Craig Hogan is the President of the Afterlife Research and Education Institute and the Director of the Center for Spiritual Understanding Through Afterlife Communication. He is also the author or co-author of four books that focus on after-death communication, healing grief and trauma, and more.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- The ways afterlife communication transforms people as they gain the awareness that their deceased loved ones are alive and well.
- The ways pioneering psychotherapists have refined methods to help their clients have afterlife connection experiences and how this helps heal grief.
- A TV docu-series called The Afterlife Files that will present the hard science to prove that we survive death with our personalities intact.
- Even though healing help is available on The Other Side, it is much easier to transition to the Other Side when you have healed many of your issues during this current lifetime.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS DR. CRAIG:
- What is the new understanding about reincarnation and the Oversoul?
- How does the Repair and Reattachment Grief Therapy method reduce a
person’s grief? - Can anyone join your Afterlife Discussion Groups and your Spirituality
Discussion Groups?
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Listen to the podcast here
Dr. Craig Hogan: President Of The Afterlife Research And Education Institute And The Director Of The Center For Spiritual Understanding Through Afterlife Communication
Welcome once again to the show, whose mission is to educate, enlighten, and provide healing choices through interviews with grief and trauma specialists, healers, mediums, and people who have inspiring stories to share. Make sure to follow us and like us on social at @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
I’m honored to be interviewing Craig Hogan, who is both the President of the Afterlife Research and Education Institute and the Director of the Center for Spiritual Understanding through Afterlife Communication. Craig, who has a PhD in Supervision and Developing Educational Programs, is also the author or co-author of four books that focus on after-death communication, healing grief, trauma, and more.
Craig, welcome to the show. I’ve introduced many gifted mediums and healers to our growing audience. Therefore, I feel it is also important for our readers to get to know you and the amazing work the Afterlife Research and Education Institute, also known as AREI, is doing to support the dedicated researchers and educators who are teaching how to communicate directly with loved ones living in the next realm of life. Let’s begin our sure-to-be-fascinating interview with this question. Craig, please briefly take us on your own personal path that led to your desire to help humanity transform by focusing on afterlife communication.
Thank you, Irene. This is delightful. I’m anxious to speak with you because there’s so much that we know now. I can bring these messages to people. I’ve spent all of my time working on this for the past few decades. What happened was, originally, a few decades ago, I learned that I have psychic abilities. I learned that because I had been speaking with psychics and they had told me that I have the abilities.
I then decided to sit down in front of a computer monitor and log onto a website where you could do remote viewing. On the website, you would get a code. It was a series of letters that were meaningless. You’d close your eyes and focus on the code and then you would sketch whatever came to your mind. I did that and sketched it.
Sure enough, I was able to identify what it was that was up there. I realized that I had psychic abilities. I then started meeting psychics and people who were interested in psychic abilities. It seemed to come to me. It was flowing towards me. As I did that, then I gained more and more understanding. Eventually, as I studied psychics, I began to study medium, the afterlife, and what it’s like.
As I did that, it just opened up the whole world for me. I realized that there’s much more to this life than simply what we can see around us. As I did that, then I began to study it. I began to meet more people. We began to have these dialogues and conferences with each other. It’s all blossomed since then into the Afterlife Research and Education Institute. It’s been a long journey. I know I’ve been called to it. That’s what I’m doing full-time with my life now.
That’s wonderful. In a way, we’re on a similar mission because I had a spiritual awakening that woke me through this world. Now, I have a mission through this show to help people and bring them this knowledge and insights. We’re on a tool path. I’m so happy to be introducing people to what you’re doing. Tell me in what ways afterlife communication transforms people as they gain the awareness that their deceased loved ones are alive and well.
What happens is that we awaken to the world that is really true. We awaken to the world that we are part of. It’s not that we are discovering something that is different or new to us. We’re coming into where we always have been, where the home is that we’ve always felt we are in. We intuitively know it. We intuitively know that there’s much more to life than just the physical realm. We know that our loved ones, when they go on and they graduate from Earth School, that they go on to another place and they’re still available to us. We have the feeling like they’re looking down on us and they’re helping us. All of those feelings that we intuitively get are true.
What happens then is when somebody learns how to communicate with their loved ones in the next plane of life, it brings all of that into focus and say, “Yes, now I understand. I know that it’s true. I can communicate with my loved ones. I get these messages. I get the intuition that is helping me in my life.” That changes them eternally. It changes them as human beings because then they realize who we are in eternity. When you realize that, you see it’s so hopeful. It’s such a wonderful message that we are in Earth School together now. We’re going through lessons. We’re learning from each other. We’re learning with each other.
Eventually, we will graduate. After we graduate, we’ll have this marvelous, wonderful reunion when the other people who graduate after us come and we meet them on the next plane of life. That’s such a marvelous message. People realize that when they learn how to communicate with other people on the other side. There are now many ways of doing it. There are sixteen different methods that we have listed in one of my books, and one of them is 98% successful. We know we can help people to communicate with people on the other side. All we have to do is find the right way for everybody to be able to do it.
