Proof Of Heaven with Dr. Eben Alexander

Welcome to Let It Be Easy with Susie Moore.

Susie Moore:

A few years ago, I read a book that completely shifted how I feel about death and the afterlife. I watched an interview with Oprah Winfrey and she sat down with Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who was in a coma and who experienced the afterlife while his brain was shut down. Oh my. It was a medically induced coma because he was being treated for meningitis, that means that he had temporary brain death. And in that experience, over the course of those few days, everything that he lived through, he wrote in very vivid moving detail in his book, proof of Heaven. I love getting the information from this neurosurgeon that consciousness isn't a product of our brain. Proof from him that we are so much greater than our physical bodies. And in preparation for my interview with Dr. Ein Alexander, I reread the book Proof of Heaven and oh my, it just comes back to these truths that only love is real.

We are here for a temporary experience in our earthly bodies, but we're part of something so big and so loving and so eternal. It's wildly comforting. It sparks so much curiosity within me. And as you can imagine, I have questions. So having Dr. Evan Alexander on the podcast today was a true joy for me. I really hope you enjoy our interview, and please DM me on Suzy at Suzy dot more on Instagram, your questions, your thoughts, your takeaways. I now give you Dr. Evan Alexander, Dr. Eben Alexander. Welcome to the Let It Be Easy podcast.

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Well, Susie, it's great to be here. Thanks so much for having me on.

Susie Moore:

I was talking all week to my different friends saying on Friday or on Thursday, I'm going to be speaking to someone who has experienced heaven. This doesn't happen every day. This isn't your average week. And in fact, I read Proof of Heaven years ago when it was pretty newly out, especially after seeing your Oprah interview. And then of course, in preparation for this interview, I read it again thoroughly. Love, love, love this book. My first question

Dr. Eben Alexander:

I was just going to say, so glad to hear you say that. I'm glad you appreciate it. And important to point out that a 10th anniversary edition just came out in the last month or two, and that has 36 new pages that cover what's happened over the last decade. So the new edition is one that is very informative about the impact of the book and kind of the revolution going on in the scientific community about all this.

Susie Moore:

So a must purchase, friends, everybody listening a must purchase now. Actually, my first question for you is it'll be 15 years this year since your experience with meningitis being in a coma. I wanted to ask, how are you doing now 15 years later?

Dr. Eben Alexander:

We're doing very well, thank you. And I mean, really coming up on 15 years since the coma has been an extraordinary journey. And one thing that many people might not realize is I've been working for more than a decade now with other scientists around the world interested in consciousness who don't buy into the simplistic fiction of materialist science. That's conventional science, that pretends that only the physical world exists and tends to ignore the findings of quantum physics. So I think it's fascinating that the world is waking up to this and it's all based in very deep science, but it has a way of proving the reality of e eternity of our souls. And the fact that we actually come back again and again, that reincarnation has been scientifically studied and is a very real aspect of human existence. It's just that there's also something called program forgetting so that we don't, as we become adults, we don't remember the memories we have as a young child of past lives in between lives. Those memories get covered over so very interesting phenomenon, but the reality of our consciousness and kind of eternity of soul is what is really bubbling to the top of this scientific revolution.

Susie Moore:

I can't help but think, Eben, as I read your story and I look at all of the components that had to be in place for you to be the person that told the story. So of course, you being a natural skeptic, being a scientist, being a neurosurgeon, having a complete understanding of the brain, you formally thinking that it was the brain that created consciousness. Don't you just feel like it's so divine that this had to be, you had to be chosen for the experience that you had. It's like this perfect storm almost.

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Well, I think near death experiences are always tailored to the individual. I mean, they're designed to help the soul transform and grow. And when I look back on all these events, and that includes my meningitis back in 2008, the months post coma of recovery of having my memories come back and all that, because when I first woke up from coma, my brain was devastated. I didn't even recognize loved ones to the bedside, my sisters, my mother, my sons. I had no idea who they were. And so it was an extraordinarily deep case. And that's why it's also important that there's a medical case report by three doctors not involved in my care, but they go way beyond where I went, the book Proof of Heaven, because I spent a lot of time examining my medical records. And their case report is in the September, 2018 Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases by Dr.

