Sid Roth - My Psychic Powers Were No Match for Jesus
Sid Roth: As a child, Ron Cohen had friends without bodies. He used to slip out of his body and travel to other locations - next on this edition of "It's Supernatural"!.
Sid Roth: Hello, I'm Sid Roth, your investigative reporter. My guest, Ron Cohen, as a young child had friends. He thought everyone had friends like this, except these were friends without bodies. Friends without bodies? Come on, Ron! Give me a break! Didn't you think this was a little weird?
Ron Cohen: Well, actually I didn't. This was the place that I lived in every day. I grew up in Huntington, Long Island, and I remember I'd come home from school, go across the street. We had these woods across the street, and I had this little campfire I built, there and I would go over in the afternoon and meet with my friends. I had a lot of friends when I was younger. They knew me by name. I knew them by name. We would talk and they would tell me all kinds of things about my life, and what was happening. The only problem was, Sid, my friends did not have physical bodies. They started out as little lights that took on more and more form, until finally - I actually recognized them as persons, or personalities, without flesh and blood bodies. They didn't have physical bodies, but they were just as much persons or personalities that had some ability to communicate with me.
Sid Roth: You know, you realize there are a lot of people watching us right now that think, I've been using this word a lot lately, think you're a "Bisele Meshuga" - a "Little crazy". Now, what about this thing of your spirit slipping out of your throat?
Ron Cohen: Well, I would wake up in the morning. I came from a very Jewish background. My parents were Jewish. I grew up in Hebrew school and all that, but I remember, like, I'd be 10, 11, 12 years old, and I would wake up in the morning and I would literally slip out of my body through my throat, and I would go over the houses.
Sid Roth: How did you know how to even do this?
Ron Cohen: You know, it's just something that came natural. It was just a part of my life, the same as these friends that were around me: this seeing into a spirit realm that I didn't even know was a spirit realm. I didn't know know if these were friends that were good or bad friends. They were just the entities that were there - powers that were there as a child - and so I would go down to the apartments, you know, go over to them: see what the kids were doing, riding bikes, playing ball, wearing a heavy coat or whatever.
Sid Roth: How did you know you weren't just - it's a child's imagination?
Ron Cohen: Yes. Yes. I would slip back into my body. I would get up and get dressed, and go outside, and everything was always exactly like I saw it - always like I saw it - and so I guess just from experience, in a sense I knew what I was doing was real.
Sid Roth: What type of a career did you prepare for?
Ron Cohen: Well, I ended up going to college in Florida. I was going into pre-med. Being Jewish I only had three choices: doctor, lawyer, and accountant.
Sid Roth: Doctor, lawyer, and accountant.
Ron Cohen: And so I started in the medical, and then actually ended up in accounting: ended up going back for another year or so. But I remember in my second year in college, I got actively involved with astrology, with palmistry and tarot cards, and the Kabbalah, but also with a man that was known as Edgar Cayce. And Edgar Cayce - the world kind of thinks of him as a prophet of some sort, but Cayce was a "Channeler". He was a medium that was in touch with, again, with one of these spirits in a high place, that would put him into a trance and speak through him.
Sid Roth: You actually worked for the Edgar Cayce Foundation.
Ron Cohen: Years later I became the accountant for the Edgar Cayce Foundation in New York City, and read his black book, his diaries - so that's how I knew more from his point of view - what was happening to him, where he would say this thing overtook him, and he called it - a spirit would overtake him, put him into a trance, and speak through him: again, not knowing right or wrong, good or bad. You know, was this from dark side or light side?
Sid Roth: Tell me how, after college, you're working as an accountant for a "Big 8" cpa firm: but what's going on with you as far as these imaginary friends?
Ron Cohen: Yeah, it was kind of two lives. In the daytime I was a straight accountant, you know - vest, suit and whatever - and then at night I was a psychic and a medium in New York City. A realm of psychic-ness opened up to me in the realm of auras, that wherever I walked down the streets, I saw rainbows around people, which, I knew they called them "Auras". And in that rainbow I would see their dead grandmother or their aunt's relatives, what they were doing, where they were working, and so it was a deeper realm of psychic-ness that opened up to me at that time. Also then got involved with Edgar Cayce. After several years in the city, went over to Switzerland to the Rudolf Steiner school - that's the Rosicrucians - and spent time with that. You know, all the time, though, trying to seek this person, you know, we'd even share to seek this person that was there when I was 12 years old.
Sid Roth: What happened when you were 12?
Ron Cohen: I remember it was the month of June, at 7 o'clock at night. I walked out of our house in Huntington, Long Island, and there on the left of me, about 20 feet away, was a man standing there looking at me. He had on a long white robe, and long brown hair. He had his hands out like this. I remember seeing red holes in his hands.