We know we can help people to communicate with people on the other side. All we have to do is find the right way for everybody to be able to do it. Click To Tweet
Which is your book that lists the sixteen some odd ways to communicate?
It’s called Afterlife Communication. What we did was we developed it at one of the conferences that I had sponsored. We had all of the speakers put together descriptions of their methods of afterlife communication. We then developed that into a book. The book is available on Amazon. The title is Afterlife Communication. People can read about these different methods. Every one of them is one of the methods that somebody could use. Everybody can find their method that works best for them.
Afterlife Communication
All you have to do is go in there and try them. Get in touch with the people who do it. We have methods that are part of the AREI that we sponsor. We have methods that we publicize, such as methods being used by psychotherapists with people. All of these methods are available. People just have to know about them. I’d recommend that anybody get the book. Take a look at the methods and then we will help you to find people who will be able to help you to learn how to use, anyone or all of the methods.
That’s great. This brought up about three more questions for me. I would think that if people know that they can communicate with their loved ones on the other side and if they know that they’re going to the other side, one of the blessings of what you’re doing is that it takes away the fear of death for people. They don’t want to leave the story of their lives, but then again, it’s not going to be over and they get to help the people they love once they transition.
Yes. It’s a wonderful message. It’s something that people learn, and you learn it so well. Once you get into studying it and understanding the truth about it, you become so understanding of the fact that we are in Earth School now and we’re going to graduate and continue our lives afterward. You become so comfortable with that. You have no fear of death, no concern about death, and no concern about the people who have gone on before you.
There’s no reason to because they’re living their lives happily. They’re enjoying life. They miss us. They miss being on the same plane with us, but they can come to us, so they can spend time with us anytime they want and they do. They come to the time when there are celebrations going on. They can come when we call them and say, “I would like help right now. I need your help.”
How do they do that? How do they help us? How does that take place, Craig? You’re asking your loved one, “I’m having a job problem,” or, “This is going on,” or, “This person’s sick.” How do they do that? They don’t have bodies now. They just have their consciousness.
There are lots of ways in which they do it. I would recommend that anybody read Your Soul’s Plan by Rob Schwartz. Rob does a marvelous job of talking about the planning session before we come into Earth School. He also talks about what happens during Earth School and how the people who are on the other side or in the life after this life come to us and help us in this life.
There are many ways in which they do that. The most prominent way is by focusing on us and giving us intuitions. We are all one mind. We are a part of the universal intelligence. Because of that, they can communicate with us, mind to mind, telepathically. They’re doing it all the time. We’re always getting messages. We’re getting messages from guides, from loved ones who are on the other side, from helpers, and from people who love us and want to help us in this life.
What they do is they give us messages. It’s like memories that we’re getting that aren’t our memories. They come up in our minds. All we have to do is learn how to listen. We just have to learn how to understand them. That’s one of the ways. Another one of the ways is they will influence other people to intercede in our lives. They’ll influence somebody else to come to meet us at a certain place. We’ll then meet them and we’ll have a synchronicity, which means that we will have this marvelous encounter that just came at the right time. They’ll do that.
They have some influence over material things so that they can make things happen in the material realm. That’s not the most often used way, but they can do that. They can make something happen that will be a beneficial influence for us. They are still working with us. They will work with us in our lives, but the most important part that they do is they will give us intuitions. They’ll give us messages. If we can learn how to listen to the messages, understand them, and value them, then they can be life-changing for us. All we have to do is allow them to come through with the messages.
Your Soul’s Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You
You’re right. I agree with you. I have to put in a plug also for Rob Schwartz because he endorsed my book, They Serve Bagels in Heaven. It’s also on Amazon. He’s amazing. His books are wonderful. Can anyone call or contact your organization and/or work with people to learn how to get messages and all that kind of thing? Do you have this hotline of people who can pick up the phone and communicate if they get calls from people who want to know more?
Yes, anybody who would like to contact us. I usually am the person who does in receiving the contacts so they can contact by phone or email. We certainly would help them out as much as we could in the circumstances. AREI was set up to help researchers, developers, educators, and the general public, anybody who wants to contact us. We will try to get you in touch with people. We have on our websites lists, for instance, mediums who are certified. Their website is AfterlifeInstitute.org.
They can get on and get to the lists of the mediums that we know are effective mediums. There are some excellent mediums. You shouldn’t pick a medium out of the phone book because of the fact that there are many medium people out there who think they’re mediums, but they’re not. We have certified mediums, and I would recommend that anybody get in touch with them. You can do a phone reading. A phone reading is just as effective as being there in person because there is no space.
That’s great.
They can have a phone reading with a medium. Another one of the ways that they can learn about the afterlife connections is through the training program that I have developed. It is on AREI’s website at SpiritualUnderstanding.org. That training program will take eight stages of training. They begin by learning how to listen and how to hear the voices of those who are trying to communicate with us. It goes all the way through being able to sit in a doctor’s office, waiting room, or on a bus and you can go into the state of mind in which you can have the connection. Anybody can learn how to do it, and we offer that free. It’s free online to anybody who wants to get to it.
