#39 How A Near-Death Experience Changed My Life: Love And Energy Go On Forever with Robert Jackman
August 27th 2021
Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer To Venus I’m Johnny Burke. Today’s guest is Robert Jackman. He is a psychotherapist, Reiki Master ,hypnotherapist,past life regressionist, and author of Healing Your Lost Inner Child. Today we’re going to talk about his near-death experience and how his own past life regressions have influenced his life. Robert, welcome to the program.
Robert Jackman: Thank you very much, Johnny. I’m glad to be with you.
Johnny Burke: Excellent. what was it specifically that attracted you to past life regression?
Robert Jackman: Well, I think it was really to help me understand what I experienced in my early twenties. I didn’t know what had happened when I had my near-death experience. So I wanted to kind of understand that, but also, to get into just expanding my awareness of. Of all of these things that I had heard about, but never really understood. So growing up, Catholic, you know, very traditionally, there was no mention of reincarnation or anything about past lives. And so in my twenties, when I really began my metaphysical journey, that’s when I got into this work.
Johnny Burke: You had the near-death experience at an earlier age?
Robert Jackman: Yeah, I was probably about 24 at the time. would you like me to tell you a little bit more about that?
Johnny Burke: Of course. Yes.
Robert Jackman: I was on vacation with a friend of mine. We were in Florida, and we were having a great time meeting other people around a pool area, and i, dove into the pool, misjudging the bottom of the pool. And, probably for your listeners, it’s just painful, even listening to the next part. I hit my head, on the concrete bottom of the pool. And I remember hearing this sort of loud and hollow thud that happened, but right after that happened, I found myself floating up in the middle of the darkness of space, looking back on the earth. so I saw the earth spinning and I saw planets and stars, I really didn’t know of course what had happened. And I kept on looking down to see my body because I still felt like myself. And I kept on looking to see my body, but of course my body wasn’t there, but all of my thoughts and feelings, emotions, memories, everything was intact. I was still me, but I wasn’t in physical form. so I was looking around trying to get a sense of things and, and I was picking up this interior knowledge of me being on a grid on this undulating grid, sort of a multilevel multidimensional matrix. And, but I had my specific point on the grid and I was connected to everything at once,and still myself and I felt an incredible level of peacefulness and calmness, which you’ve probably heard other near-death experience people describe.
It’s so hard to describe because there’s nothing on earth like it. it is just, such a deep, resonant calmness, internally. so as I’m sort of floating there in space, looking down and trying to find my body, that’s not there. I hear this voice, which, in my Catholic upbringing, I was assuming it was God, but I hear this voice say, “you can stay with me or you can go back” and I knew immediately what I was being offered, but at the same time, I was perplexed by the entire situation. And so, I said,” what?” which for me is always sort of funny. I’m asking God, what? And so I hear “I’m giving you the option. You can stay with me, or you can go back. This is the option that you have.” And so immediately I’m thinking of my mom and my dad and my sister and everyone I know, and my life, as I know it. And I’m like, well, I want to go back. And Johnny, in an instant, I can’t even describe how quickly I’m back in my body. I’m gasping for air. They’re pulling me out of the pool. They’re dragging me onto the apron of the pool and trying to get water out of my lungs and all of that. And I’m coughing and I’m sort of getting back into my body and, I’m sort of really dazed and everybody’s like, are you okay? Are you okay? I’m not bleeding or anything. My head’s not cracked open. and so I get up and I’m like, a 20-year-old, you think you’re fine. And you’re like, whatever, I’m good. And so we just go back to the room, and I laid down and an hour later, we’d go out to eat dinner. and so.
Johnny Burke: And everything’s back to normal.
Robert Jackman: And everything’s back to normal. I did not talk about that experience for like 10 years, one of the reasons was, I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what happened. And it wasn’t until I saw Oprah Winfrey had a near -death experience program and I saw that and like,” Oh, well, that’s what it was.” And that’s when I started to really kind of connect to it and understand it better.