Sid Roth: That sounds like Jesus!
Ron Cohen: And instinctively I knew that was Jesus.
Sid Roth: How could you, as a kid...
Ron Cohen: I knew nothing about Jesus.
Sid Roth: Did your parents teach you anything?
Ron Cohen: No. I knew nothing about Jesus, coming from a Jewish home. I kind of laugh at it and say, well, I thought he lived in the building down the street that had the statue of the lady out front. You know, I thought he lived in the catholic church. But two things happened to me at that moment at 12 years old. The first thing was an overwhelming desire to find that man in reality: to find the real Jesus. Not in some building or denomination or religion, but to find a real person. And the second thing that happened was an impartation, or an inner knowing of the reality of the realm of miracles. So I knew as a child growing up that there was a place for every one of us to be able to reach up into the spirit realm and receive a miracle in our life from that man who was there in my front yard. And that started the next 16 years of my life, actually, in my search to find him.
Sid Roth: Now, I know that you met a guru in India, but this guru actually came to you in your bedroom?
Ron Cohen: Well, after coming back from Switzerland, I went back to the accounting firm in New York City. I remember getting out of the bus in Central Park, West and 86th Street, and there on the other side of Central Park West, on a bench on a corner, was a man sitting there with Indian clothes on. He had his hair in a knot on his head. He had a long beard, his hands in his lap, and there were 30, 40 people sitting on blankets and mats around the bench: a strange-looking group in the middle of New York City. Walked across the street and...
Sid Roth: Well, there's some strange people in New York City.
Ron Cohen: Yes, but this was very strange. And taxi cabs and cars, you know, and everything. And I was wearing my working clothes, and I went across the street to look at them, and I was kind of leaning on a tree there, and this man on the bench looked up at me and he said - in a hand language - because I learned later that he was silent for many years - he looked at me and he said, "Welcome home. This is what you have been looking for". Well, I didn't know I was looking for anything. I was on my way home from work. But that was my introduction to Hinduism, to yoga, to Eastern theology, and whatever, and to a man in India named Sathya Sai Baba.
Sid Roth: That's what I was talking аbout: this Sai Baba came into your bedroom? Explain that.
Ron Cohen: Yes. Well, he's known as a "Man of miracles", again quote-unquote. He has many, many powers. He'll roll his sleeve up and wave his hand in the air, and have "Holy ash" come from his fingertips. I've eaten cashew nuts that have fallen out of his fingertips. Twice I've seen him feed 40,000 people out of two buckets of food - rice in one and curry in the other - and just all these "Signs or miracles" that seem to happen. Well, that was my learning about him. A few months later, I was awakened at 3 in the morning, and there he was standing at the foot of my bed.
Sid Roth: How'd he get in?
Ron Cohen: He was just standing there! I mean, it wasn't a vision. He was actually there. And he looked at me, pointed his finger at me, and he said, "It's time for you to come to India and be my disciple", and then vanished.
Sid Roth: So what did you do about it?
Ron Cohen: Well, I had to follow that one. I thought it was a heavenly command, you know? And again, Jewish: I'm looking for this Jesus - this Messiah - but I don't know about all these other things, you know. So I'm, going from one thing to the next, and then I'm quitting my accounting job and went to India.
Sid Roth: Now, what did you look like when you were a guru?
Ron Cohen: Well, after I got to India, my hair started to grow very long: I started to grow a beard. I used to wear these orange robes around and...
Sid Roth: What did your Jewish parents say? "My son, the guru"?
Ron Cohen: Yeah, so my dad had a little shoe store, and here I am barefoot.
Sid Roth: Hold that thought. We'll see whether he gets his shoes back or not. We'll be right back after this.
Sid Roth: Hello, this is Sid Roth, your investigative reporter, and oy vey! How would you like to have your son - a "Nice Jewish family" - "My son the guru"? You put him through college, he's a CPA. He's with a big 8 CPA firm, and he's off to India, looking like a guru? What happened to you, Ron, in India?
Ron Cohen: Well, I spent my first six months there with this man, Sai Baba. Sathya Sai Baba, the "Mother/father of all truth", the man who doesn't claim to be Jesus, but the one who claims to send Jesus to the earth. So he claims to be God himself. And of course, we might all laugh that off, but he has millions and millions of Hindu followers.
Sid Roth: Really? That many?
Ron Cohen: And all throughout America and Canada and Europe.
Sid Roth: Out of curiosity, were many Jewish people involved in these things with you?
