Having achieved success in Los Angeles, former Muslim Samuel was searching for an inner peace that his atheism was not providing. Turning to spiritualism, transcendental meditation, yoga, hypnosis, reiki and ayahuasca, he began having extrasensory experiences until things took a sinister turn. Would he be able to break free from the downward spiral of depression and addiction?

<p>Having achieved success in Los Angeles, former Muslim Samuel was searching for an inner peace that his atheism was not providing. Turning to spiritualism, transcendental meditation, yoga, hypnosis, reiki and ayahuasca, he began having extrasensory experiences until things took a sinister turn. Would he be able to break free from the downward spiral of depression and addiction?</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adverum Productions

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Journeys Season 1

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Cacyne Hernehult

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Maj Oblak

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Conrad Whitaker

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Samuel Jacobsen

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Grace Rose

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Jonas Nygard

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Albert Jurgens

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Chris Berger

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The spirits had given me amazing success, and I was living the life in Hollywood. I thought I had reached the higher round of spirituality until it all came crashing down and I reached the bottom. It was then that I made the most surprising discovery of my life. My name is Samuel Jacobson, but I was born as Samir Raman and the city of Irbil in northern Iraq. During my early days, the country was ravaged by war with Iran. I remember how during a raid I was hiding under an olive tree and I saw bombs falling and exploding around. Our area was badly hit. Our neighbors and friends were dying. Eventually, in 1990, my family decided to move to Sweden as refugees. I grew up Muslim reading the Quran, going to the mosque and fasting during Ramadan. But as I became a teenager in a new country, I felt lost. I did not fit in school, and the memories of the war haunted me. There was so much evil and injustice in the world. I decided that there was no God and stopped practicing Islam altogether. In 2001, I moved to the United States. I felt there were more opportunities for me there. After arriving in Los Angeles, I made a list of all I wanted to achieve. On the top of the list was becoming rich and successful, so I became a real estate agent and I did quite well. I had a comfortable life in Hollywood, but I had no peace and people around me, they had no peace either. I thought I need to focus more on the inner life. I met a spiritual coach and we started having sessions together. She told me about spiritual energies and karma and spirits that would help me to get rich. Within two weeks, I got a commission to sell a $5 million house. Next I was initiated into transcendental meditation. They gave me a mantra. A word doesn't really mean anything, and I was to repeat that word, 20 minutes a day, twice a day, and it's, and after that, I started doing yoga, hypnosis, and the more I went into new age practices, it seemed that I was being more and more rewarded. I had designer clothes. My social life was busy. I was flying by private jet selling multimillion dollar homes, four and two celebrities. And in 2016, I was named the 24th top real estate agent in the nation. And my colleagues at work were wondering, what is the key to your success? And I would tell them, I do meditation and I get help from spirits. Then my mother got seriously sick with cancer. I flew to Sweden to be with her. My mother and I were incredibly close. I'm the youngest of seven children and I was her favorite. I could not imagine my life without her. So when she took her last breath in my arms, I was devastated. I flew to Thailand and trained in reiki. I became a level three reiki master, which is the highest level. They teach you how to do certain symbols in the air with your hands, and you repeat words that don't really mean anything. But all of a sudden I start having supernatural insights. Around this time, I discovered I had new abilities. Up until then, I had not been musically gifted, but suddenly I could compose music. I wrote a piece of music for the US Olympic team for synchronized swimming that was performed during a live event in Times Square, New York. Next came Ayahuasca. This is promoted as something that cleanse you from all childhood trauma from hatred and fill you in with positive energy. I thought this is great. I have an adult niece whom I've always been very close to. She lived in Sweden and she struggled with depression, drug addiction, also a lot of childhood trauma. She was in and out of rehab. So I said, fly to LA and we'll do this ayahuasca together. So she came for the Ayahuasca weekend. We were told to dress completely in white. There were about 13 to 14 people. We were all sitting in a big circle and the shaman was there. He had feathers, crystal balls and tarot cards, and each one was asked to speak their intention. Why are you here? What would you like the spirit to help you with? Some people said all sorts of things. I want to get pregnant. I wanna marry the right person. I wanna have a successful company. For me. I said, I want to get in touch with my mother, and I want to know what happens after death. And my niece, she said she wants, wants to know the truth. The ceremony started. They were singing burning grains to send a smoke to heaven, bowing down to spirits. They invoked what they called mother ayahuasca. People started going into trans, and after about 30 minutes, I started having my first clear communication with the spirits. Though I did not hear anything, the spirit says, welcome you. Samuel are a child of light. What we have planned for you is above and beyond