That’s fantastic. You’re going to have a lot of people reaching out to you, especially now that they’re home. They’re thinking, “I need something to motivate myself.” What a great thing. Teaching people how to directly communicate, do you think you’ll eventually render the work of mediums obsolete?
No. Mediums are always going to be valuable because of the fact that they give evidential mediumship. Evidential mediumship means that it’s the evidence that people need. The medium then will get a message from someone who is living on the next plane of life and will give it to us and will say, “How could the medium have known that?” The medium couldn’t have known that. That’s evidential. That helps them.
Even with direct afterlife communication, mediums are always going to be valuable because they give evidential mediumship. Click To Tweet
Anytime anybody goes to a medium, the first thing you should look for is evidence. If both the medium and the person who is trying to communicate through the medium from the next plane of life, both of them want to give evidence to show that they are, in fact, the person who is coming through. If you sit down with a medium, you should always expect that the first thing that you get from your loved one on the other side is evidence. It’s going to be very substantial evidence. It’s going to be things that you can validate. It will be dates or something that happened at a birthday party that was unique.
John Edward had a reading in which he had someone come through. He said, “I have a grandmother coming through. She says that she had two poodles.” One was a black poodle, one was a white poodle. The two poodles went through a wedding reception and trashed everything in the wedding reception when people were not in the room. That’s the kind of evidence that you expect to have.
You get evidence first to show that the person really is coming through. Once the person comes through, then you’ll get the messages. We will never replace the mediums. They do a wonderful service. They’re very good at what they do. We can teach people how to have their own afterlife communications. It’s always good to have that validation from a medium because that lets you know that is that person coming through.
Afterlife Communication: We can teach people how to have their own afterlife communications. But it’s always good to have that validation from a medium because that lets you know if that really is that person coming through.
Now when they have their own afterlife communication, how do they know for sure that that is their loved one? The medium is providing evidence. How does someone know that that’s indeed their loved one coming through to them?
It happens pretty quickly. You sit down and you close your eyes. You go into this state of mind. You had the dialogue. It happens pretty quickly that you start to get messages that didn’t originate with you. They didn’t come from you. Once you get these, then you start to get in the zone. You start to get the messages spontaneously. When they come to you, then you know that you’re having a dialogue with that person on the other side. There is evidence. Within that self-guided afterlife communication that we train, we’ve had experiences where people have learned things that they didn’t know.
One woman went into her own state of mind. She sat down in her living room. After going through the training program, she had a connection with her father. As she was having the connection, a little girl came in. She saw a little girl and thought she recognized the little girl. She realized that the little girl was a child of a woman whom she knew. The little girl had an apron on it. It was like she was cooking something. She was making something like rollups, which is dough and you roll them up by putting things into them. She was putting jalapeno peppers in the rollup and thought this was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. She can’t imagine where that came from. When she finished, she called her friend. She said, “I had this image of your daughter. She was in this apron.” She described the apron. She said, “Yes, that was apron she used to wear.”
She said to her, “She was doing the craziest thing, though. I couldn’t imagine what was going on. She was making rollups and putting jalapeno peppers in the rollups.” The woman said, “Yes, we used to love putting jalapeno peppers in our rollups.” That was a validation. We had lots of those validations, things that the person could not have known, but they learned them as they were in this state of mind in which they were communicating. That then lets us know that there’s evidence that all of the messages that we’re getting through are true.
Many of the messages that we’re getting during our daily lives when we’re just standing at the sink doing dishes or doing something mindless, like driving down the road. We get this intuitive thought that just comes to us. We don’t know where it comes from. It just comes to us about a person living on the other side or it can come to us about something in our lives. If we start to learn to listen to those, we’ll find out that they come true, that they are validated, and that we are communicating with them. They will come through to us at the times when we’re most relaxed. The times we’re most relaxed are going to be when we’re driving our car, when we’re mowing the lawn, when we’re doing the dishes, or in the shower.
Those are the times when we’re relaxed and our conscious mind is taking a nap and we are open, and then they can communicate with us. They’ll take advantage of those moments and they’ll come through to us and communicate with us. That will be the time when we’ll get the messages that are going to be so meaningful to us. If you go through the training program and learn how to have these afterlife connections, then you’ll have them more often all day long because they will come through more often.
Are you in touch with the fact that people also can tune in and get messages from spirit guides and other people besides deceased loved ones? In my case, when I got the message that my husband had to go, many lessons would be learned from his death. I’m not quite sure who gave me that message.
There isn’t a distinction. It is true. The guides, helpers, and loved ones on the other side are all working together. When you get a message from a loved one on the other side, you’re not just getting a message from the loved one. You’re getting it from all of these people who are anxious to help and they’re all pitching in. They’re all part of the process.