Ron Cohen: You know, from what I've understood, and the studies that have been done, an overwhelming percentage of Jews are involved in the occult.
Sid Roth: Do you have any idea why?
Ron Cohen: Well, I have my own feelings on it, but I sense because of that call of God that goes down through the generations - going all the way back to Abraham - there is still that call on the Jewish heart to come to know the Messiah. But we don't know how to get there, initially because of all that's happened.
Sid Roth: I remember you sitting on a park bench, and you had a vow of silence or something, and a Christian came up to you, and what did he say?
Ron Cohen: Well, after we got back from India and we were traveling around the states, we had a bus and a caravan. I went from city to city teaching yoga, and all the wonderful things that, you know, I learned back then. And we went down to Mexico: southern California: finally ended up in UC Berkeley - the University of Berkeley - and I got out of the bus, and I sat on a bench for 35 days in the middle of Berkeley Campus on Sproul Plaza, wearing my white robes and long hair and cross-legged on a bench.
Sid Roth: I'll bet you thought you were something!
Ron Cohen: Well, hundreds of people would line up to kiss my feet.
Sid Roth: Serious?
Ron Cohen: Because of all that was happening then, you know, from the powers that were there. But I remember it was 11 o'clock in the morning, and a young man wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and short blondish hair, he walked over all the people that were sitting on the mats around my bench. He walked up to me, and he looked at me and he said, "Do you have Jesus in your heart"? And I said - in a hand language - because I was mostly silent, I said, "For sure I have Jesus in my heart. And ram is in my heart, and Krishna's in my heart, and you're in my heart, too"! I had a big heart back then! And then he asked me if I was filled with the Holy Spirit, and I had so much energy in my body from meditating that I could hold my hand up and 3-foot rays of blue light came out of my fingertips, visible in the sunlight. And I held my hand up, and said, "For sure I have the Holy Spirit". And he pointed his finger at me and he said, "You're lying. Jesus isn't in your heart, and you don't have the Holy Spirit. I can see it in your eyes". And he turned around and walked away, and 30 feet away he disappeared.
Sid Roth: Any impact on you?
Ron Cohen: You know, we all - the group that was close to me, that translated or whatever, we all remember watching him disappear right there. Just, poof! But initially there was no impact except that was very...
Sid Roth: What do you mean by "Disappear"?
Ron Cohen: Just, poof! Just - right there he was, and there he wasn't.
Sid Roth: You mean he just slipped out of the crowd or he went...
Ron Cohen: Oh, no, no! There wasn't that kind of a crowd. Everyone was sitting, and he was walking away, and then 20 feet away he vanished.
Sid Roth: Okay, now, you had your groupies - let's call them - your followers kissing your feet.
Ron Cohen: Sure did. Sure did.
Sid Roth: You're in a bus. You're going from area to area, conducting classes, and you went to upstate New York.
Ron Cohen: Well, after that experience, a couple of days later, we got on our buses and started to travel across country back upstate New York to a birthday party of this guru that was on the bench - also a Jewish guy that was on that bench - many years ago. Now many years have transpired, and when we got there at this yoga monastery, way in the mountains, he said - he came up to us: he said, "Ron, let me take you to this little yoga auditorium and tell you what was happening". And to make a lot of story short here, he said several things. First of all, he was talking for the first time in many, many years that we ever heard his voice.
Sid Roth: He had a vow of silence.
Ron Cohen: Yes. And he said two things happened in his life. He said the first thing was that he caught Sathya Sai Baba in a lie.
Sid Roth: Wait a second! Wasn't he called "The father of all truths"?
Ron Cohen: Yes, "Mother/father of all truth".
Sid Roth: How does the "Mother/father of all truth" lie, like, in a major lie?
Ron Cohen: Well, it started to go through this guy's mind, whatever was left of his mind, and that something was going on here. But the second thing that happened, this yoga monastery had no electricity, no plumbing, no telephone, no fax machine, no computer. Nothing connected it to the outside world but a tank of LP gas that was used to heat hot water in an emergency in the winter. And one day a baptist man came all the way up from the city, up to the mountain, to change his tank of LP gas, and left a little pamphlet of a Bible verse, of 1 John 4, on this guy's doorstep.
Sid Roth: What is that?
Ron Cohen: Well, his story goes like this. He was walking to the outhouse...
Sid Roth: No, no, what does 1 John 4 say?
