing up.
Richard: I have to say that again, this whole aspect of contemplating what’s on the other side and then I guess one of the other questions would be, what do we do over there? Are we doing paperwork? Is there paperwork? Do we have to fill out reports that we have to fill out from this life? We have to remember everything and account for the money that we spent and the resources that we used and so forth.
What are we experiencing? What can you tell us from the folks that you have gathered this information from, that you’ve been told, “This is what we’re going to be doing over there?”
Bob: There’s a lot of things that we do. One of the things that we do early on after we pass is we have what’s called a life review, and we do review our life. People will describe this differently, and again, part of it, I think the descriptions that are being made we’ll say through people in spirit, through mediums, is just for my benefit or our benefit, because it’s the easiest way for us to understand them. Some’ll describe us as having this life review, looking back to the life that we just had in almost a 3-dimensional movie screen, 360 degrees, but allowing us to see the ripple effect of our free will, choices, and actions. What this means simply is that we are able to see how our life impacted the world, how it impacted other people both individually and collectively.
This is one of the experiences that we have. I believe based on the 15 years I’ve been doing this, and this took some time. This really only came in the last few years. That the human lifetime is, I’ll give it a percentage, but this is just hypothetical. Say half of it is us here in the physical world, and the other half is us examining it and dealing with…Not dealing with it, because that’s a terrible way of describing it, but learning and growing from what we are able to observe from that higher perspective now based on what we did, and it’s also in watching our loved ones who have survived us and see how their lives move on, and in many ways we will recognize how our lives while we were here affected their lifetime for the rest of their lives.
There are things that we’ll say we all know that our parent taught us or did for us, or the love that they showed us when we were very young stays with us for the rest of our lives. One of the things, and I think one of the most important things that we do as spirits, spirits that have left the human body and gone back into the spirit world, is observe our life, see what we did really well, what we didn’t do so great. I don’t believe that we’re being judged by anyone. I believe that the God that I described earlier is all love, is all joy and peace, those sort of whoo whoo terms that you hear, but I’ve heard nothing but wonderful things about that God, and look forward to being in that God’s presence from a spirit-world perspective. It is that God or creator that is helping us, not judging us, to get through some of the things that we maybe could have felt we could have done better, and maybe we’re judging ourselves. That’s the only judgment that’s going on. We’re kind of judging ourselves.
We have to understand too that when we look at something that we might feel as though we didn’t do very well, it’s surrounded by all kinds of other thing that we did very very well, so there’s always a great balance in any one person’s lifetime to make them walk away and overall feel pretty good about what they did.
Richard: I have to say that one of my favorite movies in that regard is the one with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep in terms of their life review and what he goes through. He’s thinking he’s being tested, and she’s just having a great time. It’s like an exam, and he wants to pass it, and it’s like wait a minute. No, no, no, no. This isn’t a pass fail. This is just a review. We’re just showing you. He doesn’t quite get it at first, but it’s really fascinating. I have to say too that there are so many different movies that have come out, of an inspirational nature, not of a horror type of nature, that have been I have to say somewhat helpful in that regard to viewing the passing of a loved one.
I certainly know some of the stages that we go through when we experience the passing of someone, and I remember the anger that it talked about and hearing about people who would get really really angry. Then I had a dear friend of mine pass away October 10th of 2003 in our home, and it was that weekend, and we were laying there just trying to rest and recuperate from all of the emotion of the last two days, and then all of a sudden this utter rage came up inside of me. I was so mad that he left, as if he had control over it any control over it. That would be my next question to you is, do you have any control over it, or is it when it’s your time it’s your time?
Bob: I think human beings with free will, we do have control over it, because we can take our own life, but I also do believe that there’s truth to the other aspect. I believe that for instance children who die at a young age were meant to die at young age and not to live very long. I don’t believe that any one of us is set up to die on October 5th 2000 something. I believe that we are supposed to accomplish certain things, and when we’ve accomplished them, then…One of the things I didn’t mention, we were talking about God so much. I do believe we’re guided by spirit guides, and I believe spirit guides are sort of taking this journey along with us. They’re very focused on us and trying to help us accomplish what we came here to accomplish, and one of those things would be to choose our exit point.
By that, I think they influence things. I don’t think they can entirely control them, because again, human free will trumps all of that, but they will try to lead us where there’s opportunities, and sometimes illness is one of those ways that we’ll make that opportunity, so it’s perfect timing for our exit. It’s a matter of okay, they’ve accomplished what they came here for, or there’s no way they’re going to accomplish what they came here for because of certain things that happened in their lifetime, or well, they’ve lived a good life, and it’s now time to come home.
