Life After Breath?

Jacob Cooper

I listened to two podcasts recently featuring Jacob Cooper talking about his new book 'Life After Breath' and while I found them both interesting talks, they left me with more questions than answers ... like is that TV set of Jacob's sitting on a set of drawers from IKEA, and how does he watch TV with lamps in front of the TV screen ... have an OBE each time he watches a TV show?-)

LIFE AFTER BREATH
 WITH JACOB COOPER

Being from a part generational secular Jewish [non-religious]/Catholic family background when I was growing up, I find it a bit strange that Jacob (who is an Orthodox Jew) says that he encountered Jesus in his childhood NDE.

Personally, I see the Jesus Christ story as no more than an archetypal myth, just like other Biblical stories of say Moses and the creation mythical figures of Adam & Eve.

I don't believe any messiah is coming to save us earthly beings, believers, or not.

I expect believers in both faiths who just read that last line I wrote will be expecting Satan (another mythical figure in my book) appearing to me in any future NDE, or permanent DE I might encounter?-)

Although, Satan is more of a Christian boogie man too, I guess?

As I have written on this blog before, I'm spiritual, not religious -

Which Religion Should I Choose God?

And oddly, Jacob mentions having committed suicide in his past life, so there is a can of worms opened there to ponder for anyone who claims to be more religious than spiritual -

Don't Pay the Ferryman Until He Gets You to the Otherside

Suicide: The Hard Questions ... and Answers?.

One of the books I'm reading now

When I was a teenager growing up in 80s Brisbane I did something rather foolish, I got a small tattoo of a six-pointed star tattooed onto my left hand.

I was 16 years old, and I'd just dropped out of high school and was feeling a bit lost, and I always liked the idea in the song 'Wand'rin' Star' from the movie 'Paint Your Wagon' sung by Lee Marvin. 

Plus, the idea of "following your North Star" so I drew a star on my left hand with a pen and pondered getting it tattooed permanently at a Brisbane tattoo parlour.

Which I did.

You had to be 18 back then to get a tattoo, but I took my older brother's birth certificate into the city to get it, and as long as they were legally covered, they didn't mind giving me one. 

Except the first guy I went to who told me he wouldn't tattoo below the wrist, ankle, or above the neck because that was the Queen's property.

He told me to try the guy across the road, because he didn't give a shit about the Queen ... and he was right:-)

It never registered with me at the time that the star I drew on my hand would identify me as a Jew in most people's eyes when they saw it.

Not being from a religious Jewish family and growing up in Australia, I never gave it much thought, even though I grew up watching WWII movies and docos on TV, which featured Jews with stars sown on their clothes.

To me it was just easier to draw a six-pointed star than a five-pointed one at the time.

The only photo I have of my star tattoo now

And boy was I in for a lesson or two once I had the star on my hand:-)

A LOPSIDED cartoon

Most people who saw the star would ask me if I was a Jew and I didn't know how to answer that question properly, because yes I was, and no I wasn't.

Had I've grown up in Nazi Germany during WWII I would have been Jewish enough most likely to have been sent to a camp, but if I was to listen to most rabbis I wasn't Jewish enough for them.

Ah, whatever, such is life ... and death?-)

The Jewish Book of Why by Alfred J. Kolatch

Ironically, listening to that rabbi in the You Tube above tell us why Jews shouldn't get tattoos, or cut them out if they do get them, I had mine removed in my early 20s by plastic surgery:-) 

And I still have the scar to prove it.

That tattoo certainly made me learn about what being Jewish ... or not, was all about. 

Not that I really ran into much racism the years I had it on my hand, sticking out like a sore thumb, apart from a butcher I knew who would always corner me and ask me if I was Jewish, and when I would half lie to him and tell him I was not, he would then tell me Jewish jokes, which to be honest most were pretty funny.

I decided after a few years of having the tattoo that it could get me into some serious trouble if I didn't get it removed, so I did.

But I did get another star tattooed on my right arm a year, or two ago.

Lucky for me that I plan on getting cremated then I guess, and not buried;-)

At least I didn't have to go through school with my father's father's German Jewish surname of Schultz, because my Nan changed my father's surname to his Irish stepfather's surname when WW II was raging.

Ironically, growing up in Australia and going to school in the late 60s and 70s as I did, and having a German sounding surname like Schultz probably would have got me into more strife because of the anti-German feeling at the time, and the popularity of such TV shows as 'Hogan's Heroes':-) 

I remember when growing up as a child how war games were popular in the playground at school or in the neighbourhood where one group was the "good guys"/Australians and the other side were the "bad guys"/Germans/Japanese.

I remember sitting on the couch at home as a young child watching the American TV show 'Combat' and telling my father how I was going to join the army and kill Germans when I grew up.

He said to me, "how do you know that you aren't German?"

I said to him, "because I'm not."

And he said, "you sure about that?"

And then he said, "your grandfather was German."

Then I thought maybe I need to think about a career change then:-)

I found out years later that while my grandfather was German, he was from a line of German Jews, not that my father was told, either ... until I found out from a family tree going back to Germany:-)

His mother (my Nan) was from Scottish/Celtic/German[?] blood, with a bit of Indian in there somewhere, too.

Which is why my DNA test shows 1% Northern Indian and why my relatives from her line show various %s of Northern Indian DNA, too.

But she was Catholic through and through.

And she was the only really religious person I knew of in my immediate family.

Her house reminded me of the haunted house rides at the amusement parks with all the bleeding Jesus statues and crucifixes on her walls:-)

My mother and father weren't religious at all, and my father would often tell me that all religion is just made-up man-made garbage.

My parents had me baptized Church of England when I was born and that was that as far as religion went in my parents' home.

As far as religion went it was just the stuff I was taught at school and what things Nan would tell me about her religion.

My mother's mother though was like a closet pagan and would take me to the city with her to have our teacups read and fortunes told, and while she was officially an Anglican like me, she didn't practice religion like my dad's mother did.

And oddly enough she would take me up the road to the Catholic Church hall to play bingo, and she was protestant:-)   

I would see all of the horse racing pictures on the walls of the hall and go back home and tell my father I wanted to be a Catholic, and he would say something like over my dead body, not in this house.

Maybe in hindsight, he literally saved my ass back then with all the allegations to come out years later?-)

Spotlight (2015)

I did toy with converting to Roman Catholicism in my early 20s, because I like the ritual of Holy Communion and various other rituals and beliefs, but I could never get past the dogma, so I became a Liberal Catholic as a compromise.

At least I don't have to convert to Judaism to follow God according to the rabbi in the You Tube above;-)
I like un-kosher seafood way too much to convert to become a religious Jew, not that a lot of "religious" Jews I know keep dietary kosher laws anyway.

Ironically, even though I'm not religious, one of the podcasts that I like to listen to each week is one called 'Too Jewish' out of Tucson, Arizona. 

Ah ... Too Jewish for me:-)

And guess what town Lee Marvin died in?

Tucson, Arizona, I found out while doing some research for this post.

Maybe G*d is trying to tell me something there?-)