People worry if their deceased loved ones felt any pain or fear upon their passing. They also wonder if the afterlife is dark and scary. Moreover, many people fear death simply because they worry that it might be painful, scary, or dark.
Afterlife Investigator Bob Olson dispels these fears using evidence from his 28-year investigation of life after death, including accounts of near-death experiences, readings with mediums, and deathbed visions (also known as pre-death experiences).
Bob Olson is the author of Answers About The Afterlife, host of Afterlife TV. and founder of Best Psychic Directory, featuring hundreds of credible and reputable psychics, mediums, animal communicators, and energy healers. https://www.bestpsychicdirectory.com
If you’d like to watch this video, We’ve Got Death All Wrong! It’s not a punishment, but rather…, visit www.afterlifetv.com/?p=3925
Intro
Hey everybody, Bob Olson here with Afterlife TV. You can find us at afterlifetv.com. Today we’re going to be talking about: Was your loved one’s death painful, scary, or dark? Big question that a lot of people have, and based on the 28 years that I have investigated life after death, I have discovered that the answer is comforting, really, to all of us.
One, is death painful?
We can start there. First of all, it’s good to distinguish between death and dying, right? Dying is a physical event. We all know that can be painful, but death, which is really a spiritual event, is not.
So, in this particular case, one thing we know is people who have had near-death experiences, it usually begins with what we call an out-of-body experience, where they leave their body. They often will float up to the corner of the room or above their body if they’re outside. They’re what we call in the observer position. They’re observing their body from a slight distance and they’re looking down on it and they realize that they’re dead.
They’re fully aware of what’s going on, but all the people that have been able to report on this experience—people who have had near-death experiences, people who have communicated through mediums or through dream visitations, where your loved one might visit you in a dream and you really feel as though it was really them communicating with you—people who have described this experience talk about they feel nothing but a sense of peace and detachment from their body, so they’re not feeling any sense of pain or discomfort that they might be going through.
One of the things that’s really interesting is so many people describe this feeling, it’s like a sensation of weightlessness. And when I mentioned a lot of people seem to float up in the corner of the room, it’s because a lot of times people who die for a few seconds or even a few minutes on the surgery table have reported that they seem to be observing from one corner of the room, and they’re able to recognize everything that’s going on during the surgery.
They recognize that the doctors and nurses are in a little bit of a panic and they may be trying to resuscitate or bring this person back to life, and yet while all this is happening they feel nothing but a wonderful sense of inner peace watching it.
So when we ask this question about whether death is painful, really what it comes down to is these people—obviously if they’ve come back to tell us about it, their near-death experience was a temporary experience—they came back into their bodies. That is when they felt the pain, not while they were in spiritual form. It was when they returned back to their physical bodies. Now they could feel the sensations of the injury or the illness or whatever it was that was going on when they temporarily died for a few seconds or a few minutes and had this experience.
Now question two, is death scary?
Death itself is not scary but dying certainly can be scary.
Is death dark?
So once again it’s good to distinguish the difference between death and dying. When it comes to this experience, same thing— a lot of people who have had near-death experiences have described that they felt nothing but love, warmth, and inner peace while they had left their bodies and were in spirit form.
And once they have left the vicinity of their physical bodies—meaning once they exited their bodies—they said that many of them gravitated toward this brilliant light of the afterlife. And the closer they got to this light, the more love and joy and peace and safety that they felt. And it just got more intense the closer they got to that light. Once they entered the light, they felt as though they were just steeped in these feelings of love and joy and peace.
Some people who have had near-death experiences said they felt fear at one point. And this isn’t everybody, but it also makes sense. Like what would happen is if, let’s just say, they’re hovering up the corner of the room up by the ceiling, they’re looking at all the doctors and nurses in the surgery room, and they recognize that they think that they are dead and yet they’re not.
They know they’re not dead, and so they try to communicate, “No, I’m not dead, I’m not dead,” and nobody can hear them. Nobody recognizes that they’re there, and that’s when they can feel a little bit of fear set in—that they are all alone.
And it is at this point in every case that what we call a greeter, a spiritual being, then shows up to comfort that person who is now in spiritual form and let them know they’re safe.
Now as soon as that spirit or spirit guide shows up—again, often we call them a greeter—they’re greeting them into the spiritual dimension. Their presence alone, they’re surrounded by an energy that makes the person who is having this experience comforted, feel more at peace, and certainly they feel the love from this person.
Other than that, that’s the only time that they tend to feel a sense of fear. Once they’re with that spiritual being, all the fear just dissipates. It all goes away. And whatever happens from that point on is usually again from a very detached place, a place of fearlessness, and a recognition that everything is going to be okay.
The third question, is death dark?
This is an interesting question because it’s a yes-or-no answer. So I’ve interviewed a lot of people who have had near-death experiences, and they’ve been telling me for years about this light within the darkness. Yes, there is a darkness that exists, which is really more of a vacancy or a void of light, more than it is a darkness. There isn’t necessarily a blackness.
I’ve had it described to me in many different ways. One person described it to me as a soothing darkness that had light illuminated from within it, and as confusing as that may sound, a lot of different people described it in similar ways. One person said it was a soft, velvety darkness and she said light radiated wherever she focused her attention.
