Bernard Jakoby is recognized as an expert in death research in the German-speaking regions. In a dialogue with The Epoch Times, he shared his findings about life after death, near-death experiences, and after-death contacts.
I met with Bernard Jakoby at the Kulturhaus Schwartzsche Villa Café in Berlin. The café is a community project and has a serene atmosphere with a view of the park and its beautiful old trees—just the right place for our contemplative topic.
Jakoby recalled how it all began. The topic has always fascinated him. He was a senior in high school when Life After Death by Dr. Raymond Moody, the now classic text on death research, came out. At about the same time in the early 1980s, three one-hour segments on the same topic, hosted by Dr. Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross, aired in Germany. This confirmed Jakoby’s hunch that life after death and the continued existence of the spirit or mind, independent of the physical body, are real.
A few years later, in 1986, Jakoby’s mother became ill with incurable cancer. His father was also diagnosed with cancer in 1988. Jakoby described the ensuing four years prior to his parents’ deaths (they died within a short time of each other) as a growth experience. It was an especially intense time, particularly the last two years, which included emergency surgeries and chemotherapy treatments.
The night before his mother’s death, when death seemed imminent, Jakoby’s brother called him. Jakoby got in his car and drove back to the hospital. As he was waiting at a traffic light, tears suddenly filled his eyes, and he was overcome by a wave of relief, joy, and happiness.
When he arrived at the hospital seven minutes later, he learned that his mother had passed away at the exact moment when he had felt the intense emotions at the traffic light. This event became a key experience for him. He wanted to know more, to know exactly what happens when a person dies.
A time of mourning followed. In 1994, Jakoby moved to Berlin to collect empirical research data. He began to seek out people who had near-death experiences, and those who claimed to have after-death contacts. He placed ads in two of the local listings publications and initiated discussion groups for interested people and those who had such experiences.
“Berlin is a good place for this kind of research, if you are open-minded about such things,” Jakoby said.
Slowly, Jakoby established himself in Berlin by working as a death coach and connecting with the esoteric community. He met many people who, like himself, had experienced things and were looking for answers, but were stymied by the scientific community’s preconceived notions and their reluctance to investigate these events further.
Jakoby’s reputation grew due to the earnestness of his research. He began giving seminars entitled “What happens when we die?” He brought together people who had gone through experiences with dying relatives, or who were interested in certain phenomena related to this topic, and facilitated discussions.
People were given an opportunity to talk about the things they had been keeping to themselves. Discussions touched on a variety of topics, including dealing with the dying process, with the after-death experiences, or even with suicide and sudden death.
“I wanted, first of all, for people to open up and share why they were attending. That would then usually fit very amazingly and harmoniously into the general context,” Jakoby said.
It was of prime importance to him to provide people with an opportunity to talk about the things they had experienced, and what troubled their minds. According to Jakoby, that’s why they came in the first place—to find an open forum for these topics that society as a whole still treats as a taboo.
People’s need to exchange their understanding and experiences about the afterlife was overwhelming. One front-page article in the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper in September 1997 generated over 300 phone calls.
Jakoby also met with and interviewed Dr. Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross on several occasions. These interviews were featured in various professional journals. Even though Kuebler-Ross had suffered three strokes since 1995, she enthusiastically contributed the preface to Jakoby’s first book You Too Live Forever—Results of Contemporary Death Research (Auch Du Lebst Ewig), which was published in 2000 and soon became a bestseller.
One of Jakoby’s goals is to disseminate the already-existing knowledge of the dying process, death, and the continued existence of consciousness.
“As long as these ideas are not yet part of mass consciousness, I shall continue to write similar books, even though critics may accuse me of being repetitive. It can only be repetitive. One cannot change the underlying processes. It is a universal truth—nothing can be added in, or left out,” he said.
The root of religious interest
Jakoby noted that the knowledge of the dying process, death, and transition into the other world hasn’t been around for just thirty years. It has been a part of human culture throughout the ages and is the cause and reason of all shamanistic and religious interests and activities. The shaman crosses the line of death in meditation to obtain information from the other world.
