Details of the Afterlife Part 1
- Lauren Pisciotta
- Aug 12
- 13 min read
Updated: Sep 13
In his book, Exploring the Eternal Soul, Andy Tomlinson details out the phenomenon called between lives hypnosis. During a between lives hypnosis session, the regression therapist provides relaxing cues almost like a guided meditation to relax the client but the client is always in complete control. The client becomes very relaxed in a theta brain wave state. Once in this state, the therapist will guide the client into a past life. The client then reports on their past life death, a transition to the light, a life review, and then meets with their soul group. The client may also have a meeting with a Council of Elders and get a glimpse into why they chose specific characteristics for their incarnation or even past incarnations.
Michael Newton was a key pioneer of this hypnosis method in addition to a few others. Tomlinson expands and adds more detail in his book to what Newton shared in his books, Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls, about the spirit realm. One point that Tomlinson wants to make clear is that many past life and in between life pioneers in the 1960s and early 70s were professionally trained psychologists and psychiatrists. Pioneers like Michael Newton, Helen Wambach, Brian Weiss, and Edith Fiore. He says "Nearly all described how they had become atheists while studying at university. Using conventional hypnosis to regress their clients back into childhood, they experimentally stumbled upon what appeared to be past lives." Thus, Tomlinson is making the point here that these pioneers were just as shocked when clients started discussing past lives and the spirit realm under hypnosis.
Tomlinson is a psychologist, psychotherapist, and certified regression therapist. He has taken hundreds of people, mainly from the UK, Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia, through between lives regressions. Based on his cases he pulled together 15 between lives cases. He chose five people that had not previously heard or read about between lives, another five that had previously read about between lives but didn't remember the details, and another five that had previously read about between lives and retained a significant amount of information. Thus, we can see if there is a difference in the content provided by people with different prior knowledge.
Let me share some details from Tomlinson's book. Note that I use italic font when Tomlinson is commenting in the book or asking a question during the hypnosis session in order to differentiate from the hypnosis client:
The process of death: Tomlinson says the following about the death process:
"All of the between lives pioneers report that the experience begins with the subject moving or floating out of their physical body after the point of death in a past life. They usually express a sudden sense of lightness and freedom, and sometimes the death scene is observed for a while with an air of detachment. Some even attempt with limited success to contact grieving friends and relatives, to give them comfort before they move on into the light."
Below is what a hypnosis subject says when she dies in a past life during an earthquake and a temple crashes down around her:
"So my body’s lying face down on the stone floor, and rocks have hit me in the head. I feel very unconcerned. I’m not feeling distressed at all."
He asks her to continue. Below is what she says:
"It’s a bit like a tunnel on the way in, although it feels very white to me. Almost like a tunnel that isn’t dark at all, almost like it’s made out of mists and things. It’s funny because I’m walking, but I’m in the sky. There’s no sense of physical support, but I’m walking rather than floating. I look the same. My hair is straight and I’m wearing the white gown and the sandals. I have some sense of these people living in little houses by the sea, and I feel very loving towards them. It’s time to go and I get a sense that maybe I’m being drawn."
Below is from another client:
Go to the point that you take your last breath.
"I feel very light. I’m looking down at my body. My sisters are sitting next to it. They’d prepared so well for my passing and everything’s in place. It’s like they’re holding a space in the energy so that I can move on easily."
What do you experience next?
"I just feel myself moving further and further away. I can see the bedroom and my sisters. Then as I move further away I can see so much more. I can see all over the land. I feel I’m being drawn away."
The welcoming party and entering the spirit realm: After going into the light, many souls talk about a welcome party with loved ones, spirit guides, and soul group members. Below is what a hypnosis client says:
Tell me if you become aware of any lights in the distance.
"Three. I’m moving towards them."
What do you start to notice?
"I sense that one is my husband and the other two are my parents."
What happens as you make contact with your husband and parents again?
"I’m not believing it. It’s like a dream. Maybe I’m just dreaming."
Do they embrace you in any way?
"Yeah."
Describe what it feels like when you’re being embraced.
"I feel surrounded by love. It’s like they can wrap their whole bodies around me."
Below is another example from a different hypnosis client and what Tomlinson says about her experience:
"I can see flowers, and grass, and buildings maybe, but they are different from where I’ve just come from. They are simple and there’s a different sort of quality about this place. It’s lighter, you know! It’s as if everything is there and somehow not there. So even though they’re buildings, they don’t seem very dense… I think it’s partly me creating them myself. It feels like when I focus on something, it’s there."
Tomlinson says, "All of the between lives pioneers report we can give our surroundings varying amounts of semi-physical form in the spirit plane. This is achieved simply because energy follows thought. It often happens during the initial transition, that will make them feel more comfortable and at home. It is why between lives sessions often contain various reports of huge crystalline castles, or green meadows and flowers. Sometimes the settings are described as classrooms and libraries, or perceived as temples with domes and columns. These characteristics often contain elements of a favorite building or scene from the life on earth".