They set things up for us, and it’s always about opportunity, and if we miss our opportunity because our free will says “I’m not going to get in that car, I’m not going to get on plane, I’m not going to drive down that road,” whatever it may be, then a new opportunity will show up shortly after. That’s the way I understand when we die, but I just want to say, because there’s a lot of people who have lost children, and one of the things that happens when we lose children is that we always think of, “Oh my God, the lost opportunity. So much missed opportunity.”
My investigation has led me to believe that the opportunity for a long life never existed. I find comfort in this because then I don’t feel as though it was lost. I feel as though it was never intended to begin with, and we always knew that that person was going to die at 5, at 12, in their 20s, wherever it may be. All the evidence that I’ve looked at indicates that these things, the timing of our death does seem to be either controlled by our initial intentions and then followed up by our spirit guides helping to accomplish those as we had sort of set it up to begin with.
Richard: This has obviously impacted your life and your philosophical view of the world, this and the other. Can you share with us how this has impacted you?
Bob: I had no idea this was going to happen. I was just interested in finding out the answer to, what happened to my father? Where did he go, if anywhere? The longer I was into this, I just seemed to gain two things. One was this amazing sense of inner peace that overcame me. The first level of it was me not fearing death anymore.
I think we have physical maladies and psychological maladies that occur because of our fear of death, and you take that away, and it gives you a sense of inner peace. It doesn’t make your whole life perfect, but it takes away a lot of the fear that we feel, which reduces a lot of the stress, and at least for me, that’s where a lot of that peace came from.
The second level of inner peace that came for me is understanding why certain things happen, and I don’t think I could answer it in a radio show like this, because there’s too much depth to it, but for me, I feel as though I understand why bad things happen to good people. By understanding that, whether I’m right or wrong, because I feel like I at least understand why it happens, and then that gives me a sense of inner peace.
For instance, if something bad happens to me, I don’t feel as though now, because of all my understanding, some of which we talked about, I don’t feel as though God is punishing me. I don’t feel as though I’ve been overlooked by God, I don’t feel as if God has its favorites and I’m not one of them. All those kinds of thoughts or feelings are gone now, because I know I’m equal with everyone else. I also understand that the experience, even if it’s a challenging one, a negative one that I’m going through, is one that my soul is learning and growing from. It’s something that it’s going to retain for all eternity, because we’re eternal spiritual beings.
Even though I may not like it right now, I recognize that my temporary suffering is something that’s going to benefit me for the rest of my spiritual existence. Those kinds of things really give me that sense of inner sense of peace that I’m talking about. There’s much more to it than this, but I think that’ll give you an idea of what I found by investigating the afterlife that I certainly didn’t expect.
Richard: I did an interview 20, 25 years ago with the wife of a Christian musician. She had been through her own personal substance abuse and had written a book about it regarding 12 steps, and obviously incorporating it in the context of Christianity, and throughout the entire interview she never once mentioned the responsibility for her problems were as a result of the devil. I bring it forward. Here we are in this interview, and not once have you mentioned in our conversations about the afterlife, the hereafter, however you want to phrase it. You have never once mentioned the concepts heaven or hell. Do they exist?
Bob: I don’t use the word heaven generally because I feel as though it’s more of a religious term, at least that was the word I was using as a Catholic growing up. I feel like there’s other religions that don’t necessarily using that word heaven, I found myself using spirit world, afterlife, even though that’s a little bit more of a misnomer, because it’s also before life. And all kinds of other terms that mean the same thing. I also don’t like to use the term heaven because so many people have these predetermined thoughts about it based on what they learned from their religion, and a lot of times the evidence that I found indicates something a little bit different than what I learned to be heaven.
As far as hell is concerned, I found no evidence of it. There are some things that suggest evidences of it, and I explain them in the book. One of the things is some people who have had near-death experiences have had what we call a negative NDE, or a hellish near-death experience. This is a small percentage, maybe 15% or less of people who have had them that claimed to have this.
My understanding of it is that of that small percentage, many of them it changed into a more, since we’re using the word hell, I’ll say a more heaven-like experience for them, because they recognize that what was happening is they were gaining whatever it was that they were imagining.
If you are imagine one thing, you experience it, because we can have or do or be anything we want as spiritual beings. I think that for many of them, the reason they had the hellish experiences is because it’s what they expected, it’s what they believed they were going to experience when they got there, and that therefore was the first experience they had. For those people who were there long enough, because not everybody is, were there long enough to change that thought to something else, it immediately changed for them.