Ron Cohen: It's - oh, well, I'll get there in a sec. Okay. He was walking to his outhouse and being led by the spirit, and he said he tripped over his doorstep of his house, and his nose fell on that little pamphlet. And he took it as a sign from God to read it. So he brought it in his little hut, and he sat down and he read this little pamphlet. Well, 1 John 4 says, "Beloved, test the spirits: not every spirit comes from God". It doesn't say spirits aren't real. It says not every one comes from God. Well, if it doesn't come from God, where else does it come from? Not every spirit comes from God, and if it comes from God, then it will confess that Jesus has come in the flesh. If not, it's the spirit of the anti-Christ, which is even here to this day. Well, this guy read this over and over again, and there might have been a little prayer at the end, or whatever, but his story is that within six months, that spirit of Sai Baba, that power that was over him, started to leave him. He got his voice back and whatever, and that's when we showed up. He looked at me and he said - I was called Swami Davi Dotter - he said, "Bless you. I want you to go in this little yoga hut and test the spirit yourself and see what happens".
Sid Roth: Did you?
Ron Cohen: So, I went in and, again - a lot of story short, why I would even do that - but I sat cross-legged on the floor of this little hut and, you know, I opened my mouth, and look what came out of my mouth! You know, I'm Jewish! I was never in a church. I know nothing about Christianity or Messianic - I knew nothing about it. I opened my mouth and I said, "Shakti". Now, I was able to speak to that spirit that was in my body.
Sid Roth: Who was Shakti...
Ron Cohen: Shakti was a person: a personality: a spirit that lived inside of my body, that I was very in touch with, very in contact with. I knew it was there. And I said, "Shakti, do you confess Jesus as Lord"? A strange thing for a Jew to say! "Shakti, do you confess Jesus as Lord"?
Sid Roth: So what did he say?
Ron Cohen: Well, within ten minutes something like a ping-pong ball was starting to go up and down my back, and I knew it was this yoga kundalini spirit. Well, something crossed my mind, to ask Jesus into my heart. Well, I was sure he was in there. Everybody else was in there.
Sid Roth: I remember!
Ron Cohen: So I said, "Jesus, come into my heart"! And then I said again, "Shakti, do you confess Jesus as Lord"? And within two hours, that holy yoga kundalini spirit, Sai Baba spirit, left my feet into the ground, and I stood up and walked out of there - a Ronald Cohen, who I was many years before that. And the first thing I noticed...
Sid Roth: Hold that thought! We're going to find out about the first thing he noticed, and we're going to find out even more than he bargained for. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Hello, Sid Roth here. I'm so engrossed with what Ron Cohen is telling me. Did you catch what he said? That this spirit - he's practicing yoga - and this spirit, when he says, "Do you confess Jesus Christ as Lord"?, it left through your feet and into the ground. And what happened next?
Ron Cohen: Yes. And I got up and I walked out of there, and the first thing I noticed - and again, my "Disciples" - my people - were all around waiting for me - the first thing I noticed was that every light, every aura, every rainbow, every psychic ability was completely gone when that spirit was gone.
Sid Roth: Did this bother you?
Ron Cohen: Well, it didn't in a sense because I knew why it was gone.
Sid Roth: Why?
Ron Cohen: Because the name of Jesus was more powerful than what was in me: because at the mention of the name of Jesus, "Shakti, do you confess Jesus as Lord"?, this thing had to leave.
Sid Roth: Wait a second, these things had a lot of power!
Ron Cohen: A lot of power. And yet, this was far more powerful, and it drove out all of the psychic abilities and the spirit that was there.
Sid Roth: You know, you had told me before we went on the air that the Talmud says there are three Messianic miracles.
Ron Cohen: Yes.
Sid Roth: What are they, and did you see them duplicated within the new age?
Ron Cohen: Well, over in India there are many, many miracles that happened, and in the whole new age movement, you know, signs and things like that, but in the Talmud it's called "Three Messianic Miracles'. These are miracles that only the Messiah would be able to do. And the first thing was healing someone that was born blind. Now, in India there are, you know, all kinds of sick people that are there.
Sid Roth: Lots of blind people.
Ron Cohen: I've never seen or heard of - in all of the studies that I studied, sand script and a lot of writings - I never heard of anyone blind that was ever miraculously healed
Sid Roth: Born blind.
Ron Cohen: Yeah, born blind, and you know, that's why, in the scriptures, it so talks about the pharisees. They went to this boy that was healed - that Jesus healed: this boy that was born blind - and they said, "You've got to be lying! It's impossible"! Then they got the mother, and you know, they say it's got to be sin. This couldn't possibly! Because for them to admit that a boy born blind was healed, would be to admit that Jesus was the Messiah.
Sid Roth: Obviously.
Ron Cohen: The second Messianic miracle is healing a leper. Now, in all of India, and I saw lepers!
Sid Roth: All the lepers they have there!