When you get a message, it doesn’t matter who it came from. It’s the message that’s important because of the fact that it’s coming from all of them. Sometimes you’ll get a sound, which sounds like a voice coming into your mind. When you get that sound, then it is them and they are being projected. In other words, the voice is being projected to you. The projection is coming with the help of these other people, as well as your loved one who’s sending them from the other side. It can come from anybody. We don’t need to make the distinction of whether it’s a guide.
It’s interesting because people ask that question. You’re right. I’m talking to you and I’m having déjà vu. When they pulled me out of the car, my husband was gone as I’d been told he would be next to me. A male voice came into my head and said to me, “Be loving and kind to everyone,” as they put me on the side of the road, getting me ready to go into a helicopter. I always wondered about that. That might have been a community experience with a voice that was pumped into my head from a communal thought.
We are never alone. We never die alone. We are never in a circumstance in which we’re having a traumatic event when we’re alone. We’re always being helped. We’re always being given guidance. In this case, they didn’t feel that you needed that message and so they gave it to you. That message then came from your helpers, guides, or other people who could have been other loved ones who are on the other side. Don’t worry about where it comes from. It always comes from these sources. They’re always giving messages to us continually all day long and they’re always benevolent. They always have wonderful messages for us.
This takes away the fear because a lot of people are always afraid. I have never heard anyone get a message that wasn’t loving and filled with good information. This is so great, Craig. Let’s continue with this question. What is the repair and reattachment grief therapy method and how does it reduce a person’s grief?
It’s a therapy method that was originally described by Al Botkin in Libertyville, Illinois. I co-authored a book with him about the method. It’s a method that psychotherapists use in which they do what’s called bilateral stimulation. It’s a psychotherapy method. It’s one of the methods that’s used in EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. What it does is it is a therapy method in which the person, the client, is put into a state of mind in which their mind is moved around into positions that it’s not used to being moved into. Because it’s in those positions, it’s open much more to things that are happening to it and the messages that are coming to it than it was when it was in one stable position, the way that we are in our normal lives.
When the mind goes into this state of mind that the psychotherapist helps the person get into, the person closes their eyes. When they close their eyes, all they have to do is focus on their loved one for whom they’re grieving. Immediately, they will have these connections. The connections are going to be very vivid. They’re going to be encounters in which they have dialogues with their loved one on the other side. They will have physical sensations, like hugging, kissing, and walking ashore with them. When I said immediately, it may take a session maybe to the larger part of a session before they’ll have them.
They don’t have bodies. How are they getting the physical sensations of hugging?
It’s because of the fact that there is only mind and experiences. In other words, everything in the universe and everything that we have experienced is only the universal intelligence mind and our individual minds that are part of the universal intelligence and the experiences that we have. We can have the experience of touching a table, for instance. That isn’t because there’s a table outside of us. That’s because of the fact that in our minds, we’re having the experience of touching the table. The touch that we get is a touch that’s happening in the mind. It isn’t happening in our fingertips. When in the mind, we feel the touch. That means that we can have the same sensation. We can have the same touch when we just close our eyes and have the feeling of a touch.
One of the funny experiences that someone had in two-step-to-death communications, which is what the person in Libertyville does was what the person did was he had closed his eyes. He had gone into the state of mind. He was having an encounter with his brother on the other side and opened his eyes quickly. He said to the psychotherapist, “I had a stunning experience. I felt like there was a big claw around me.” The psychotherapist said, “Let’s go back in and see what it was. Ask your brother what that was.” He went back in and he asked his brother what it was. When he opened his eyes again, he said, “That was my brother hugging.”
There was the feeling of a hug. In fact, we have a video of one of the clients of another psychotherapist that I work with and also co-authored the book with, whose name is Rochelle Wright. She’s out in Washington. She developed a method called Guided Afterlife Connections. Even better, this is the one that’s 98% successful. What she did was that she would take people into an even deeper state of mind, and it could take as many as eight hours. The person has communication for several hours during that period of time.
We have one encounter that she had with a woman named Carol, who had an encounter with her daughter, who had passed away in a car accident. Carol then describes what happened when she went into this experience with Rochelle Wright. She was walking down the sidewalk with her daughter. She was feeling her hair. She was talking about the accident. They went to the accident scene. She then sat down with her, held her hand, and talked with her.
All of these things happen because they happen in the mind, but they understand that all sensations, even touching a table in the physical realm, all sensations are only happening in the mind. They’re not happening at their fingertips. All these things they have. All of the senses are happening in the mind so that we can close our eyes and we can have the same sensory experiences.
That’s why in a dream, things seem so real. In a dream, you can have sensations. You can have the feeling that things are going on. The reason is everything happens in the mind. In this state of mind that the psychotherapist puts people into, the person then has the experience of being with their loved one. They go through these. They’ve walked on the beach. In one case, the woman was at a pool and jumped in the water with her son and they frolicked. You have the same experiences that you would have in your mind if they were happening in the physical realm with all of the realities.