For some people, that meant calling out for help, and calling out for help actually means they believe there’s another possibility that exists, because you wouldn’t call out for help unless you thought help might be there for you. Regardless of who they called out for, once they called out for help, they imagined another possibility, and that possibility changed for them. That’s the only slight evidence that I ever found for hell otherwise, and now I can explain it away, so I found no evidence of it.
As far as the devil, I think same thing. Very religious term. I believe that it exists because of our fears and beliefs around hell. If that doesn’t exist, I don’t believe that the devil exists. I think if anything, hell and whatever you might describe as the devil are just things that exist within human beings. It is not a spiritual term at all. It’s just another word that we could use to describe to what happens to people while we’re trying to get through life here.
Richard: Absolutely. I certainly understand where you’re coming from in that regards, and one of the reasons why I’ve always enjoyed my conversations with rabbis, because the level of insight that I have gleaned from them, especially regarding some of these terms, has been just extraordinary. My own research in and of itself, when I started the research in the Old Testament about the devil and any other terms referring, always came back to not a personal being any more than a personal being called God was. Those negative aspects were all nothing more than the lowest base nature of man. In other words, it was a part of us. We were the ones that exhibited the devil or the devilish attitudes and behaviors and mindsets. It was not something outside of us. That was what I found so fascinating.
Bob: It is fascinating. I agree with it wholeheartedly, and again, the only reason I think so many people believe that it exists outside the physical dimension is because so many people want to think of the other dimensions as being just like this one, so they carry everything over, but everything you just said I agree with entirely.
Richard: It’s one of those aspects where we’ve become so attached to this world that we…I’m not even sure what the generic term of anthropomorphize is, but we project this world, this existence onto the next and everything that isn’t in this world that we can tangibly hold and define and dissect.
Bob: I think it’s also a great moment to make the point that I believe that the reason that our souls chose to have a physical experience is because there is no evil, there is no hatred or illness or tragedy in the spirit world. There is only love and peace and joy. We have a physical experience because those things exist here. They’re a way. If you want to understand health and really appreciate your health, get sick. You’ll appreciate that health and see it from a different paradigm entirely.
The same is true, so as spiritual beings, in order to really understand love and joy and peace, we come here and have a physical life where there are many challenges of all levels, and we’re able to understand the love and joy and peace that we know as spiritual beings so much better.
Richard: Absolutely. My guest is Bob Olsen, and he is the author of, “Answers About The Afterlife: A Private Investigator’s 15-Year Research.” Unlocks the mysteries of life after death. How has the religious community, if they’ve even responded to, how have they reacted to your work, your investigation?
Bob: I think I kind of held onto my seat when the book first came out, because I wasn’t sure how that would happen. For the most part, it’s resonated with a lot of people of many different religions, including the Christian community, but mostly these are the people who are more open-minded about spirituality, and they too, there are so many people right now that follow a particular religion, but they’re not locked into the details of it. All the things that I talk about in “Answers About The Afterlife,” most of the Christians who are open-minded about it recognize that it’s just saying what they’ve believed all along. They tell me that everything that I write resonates with them entirely, even though the details of what I say versus what their religions say are different.
Then there are those people who don’t feel that way, and they don’t like what I’ve written, because they’re the type of people, not necessarily self-thinkers, but they like to be told what to believe, and that’s okay, “Tell me what to believe, because I have fear, and I want to feel safe. “For those people, when they see the details are a little bit different, like my definition of God, then it’s difficult for them and challenges them, and therefore they sort of cast it aside.
Richard: Interesting. Well, I have to say that I conducted interviews for 15 years at the station I worked back in Phoenix, and I was doing interviews like this, but I would use the terminology that they understood. It kind of goes back to that same thing. I was interested in opening the door a little bit. Just a little bit, to give a peak. I didn’t want to blast it open and blow people away and then create all kinds of other problems, because I was curious. I found, just as you did, there were even authors that I interviewed, and others, who they didn’t necessarily believe all 327 rules and guidelines of the faith that they were supposed to. They were thinking on their own. They were researching and searching on their own, and I found that so fascinating.
Bob: I think it is fascinating too. To me, it’s the difference between what I call a belief and a knowing. A belief is when we’ve taken somebody else’s word for something, and so we now believe it on faith. We’re taking somebody else’s beliefs that they’ve passed on to us, and this can include what our religious leaders tell us, and we say, “Okay, I’m going to believe in that, because I do not know what else to believe in.”
