The afterlife: the spirit and the soul

[Ninshub]

I probably posted this video from Bob Olson a long time ago already.

Attending the Matt Fraser group reading, along with watching and reading about a lot of readings clips from other mediums, it struck me again how what's presented to the sitter is the personality as they know them, uncle Chuck or whoever, who still has the same interests, may have undergone changes in their perspectives, and watches out and even worries about the sitter or friends. They still belong to the same "family".

So we're very much in the domain of what Bob Olson calls a "spirit" as opposed to the higher self, which he calls the "soul".

Vocabulary decisions apart, I think Bob's elucidation of the two and their relationship, based on his research, makes some sense to me, and I wish other researchers or mediums or what have you would have address this question more. Of course it still leaves me with questions.

Different experiencers (through meditation or NDEs, depending on how you interpret them) claim to access something of the higher self, which is different from Bob Olson relates here. According to Bob, you, Charlie, will still be Charlie in the afterlife. You'll know more that you're connected to your Soul (or higher self) than on the earth plane, but you will still be forever Charlie. What "reincarnates" is not you, Charlie, but Bob or Suzanne, another creation of your Soul.

Again, I don't know if this is so, other experiences suggest something else, as do a lot of Asian spiritual practices. But again straight mediumship pretty much gives you this portrait.

Does anybody have thoughts about this, or how they wrap their heads about those questions? Bob says it was the most popular question he answered in his afterlife book, and I agree. To me it's the question with the most fundamental importance.

It has great implications also, in my mind, for what perspective and maybe practices one engages in one's life. Should I just continue being my personality, or should I strive to gain distance from my personality and identify and realize the higher Self?

Queued up (he reads from his book, so it's quite clear):
https://youtu.be/y-JNwIaLyDw?t=144

I probably posted this video from Bob Olson a long time ago already.

Attending the Matt Fraser group reading, along with watching and reading about a lot of readings clips from other mediums, it struck me again how what's presented to the sitter is the personality as they know them, uncle Chuck or whoever, who still has the same interests, may have undergone changes in their perspectives, and watches out and even worries about the sitter or friends. They still belong to the same "family".

So we're very much in the domain of what Bob Olson calls a "spirit" as opposed to the higher self, which he calls the "soul".

Vocabulary decisions apart, I think Bob's elucidation of the two and their relationship, based on his research, makes some sense to me, and I wish other researchers or mediums or what have you would have address this question more. Of course it still leaves me with questions.

Different experiencers (through meditation or NDEs, depending on how you interpret them) claim to access something of the higher self, which is different from Bob Olson relates here. According to Bob, you, Charlie, will still be Charlie in the afterlife. You'll know more that you're connected to your Soul (or higher self) than on the earth plane, but you will still be forever Charlie. What "reincarnates" is not you, Charlie, but Bob or Suzanne, another creation of your Soul.

Again, I don't know if this is so, other experiences suggest something else, as do a lot of Asian spiritual practices. But again straight mediumship pretty much gives you this portrait.

Does anybody have thoughts about this, or how they wrap their heads about those questions? Bob says it was the most popular question he answered in his afterlife book, and I agree. To me it's the question with the most fundamental importance.

It has great implications also, in my mind, for what perspective and maybe practices one engages in one's life. Should I just continue being my personality, or should I strive to gain distance from my personality and identify and realize the higher Self?

Queued up (he reads from his book, so it's quite clear):
https://youtu.be/y-JNwIaLyDw?t=144

Bob Olson's conception of the afterlife poses some big problems. What strikes me the most is the almost terrifying thought of having an eternity ahead of being essentially my old human self, but in a realm where thoughts are things and there is no real challenge. At the very least, immense boredom would have to set in after maybe a few thousand years. And that's just the beginning of the afterlife.

Then there is the potential problem that anything imagined by the human self could be unintentionally brought into spirit realm existence, even perverse and horrible subconscious fears and dreads. One unfortunate human psychological characteristic is the impossibility of preventing a forbidden frightening thought from occupying the mind, once one intends to not think about it. The human process is such that then, you just can't not think about it.

These are just a few of many potential downsides of an eternal afterlife for each unique human being. Submerging into the super-consciousness of the soul or higher self would seem to be a mercy in comparison, even though that latter conception brings with it the downside of knowing that one's personal existence will have an ending. 

Another problem of Olson's conception of the afterlife comes to mind - you would think it would be getting crowded up there since the spirits of every human being that ever lived in the physical world would be populating it, but there is no sign in the channelings and mediumistic communications of encountering hordes of spirits all clamoring for attention. Where did they all go? Did they all evolve into higher beings in other spiritual spheres? Since there are no massive numbers of communications from these formerly human spirits they must conveniently lose any interest in communication, communication is just too difficult or is impossible, or there just aren't any such formerly human beings populating the afterlife.

[Ninshub]

I'm with you regarding the thought of remaining my "old human self" all eternity - hopefully it's not that.

I'm not sure I follow you regarding all the implications of being the old human self - I don't know that Bob Olson is necessarily saying Charlie on earth will be exactly the same "human" Charlie in the spirit world, but that it is a spirit distinct from the soul.

I'm also not sure that what he's conceptualizing is all that different from regular mediumistic communications. Are you saying you think his model is not what occurs in mediumistic communications, or do you think mediumistic communications are problematic in themselves in terms of what they say about post-physical existence?

(I would dispute the "crowded" part though - it's not as if we're talking about physical space.)

I'm with you regarding the thought of remaining my "old human self" all eternity - hopefully it's not that.

I'm not sure I follow you regarding all the implications of being the old human self - I don't know that Bob Olson is necessarily saying Charlie on earth will be exactly the same "human" Charlie in the spirit world, but that it is a spirit distinct from the soul.

I'm also not sure that what he's conceptualizing is all that different from regular mediumistic communications. Are you saying you think his model is not what occurs in mediumistic communications, or do you think mediumistic communications are problematic in themselves in terms of what they say about post-physical existence?

(I would dispute the "crowded" part though - it's not as if we're talking about physical space.)

Neither. I think that at least some mediumistic communications are with people surviving as their individual unique personalities and memories in an afterlife which sometimes seems to mirror life on Earth in an idealistic way. This would follow Olson's conception.

I just point out some unpleasant and/or difficult to understand implications of this, that Olson apparently didn't think of.

[Ninshub]

I just listened to this reading online by Matt Fraser. I was thinking of maybe posting it in the Matt Fraser thread to give a good example of what I experienced and it not being just generalities and phishing. (Don't pay attention necessarily to the item about the son reincarnating.)

I decided to post it here instead because what strikes me again in such mediumistic communications, which are with "iindividual unique personalities" as nbtruthman labelled them, is how much the discarnate here, in this case the father, is seemingly still completely identified with his life on earth, or at least as it relates to his interest for family and what he's communicating to the medium. It's like he's always watching them.



It's the sort of thing you notice with other mediums as well and, if true, it paints a drastically different picture than a soul experiencing limitless adventures in consciousness, that you sometimes see described in NDEs or astral projection/OBEs.

Does this mean this says something only about these particular individuals? Does this mean we're seeing only an aspect of that "soul" (which perhaps is multi-layered or faceted in a way that's a lot more complex than Olson's model)?

What happens to individuals whose lives were not so family-oriented, or who lived lives absorbed in interests that were much less worldly?