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Jacob Cooper speaks in lectures on wisdom and consciousness, offering meditation and mindfulness seminars to help others find purpose overcoming fears of life after death. As a clinical social worker, Reiki Master, certified hypnotherapists specializing in past life regression, Jacob's uses his extensive personal and professional experience to empower one soul at a time. A couple of his books include Life After Breath and The Wisdom of Jacob's Ladder. Jacob, welcome back. Have you been?
Hey George, I've been terrific. How have you been? It's great to connect with you again.
You too. A whole year went by pretty darn fast.
And then time is just a funny thing, you know, It really just flies by. It really does.
For the benefit of those who did not hear you a year ago with us, tell us about this near the experience you had. What happened?
I had a condition called pertessis otherwise known as whipping coughs, and at just the young age of three years old, I went to a playground and as a result of whipping cough I suffocated and all parts of my body and my brain just were deprived of oxygen and they just shut down and stopped working. And once my body and brain began to shut down and my entire physical breath was taken, there was this whole other breath that I was able to receive, which I now know is
called the breath of eternity, the breath of creation. And I just surrendered to this and at a full blown crossing over experience or neous experience that included the awareness of angels, spirit guides, past lives, the lives that I would be doing, awareness of all that there is was will be in the source of creative life itself, which many depict does God or the universe, whatever your terminology for it is. But it was a profound near death
experience and foblone crossing over experience. And with many near death experiencers, I would probably say the majority are told, you know, it's not your time, you have more maybe work to do. This near death experience, there was freedom as to what I would do, you know, staying on the other side or continuing my life, and I just simply asked, you know, who am I, Why am I here?
What am I meant to do in this life, and all of a sudden I was showing pictures of myself and images of what I would be doing in this life and helping others out and sharing this message, and that to me was the tipping point of why I'm here today is to share this message that you know, we do go on, we are eternal, we are infinite, and life does not stop at death, but it begins anew. And so I am here. But I love sharing my story.
I speak throughout the world, and you know, it's it's a profound experience that I've been able to really find meaning and beauty behind it, although for a while it's certainly felt like more of a burden than a blessing.
Really, And at that young age, how did you remember all this, Jacob?
There's a plus, There's a plusor of avenues that I really pinpoint as to that's the why I remember this. But the first thing is certainly trauma. You know, I work in the mental health field now, and I could say how strong an imprint trauma can have. I mean, for instance, you know there's the clients that I and colleagues have worked with where you know, we've asked you know, even young kids to draw pictures of a traumatic event
and that's very specific what happened to them. And you know, this has happened to me in other colleagues where we've lost the picture and we just kind of got upset, like, oh my god, I can't find this picture. And then the client at a young age and would be able to depict exactly what happened to them when we've been able to find that picture. And the point I'm trying to make is trauma has an undeniable imprint on the
brain and there's a memory. There's also a disassociative component, which is protective mechanism that people have where they push away that trauma. But even many your death experiencers who might forget their near death experience, we'll see people like myself as a hypno therapist and be able to ask
full recollection. So I think trauma was a gift behind the ability to rememb combined with the fact that this was something that went far beyond my brain my body, and this is a memory really stored within deeper than my subconscious mind. So there's a lot of avenues to point to it, but certainly something that's never left with me since that day in September of nineteen ninety three.
It is truly remarkable that you kept this all these years, this knowledge.
Yeah, yeah, it's well. It was certainly what led to a very complex childhood. I remember very little about my childhood, but coming back to my preschool, I just remembered this liver of light that was going through my brain, which new death experienced researchers have really had congruencies what I experience to point that the brain is not the producer
of life, but rather just the filter of it. And when my brain, you know, shut down, that's when the proverbial saying that says, you know, when my brain snapped in half, that's when God came in. And you know, that literally happened to me. But my brain was very much changed. And this is a TBI that I experienced. But I just experienced the liver of light, and from this liver of light, I had premonitions, hiding intuitions, I
had interdimensional communication. But the hard part was and the isolating part was I learned very quickly that this was foreign to people around me, and so I kept it quite close to me, which is very common as a lot of near death experiencers where they'll have something so sacred or they'll know that it's something that others won't understand around themselves, so they'll keep it to themselves, rather than having others put down their experience, judge or experience
to when they shut down their own experience themselves. So I kept it very very much close to myself for nearly two decades. It was when the first time I really started to become public with the near death experience.
Would you say, Jacob, that this near death experience was the catalyst for where you are today?
It not, as not only is just the catalyst, but it is my everything. You know, when I think of my new death experience, I think of just this ultimate gift that I have, and it was a gift that really showed me who we are while we're here. But more importantly, I was able to be given a second chance of life in this body. And so for myself and my work, you know, I see people who feel like they don't want to live anymore, or metaphorically they
feel dead inside. And so my work in the mental health field and hypnosis as a healer, it's to try to get people to really tap into their own life force when they're feeling disconnected, and to give that back to other people and to empower others. And so given a gift, you could hold on to it. You know, there's givers and takers. But to me, I believe in giving back what a big, beautiful gift of life that I was given, and to allow people to remember that it is a gift to be here in this body
and this life. Altho were on the surface, it could certainly feel quite the opposite during many on different points of their own journey.