That can go to a knowing, what I call a knowing, because now we’ve had experiences that it doesn’t matter what other people’s experiences are. They’re our experiences, as I mentioned earlier. They’re sacred to us. We know they are true. We know at a cellular, some might call a soul level, that these experiences are real and, and they’re real for us. They don’t have to be real for anybody else. It becomes our knowing, and therefore, as we were to discussing earlier. our truth. That’s sort of the difference.
I think most of the people that you’re talking about, a lot of these people started with the belief that’s where religion helped really helped them, and then they opened up and starting searching for more, and over time, they gain knowing. They became a knower in one area or another. That’s what happens with us. We don’t become a knower of all the things. We only become a knower of one little thing at a time, and we just keep seeking more and more of it overtime.
Richard: Again, it goes back to what I said before about my own personal evolution and that is a best epitomized by a conversation I had with my sister. Unfortunately, I did it in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was at Thanksgiving amongst all of the rest of family in the kitchen while the food was being cooked. You know you learn.
I remember we were sitting there having a fairly good and heated conversation on religion and so forth, and I basically responded to her at one point by saying, “Look, you know my beliefs of yesterday are not my beliefs of today are not my believes of tomorrow, because I’m always experiencing. I’m gathering new information and so forth, and I’m trying to understand this world, let alone the next world, that we live in.”
That didn’t sit well with her at that time, but be that as it may, I think that your approach is a very good one. You’re just putting it out there, and people can take it for what it’s worth. You’ve got some great information in there. I find it interesting the way you have it broken down into the various sections. You have several different parts in here. You have different sections here, questions about spiritual communication, which I know a lot of people are curious about, questions about the afterlife and the spirit world, about spirits, angels, ghosts, as well as wants and needs of spirits. I figured they already had all they wanted. Since they’re on the other side, they can get whatever they want there.
The one thing I want to talk about before we wrap up our program here, I want to talk about, and I just looked at it a moment ago, and that has to do it with the concerns on the part of a lot of folks in this world about the process. There’s a huge amount of fear. That’s why I usually stay away terms likes death and dying, and I just use the word transitioning.
We’re still talking about the same thing, but hopefully it’s not evoking the same kinds of emotions. What can you share with us about that process?
Bob: About the process of dying?
Richard: Yeah.
Bob: First of all, dying can be difficult, dying can be painful, but death is not. Dying, the way I describe it, we’re still in the physical world, and it’s our transitioning to the other side. Now, it doesn’t have to be difficult, it doesn’t have to be painful or anything else, but it can be for some people. We all know people who have a long, slow, painful death.
As far as getting on the other dimension into the spirit world, there seems to be a point where our spirit checks out, and for many people, and I’ve heard this with many people that were in accidents; plane accidents, car accidents, other kinds of very tragic impactful accidents where we’ll say for plane accidents people have come through. I know people who have lost love ones in plane accidents, and they came through during readings with mediums, and they said their spirit left their body long before the crash. This is something that can take place. Now, if the soul felt as though experiencing we’ll say the dying process of particular illness is something that it will benefit from, then that wouldn’t necessary be the case.
Now, why would a soul want to do that? One of the reasons is because when we have an experience like that it gives us immense compassion for anybody who’s experiencing that sort of thing. There’s a lot going on right now with ALS and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenges everybody’s familiar with. The way that started was apparently somebody who had ALS was describing to his friend that having ALS felt like having freezing cold ice water poured over him, and that’s what that is supposed to represent.
While he’s having this experience, well, he now as a spiritual being, both in the spirit world and even if he has other lifetimes, he’s always going to, he, she. It’ll have no gender at that point, but they will have compassion not only for the people who are experiencing that illness or disease, but for people who are supporting or caretaking for someone like that, because they recognize it from many different sides.
That would be maybe one of the reasons that someone would continue to suffer and not exit their body early on, but a lot of times what happens with these plane crashes and stuff, there’d be no purpose in staying in their bodies to experience what happened upon impact. They leave their body in that case, and so that’s the dying process, and then once you get onto the other side, everybody’s experience is a little bit different
Some will describe it as there’s a transitionary period, that sort of thing. For the most part, my understanding is there’s no time over there. If there’s any transition period at all, it’s very brief, and we immediately gain the awareness that we had as spiritual beings before we came into this lifetime. We gain that back, and so we’re whole again.
Richard: I have to say that this conversation has been very interesting, and I’m hoping that it is also for our listeners as well, and that people will certainly check out the book. Also, check out the website. That’s right, there is a website. There’s also a television program we haven’t even touched upon, Afterlife TV, which is the website, afterlifetv.com, where you can actually watch programs with Bob Olson, and I’m going to guess you have guests on there talking about this whole subject from numerous different detailed points of view.
