That's probably the biggest difference. It is much more than what you experience in your current physical reality, but most people, when they're alive, still have some awareness of their spiritual connection to something much more infinite. The difference is, by its very nature, your life on earth is more preoccupied with matters of caring for your physical and psychological needs and spiritual matters are secondary. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just where you happen to be right now.

When most people first pass over, the reality they experience is initially very similar to being alive. As they gradually gain an awareness of where they are and what's happening to them, they become more free to explore those other realities. That has been my experience so far, and that's the way it works for most folks as I understand it.

People's lives do occur in a chronological sequence, however. Those of us in the spirit world are aware of the passing of time on earth, but days on the calender and hours on a clock are less relevant than the progress and passing of peoples lives. Their bodies grow older, they have children, they make mistakes, they learn, and so forth. The ability to "see into the future" is not so much a technique of looking ahead into time as it is an ability to know about the chronological pathways of people's lives.

As one grows spiritually in the afterlife, one gains a greater understanding of the bigger picture and sees many things differently than one does on earth. To that extent, a being in the spirit world has certain advantages that he or she did not have on earth, and some of those advantages have to do with just knowing certain things. It's a different, broader perspective that we can only occasionally glimpse on the earth plane.

Let me give you an example: As a parent, or any adult, who observes a child growing up, you may become aware of certain tendencies in that child's behavior that foreshadow what kind of adult that person will grow up to be. As an adult yourself, having been a child at one time, you can predict certain things about the outcome of that person's life as you watch them age. The longer you know them, the more accurately you can do this. The child, however, doesn't have the same advantage of your adult viewpoint. You might have known that the child would get into a car accident within 6 months of getting his driver's license, but the child didn't know it until it happened. That's a simplistic example, but perhaps you can extrapolate my meaning.