Johnny Burke: That sounds pretty consistent from what I’ve heard. The conditions and the, the characteristics are very, very similar. and I’ve heard a lot of people say, I really didn’t want to go back. But I felt I had to family and obligations and so on. And I was just about to say the average lag time between the incident itself and the report, when that person comes forth and says, I had a near -death experience is actually 10 years. The International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS) compiled the data on hundreds of thousands of cases. And on average people wait about 10 years because they, they don’t know what it is. They’re afraid. People might think that they’re crazy and so on.
Robert Jackman: It was just so bizarre. It was so out there I had no frame of reference for it. And of course I never heard anyone else talking about such a thing.
Johnny Burke: It seems like there’s, definitely a connection between the near-death experiences and the past life regression. this is your line of work, so it’s a logical step in that direction. So as a regressionist, do you also explore the life between lives space?
Robert Jackman: I do. What I find is that, when I am regressed, I’m able to kind of go into that life between live space, that’s sort of spiritual realm. I have been able to guide people, they’ve sort of taken me to that space when I’ve regressed them. What I find in my experience is that not everybody can kind of touch upon that space. my experience is that some people can go there and access that, that sort of spiritual realm and some cannot.
Johnny Burke: That’s interesting because when we talk about past life regression, I think most people know by now, it’s fairly popular. You can do a Google search= I live in the West Palm Beach area, (speaking of Florida) and I find about 10 or 12 therapists nearby. It’s almost becoming mainstream, but the life between lives space, what Dr. Michael Newton wrote about, most therapists know of it, but most people that are familiar with near-death experiences have not heard about it. Why do you suppose that is?
Robert Jackman: Well, I think that life between life space is still one of the unchartered territories as far as we’re trying to understand it. We’re trying to take it in. I think Dr. Michael Newton’s work for me personally was so instrumental in helping me understand more about my NDE, but also helping me understand the, the bigger perspective of reincarnation and the lives between lives and what happens in the spiritual realm as we’re preparing to incarnate into a new lifetime. all of that for me, helped to give such a broader understanding of our spiritual life of us being, spiritual beings having a human experience. So that really helped to expand this sort of very provincial knowledge or understanding of our lives and saying, there’s much more there. To this point, I’ve been regressed myself about 35 times. So I know about 35 or so of my lifetimes that I’ve had. Each one has helped expand my understanding of myself. And like many people will say, when you do a past life progression, it really does answer- it’s sort of like putting a puzzle piece in place and saying, okay, this is what happened in that lifetime. And this is how it may or may not apply to what’s going on with your life today. But it really answers, calms down, heals, really connects us more to ourselves.
Johnny Burke: Interesting that you mentioned a grid in your NDE. And then we started talking about life between lives a bit, because I did speak with someone who had an experience, and she was actually in that in-between space. She was actually shown a life had she had taken a slightly different path. She was an empath, an intuitive that was teaching intuitives, and and she didn’t follow that path because she was in a religious order- speaking about provincial. But in that in-between space, she was actually shown if she had chosen that path ,and she said, it looked like a grid.” If you had chosen that, these are all the people you would have lit up” and like you said, it’s a grid and there’s like several layers or levels. Right.?
Robert Jackman: Yeah, very much.
Johnny Burke: Okay. So it sounds consistent with what you saw as well. So, speaking of past life regressions, you probably have some stories to tell, what were some of the highlights?
Robert Jackman: Well, my very first regression and you’ve probably heard this from other folks you’ve talked with was, I went back to a lifetime where I was being persecuted I was in a religious order. I was a monk. I was being persecuted because I was talking out against the abuses of the Catholic church and, at that time, and I think this was the 18th century and I was not happy because the church wasn’t giving back to the poor and really doing the mission of Christ as I saw it. And the Abbott was very disappointed in me, and I was a thorn in the Abbott’s side. And so,
Johnny Burke: Sounds familiar- I’ve heard this before!
Robert Jackman: And so, here I am speaking out against that and, what the Abbott did, was he had all my brothers are standing around me. Three of whom are in my life today in my lifetime today as friends and a cousin. And he had them watching as they ran my hands through a mangle. I first went into that regression, popping up off of my therapist’s couch, looking at my engorged and bloody hands, as far as what I saw interiorly. So, he wanted to punish me because in that lifetime I made illustrated manuscripts. So that was my showing. My love for God was using my artistry to create these illustrated manuscripts. And he knew that. And so the Abbott punished me and took away my gift to God. the interesting part of that is a couple of years ago, I had another regression and spontaneously the Abbot came up into that regression and I forgave him. It was like, all of that was then full circle because then I really close that chapter. I cut cords with those experiences. And I healed that between me and that Abbot. that was really an incredible experience for me because, that was my first one.
