041, Dr. Eben Alexander: Going Within--The Power and Promise of Unity Consciousness

“In order to rise to the challenge of addressing the global emergency known as climate change, we need to access and build a relationship with our higher soul. This connection fosters a life where we truly take stewardship of the planet and our relationship with other beings, and to the best of our ability, manifest love, kindness, and compassion for self, others, and the world. This leads us all to a better life.”

Dr. Eben Alexander spent over 25 years as an academic neurosurgeon, including 15 years at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, the Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.  Over those years he personally dealt with hundreds of patients suffering from severe alterations in their level of consciousness. Many of those patients were rendered comatose by trauma, brain tumors, ruptured aneurysms, infections, or stroke. He thought he had a very good idea of how the brain generates consciousness, mind and spirit.

In the predawn hours of November 10, 2008, he was driven into coma by a rare and mysterious bacterial meningo-encephalitis of unknown cause. He spent a week in coma on a ventilator, his prospects for survival diminishing rapidly. On the seventh day, to the surprise of everyone, he started to awaken. Memories of his life had been completely deleted inside of the coma, yet he awoke with memories of a fantastic odyssey deep into another realm – more real than this earthly one! His older son advised him to write down everything he could remember about his journey, before he read anything about near-death experiences, physics or cosmology. Six weeks later, he completed his initial recording of his remarkable journey, totaling over 20,000 words in length. Then he started reading, and was astonished by the commonalities between his journey and so many others reported throughout all cultures, continents and millennia. His journey brought key insights to the mind-body discussion and to our human understanding of the fundamental nature of reality. His experience clearly revealed that we are conscious in spite of our brain – that, in fact, consciousness is at the root of all existence.

His story offers a crucial key to the understanding of reality and human consciousness. It will have a major effect on how we view spirituality, soul and the non-material realm. In analyzing his experience, including the scientific possibilities and grand implications, he envisions a more complete reconciliation of modern science and spirituality as a natural product.

He has been blessed with a complete recovery that is inexplicable from the viewpoint of modern Western medicine.

In this episode…

• The story of Dr. Alexander’s near-death experience and the subsequent journey into the nature of reality, the mind-brain connection, free will, and debunking conventional science’s denial of the existence of consciousness
• Dr. Alexander’s most powerful lesson since coming out of his coma has been the power of going within. Meditation is the first step to putting the little “ego-mind” in time-out, and helps us get in touch with aspects of ourselves that are more connected with other beings, and connected with the universe at large. That’s the best way to manifest the loftiest world of the dreams of our higher soul.
• The Life Review: a common feature of reported Near-Death Experiences where boundaries of self disappear and your life is presented to you from the emotional perspective of those around you (reinforcing the Golden Rule)
• Past-life accounts from children have been validated through historical research
• This material world is where our souls actually make progress, not the in-between spiritual realm
• Reincarnation was very accepted in the early days of Christianity, but the concept was written out by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea
• Several examples of people having NDEs and making miraculous full recoveries from deadly traumas and illnesses
  Darwinian concepts of evolution through competition (ideas that bled into our social and economic systems) versus evolution via collaboration and cooperation
• Meditation as a technique to get in touch with our higher souls, as well as a scientifically proven tool to lower stress and blood pressure, improve sleep and productivity, enhance the immune system, generate inner peace and assist with interpersonal conflict
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s vision—echoed by those from the NDE world and the meditating community— of the evolution of all consciousness toward a higher level of oneness and connectedness and love, a utopian world for all of life on Earth—shifting the focus from the “ego-mind” toward the universal higher good
• It’s time to shift our identification away from individual nation-states and toward a global vision focused on the highest good of all beings; it’s time for us to wake up and care for each other and realize that a polarized society isn’t healthy and will sooner or later collapse under its own weight

Resources

• http://ebenalexander.com/

• Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander

• The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife by Eben Alexander

• Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Heart of Consciousness by Eben Alexander and Karen Newell

• Seeking Heaven: Sound Journeys into the Beyond Audio CD by Eben Alexander and Karen Newell of Sacred Acoustics

• https://galileocommission.org/

• The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Singer

• https://www.sacredacoustics.com/

• University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies

• Inner Sanctum Center (One Mind: United in Hope and Healing)

• Why Jesus Taught Reincarnation by Herbert Bruce Puryear

• Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

• Dying To Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing by Anita Moorjani

• My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor

• The Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

• The Science of Near-Death Experiences by John C. Hagan III

• Efficacy of Binaural Beat Meditation Technology for Treating Anxiety Symptoms: A Pilot Study (abstract)