What do you remember, Jacob, in addition to what you've just said about this near death experience, were there angels involved, spirit guides, helpers, relatives who had passed on.
That you might know, Yes, yes, and yes absolutely. I you know, we live with a box of reality that we see as such. And you know when I had my near death experience, what really most step to me while I was experiencing it was just how much we forget is around us at all times on this journey.
And when I was able to see my two spirit guides with me during my new Gud's experiences, I call them the Guides, it was a profound reunion and I just remembered, My God, I couldn't believe that I forgot all the beauty that was accompanying me and all of us,
all of our viewers here on this journey. And so I know I'll say this throughout the course of our conversation, probably, but one major takeaway that, if anything else I'd like viewers to remember, is there is so much around us at all times that maybe we may not be aware of the physical eye at all times, but there is
so much around us. But the spirit guides to me are there with us before we get here, go there with us through every part of our lifetime, and they are just the innermost part of ourselves as we know it. They know everything about ourselves at our deepest core. But when I saw the guides, the analogy often has is, you know, imagine you had the most beautiful, you know, Hollywood celebrity crush, and you just think that that person is thousands of miles away, living in some ivory tower
far away from you that you can never access. Now, imagine that by an infinite amount, but imagine that feeling is drawn towards you. So in other words, the admiration, the respect, the love, the infactuation, that you have with that being, that person that is directed towards you. And that's how our guides view us. They see us in such a level of love and beauty that we cannot
ever really truly comprehend. And so the guides see us in such a different way than many times the judgments and the small versions that we hold of ours else. But the angels were floating literally right in front of me when my body was on the ground, lifeless and irresponsive to people who went to me to the playground on that day, and I just saw very young, youthful angels that were floating right in front of me. I
could hear their sounds, I could see colors. But this goes beyond anything comparative to this reality, you know, George, Your death experiencers often point to the fact that we have nothing to compare the other side to, just in
terms of a perspective of color. For instance, the colors that we have in our realm are really colors that are originated from the spectrum of the sun, and when you're on the other side, you're in a different realm, and so the colors over there aren't don't have a limit of bandwidth from the colors of the sun, they go further deeper, and so the colors, you know, you can't described in this reality because they have such a depth and beauty that go beyond anything of this reality.
But yes, angels are around us at all times, sending healing, sending love, and that's what I experienced. And they had no different than the spirit guides. The angels had no distinct characteristics. They were very uniformal. They were just there to send healing, to send love, to send protection. And they're around us at all times, as well as my own, as you mentioned, soul family on the other side, which are members that we are connected to within this life
and beyond. And it's almost kind of like a theater of life where we have different roles and different acts to play, but we're connected to a similar cru set throughout different incarnations. And that's a fascinating subject in itself, but gues to all those questions.
These angels there to comfort you, Jacob. I mean, you were just a little guy when you went down. I would assume you were scared for a while.
Yeah, you know, Georgia, it was the most What I would say is I've never seen a bigger pendulum of swing of emotions from you know, and I don't know if you've experienced this there any viewers have experienced how scary it is to lose your breath, you know, and unless you're on a ventilator, I mean, the breath keeps us going, and it's.
Got to be a horrible feeling.
It was beyond traumatizing. I mean, the analogy that I often have is imagine you're drowning and there's nothing to hold on to, and you just keep on thinking deeper and deeper, and there's nothing you can do. And so you know, what did I do? Instead of I was struggling against this, I was resisting against this, but as we know, with all walks of life, what we resist persist, and so what I did was I just completely surrendered
to what was happening. I recognized I had no control, and once I surrendered, I really was able to tap into this ultimate power that we're all connected to, this infinite breath, this breath that goes beyond our own human breath. And I've learned since you know, my own religion, Judaism, the word for spirit is translates to ruach, which means the wind or the breath of God and that is
our creative force. And so for viewers who are might be struggling and certainly alcoholics anonymous you know, you know is congruence with this, But there is a great power of simply surrendering to the power that we all have inside of us and to stop the struggle recognize its surrendering is not a form of giving up, but a form of giving in to the deep inner power and divine spark that we all have. But yes, the angels are simply there to comfort not only me, but we.
And this is certainly time that I hope to get into, which is the me consciousness versus the we consciousness, and different experiences in my life that have given me first and evidential awareness that we are all not just the me, but we are much connected to a much greater reality that involves the we.
Jake up in your near death experience, do you witness others who have had near death experiences? Are they there next to you?
That's a great question. I've heard other near death experiencers that have mentioned this. Uh to answer question, I didn't experience. I didn't have any other experiences that I that I was aware of at the moment certainly, you know, other near death experiences have had a pivotal impact in my life and has given me the strength and courage to become public with my message. Otherwise I've been quite ostracized. But no, I didn't. But what I did have was
premonitions about my near death experience. And I just remember when I did have my near death experience, it just felt like deja vous, as if I've seen this before, and there was nothing I can do to stop what was to come. And so I write in my book that I had, you know, clear recollections of dreams the nights before of my ende of what was to come. But in terms of seeing the other near death experiencers
when I had my ENDE, that didn't happen. Have you heard of such a phenomenon, George before, because I believe I have where people have had ner death experiences and they've seen others ye have had theirs, which is just phenomena. That is phenomenon. I don't know if you know of anyone specific, but that that's sploish my mind.
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