And so many people described that, yes, there was a sort of a darkness—or as I say a vacancy of light—but then within that darkness things would illuminate. They would light up based on what it was that person, now in spiritual form, was focusing upon.
What the tunnel teaches us
Again then we come to the tunnel experience. So many of us have heard about people who have left their bodies and had this near-death experience and they find themselves in what some will describe as a tunnel. And the way this tunnel is often described is that it’s almost like the walls of the tunnel—this is a very spiritual experience so it’s hard to put into human terms—but it seems to be illuminated.
So again, while there may be a lack of light within this space, there seems to be a light all around what some of them told me is like the walls of this tunnel, and they’re just illuminated—this iridescent multi-colored illumination that they’re sensing.
And, you know, what’s interesting is when we really get down to asking these people who have had near-death experiences to articulate what their experience was like, they find that it’s difficult to describe in human terms, to the point where children who have had near-death experiences will use like basic terms like they went into a noodle, or they were in a straw, or anything along those lines. Whatever it is a kid associates with a tunnel-like experience, because it’s not exactly a tunnel as you and I know it.
Now again, even with the kids, the tunnel had beautiful lights and colors within it.
Spirits gravitate towards the light
And certainly everyone describes that they could see a very brilliant light at the end of the tunnel, and they were just gravitating toward it naturally without any effort on their part. They were just moving towards this brilliant light at the end, and the closer they got to that brilliant light, the more love and peace and comfort that they would feel—a sense of safety—as they just kept getting closer to the light, which most people will describe as the spiritual dimension or heaven or what have you.
There seems to be no resemblance of what we know as darkness within this description of being in the afterlife. So as I mentioned, it seems to be more like a muted or vacant visual that illuminates only when they shift their focus to one area or another, and it’s just fascinating to me.
I think it’s one of the things that makes it fun to listen to all these interviews that are on the internet about people who have had near-death experiences.
Now, through mediums, we’ve heard many of the same things. People who have had deathbed visions, people who have been in their deathbed—maybe they’re in the hospital, maybe they’re at home, they are preparing to die, they are maybe minutes or hours from death—and they will see loved ones in spirit greeting them back home. And they’ll get glimpses of the afterlife. And, for them, so much of it is about the light that they see. They’re recognizing more light, no darkness, but a light that’s illuminating from these spiritual beings that are there to make them feel not afraid and more comforted by their presence. “We’re here, we’re waiting for you. We know you’re soon to come home.”
Light and the spirit world
And ultimately, the descriptions that we have of the spiritual dimension are that it is very bright. I’ve said it many times, it’s like a hundred times the illumination of the Sun, and yet it doesn’t hurt one’s eyes. And it feels very comforting and warm and loving and safe. And I think the best description that we probably have for it is sitting on a beach in the Sun, with the Sun on our skin, and keeping us warm, and it just feels so good. And I think we must take that to a hundredth degree, right, as to what that must be like when we return back to the spiritual dimension.
Conclusions on painful, scary, and dark
Ultimately, however it’s described—slightly differently because it’s different people who are describing it—it’s a subjective experience that just seems like it’s a wonderful experience no matter how you look at it.
And so we start off asking, was your loved one’s death painful, scary, or dark? And I think the answer is, it was none of those things. It was—perhaps the dying experience may have had some pain, may have had some scariness to it—but the death itself, the transition back to the spiritual dimension, was neither painful, scary, or dark. It was really the opposite of all those things. It was filled with love and bliss and peace and joy, and certainly the joy of seeing our deceased loved ones again on the other side, there to greet us.
So anyways, I hope that was helpful to you, if you’ve ever had those fears about your loved one and their passing.
Books
As usual, I’ll just quickly tell you about my books, if you’re interested more about learning about life after death. Answers About the Afterlife is really my investigation report that I’d come out with after 15 years of research. Nothing has changed. That book is extremely accurate, as I have read through it multiple times thinking about updating it, rewriting it, and there’s really nothing to update there. So I still stand by everything that’s written in Answers About the Afterlife.
My second book is a fictional story really, The Magic Mala is about what I learned about life while investigating the afterlife. And I put that into a fictional story with some characters that I fell in love with. This story just came to me one day, and I started writing it out and I couldn’t stop. And I ended up writing for about eight hours a day for 40 days and finished this book.
And then my third book is called Insight From Hindsight. It just came out a few months ago, and that book is a compilation of stories, short stories, and they’re true stories from my own life about events that happened to me that really taught me lessons. And by reading them, it’ll help you to recognize that there are messages within the things that are happening to you and your life, even if they’re seemingly negative experiences. They may be teaching you something, helping you to grow in some way, or maybe leading you in a new direction for growth and understanding. Insight From Hindsight is my newest book, and I haven’t done a lot to promote it, but there you go. You can find that on amazon.com.
Final thoughts
Finally, I’ll just mention that I’m the founder of Best Psychic Directory, where there’s hundreds of psychics and mediums and energy healers and tarot readers and spirit artists—many of the practitioners that I talk about in my video on the most compelling evidence of life after death. So if you want to check that out, you can go to bestpsychicdirectory.com.
Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope it gave you a little sense of comfort and peace, maybe answered some questions that you had as we talked about the evidence around: Is death painful, scary, or dark? All right, we’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you!
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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