Bob: That’s exactly true. Authors, experts, people who have had experiences. The main reason, I was doing this as I was investigating the afterlife. I always did it for myself, and in 2011, I decided, why don’t I record these interviews so other people can benefit from them as well? That’s how that started.
Richard: Before we wrap up the program, a final few questions for you. Who is Bob Olson?
Bob: Oh, wow, that’s a good question. My private life, I’m a husband. I’ve been with my wife since she was 12 years old. I was 15 years old. We’ve had a long life together. I’m now 51. This is what I do for a living. My wife helps me with it, so together we tackle all the work that we do. We have a directory for psychics and mediums called bestpsychicdirectory.com. Over 800 psychics and mediums that all have been screened and approved by me there. Afterlife T.V is something we now do to try to educate the public.
This book is something we use to try to educate the public. I even help to train psychics and mediums to increase the standards upon which they live and work, and you’re looking at…I have a dog. I’m kind of a workaholic, so my work really is my life.
Richard: I understand. What is it that you hope to or want to achieve through the work that you’re doing now?
Bob: It’s interesting, I keep wondering, “How long is this going to last?” Then what happens is once I feel as though I’ve seen it all, something new comes along, and it’s something that I haven’t seen before. It’s something new, and it gets me all excited, and that passion that I felt at the beginning of this journey comes right back. The way I am, when I learn something new about anything, but certainly in this field, I just get so excited to tell everybody else about it, because if I find it fascinating, I know other people will too, and so that’s what keeps me going. It’s like that lottery ticket that you scratched and it won. It makes you want to keep buying them for whatever months longer before you get another one. Every time I learned something new to me, some new way of understanding the afterlife, that just keeps me going for a little while longer.
I think in the very end, if I had to get at the very basis of it, it’s I feel as though my work helps people who are grieving, people who are suffering with the loss of a loved one. I know that understanding life after death gives them comfort. It doesn’t take away their grief, but it certainly helps to comfort their grief so that they’re able to function in society as the rest of us. That’s what gets me up in the morning.
Richard: Finally, who inspires you?
Bob: This sounds silly, but honestly, my wife. Someone who I’ve been together since we were young teenagers. She, without having to do all the research that I’ve done, has become sort of the spiritual being and practice that I hope to be. She’s that Buddha who is the example to all others. She’s the example to me, and I look at her and the way she emanates love with unconditional love for everyone, animal, human being. It doesn’t matter. I just want to be more like her, so that’s why am hoping that I’ll achieve before I die.
Richard: Well, Bob Olson, I want to thank you so much for sharing this time with us here on the program. It’s great to have you and have our listeners find out more about the afterlife through your investigation, and we certainly hope to stay in touch with you and see the kinds of work that you’re doing. I was just noticing at the afterlifetv.com website that you have tools for everyday people to communicate with spirits as one of your programs coming up.
I’m sure that there are dozens of other programs as well, and that we get a chance to investigate some of these other folks as well, and who knows? Maybe there’ll be a part two to this sojourn.
Bob: That’s right. I thank you, Richard. This has been such a pleasure for me. I love it when someone understands these things the way you do and asks these incredibly meaningful questions that makes me think and brings back all my passion, so thanks so much, Richard.
Richard: You’re very welcome. I would assume that the research, is there going to come a point when you’re going to say, ”Okay, I’ve done enough research. I know. I got it, I got it,” or is this literally just there’s no end to this?
Bob: I think there’s no end to it, because of what you said. Our truth evolves, and I look forward to what tomorrow’s truth is going to be. It never changes that much, but I love to have a little bit of a greater awareness any chance that I can get, so that’s what’s keeps me going.
Richard: Great. Afterlifetv.com is the website. Answers about the Afterlife: A Private Investigator’s 15-Year Search Unlocks the Mysteries of Life After Death,” Bob Olson, host of afterlifetv.com. We certainly hope you’ll check that out as well. We will be linked to him. I’m Richard Dugan. This has been Tell Me Your Story, New Paradigms for a New World. We’re giving you choices and knowledge of those choices to help make your dreams come true. Until next time, love to lol.
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Narrator: That’s all for another fantastic Afterlife TV episode. Bob couldn’t be happier. If you enjoyed this episode as much as Bob, please leave a comment on afterlifetv.com, Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube, and don’t forget to check out Bob’s book, Answers About The Afterlife. Thanks for watching Afterlife TV.
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.
JOIN BOB’S NEWSLETTER: Don’t miss Bob’s latest content about life lessons and life after death on his newsletter called, Bob Olson Connect.