Johnny Burke: What is the farthest back in time in your own regressions you were able to go back to?
Robert Jackman: We were, what I was picking up was a lifetime, and I believe it was the eighth century. this was a lifetime where it was my mom and dad from this lifetime, they were my mom and dad in that lifetime. The scene opens up with me riding in the back of a cart. So they’re in the front of the cart, the donkeys pulling the cart, I’m in the back and we’re going into the village to the market going over a little bridge and the donkey gets spooked, tips over the cart immediately. My mom and dad are dead and I’m just like thrown out of the cart onto the side, in a ditch. I’m trying to help them, but they’re dead. As a little boy, I think I was like eight years old. I just start walking into town. I remember the scene is just me kind of wandering around, looking at other people in the marketplace. Like what, what do I do? I asked in that lifetime. Sometimes the regressionist will say, “what is your name?” and that sort of stuff.
Johnny, this was like a confirmation for me, because it was hard for me to say that name. And the name was, Hermaticus. I had never heard of that name before. And so it was hard for me to even pronounce it. And so for me, that was kind of a confirmation that, okay, this is real stuff that, when we go back and do these regressions.
Johnny Burke: Right. The obvious question, which a lot of people have, is how do we know whether it’s a bonafide past life memory or whether it’s your imagination?
Robert Jackman: Right. Right. And so that was a nice confirmation for me. That was one of the earlier regressions that happened as well. So that helped to kind of give me a sense of trusting this information that’s coming through. And what I would say today is that when working with people and doing regressions, and getting this information that’s coming out, for me as a therapist, working with someone it’s not necessary that they’re getting all of this information correct. Or they have the date, correct. Or any of that- it’s more important that we really look at what is the emotional wounding from that lifetime that needs to be healed. that really is the core issue. All of these other things make for an interesting story, but it really is the emotional wounding that needs to be healed.
Johnny Burke: Wasn’t it true that regression therapy, which has been around for a very long time, the objective was to find the source of an illness or a condition or anxiety? very much like Brian Weiss was doing with his patient, Catherine. right? He stumbled into one of her lives from 3,500 years ago or something like that.
Robert Jackman: That’s also what Edgar Cayce did as well. So, you see all of this work is all of these, thought leaders, these Wayshowers, even native Americans, even first nations peoples , shamans that will take people on vision quests. what we’re talking about has been around ever since people have been walking the earth.
Johnny Burke: I believe it is. It’s funny when you just mentioned vision quest- I immediately thought of the eighties movie, one of the kids, it wasn’t Matthew Modine, It was somebody else. He had a Native American background of some sort. This is really, really interesting stuff. So do you have an example you could share where you did a regression with someone, and you are able to take them to that life in between life space?
Robert Jackman: Yes, what I found was, let’s say we regressed, they went to a lifetime, and they came back into the spiritual realm. What was interesting for them, and I’ve seen with other folks, is that in that spiritual realm, it’s as if they’re suspended in this, think of like a control room, for lack of a better word. And so they’re able to see Oh if I go through here, that’s what that’s about. And they’ll say, okay, don’t want to go through this, portal or this door yet. I’m not ready for that. So what I find is that they’re picking up energetically in that spiritual realm, what they’re ready to incorporate into their consciousness. Some are not, able to illustrate or explain that in that way, but I think that that’s really what’s happening.
Johnny Burke: That might at least partially explain why some people are able to access that space and some people are not, it could be that they’re just not ready for it.