That’s amazing. When the psychotherapist works with a person, is it a form of hypnosis they put them in? Is it a different kind of technique?
It is a different technique. What hypnosis does is to make you more suggestible. The hypnosis slows down the mind. EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing uses a method called bilateral stimulation. What that does is speed up the mind. The mind is going faster, and you’re not suggestible. The person to psychotherapist has nothing to do with it. The psychotherapist is entirely quiet while the person sits with eyes closed and has these experiences.
In the bilateral stimulation, the person is then a part of the experience and is taken into the experience by those on the other side. They’re in charge. They take us through the entire experience. They are the ones who decide when it begins. They decide when it ends. They decide when it happens and where you’re going to go. They also decide who’s going to come in. You can go into one of these sessions in bilateral stimulation and you can say, “I would like to speak with my mom.”
You go into this, the person closes their eyes and goes into the state of mind, in which they’re going to have the connection, and Uncle Joe comes through. Uncle Joe comes through, but it’s because he’s got a message for his wife, who’s still on this plane of life. He comes through, and it was so important for him to come through with his message for his wife, who’s your aunt. Your mother stepped aside and let him come through. We don’t have control. They have control on the other side, but what they bring through to us is marvelous. Nothing harsh.
I would think that people would be very open to bilateral simulation because, in hypnosis, they feel trapped and have a loss of control. This has nothing to do with a loss of control.
No, in fact, what it does is to give you more control. It gives you and the person on the other side control. You go through this entirely on your own. The psychotherapist puts you into the state of mind in which this is going to happen. You close your eyes, and then you’re entirely on your own. There’s no suggestion. There’s no leading. You go into the experience yourself. You have whatever experience they have in mind for you.
That’s fabulous. Do you have many psychotherapists who do this? Can they be connected with everywhere? Do they do this long-distance virtually and all that kind of thing?
They can’t do it in long distance yet, but there is a method that’s being developed. It’s going to be out very soon. They already have been doing it. It’s now being tested to make sure that it’s okay. It’s a method that has been developed in which psychotherapists can do it online over Zoom so that it’s going to be possible for the psychotherapist to meet with somebody on Zoom. They’re going to go into the state of mind. They’re going to have their own experience wherever they are, their living room, or their dining room. That method is being used now. It’s going to be available to people in the very near future. Any psychotherapist who wants to know about this should contact me because I would love to.
I promise you, there are going to be psychotherapists reading this. You will probably get contacted. It’s wonderful. I’m also fascinated. I know that you’re not personally involved in this. People are donating to this TV docu-series called The Afterlife Files, which is going to focus on helping people realize that we survive death with our personalities intact, which is great. It’s going to present the hard science to prove this. I understand that family’s lost loved ones will be personally involved in the production. Could you talk to us about that? That’s fascinating. Does this have a timeline when they’re thinking of coming out with it, or they’re still collecting money to do it? What is that about?
It’s a wonderful effort, and it is going to be exciting. As you say, it’s going to involve people who are having connections with their loved ones. It’s going to bring in people. They’re going to be having connections with their loved ones. It’s going to be exploring what that means and elucidating some of the things about the afterlife and about what happens during the connection.
This is by a man named Tom Mosher, who is in the process right now trying to find funding. We’re endeavoring to find funding for him so that he can go through with this. It will be a TV series. He’ll be doing it with more than one person having this connection and exploring what happens during that time, what the reactions of the person are, and how they’re having the connection. It’s an exciting development. We just have to get the funding for it now.
I may be naive, but I would imagine that there are some successful mediums who would also be interested in becoming a part of this. There have been already some TV series that have been very successful in showing the afterlife and all that. This would be tremendous, especially because he’s also presenting the hard science. All you skeptics out there, go take a listen. Do you have any more of your fascinating stories that you’d like to share and highlight with us about different things that have come through and eye-opening experiences that people have had?
There are many of them of the experiences that people have had that have shown them the fact that the afterlife is such an incredible experience for us. It’s a new experience, but it’s an old experience because of the fact that we’re going back home. We’re going into what we know to be true about ourselves and about the afterlife. There are many experiences in the literature. There are experiences in which you had asked about people coming from the other side and having influenced us on this side.
Afterlife Communication: The afterlife is such an incredible experience for us. It’s a new experience, but it’s an old experience because of the fact that we’re going back home.
There is a story that has been validated about a woman who was in her apartment. She heard a knock on the door. She went to the door and there was a young man standing there. He didn’t look like he was whole. He looked like he was transparent. He was a young man. He was beckoning her to come down. She followed him down the hallway. It was in an apartment house. He took her to a room. She went to the room and knocked on the door and didn’t get a response. She opened the door. The door was open. There was a young woman who was lying on the floor. She was asphyxiating because she had a problem that she was going to die from. She did get the EMS there. They took care of her and she was revived.