Sebi Kana, Lauren Moore and Bruce Grayson. But that case report goes a long way to make two major points affirming what I said in proof of heaven. One is that the objective data from neurologic exams, scans and lab values show that my brain could not have mustered any kind of dream or hallucination, much less the most extraordinarily rich, detailed, vivid and alive experience I've ever had in my life. And the second major conclusion is you cannot explain my recovery. A full recovery from a week long coma due to Gram-negative bacterial meningoencephalitis does not happen. It's unprecedented in the medical literature. And when they were challenged, the peer review scientists at the journal said, well, how do you explain this case? It's absurd. They said, well, it's because he had a near death experience that he had such a remarkable recovery. And that's really the important message for all of us because, and they said that because they knew of other near death experiencers who had had recoveries unprecedented in the medical literature from lymphoma, for example, with Anita Mojo after an over 30 minute warm water drowning in the case of Dr. Mary C. Neal, where people just don't come back from those things.

That doesn't happen. And yet in the setting of a near death experience, it can happen. And that just shows us that ultimately we're spiritual beings in a spiritual universe. And our mind and the spiritual essence of us, that's all interconnected, has tremendous power to guide the best and optimal kind of outcome in all these events. So it behooves us to learn much more about our spiritual nature and this kind of power of our higher soul to determine our emergent reality.

Susie Moore:

That's what I keep feeling as I come across your work and I go deeper. I keep thinking, wow, Evan says that this is the single most real experience of my life, what you went through in your coma, and you also say that it's the chief task of your life to share about it. And I'm like, no wonder

Dr. Eben Alexander:

You're right. It's just astonishing. And I had spent the first 54 years of my life before coma, honing a very kind of conventional scientific worldview. But this absolutely shook me to the core. And now I realize, as do many scientists that I work with, and for your listening audience, important to point out that I've written three books about my adventure, proof of heaven, which most people know about. But then the map of heaven was just confirming that these are very common experiences that millions and millions of people have these experiences all the time. But the third book is probably the most important. That's where we really bring science and spirituality together. That's the true proof of Heaven beyond the Book Proof of Heaven. And that book is called Living in a Mindful Universe. And people can learn a lot more about all these books and see the scientific reviews, et cetera. If they go to eon alexander.com. It's a great information resource to learn a lot more about all this.

Susie Moore:

When you were having your experience, Eben, you said that there were three messages that were made very, very clear to you. You almost just summarized it too with one word, but these are the messages that you received, and I find them so soothing and so beautiful. They are, you are loved and cherished dearly forever. You have nothing to fear, and I love this one. There is nothing you can do wrong. Yeah, I feel like we go through life feeling like we're not love sometimes there's everything to fear and we're doing everything wrong. That's how it can feel.

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Well, thank you for sharing that. And yes, that message came from my spiritual guide, the beautiful young woman that accompanied me on the butterfly wing. And it was an extraordinary message. And I think the most important thing to understand is it reflects what so many near-death experiencers tell us that in that realm, it is pure love. That is the ambience, and that is what guides all that happens. That's why when you have a life review in that setting and go through the important events of your life, and it's important to state that a life review is not remembering these events, you're actually reliving the events by so many people's accounts of how this works. But it's important to point out that in that beautiful light and love, it's crystal clear that anything we did to hand out pain and suffering, greed or selfishness, et cetera, just looks incredibly out of sync with that beautiful loving light.

So in that statement to me, you can do no wrong. I knew what she meant, the guardian angel, but I think unfortunately I didn't explain it well enough in the book Proof of Heaven. And some people get to that point in the story and they say, wait a minute, you mean we can do anything we want and it's all fine? And of course the answer to that is no, not even a little bit. But when you've been to that realm of the NDE of the same realm that billions of souls have been to over the last many thousands of years across all cultures, you realize that it's about that light and love. And the more we can follow that light and love with kindness, compassion, empathy, mercy, acceptance of others, realize we're all in this together in many ways, we're kind of sharing one mind.

And so we're really here to help each other. So that statement you can do no wrong implies that you are in that environment and have that deep wisdom of realizing how love and compassion and oneness, the love of the creator for the creation is at the very core of our very existence. And that is the important lesson. But yes, those were very reassuring messages that I received every time I reentered that phase because I would cycle from the earthworm I view where it all began very coarse underground realm up into this brilliant ultra real gateway valley, much more real than this world. And that's where things like life reviews and reconnecting with souls have departed loved ones. All that kind of thing happens. But then I ascended to an even higher level the core where all dualities are resolved, oneness with the divine oneness, with all creation, basically knowing that your mind is the mind of the universe.