Robert Jackman: Their spiritual guides or angels are saying this person is not ready to bring this into their conscious realm. they need to go through other things before they get to that. And I think that brings us back to a therapy approach with regression and hypnosis, is that a lot of people will say, “Oh, I, want to go in and do this. Will you regress me? Because I want to get rid of X, Y, or Z. “And I’ll say “well, let’s talk first “,because what they’re doing, what they’re saying is can we just skip over all of this stuff and get to what their real issue is So I don’t have to work through anything. But really there’s so much self-examination they have to do. Before they get to that point. And that’s exactly what my therapist did when I began with him . I didn’t know what he was doing in my twenties. I said,” Okay, You do hypnosis. Let’s do a past life regression.” I was all excited. He said, “we’ll get to that.” So he had the presence of mind and the clinical knowledge to say, no, we need to wait for this. So that’s what I would encourage your listeners to do. I know that it’s exciting to do the past life regression, but the past life regression is really more of the icing on that cake, but it’s not the cake.
Johnny Burke: When your therapist says you have some work to that sounds like a football coach saying you got to hit the weight room. And you got to do some conditioning before you get out in the field. If not, you’re at a pretty high risk of getting hurt.
Robert Jackman: That’s a great analogy because you have to really prepare the table for the feast. So it’s really preparing yourself to then have this expanded knowledge of yourself to then incorporate it into, this is who I am and where I am today, emotionally. And now this is what I know. and I now understand about past lives and what I’ve experienced, and this is how it plugs into where I am today.
Johnny Burke: okay. You mentioned, just now spirit guides, angels, I think if you traverse that life between life, space. he would have probably had to have run into a few of those.
Robert Jackman: Well, yes, I personally have. I’ve experienced, where I’ve met my, I call them my council. This is about 10 to 12, people, that I think about five or six are with me, have been within my entire lives and the others come in based on what I’m experiencing at my life, what I’m going through, presently in my life. They’re really there to part of our intuitive knowledge, they’re there to guide us if we’re open to their guidance, they’re there in service to us. They’re not going to tell us what to do, but they’ll certainly point like, Oh, well there’s the light switch. If you want to turn it on, but we still have to turn on the light switch.
Johnny Burke: Now when you mentioned the council, is that the same thing as a council of elders, which is in the in-between space? Or is that just a group of your guides? Because I’ve been told that guides, there are several different types.
Robert Jackman: That’s what I call the group of my guides. Yeah. So that’s who traveled with me. My understanding is that we also have each like one main guide. So my main guide, his name is Black Hawk. He’s this very large, man, who’s been with me my whole lifetime. The council is,what I understand it to be the more work that I do, the more I expand within myself, the more, let’s say refined, the council becomes
Johnny Burke: Interesting. That’s one thing I have not heard is that the more work you do, the more, extensive your council becomes. I have heard from several people that different guides, like Black Hawk-that’s so cool, by the way, I mean, who wouldn’t want a spirit guide named black that ?that’s like your bouncer, and I’ve heard bouncers! One of my speakers I had on a while back mentioned one of his guys, he had like a really cool name, I can’t remember what it was, but he was this big burly dude that didn’t speak, but he was there to protect him from any dark energy, I don’t want to mention any of that stuff, but you know what I’m talking about. So, and it’s your belief that we all have guides?
Robert Jackman: That we all have guides and that I believe that we all have a council per se. And so the council basically progresses in knowledge and wisdom as we progress in knowledge and wisdom. So they’re tracking with us. And so that’s what I mean where some will kind of come in and come out based on how we’ve progressed. So for example, I wrote a book which came out last year. And what I’ve noticed is that since the book has come out and since I’m getting more interest about the book, and I have over 4,000 global readers now, that has kind of expanded my council. So feel a difference in their energy that’s with me is, it’s expanded greatly.
Johnny Burke: When we talk about expansion, spirit guides and developing, what does this have to do with Ascension? It seems like almost everybody I talked to is aware of this.
Robert Jackman: I look at it in the terms of personal Ascension. so what I think is important for us all to recognize is that this is not a race to ascend to the highest and the greatest and the best, because where we each are is exactly where our soul needs to be at this moment in time. As we expand our frequency, as we, do more healing work within ourselves and elevate our frequency. We’re going to the next level within ourselves. What I’ve been told is that this lifetime will probably be my last lifetime to incarnate in this realm, in the third dimension or
Johnny Burke: third density?