Ron Cohen: I've been in leper colonies in India, and I've seen whole huddles and that: never heard of a leper healed.
Sid Roth: I interviewed a man that prayed for hundreds of lepers that were set free.
Ron Cohen: Yes! Yes! Healed, in the name of Jesus!
Sid Roth: In the name of Jesus!
Ron Cohen: In Jesus' name, yeah. And again, that's why in the Gospels, that when the lepers were healed, Jesus always sent them back to the temple to show themselves.
Sid Roth: Yes.
Ron Cohen: Because for the high priest to say, "Hey, a leper just got healed"! Would mean, hey, then Jesus, the Messiah, had to be here.
Sid Roth: What was the third miracle?
Ron Cohen: The third was casting out a deaf and dumb spirit, because the pharisees...
Sid Roth: And Jesus did that, too!
Ron Cohen: Yeah, because the pharisees moved in deliverance, but they had to ask the thing its name, and a deaf and dumb spirit couldn't speak. So Jesus cast out deaf and dumb spirits, so all of these miracles, now, were done by the Messiah, by Jesus, and has never been duplicated in the counterfeit, in the new age, in India, or any of that psychic realm have you ever heard of someone born blind, lepers, or deaf and dumb spirits. But now, as a believer, and in our meetings - and many, many believers can testify that in the name of Jesus, they are seeing miraculous healings in those...
Sid Roth: Wait a second, now. You saw a lot of miraculous things going on in India - in the new age, in India. You are seeing even greater miraculous things go on today in the name of Jesus!
Ron Cohen: Yes.
Sid Roth: So what's the difference?
Ron Cohen: Well, first of all, a healing - a miracle that's done in the Lord, in Jesus' name - it doesn't have that heaviness that surrounds it. It's almost like an atmosphere, and the atmosphere is heavy: it's foggy: and the glory goes to the man that does it. There's always a silence or a quietness. The glory goes to the man, and there's always a sensing within you that something dark is here, even though we are seeing a healing. Also, if you are ever healed in the physical realm, you're bound somewhere else. You're bound in the soul. There are people in India to this day that were part of our group 25 years ago that are afraid to leave this guy's presence because they'll lose their healing.
Sid Roth: Bottom line: what is the difference between Ron Cohen today, and Ron Cohen guru?
Ron Cohen: First of all, today I am free. Secondly, I'm not searching. I'm looking for more of the Lord, but I'm not on a search trying to fill something inside. So even Ron Cohen as a guru, one who was in Samadhi, in a high place, in that - there was still that inside: of knowing there was more. There had to be more yet, because I wasn't there. And also, the deeper you got, the more bound you actually got. And the other thing, too, is that I saw - this spirit that was in my body takes over your emotions. You end up without emotions, without feelings, without thoughts, without our sense of consciousness. When you come to the Lord and Jesus is in your heart, first of all, you have a freedom in your life. "He who the son sets free is free". You have a freedom in your life.
Sid Roth: Quickly: tell me one quick miracle, one specific one.
Ron Cohen: We have seen so, so many of them, just these past months. There was a woman in Connecticut who had a hip implant, and her leg was 3-4 inches shorter than the other, and that was because her femur bone and all was cut. And we prayed in the name of Jesus. Her leg grew out, completely equal to the other. Just a few months ago in Australia a woman with ms, muscular sclerosis, came in crawling, full of tremors in her body. Miraculously healed! We have had several just these past months, full healings of ms, of Parkinson's, of blindness, full blindness in an eye. We've had three people fully deaf with no eardrums get their hearing back. Many, many cancers. I just get letters of terminal - terminal - weeks left to live.
Sid Roth: We're coming into a time, Ron, and I know that you know it, that the true miracles of God are going to be sweeping this earth. And there are people right now that need a true miracle from God. Ron, I want you to pray directly, quickly, for these people right now.
Ron Cohen: Thank you, Lord. Lord, I thank you for those that are watching today. Father, I thank you that you are the truth. "You are the way, the truth, and the life". Lord, where the enemy has come to rob, kill and destroy, people's lives, father, physically in their body: emotionally - the depression: the things that are so going on in people's lives. The hurts and the pains, the physical sicknesses: Jesus has come today to give you life, and life abundantly. So in the name of that life, in the name of Jesus Christ, I speak healing to you today. To those that have arthritis in the hips, I command the healing. I command every arthritic symptom out of your body - the blood diseases, the leukemia, the hardening of the marrow - I command healed. I just sense there's people with lung diseases watching today, emphysema and such. I command healing of every lung, disease, in Jesus' name. Colitis, and diverticulitis, and colon diseases healed, in Jesus' name.