How is the negative energy from Earth removed and healed? Just as Michael Newton's hypnosis clients described places for healing in the spirit realm, Tomlinson also explores this topic and reports on the healing that we experience when we return to the spirit realm:
Tomlinson says, "Virtually all of the subjects confirm these standard ideas of energy healing in one way or another. The level of healing depends on the challenges of the life and the level of maturity of the soul. Usually they refer to the processes as washing away negative emotions and of expansion".
Below is an example from a hypnosis client that describes what the healing feels like upon return to the spirit realm:
"Wrapped in a ball of swirling energy with a pearl-like surface that dissolves my unnecessary thoughts of sadness. Helpers who smooth or stroke the surface of my aura so that all the parts of my body ripple like liquid."
Below is another example:
"A stream of light like a clean-up shower that cleans out my feelings of sadness and loneliness."
Below is what another hypnosis client says about healing:
"The memories don’t go with the cleansing, the cleansing just removes the heavier or more negative energies. Negative isn’t the right word, but it’s the only one I have. The more negative energies stop you being able to be in your soul form so they need to be lifted. The learning and the energy remain with you. They have to."
How do we reunite with the energy that remained in the spirit realm while we were incarnated (the higher self energy)? When we incarnate into a human body, we incarnate with a percentage of our energy, not the full energy. We leave a percentage of our energy in the spirit realm because the human body can't physically accept 100% soul energy and also we do things in the spirit realm while we are incarnated. Below are quotes from hypnosis clients of how they merge back with their soul energy:
How do you reconnect with this energy?
"We are merging. I feel stronger, much stronger and more confident."
Below is another quote from a different hypnosis client:
"My guide, it’s like he’s holding a jar, but it’s not a jar. Inside it’s like a light and that’s my energy. I feel my energy is pulsating. He knows where it needs to go. It’s like a magnet. He releases the lid and that’s it. Joined.
And what does it feel like?
"Empowering. Very empowering. I didn’t take enough energy when I went to earth. Hmm."
What is it like to have a life review? The life review is a well known stage to review the prior life. Below is what Tomlinson says in italics and then what the client under hypnosis says about her past life:
Tomlinson says, "The suggestion that we are our own harshest critics comes from the experience of Lisbet Halvorsen. She regresses to a life as a ship-owning slave trader operating in the central Mediterranean, who dies aged 60 in his cabin from a smoking-related lung problem. She experiences immediate and profound regret about a life of such emptiness and materialism:"
The client says under hypnosis, "I immediately regret this pathetic life… I want to get away quickly… I feel so ashamed… That was a terrible life… I’m alone now, just feeling the shock of how easy it was to lead an empty life. How easy it was just to go with my instincts and be completely cut off. How easy it was to be self-satisfied. I felt I did nothing wrong at the time, and now there’s this light ahead of me and I’m thinking, ‘How was it possible to be so cut off from love, and not be critical of myself at all?’"
She then goes on to have a life review and says the following:
"My life review goes quite quickly… I’m talking to my teacher now, this older person, someone I trust and who understands me. He’s saying, ‘So how did you think that was?’ I say, ‘I didn’t think it was possible to go down and have a life not remembering the important things,’ and he is saying, ‘See, it’s that easy to forget’"
Below is a different client under hypnosis. We find out in Tomlinson's book that she has multiple past lives where she gives up on life when her husband dies.
How is this review happening?
"I’m being shown it in one of the books. It’s almost like a little video inside the book that plays back certain scenes."
Well, just tell me the scenes that are played back and the discussions you have with Inka (her guide).
"I get the scene running up to my death. I’d given up on life, given up on learning. He is asking how things could have been different."
And what do you say?
"I could have been more active, more outgoing. I could have not felt sorry for myself. I had the option to live more in the present, but at that stage I was looking more to the future and dying. It brings the sadness back. Then he flips back. There were some opportunities that I had after my husband’s death that I didn’t take up. I could have listened to certain people’s advice. I could have taken a different path and that would’ve helped me to not be so sad in my later years."
Does your spirit guide offer any advice at this point?
"He’s saying that it was quite a normal human emotion to feel as I did, but he feels that I took it too far."
And at a soul level, what do you think?
"I agree."
Are there any other scenes that you review in this book?
"We go back to some happier times when our children were young, and how we both did a lot of work educating them, and trying to instill values of self-worth and confidence."
And what does Inka (her guide) say about that?
"He’s praising me for the work that I did with the children, and how it’s helped them have a good start in their lives. He’s showing me other scenes where I’ve done it with other people. That’s one of my skills, he says."
How do we watch a life review in the spirit realm? Below is what is said by a hypnosis client about this question:
How are you watching it?
"We’ve chosen to watch it on a big screen."
What other choices could you have had?
"I could’ve chosen to view it telepathically, and we could’ve chosen to relive it and stop at the pertinent times."
