Dr. Eben Alexander: Heaven is Real
Your Consciousness Exists Beyond Your Brain
“I was my own worse skeptic trying to explain my near death expereince as a brain-based phenomena and I tried to discuss it with my colleagues, trying to figure out how this could happen in the brain. I finally had to accept it happened outside the brain. For the next two years, I went into deep study about the nature of consciousness, quantum mechanics and what we know about reality,” explains Dr. Eben Alexander.
“I was my own worse skeptic trying to explain my near death expereince as a brain-based phenomena and I tried to discuss it with my colleagues, trying to figure out how this could happen in the brain. I finally had to accept it happened outside the brain. For the next two years, I went into deep study about the nature of consciousness, quantum mechanics and what we know about reality,” explains Dr. Eben Alexander.
By Krysta Gibson
What’s your vision of heaven? Angels flying around playing harps? Do you believe heaven exists? What do you think happens after death? Do you think there is another world where we continue to exist, or do you think we become food for carrots? These are big questions that deserve big answers. Enter Dr. Eben Alexander who graduated from Duke University in 1980 where he focused on the study of neuroendrocrinology, the study of the interactions between the nervous system and the endocrine system.
On Nov. 10, 2008, at the age of 54, he was struck by a very rare illness: E. coli bacterial meningitis. This was so severe that it drove him into a coma within three to four hours of onset. His entire neocortex was shut down. It did not work at all. At first Dr. Alexander was given a 10% chance of surviving. When he didn’t respond to antibiotics, he had a two to three percent chance of surviving. Usually within three to four days people wake up or die.
On day seven, Dr. Alexander woke up. He had survived this illness.
Dr. Alexander’s book, Proof of Heaven, gives details of this experience, but even more, it details the experiences he had while in the coma, experiences that he can only describe as being beyond the brain. He experienced God or Om; he was in a place he calls Earthworm’s-Eye View, and he experienced what he calls “dazzling darkness – an ink darkness that was also full, brimming with light.”
(Μy remark: Does this remind you the penumbra of Illumination and Darkness??)
Before this experience, Dr. Alexander says he would have said the chances of such a patient remembering anything that happened during coma was zero. “And,” he says, “doctors will agree there is no medical explanation for how I could have such a complete recovery. The ultra-reality of what happened deep in coma was very striking. It was a long odyssey and I felt like I had been there for months.”
Before this experience, Dr. Alexander says he would have been entirely skeptical that such a patient had a true experience. Along with many of his colleagues, he would have said this near-death experience was just a function of the brain. But his brain was entirely non-functional.
“I was my own worse skeptic trying to explain this as a brain-based phenomena and I tried to discuss it with my colleagues, trying to figure out how this could happen in the brain. I finally had to accept it happened outside the brain. For the next two years, I went into deep study about the nature of consciousness, quantum mechanics and what we know about reality.”
He continues, “What I learned is that at the core of everything is the fabric of this multiverse. It is infinite, unconditional love of the creative source, God, Allah, power, Brahmin – this all powerful, loving God is at the core of each one of our conscious existences. My grand message is three to four thousand years old. It is an ancient message. What I bring to the table is my attempt to synthesize everything I know about existence, and that includes the most advanced notions of space and time, quantum mechanics, and everything we know about the fabric of underlying reality,” he explains.
Dr. Alexander says Proof of Heaven synthesizes ancient lessons and applies them to our modern lives so people can know the power of that all-loving deity that he says is the core of our consciousness.
“I do believe that to get to know these deep truths you can do a lot of reading and watch DVDs, go to courses, etc., but at the end of the day one has to do the work and go deep into our own consciousness through centering prayer or deep meditation. I use acoustical enhancements of deep conscious states, especially with a group called Sacred Acoustics.
“It’s all about getting deep into consciousness and into answers, realizing the voice in my head is not who I am. My consciousness acknowledges that voice but in fact that little voice needs to be turned off.”
He says that people who meditate on a regular basis know and recognize the experience he had while in deep coma.
“You don’t have to almost die to get this. As a conscious being I had everything I needed before my coma to come into the understanding that I have now: the understanding that our consciousness is our direct link to the most powerful force in the creation of the entire universe. We can all get there but it does take work. I enjoy meditating and I do it two or three hours a day and I have been doing it steadily for two and a half years and see great benefit in it for creativity, getting to know about our existence, about our relationships with others, about our reasons for being here.
“People can bicker over their definition of heaven and whether or not I’ve defined the heaven they like, but I submit that at the core we’re all talking about the same place, the dwelling place of the divine.
Our cultural and personal biases can color and taint our memories as we come back to this realm. Where the skeptics get lost is that this realm is real. Many people have come to know this realm and this connectedness that we all share and that it is real. Consciousness, soul, spirit transcends bodily death.”
He says that before this experience he would have said that our brains create consciousness. Now, he says this is wrong and that consciousness is primary.
The one thing he was taught that really matters is summed up in three sentences:
You are loved and cherished.
You have nothing to fear.
There is nothing you can do wrong.
“Some people recoil at the last one,” he says. He explains that this does not mean we can hurt other people. We must love others. If we harm other people we will pay the price, he says, in this life or another. “We pay the price when we give pain and suffering to others because we really are all one at deeper levels.”
Dr. Alexander says he learned that the way to manifest our highest spiritual selves is through love and compassion. “These are real, concrete and they make up the very fabric of the spiritual realm.”
Dr. Alexander now teaches classes, works with the medical community and others to share what he learned during this experience and his resultant studies.