“The Existence of Multiple Afterlife Realities”

From: The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife - Gregory Shushan

“The existence of multiple ‘afterlife realities.’” As Kellehear similarly wrote, “I do not believe that diversity of NDEs of itself makes the arguments for survival, for whoever wants to make them, less convincing. Perhaps there really are several ‘otherworlds’; there are several ‘worlds’ here, so why not there?”

William Price (1953) postulated that it would be an “intersubjective” shared afterlife: an experience actually created by the deceased individual in conjunction with the minds of other human spirits. Like-minded individuals – with, for example, similar memories, ideas, values, or culture – would collectively create their surroundings, with each soul contributing to the group-afterlife while also bringing personal, idiosyncratic features into being. Rather than a single universal afterlife, Price’s model suggests a plurality of afterlives: numerous different communal worlds formed by the collective consciousness of each like-minded group member. The way these worlds manifest would be determined by the “memories and desires” of the co-creators, meaning that a person’s cultural background and individual psychology would be given form within the experience. This means that while the afterlife exists beyond any single group member, each person can have a different experience.

If the barriers between the conscious and unconscious minds dissolve after death, repressed fears, wish-fulfilment, and self-perception would all play a role in the formation of these other-worlds. This could lead to experiences characterized by states of mind both positive (love, harmony, unity, wish-fulfillment) and negative (guilt, fear, anger, resentment). Such a scenario corresponds to the NDE theme of evaluation of one’s earthly life (as in the life review), as well as to reports of distressing NDEs. Both also have parallels in afterlife beliefs across cultures, in the form of judgments, heavens, and hells.

Counter-point

Price’s model, however, actually makes less philosophical sense when applied to much of the mediumistic descriptions of the otherworld than when applied to cross-cultural afterlife beliefs, NDEs, and intermission memories in spontaneous reincarnation cases. For example, if like-minded souls are drawn together to form groups, there should be different afterlives based upon belief or culture, including Hindu groups, Muslim groups, and so on.