When the woman went back to visit the young girl the next day, she went into the room where the girl was and noticed that there was a picture on the wall. She said, “Who is that picture on the wall?” She said, “That’s my husband. He had passed away three months ago.” That sure enough was the young man who had come to her door. That’s a validated experience that somebody has of them being able to interview, come in, and actually materialize.
There’s another method of communicating called physical mediumship. Physical mediumship is one of the most exciting methods because of the fact that you sit in a room, the people from the other side come into the room, and they can materialize in that room and communicate with you. They can talk with you while you’re sitting in the room and they materialize so they can touch you while you’re in the room. Most of these are done in the dark, but they’re validated because of the fact that people who come through speak with their loved ones about things that other people couldn’t have known. The medium, the person who’s the physical medium, is strapped to a chair that’s inside of a cabinet. It couldn’t possibly be doing anything.
That is cool. I would love to be a part of something like that. That is fascinating.
There are only a handful of physical mediums in the world nowadays. We have a circle here in the AREI. It meets here in my home about 10 feet from here. It’s called The Circle of the Masters of Lights. It is a physical mediumship circle. We sit in a circle in the dark and we sing songs to lift up our vibration to unite and harmonize us. There’s a team that works with us on the other side. They then do things in the room. Now, they’re focusing on the table. The table that we’re sitting around, the table starts to rattle back and forth and then moves around the room. We experienced that in this house about 10 feet from where I am.
I was in an experience in which I sat next to a woman in another seance. It was with another physical medium. In this physical medium, he would have people materialized in the room. They would walk up to us, talk to us, and touch us. The woman sitting next to me had our hands held because of the fact that we needed to make sure that we knew where everybody was in the room. It was in the dark. She had her son walk up to her. I was sitting there with her. I heard it.
He spoke to her and told her some intimate things about what had happened with them together in their life. He told her not to worry about him and that he was fine. He put her head in his hands and kissed her on the forehead. That happened right next to me in the seance. I’ve been in other seances and similar things have happened. People have had marvelous encounters with their loved ones on the other side through these seances.
That’s fantastic. People want to connect with a medium to get evidence that the person on the other side because they’re feeling their loved ones talking to them and embracing them.
It’s wonderful. There are many experiences like that nowadays. Now, we know more about the other side and the life after this life than we’ve ever known throughout the history of humankind. We know about it. It’s available to us. We can teach people about it. We can tell people about it. Everybody needs to realize that there’s nothing to fear when we make the transition from this life into the next. That it is a natural transition.
Our loved ones are already there. The others are going to be coming following us. We can communicate with people living on the Earth plane. They can communicate with us at any time they want. There’s nothing to fear about the transition. We know where our loved ones are. There’s no doubt about where they are. They’re happy, they’re healthy, they’re enjoying their lives, and they’re always available to come to us. Regardless of where they are and what they’re doing on the other side, they get our thoughts. If we just ask them to come, they immediately come to us.
There's nothing to fear about the transition. We know where our loved ones are. They're happy, they're healthy, they're enjoying their lives, and they're always available to come to us. Click To Tweet
It doesn’t matter what plane of existence they transition to.
It doesn’t matter.
I know there are different planes depending on your experiences and where your vibration is. It’s not a purgatory or a hell, but your vibration lands you in a different plane. One person may be on a higher plane than another, but they can still come through.
Most of us then will go to what the spiritualists call Summerland. It’s the next plane of life. That’s where most people from the Earth plane go. That plane is a wonderful plane. It’s exactly like the Earth plane, except it has none of the drawbacks. It has many more features than the Earth plane does. This solid body that we have, we have a body there. The body is the body that we had when we were in our prime, which means in our 20s or 30s. We do the same kinds of things we wanted to do here. If you’ve always wanted to be a gardener, you could be a gardener there. If you always wanted to play the piano, you could play the piano there.
All of the things that we think of as being this wonderful heaven-like atmosphere are true. That is what happens when we transition to the next plane of life. Nobody needs to fear that. Even the transition. What happens in the transition, when we transition from this plane to the next, the suffering that happens in the actual transition at the point of transition is not something we feel. In other words, we’re taken out before then.
In Laurel Parnell’s work, she described a person who came through from the other side and had been killed in a plane crash. She described the fact that they experienced the plane going down and the terrible feeling of being in an impending crash. After that, it was gone. That was it. They didn’t have any experience of it. They’re taken out. They don’t feel anything at that point.
I suspect with my husband when I had the accident. His soul probably left before the physical body that I saw before that was gone. The other thing that I often think about is not only does this take away our fear of death, but it changes how we look at life.
People live differently. That happens in near-death experiences. It also then happens in communication. In near-death experiences, there are several things that happen to a person who has a near-death experience. One of them is they lose their fear of death. You would expect that to be true. They live their lives differently. They see people differently. They understand life differently. They don’t take it so seriously. They’re not harsh. They’re much kinder and much more understanding of other people. It does change their life.