And of course we have to get away from our little ego sense of mind. And this is where meditation is so important. This is all the work I do with my partner Karen Newell, who is the co-author of Living in a Mind for Universe. She's the co-founder of Sacred Acoustics, which is a form of binaural beat, brainwave entrainment, a very powerful way of using audio signals with headphones to get into deep transcendental states of conscious awareness. And people can learn a lot more about that if they visit her@sacredacoustics.com. But the good news is that having an NDE is not a requirement to understand all this, to get it to have personal experience that shows you the reality of this. You can do that through centering prayer and meditation. And we just happen to offer some tools and we discuss it a lot in living in a mindful universe. But these tools can be very powerful at separating our conscious awareness from the sense of here now and the sense of self. Because here now and a sense of self in many ways are an illusion provided by consciousness when the brain filters primordial consciousness into this body, into this physical realm, and yet we can explore consciousness beyond the veil, beyond the limits of that apparent selfhood. And here and now by meditation and centering prayer.

Susie Moore:

One thing that struck me as I was reading your work, Eben, is when you speak about evil in trace amounts, and I was like, oh, I've got questions around this. Because when we're speaking about there's nothing you can do wrong, love being the ultimate reality. You say that there's not one universe, but many evil is present in the tiniest trace amounts because without it free will is impossible. And what I took that to mean, I'd love to ask more about this, but it's that we are loved enough to be given this free will. It's almost as if that's how trusted we are. But can you speak about evil and the tiniest tracing mounts? Because I feel like the dominant conversation these days is that it's all scary out there and that the world is an evil scary place. So could you just speak to this a little bit more for us?

Dr. Eben Alexander:

I think that's why it's important for people to get on board with this tremendous revolution in the nature of consciousness because there are a lot of voices out there that are talking about this scientific revolution. Two examples would be scientific and medical.net and galileo commission.org. I work with both of those scientific groups, and they are in many ways far along the pathway of explaining the reality of this quantum and form notion of the primacy of consciousness. But the interesting thing is this of quantum notion of consciousness that's emerging in the scientific world absolutely opens the door wide to free will. That's completely opposite to the conventional science, materialist science that I worshiped before my coma. I do not use that word lightly because materialist science is a faith-based religion often parading around under the guise of what is known as scientism. Scientism is the statement that the falsehood, that the only knowledge that's of value is through the scientific method.

And that is a ridiculous statement. And no scientist would ever say that. In fact, no true scientist. In fact, Richard Feinman in his Nobel Prize speech, he won the Nobel Prize in physics. He said that there is much truth that will never be proven through the scientific method. And I think that's the important thing. Now, getting back to your question of evil though. So in other words, materialist scientists would claim we have no free will. They say it's all chemical reactions, electron fluxes in the brain. They give you an illusion of awareness and free will, but that everything is predetermined. There is no free will. And that's where I think they're absolutely dead wrong. And that is based on an outmoded Newtonian determinism from centuries ago. It does not reflect the wisdom of quantum informed consciousness models that are coming into the world now. Very important.

And the thing is, I learned that to embrace hardship, that was a beautiful gift of my journey. So in many ways to see that the bad things that happened to me in life in many ways would serve as a stepping stone for my growth and transformation. So that's the beginning of starting to look at the dark side. The challenges, the hurdles in life is maybe being your ally and not against you because they're helping to grow you. And when I look back on my life, it's the ing times that have led to the most growth, and that certainly includes my near death experience due to gram-negative bacterial meningo encephalitis. But the other side of it was a realization that from my NDE, and certainly I would say my life since then has proven this beautifully, is there's a tremendous amount of love and kindness and compassion in this world.

You don't necessarily find it if all you do is follow your social media, click bait and Twitter feeds and some of the insane media posturing today that's polarizing and a response to the polarized political situation, et cetera. And all of it can look quite dire. And of course, Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine brings to mind the horrific mode of war. War should have been outlawed a century ago, humanity, I mean for Putin to invade Ukraine like it was 1939, again, I mean the world humanity has learned a lot since then. We need to leave all of that insanity of that. The materialist thinking gives a false sense of separation like it's us versus them, as opposed to the quantum informed uniform kind of version of understanding consciousness and this revolution in scientific understanding, which says we're all sharing one mind, we're all in this together.

