Accounts of Shared Afterlife Communication Experiences

The first time Dr. Botkin became aware that two people can share the same afterlife communication experience, he was inducing an afterlife communication while a psychotherapist he was training observed.  The patient wanted to resolve his grief by having an afterlife communication with his deceased uncle. While Dr. Botkin induced the afterlife communication with the patient, the observing psychotherapist closed his eyes and performed the EMDR eye movements on himself to relax.  Images appeared to the psychotherapist in training: a vivid scene of a swampy area with cattails, a pond, and a willow tree.  He felt as though he was lying on the grass with the pond at eye level.  It made no sense to him so he simply opened his eyes and continued to observe Dr. Botkin and the patient.

He was to learn that he shared the patient’s afterlife communication experience. This is the narrated account of what happened from our book.

When the patient opened his eyes after the induced after-death communication, he said he saw a swamp scene.  He felt like he was lying in the grass looking at the swamp.  The psychotherapist in training was surprised at this coincidence and asked, “Did you see cattails?”  The patient said, “Yes,” not expecting that to be an unusual statement since he had said it was a swamp.  The psychotherapist then said, “Did you see a pond and a willow tree?”  The patient was clearly surprised.  “Yes,” he said.  “How did you know that?”

The psychotherapist explained what he had done and the two continued to compare notes with great accuracy between their reports of what they had experienced.

Dr. Botkin asked the patient, “Why did you see a swamp?”  The patient answered, “The swamp was in the backyard of my uncle’s farm.  I used to play there and would lie in the grass by the pond.”

The patient, psychotherapist, and Dr. Botkin sat with wide eyes.  They were speechless for some time, simply looking at each other.

In the next session with this patient and the same psychotherapist observer, the patient said he was eager to learn more about this occurrence and agreed to do it again, so Dr. Botkin induced an after-death communication with the patient while the psychotherapist used the eye movements to enter a state in which an afterlife communication might occur.  The two sat quietly for a while.  Finally, they opened their eyes, and before the patient explained his induced after-death communication, the psychotherapist reported that he had witnessed a conversation between the patient and his uncle.  He provided specific details about it while the patient and Dr. Botkin listened.  Afterward, the patient said all the details matched the conversation he had experienced in his induced after-death communication.

Dr. Botkin and the observer psychotherapist experimented with eight other patients who agreed to participate.  For these experiments, the psychotherapist wrote down everything he experienced before the patients reported what happened during their induced after-death communications.  In every instance, the psychotherapist’s accounts matched the patients’ induced after-death communications with great accuracy.

Dr. Botkin explained this finding to another psychotherapist he had trained in induced after-death communication therapy.  She reported the next day that, during a session, she had given herself eye movements while her patient experienced an induced after-death communication. She had a shared induced after-death communication experience.  This is what she reported narrated from our book.

After you described to me what had happened with the shared induced after-death communication, I was curious about whether any person present during the patient’s induced after-death communication experience might share the induced after-death communication, including the psychotherapist.  So I decided to give it a try.  I was working with a patient who had both traumatic images and grief from a war experience.  He was hoping to have an after-death communication with one of the soldiers he had seen die during a fierce battle.

I administered a set of eye movements and he closed his eyes.  At the same time, I closed my eyes and moved them.  What I experienced was incredible.  I wasn’t trying to experience anything, but very vivid scenes of a soldier in a peaceful, green valley started coming to me.  I could sense that he was communicating and saying, ‘It’s all right.  It wasn’t your fault.'”

I opened my eyes after a short time to be sure I was watching my patient when he opened his.  Soon after he opened his eyes, he told me ‘I saw him.  It was really him. He said not to keep feeling bad.  It wasn’t my fault.’  Well, I was pretty stunned, but I stayed with it.

‘Describe what you saw,’ I said, really curious to see what he would describe.  ‘What was the scenery like?’

He said to me, and these were his words: ‘It was a beautiful lush, green place with slight rises on either side like a valley.’  I kept my composure and we finished the session.  I wasn’t willing to tell him what had just happened, and now that I know what can happen, I won’t do it again without talking to the patient about it first.  But someone really has to study this.”

Another psychotherapist Dr. Botkin trained in using the induced after-death communication procedure heard about the shared experiences and decided to try it himself.  This is his account of what happened.

I was counseling a forty-year-old mother of two who had lost her husband about a year before our session. I used EMDR to relax her into a receptive state.  The induced after-death communication unfolded.

During the quiet time when she was experiencing her induced after-death communication with her eyes closed, I closed my eyes for a few seconds and did eye movements myself.  I experienced a clear image of a man in a bright white shirt, young and healthy, holding his hand over his heart.

After she opened her eyes, she explained to me, full of joy, that she had experienced a visual image of her husband and the ‘essence’ of what he was feeling.  I asked her what he looked like.  She replied, ‘He had on a very bright white shirt, and he looked younger and completely healthy.  He was holding his hand over his heart.

Six months later, the psychotherapist reported to Dr. Botkin that the patient had called him to thank him and said her family and friends had noticed a glow about her since the therapy session. The psychotherapist sent a message to Dr. Botkin explaining what he thought helped cause the shared induced after-death communications. He wrote,

I firmly believe that the energy of an induced after-death communication is linked in the power of love.  The stronger the empathy of the therapist, the greater the likelihood of tapping into an induced after-death communication.