The Elder souls: There is a council of experienced souls that sometimes observe the life review with us in the spirit realm and help with final decisions about the next incarnation. Below is what one client says under hypnosis about this council. We find out that she has issues in past lives with holding onto hatred toward perpetrators. Note that Tomlinson's comments are in italics.
Tell me what happens.
"It feels as if this room is just alive with laughter. I’m just being told to ‘lie back in the laughter’. I think I expected to come in here and it to be like some sort of exalted holy place, but it’s just full of laughter and mischief and a kind of golden knowing. It’s joyfulness. It’s grace, the very stuff of existence. It’s being. It’s loving. It’s love, really.
She is asked here why they are choosing to show her such a joyous atmosphere:
"Because I take myself so seriously. I’m even trying to take myself seriously in here… The sense I get is that it’s very honorable to be diligent and serious, but not necessary. It’s necessary to be light. To be a light being, working in light. To take myself lightly. They have a message for me about hatred as well. They say it’s an intense light charge, with the wrong interpretation. By labeling it as hatred, it becomes a weapon, like a sword, double-edged. They’re telling me to expand so that my being can experience it as joy."
Tomlinson says, "This discussion of turning negative emotions into joy is perhaps something we can all consider. She then continues with the Elders in the library environment, where she is helped to see the cause of her hatred in the context of a number of previous lives:"
The client says under hypnosis, "They take down this volume. One image that I’m seeing at the moment is a sort of phalanx, like marching centurions. They’re marching warrior men with close-fitting metal helmets, and what I’m seeing is just being ground underfoot mercilessly. As women with no defense we are just ground underfoot by this moving machine of willful warrior men… There are children as well. They’re also ground underfoot. … My heart could experience it as love and grief for my children and all the others, you know? To narrow it down to hatred binds me to that. If you stay tight like a sharp point, then the hatred is in the point and it’s a weapon. If you stay loose and expand, then the heart is dealing with the faces of love… I’m being shown that fighting back has no purpose. It remains like a razor that wants blood… I think it feels as if the message is just to expand, in the middle, in my heart, to just open. Open. Open. Open. It’s almost like the blow just passes straight through you then. Open. Stay open and then it’s a touch of joy."
Tomlinson says, "Laura had indicated before the session that she wanted to understand more about a problem in her current life. These are worrying thoughts of being attacked and feelings of fear and shame when talking to small groups:"
The client says, "Yes. They say it is the same, but it’s a different life memory involving the fear and shame of being stoned to death. This is essentially the same as the boots of the soldiers that crushed us underfoot. It’s the same impact. It’s the same meeting of a hard, unresisting, attacking force… So it’s all about surrender, about letting go of resistance. What they’re actually showing me is that even the most brutal attack can be experienced as a caress of love. Every knife, every bullet, every weapon, every bomb. That it’s my ego that wants to meddle with another soul’s journey, by taking it as an attack. My own soul path is about learning, surrender, and emptying. Every weapon that seems to harm is the perpetrator’s journey, and it’s only my wanting to meddle in that other person’s journey that makes it an injury and a wound. If I want to meddle in that other person’s journey, then I’m going to receive it as ‘you’ve done me wrong’. When you surrender and become empty, you become a much clearer conductor of the light. If we are always emptier we can conduct a greater charge, without any impedance. They’re showing me that even a cannon ball can go straight through my chest and not harm me at all if I stay light. If it takes my life force away I have the opportunity to reform and come back in another time and place."
Life purposes and challenges: When the clients are under hypnosis, they discuss life purposes of the lives they lived. See below quotes from one client that lived a simple past life:
What was the purpose of this life?
"It was about reconnecting with nature, and the peace and the love that it’s possible to experience in physical form. It was also about being able to be a pure and aware channel for the higher vibration energies to come through."
Just summarize briefly what happened to you.
"I was born into a good family. My mother was a Wiccan and she taught me ‘the ways’, and I passed them on to my daughter and son. My husband was a good man. I was surrounded by loving people, and enjoyed everyday life. I enjoyed my relationships and I enjoyed my family. It was simple and wasn’t a wealthy life, or a life full of riches and glamor, but it was a life free of trauma and pain."
Is there any discussion with your spirit guide about the sadness of leaving people at the end of that life?
"I don’t feel that now. The sadness was just because I loved them so much. I liked watching them grow and their lives changing, and them blossoming into the people they were meant to be. I know that I can watch that from here."
To summarize this blog post, this information is a good overview of what I read about consistently over and over again as I research near death experiencers, mediums, channelers, and those that had past life and in between life regressions. It is so consistent and these people that share these accounts are all from different backgrounds and countries. Perhaps this will provide a perspective on what it's like to die and transition on to the spirit realm. This was part 1 of what I wanted to share, I wanted to keep it short for the blog post. Below posts provide more details about the afterlife/spirit realm in part 2 and 3:
To continue see below blog posts:
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