what you can imagine, but we have a problem. Your niece, she's a child of darkness. So in order for us to help you, you need to separate from her and you cannot question us. Even though you may not understand why we ask you to do certain things, you just have to follow our directions. Then my mother appeared to me. She said that when we die, we become spirits. On the other side, it's all peace and happiness. I understood that she was my guardian angel. She was pulling strings for me. I've always been a logical person. I believe in science, but I couldn't deny what I was experiencing. I practiced in about 12 ayahuasca ceremonies, and in some of them I talked to what it looked like. My dead mother. Fast forward to the ayahuasca ceremony we did in Mount Shasta. It was a small group including my niece. The ceremony starts and my niece start making some tressing noises. The shaman goes over to her to help her, and the shaman is using a musical instrument to call on the spirits. So my niece tells him, stop, but he will not stop. So she grabs the instrument from him, breaks it into, she runs through the bathroom, turns all the lights on, and I'm in a state of shock. I look at all this and the spirits are speaking to me and they said, look, what did we tell you? She's a child of darkness. She causes problems. So after the ceremony, we flew back to Los Angeles. My niece flew back to Sweden and I broke off all contact with her. A little while after that, something changed. The spirits did not communicate with me in the same way anymore. The peace that I thought I had found was gone. I fell into a severe depression. The antidepressants that I was taking were not helping anymore. I went into rehab for a month. I paid $14,000. I came out, did not help me. I felt I had to be on drugs all the time to be able to cope. I then ran into some serious health problems, which I was later hospitalized for. My life was spiraling out of control. I was battling addictions to drugs, to pornography. All the spiritual practices that I had learned were of no effect. I felt utterly hopeless. I called my niece in Sweden to ask how she was. To my great surprise, she was happy and got over her depression and addiction, and she was like a new person. It was hard to believe. I asked her what happened. She said, at Mount Shasta, in the midst of this despair and darkness, she cried out, is this someone who can help me? And immediately she felt she was surrounded by this deep love that is beyond human words. She knew that there was a God back in Sweden. She got a hijab, went to the mosque, but didn't feel right. She kept reading the Quran, praying nothing. One day she went down on her knees and she cried out, who are you? Who are you? I know you have revealed yourself to me. She goes to sleep, and Jesus comes to her. He's dressed in white. He stands at the door with open arms, and he says, I am the way and the truth under life. I have already defeated darkness and evil. And she jumps into his arms and hugs him. From that moment, her life changed completely. And I remember in the first Ayahuasca ceremony, she asked for the truth and God heard her earnest desire for the truth and answered her in a clear way. My niece said she had been praying for me. I realized that was the time when the communication with the spirits went silent. I was in a dark place. Now. Her life had turned around. Miraculously I wanted to have what she had. I started watching Christian videos on YouTube and learning about Jesus. I was attracted to his teachings, and I noticed little by little, a peace came over me that I had not experienced before. And as God was working in my life, I started winning off the antidepressants that I was taking for 15 years. And eventually I was able to stop completely. I had some friends who had become Christians and they took me to church with them. I went on long hikes and listened to the Bible while walking. My life was being healed and cleansed from the inside. Soon it was time for another kind of detox. I packed all my Buddhist statues, my crystals, my stones, all the other new age paraphernalia, packed them in big trash bags and got rid of everything I wanted, nothing to do with the demons of my past. I learned the hard way that Satan and his demons are real today. I know that in those ayahuasca ceremonies, I had not met my dead mother, but a demonn impersonating her to gain my trust. The Bible teaches that the dead are not conscious. They're just resting in the grave through new age and the paranormal, the devil is spreading his lies about life, about death, in order to deceive people and lead them to eternal destruction. The spirits are his demons. They have taken me to unexpected highs only to drop me into the abyss of despair. In 2017, I accepted Jesus into my heart and was later baptized. The last three years of my life have been the most rewarding. As God opens up my eyes to the truth of the scripture, all the material things which were just idols, they lost their appeal. I was finally able to experience true freedom and joy that surpasses all understanding. I learned that God is real and more powerful than the devil. He has turned my life around and brought me out of spiritual darkness into the light, and that is the greatest miracle Of all.

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Journeys Season 1

Escape From New Age and the Paranormal: Samuel’s Journey

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Other Teachings in Series

Should Christians Have Ecstatic Experiences?: Christopher’s Journey

Searching for the Meaning of Life: Dan’s Journey

Searching for True Love: Cacyne’s Journey

Can Faith Be Rational?: Maj’s Journey

I Would Never Become a Christian: Miikael’s Journey

Finding Hope for the Environment: Jan’s Journey

Beyond Rituals and Crucifixes: Conrad’s Journey

Escape From New Age and the Paranormal: Samuel’s Journey

Finding Peace at Last: A Miraculous Journey

Hungry for More: Jonas’ Journey

Learning to Trust the Bible: Albert’s Journey

Existential U-turn: Chris’s Journey

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