Robert Jackman: Right. Third density. And so then I’ll go onto the next, but that doesn’t mean that I’m better or whatever. It just means that I’ve done this work to get to that next level. And then, I’ll start at the bottom of it and go up from there.
Johnny Burke: Well, maybe you’ll progress to be one of the council members, or maybe you’ll come back, as Gandhi did. and that brings up the question about ascended masters and so on. but before we get into that, both of us being raised as good Catholic boys, how have these things changed your view of religion?
Robert Jackman: what I say to people is that I feel very blessed, and I truly mean this, that I was raised within the Catholic faith, because it provided a foundation for me to grow from. So I’m grateful for that. I’m no longer a practicing Catholic, but I think that the Catholic church and, religious organizations serve a purpose. for many people, I think that there are some more enlightened, faith communities, but I’m very glad I had that foundation because I was able to then take from that and grow and expand, from that foundation. what I find in my therapy work is that folks who have a fear of death or who experience a lot of anxiety in their lives, I will ask them, did you grow up in a faith community and to a person they will say, no, I did not. Or they’ll say, yeah, we went, or it really wasn’t that important to me. And so I think it’s so important to raise children. With some kind of faith-based organization. I don’t care what it is, that faith community gives a sense of solid sense within the child that they can call upon later if they so choose.
Johnny Burke: I would agree with that. I think church or temple or wherever you go to worship- it’s a good place to start, but it’s also up to you to expand beyond that. Past life regression and near-death experiences tell me something a lot different from what I’m hearing in church. But I think that you have to start somewhere.
Robert Jackman: Yeah, people have to start somewhere, and religion gives us some of the answers that religion believes, but spirituality, our personal spiritual quest allows us to go and seek out the answers for ourselves. And so today I’m more spiritual than religious.
Johnny Burke: I think a lot of us are at this point. Speaking of all things, religious, what is your connection to the divine today?
Robert Jackman: the minute you said that I just got a big smile on my face and in my heart, because I have such a wonderful, deep connection to God, to the divine. so God is always with me, always very present, around me. and in, times of fear or uncertainty, know that I can call upon that energy to bring what I referenced his energy into me, for that, sort of evergreen calmness. And, so that’s my connection to the divine today.
Johnny Burke: For those of us who have not experienced any of those realms, what is God? Who is God? Is that the universe? Is that the quantum realm? Is that all the same thing? Is it just an energy form? What is it?
Robert Jackman: Well, as I’ve experienced God in my meditations and in my deep healings that I’ve experienced. God, to me, is this big, loving and enveloping energetic presence that doesn’t have a face in the context of how we think of a person looking, but God embodies this unconditionally loving, energetic feeling that when you’re in the presence of God, you are fully loved. Every part of you is embraced. We are each God’s children. And I believe that when we die, when we transition, we go to God and God says, so what did you learn? Because we’re walking the Earth for God. So when we go and say, “well God, I learned that I really love ice cream and popcorn, and that fireworks are cool.” And so we’re telling all of experiences, but with that, we’re expanding God’s consciousness. So we are bringing to God, our consciousness and then adding to the collective consciousness of God’s wisdom.
Johnny Burke: And the collective unconsciousness is basically shared by all of us, which then obviously leads us to the conclusion or the, should I say the concept of oneness. Is that a fair explanation?
Robert Jackman: Yes. that’s a great way to say that. And I believe that when we add our consciousness to the collective that the frequency, the energetic, experiences that we are bringing into that expand. I believe in many ways, that’s how the Ascension is happening for the planet and for humanity based on that consciousness that we’re plugging into.
Johnny Burke: So we’re plugged in. We are exactly where we were supposed to be individually. At the end of the day, we are contributing to the universal or otherwise known as the collective unconscious, which I think Jung wrote about,
Robert Jackman: That was all of his work.
Johnny Burke: Yeah, that was his scene. And I believe he had a near-death experience, which I didn’t even learn about until last month. It’s interesting that he was obviously aware of that as well. Robert, thanks so much for joining us really, really great information here. How can our listeners find out more about you online?
Robert Jackman: So listeners can go to my website, www.theartofpracticalwisdom.com, where they’ll learn more about my works and about my book Healing Your Lost Inner Child. And it’s also available on Amazon as well.