The same thing happens in communication experiences. When you communicate with a loved one on the other side, you do change. You realize that this life is not all there is. There is much more to it. You hear the messages and the messages are always full of love and hope, and the fact that they are enjoying their lives on the other side. They miss being here on the same plane with us, but they’re not grieving or sad because of the fact that they know where we’re coming from. They know that we’re going to be there in just no time at all, and they can come back and communicate with us.
Is there a lot of healing that goes on if a person crosses over and they’ve been traumatized and grief-stricken, something horrible has happened, or they would say they went through a horrible childhood, or they had abused or all of it? Are there places that they can go to heal on the other side?
Yes. There’s a great amount of help on the other side. People do stay the same person they were. An hour after you transition, you’re the same person you were an hour before. We have the same person. We have all the same personality. We have the same insights, likes, and dislikes. All of those emotions are the same.
Over a period of time, we grow out of those. If there were traumas, the traumas having to do with the body are gone. If there’s anything that was aligned with the body, then it’s gone. The psychological part, growing out of that, people grow out of that over time because they’re helped. There are people who are dedicated. They’ve dedicated their lives on the other side to helping people to make adjustments and to become all that they can become when they go to the other side.
Perhaps, when they come back, they’re in better shape or they’re coming to learn different lessons than when they crossed over.
When we think of reincarnation, the old way of looking at it was that somehow, and this is from the Eastern religions, as an individual, we would incarnate again in a different body as a different person. We understand that differently now because of the messages that we’re getting very clearly from many sources on the other side. What happens is we have an oversoul or a higher self. The oversoul or the higher self has many individuals in it. There are many people like Craig, Irene, and other people who are part of the oversoul of the higher soul.
When someone goes to the transition out of the Earth plane, they stay the individual they are. The higher soul or the oversoul has another part of it that will incarnate. That part is the one that learns new lessons. You then share the lessons when they come back. We, as individuals, will stay as individuals. We never have to worry about a loved one not being there when we try to contact them or not being there for a reunion with them because they stay as individuals. It’s just another part of the higher self or the oversoul that has an incarnation.
This is a slice of Craig’s oversoul talking to a slice of Irene’s oversoul.
That’s it, exactly.
We then cross over. We join in again with our oversoul. When we’re ready to reincarnate and learn different lessons, another part of us takes off.
Yes. We can have a connection with that other part. In other words, we can have a connection and learn new lessons through that other part. That’s where the experience of when somebody goes into a regression and goes to a past life. What they’re getting is they’re getting what that part of a person was or that person that we are now. We’re getting that past life. There is a past life regression. We can go back and we can find out about that other person. The individual that we are stays an individual. We’ve had people come through from the Roman Empire and ancient Egypt. Confucius has come through. We’ve had people from ages and ages ago who are still individuals and are able to come through to us and communicate nowadays.
They must find it fascinating what they’re seeing going on in the world nowadays. It is quite illuminating for them too. You’ve got two discussion groups. Are they also online? They sound fascinating. One is an afterlife discussion group and the other is a spirituality discussion group. Could you tell them about it? Tell us about it.
We have about a dozen Zoom groups. The AREI is sponsoring these Zoom groups. There’s one global Zoom group that meets every Sunday afternoon. People can get on and they are people from all over the world. We have speakers come in. We have discussions and it’s free. We have Zoom groups for people who are interested in automatic writing, afterlife communication, what it’s like to have a soulmate, what happens to the soulmate, and all kinds of other experiences. All of these Zoom groups are available, and anybody can get on the Zoom groups. If you want to get on the Zoom groups, go to VictorZammit.com/zoom.
The Zoom groups are all listed there. Anybody can get onto any one of these Zoom groups. They’re just wonderful. We get on the global group, which is people from all around the world. It goes on every Sunday afternoon at 5:00 Eastern time, 4:00 Central time. We have speakers. The speakers are just top-notch. They’re wonderful people who have great insights into the afterlife and afterlife communication. I recommended that. We have a couple of local groups here that are meeting in Central Illinois that are meetup groups. We have one that’s devoted to afterlife communication and understanding the afterlife. Another is devoted to spirituality without religion. We have those that are physical groups that have been sitting there.
We have our physical mediumship circle. It meets once a week here in Central Illinois. We have five people in the circle. We are encouraging other people to start their own circles. If you start your own circle, the teams that are working with us on the other side are going to honor that and they’re going to do what they can to help the circle to develop. When you form the physical mediumship circles, then you’ll have things happen in the room, wherever the circle is meeting. You’ll have things moving around the room. For us, now, it’s the table and rocks that move around the room. We get messages from those on the other side.
If it’s advanced, it will be the physical mediums that have the materializations, where people materialize in the room. They come around and talk and touch people. Those are the advanced physical mediums. We don’t have any physical mediums in Illinois. There are physical mediums in New York, Massachusetts England, and Australia. There are only a handful of them. It’s a very unique experience.
That’s wonderful. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about the four books that you’ve taken part in besides what you’ve already told us about afterlife communication?