That's the deepest lesson that comes from near death experiences is that we're all really sharing one soul, one mind. We're in this together. We have a common purpose. Our mission in many ways is to grow towards that oneness with a divine. And that's what this revolution is all about. But especially when you have your own practice of meditation and pay attention to this emerging story and narrative and literature from the scientists who are leading the charge, including those two groups that I mentioned before, the Galileo Commission and Scientific and Medical Network, you'll realize that we are headed towards peace and harmony and great prosperity for all of humanity. We can do that, but we have to stop behaving like we have been. The status quo is deadly, our addiction to fossil fuels, toxic plastic pollution, et cetera, we need to take much better stewardship of this planet.

And when I talk about the one mind and how we're all in this together, that includes the animal world. I mean animals can have a very rich spiritual essence and it aligns very much with ours. And I think humans will need to adjust their relationship with animals in the coming decades as this revolution really comes through and affects all of us. And this is where we will start to really refine that notion of evil and find that perpetuating selfishness, greed, and evil pain and suffering on others is the antithesis of what we are meant to be doing here as spiritual beings in a spiritual universe. And the more people realize that the science fully supports these notions of consciousness and the binding force of love, the more we will realize the direction in which humanity must head, and that will inevitably be a tremendous reduction in what we sense is evil in our world.

Susie Moore:

Oh my. What comes to mind for me sometimes is thinking, I think that it's easy to believe, Eben, that you have to really got to compete. It's rough out there. You've got to, even going to business is like going to war every day. And there's almost like there's rewards for behaving that way or for thinking that way, being an aggressive human thinking that we've really got to make things happen in this world. What's your sense of that as also a very accomplished, hardworking doctor? Are we sent here? Is it meant to be easy and unfold for us, or is there an aspect of competition in the universe?

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Well, I would say it's important to point out that whole big focus on competition survival of the fittest, et cetera, was actually a misinterpretation of Darwinian evolution from the 18 hundreds. And it was promulgated by the likes of people like Thomas Huxley who really militarized evolution into this hardcore view of only the fittest survive everyone else, parishes end of story. And yet biologists through the 20th century have come to realize and prove time and time again that the best successes that you find in the biological world are successes of collaboration and cooperation between members of a species and between members of different species. For example, when dolphins serve as midwives in the birthing of whale calves, you start to get an idea of how species help each other. And you come to realize that that whole myth of survival of the fittest and that only competition rules the day was really a disease of the toxic thinking of materialist science that was allowed to flourish in our kind of social sciences in the 20th century, economics, things like that. And I think that's what we'll need to change over time is our very economic system that tends to reward bad actors.

I mean, that obviously doesn't work in our bigger best interest. And I think as this revolution in scientific understanding that more honors the oneness of mind and the collaborative aspects of our existence as that becomes dominant, which it will over the next few decades because of the NDE community and because of the science of consciousness, that is what will lead to that much greater peaceful and harmonious world. And I believe part of that will be a reshaping of our economic system of rewards basically, and what we value. Who is it that gets the financial in this world? And it shouldn't be the rapacious billionaires who rip everything off and take all that wealth for themselves. There's plenty to be done in this world where you don't have to be rewarded with billions of dollars. And in fact, from my point of view, especially with this emerging conscious awareness, any society where you have starving children, children who go to bed hungry at night, that also has even one billionaire, that society is out of balance and that that wealth needs to be redistributed.

There should never be that kind of wealth in a world where children are hungry. And that's the kind of principle that I think will come to guide the emerging reality for humanity as this awakening to the primacy of consciousness and the fact that we're all really in this together and should in all of our behaviors and actions on our kindness, compassion, mercy, acceptance, unconditional love to the best of our abilities, forgiveness when necessary. I mean, these are the principles that Indy ears have been coming back with for thousands of years, telling us matter most in life. And from my point of view, one of the worst curses would be to lead your whole life as a hardcore, materialist, greedy, selfish, accumulating all this material stuff. And then on your deathbed you find out as you reunite with souls of your departed loved ones that you were doing it all wrong, that your focus was completely antithetical to one that allowed for soul growth and this existence and you wasted your whole life. So let's learn it now that the big lesson is to take care of others. The best way to receive the love of the universe is to serve as a conduit for that love and share it with all of our fellow beings and all of our thoughts and actions. And I think the more this world can adapt to that kind of paradigm for living, we will see the world become a much kinder, gentler, and more harmonious place.