The crossing-over is documented in the Taoist scriptures, as well as in the Egyptian and Tibetan books about the dead. In the Gilgamesh epic, the crossing-over into the other world by a friend of the hero is described in the same manner as reported by Moody in Life After Death—after passing through a long, dark tunnel, the deceased walks into a brilliant light and beholds wondrous, paradise-like landscapes.
Present-day reports of out-of-body experiences are also cited in the Bible—for instance, in the epistles of the apostle Paul. Jakoby concedes that these reports are certainly culturally and historically specific and are tailored to the prevailing religious beliefs. However, by removing these cultural garbs, we discover the same process and events that we are already familiar with.
According to Jakoby, the problem in our present-day society is our unwillingness to be open to these things. Once man accepts the observable processes and pays attention to the many existing reports, then consequently, he would also acknowledge the existence of life after death, the existence of a loving deity, and his responsibility for everything, including himself.
“That’s exactly what the dying process actually reflects—we will be confronted with all of the unresolved issues in our lives, and that is something people would rather not hear,” Jakoby said.
“At the moment of death, people are like an open book. The time to waffle has passed, as has the time to blame others for our shortcomings. We are completely left to ourselves, and that is also the reason why some people die easily, and others with difficulty. The more unresolved issues pile up, the harder the process of dying. Presently, one of the biggest taboos is for people in their eighties to deal with unresolved issues from World War II that surface at the time of their deaths,” he continued.
Contacts from beyond
Jakoby considers it a grave issue that despite the existing, well-documented knowledge about the death process, so many people don’t translate it into their daily lives. For example, he believes that the preparation for death should not begin when a husband is already hospitalized, but much sooner. However, most of his seminar attendees come only after having witnessed death, or once they are overwhelmed by an event and can no longer deal with it.
In particular, Jakoby finds the huge number of reported after-death contacts between the departed and the living family members as an alarming sign of our times, as most of these contacts have to do with unresolved issues.
“As long as we harbor ill thoughts toward a deceased, or have negative thoughts about anyone, we are not free. That’s why forgiveness is so important, and that’s why so many dying people long for reconciliation during their last days.
“People can suddenly put the death process on hold when, for example, they are awaiting the anticipated arrival of a son from America, even if it takes three weeks. It is that important to have this conversation, and therefore, the death process is halted. This shows us the importance of forgiveness. Because life vignettes rise to the surface of one’s consciousness, people are suddenly able to see the greater connections. This is truly a spiritual event, and the rigidity and hardened mentality fall away,” he said.
According to Jakoby, this experience is accompanied by a perception of a rapid transformation of things, such as an extremely fast succession of events, or an increase in spiritual/mental experiences. One may say, “I feel as if things are now happening in a week that in the past would have taken two or more years to occur.”
In his present work Principles of the Beyond (Gesetze des Jenseits), Jakoby primarily addresses such themes, which are related to man’s inner processes rather than the death event itself.
“Those are precisely the processes when people once more comprehend that they have a soul, not that they are a soul, and it is meaningful to once again seek contact with our soul from which we receive our impulses. The knowledge I disseminate is actually inherent in everyone. All of us have this inner voice, but for many, it needs re-discovering. They can really sense it when the need for it is there. That’s the focus of my present work— spiritual themes,” Jakoby said.
“We will never be able to prove with complete certainty the existence of the beyond by using scientific methods. Life and death will remain a mystery at a certain juncture. But when one studies the fundamental processes of the death event, when one has experienced it oneself, then one simply knows that this is not merely a physical thing, but that it also has a mind/spirit aspect that is far more important.
“The non-material dimension is real, and that’s basically what people have been aware of throughout the ages. I think this kind of knowledge must be taught in schools. We must include such studies in universities and hospices. If man denies the spirit or the soul, when man does not comprehend that he is a spiritual being, then nothing makes sense.
“What is it that animates us? It’s the god-spark in us. It’s love, in the form of compassion, and spirit. And the spirit is greater than the intellect. But we have completely covered our spirit up with the intellect, to the point where we can no longer perceive the spirit and, like zombies, clamor only after the outer-worldly things. This specific bond of compassion and spirit, the inner voice, is something that all of us yearn for, but are generally unable to find here,” he continued.
Read the original German article