The books are devoted to the afterlife communication. The book that I’m working on now is devoted to understanding the fact that we are minds and experiences. Because of the fact that we are minds and experiences, everything is open to us. We can communicate easily with the people on the other side, anybody whom we want to. We can also have experiences like out-of-body experiences and astral travel. We can have experiences in which we go into trans. We meet with people who are struggling because they don’t understand where they are. They’re on the Earth plane and they don’t understand where they are.
Are those ghost people who are stuck in their experience and need help to get to the other side?
Yes, that’s true. Some people who will transition out of their bodies don’t realize that they have passed away. They think that they’re dreaming and they’re going to wake up. Some of them who realize that they’ve passed away don’t want to leave the Earth plane because they’re afraid of going to hell. They’ve got all this nonsense about hell and purgatory in their minds, so they’re afraid. They stay on the Earth plane because of that. These people need to be helped to realize that there is no such thing as hell. There is no such thing as a punishment on the next plane of life and they can go on. It’s okay. We go into speaking with them, spending time with them, and teaching them that they can go on and they don’t have to worry about the rest of their life. They’ve got wonderful things.
There is no such thing as hell. There is no such thing as a punishment on the next plane of life.
You’re going to go to a lower plane but you can work your way up.
They can work their way up.
I sense another interview coming on when you’re about to publish this new book. People will be very interested in hearing about it. Would you like to tell people from your heart what you feel is important about healing while you’re here in this experience in this lifetime?
It’s important that people realize the fact that we are eternal beings. We’re having a physical experience. This is just a temporary time, like going to school. While we’re in school here, we’re going to be going through studies. Sometimes we’re going to get good grades and bad grades, but the grades don’t mean anything. They’re ways of letting us know how we’re doing in this period in Earth school. We are always in communication with our loved ones. They’re always available for us to communicate with them. We are going to have a glorious, wonderful reunion when we then transition and go on to the next stage of life.
The Earth plane is a spiritual plane. We’re on a spiritual plane. The next plane of life is just another spiritual plane. The transition is like going from adolescence into young adulthood. You don’t have to worry about it. It is not something to be feared. Our loved ones are fine. They’re waiting for us and that it’s a wonderful message. People have to realize that it’s true.
Let us say someone’s been traumatized in this lifetime. They do work with a therapist and they do healing and all. Does that change the experience when they transition over?
The more you understand about the afterlife and your nature as an eternal being, the easier the transition is. What happens is they don’t have to spend so much time teaching you on the other side because you’re ready. When you realize who you are and that you are an eternal being, you’re ready to go on to the next stage of life and you hit the ground running. People who don’t understand that, who think that there’s nothing to life but this physical realm, people who are afraid of hell are afraid or angry of the passing period of time. They have a difficult time. When I say difficult time, it takes a period of readjustment for them. They had to be taught because they have to go through what we should have gone through on this side of life.
That’s the healing part that happens on the other side. You can take a shortcut by doing your work now. Do the work now or do it later, but it’s good to do it now. What are the very best ways for our readers to connect with you, Craig? There is the Afterlife Research and Education Institute and the Center for Spiritual Understanding Through Afterlife Connections.
Both of those avenues. There are two websites. One is AfterlifeInstitute.org. That’s the Afterlife Research and Education Institute. The other is SpiritualUnderstanding.org. That’s the Center for Spiritual Understanding. Either one of those, you can get in touch with me and I’d invite you to do that. I would very much like to talk to you.
Is there a way they can google Craig Hogan and will they come up?
If you Google R. Craig Hogan, you’ll come up with several pages of links. Otherwise, there’s an astronomer in Chicago and you’ll get him. His name is Craig Hogan.
That’s great. I know you’ve got a good tip for finding joy in life. What would you say that is?
All you have to do to find joy in life is to realize that you are an eternal being and that there are people on the other side who are dedicated to making your life just as pleasant and as happy as they can make it. All you have to do is learn how to listen to them, understand the fact that they are there, and have confidence that your life is going to be a wonderful life. You had to allow it to be so.
You are an eternal being. There are people on the other side who are dedicated to making your life just as pleasant and as happy as they can make it. Click To Tweet
Craig, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for this profound and fascinating interview. It’s your belief that humankind will live together in love, peace, and joy when communication with loved ones in the afterlife becomes commonplace. Maybe we all experience this. I could not agree more. Make sure to follow us and like us on social at @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Thanks again for joining us. As I like to say, to be continued. Bye for now.
Guest’s Links:
- Dr. Craig Hogan’s Website
- Afterlife Communication referenced in this episode
- Rob Schwartz’s Your Soul’s Plan referenced in this episode
- Rochelle Wright’s Guided Afterlife Connections referenced in this episode
- Afterlife Zoom Meetings
Host’s Links:
- Irene Weinberg’s They Serve Bagels in Heaven referenced in this episode
- @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram
- Irene Weinberg on Facebook
- Irene Weinberg on Twitter