Susie Moore:

You say Eben too, that it's a terrible burden to live with the amnesia of the divine for even a moment. And I'd love to ask you, so if I were to have met you say 20 years ago and then meet with you say today, 15 years after your experience, is your being completely, have you completely altered? Was there more of a rush, more of a go, go go, more of a dismissal of things? And I mean today, do you have a separation from the divine? Do you still have moments where you're like,

Dr. Eben Alexander:

I meditate daily. I spend about an hour or two meditating every single day. I've been doing that for the last 11 or 12 years, and so I'm actively reaching for the divine every day. And the best news is with a meditation program like that, over time, all of your waking time starts to also benefit from what you've done in the meditative space. I mean, my dream world has changed, adapted to this enhanced meditation space and certainly my sense of peace and harmony and being comfortable in my own skin has become far grander through this regular practice of meditation and living the divine. It's interesting that children, like for example, if you look at the scientific evidence for reincarnation, I didn't know there was such a thing before my coma, but there is, if people go to uva dops.org, that's a University of Virginia division of perceptual studies, you'll find an academic group of scientists who for more than six decades been studying many of these features like near death experiences, telepathy, psychokinesis, all phenomenon of non-local consciousness, but also tremendous work in memories of past lives in children.

And in fact, the UVA group has studied more than 2,700 such cases over the last six decades. And 1700 of those cases are what are called solved. That is they actually found the person who the child is describing. And many of these cases came before the internet when there was really no way to determine that fact without deep, rigorous, scientific scholarly research. And yet what these scientists will tell you is you have to harvest those memories from the child before age five or six because they're natural processes, which I call programmed forgetting that occurs in our childhood so that by the time we're seven or eight, we don't have any of those memories still existent. And that's why so many people, of course, have become separated from the divine. They don't remember that. And our culture is very heavily secular and tends to force people away from any sense of spirituality or divinity.

And yet the deep truth is we all come into this world with that kind of knowledge, and I guess it's to get skin in the game that we have program forgetting so that we end up as adults kind of believing that this is our one existence, birth to death, nothing more our little ego running the show. But that's where meditation can be so powerful because the last thing you want to believe in here is that your ego is who you are. The ego is there to serve a purpose, but it is not who you are. And this deep, profound inquest to find out what is consciousness, what's my relationship with the universe, that's where the meditation shows you that your ego voice, that little voice in your head that you've been paying attention to all these years is a little more than an annoying roommate.

That's how Michael Singer puts it in his book, the Untethered Soul. And I love that phrase, and I learned that 12 years ago in meditation that the most important step early on was to put that ego voice in time out. Now it could make a request. I ask a question of the universe, but then my ego, the ego of Evan Alexander goes into timeout and I begin to explore a much richer, broader consciousness, not limited to the perceived boundaries of self, not limited to the here and now, but a universal mind that we all share. And that is where I think many of us can use meditation and centering prayer to come much more into alignment with all the rest of this universe and with our own personal soul journey. And this is why I strongly advise people, if you don't already take some time out every day to go within and explore, basically you're going out into the universe.

Once you realize that the mind consciousness is not created by the brain but is a fundamental property of the universe, that's where we start to discover of the much grander aspects of self and higher soul and that interconnectedness and it's best to discover it now through meditation so we can live that life and bring those gifts of love into this world then to only discover it when you're leaving the physical plane on your deathbed and then be the shocked materialist to find out, oh my gosh, I was wrong my entire existence. Now it's time to, but then of course you realize your only option, unless you can fix everything up in your life review, is to come back and have it all reshuffled in next lifetime with the same challenges that you had this lifetime.

Susie Moore:

I mean, so many questions are coming to me. One is about the program forgetting. So that happens early in life because you also say in your book that if we have such a memory of where we come from, if we know all of this, it could almost act as a distraction for us to I guess our to fulfill our or to make our contribution in our current lifetime so we can access it through meditation, centering prayer like you said, but it's actually useful to not have knowledge of too much outside of the day-to-day, unless we're reaching for it because this serves us. Is that right?

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Well, I think all of that applies to looking at humanity over the millennia and centuries leading up to now, because especially the ego served more of a purpose back when it was basically predator prey dance. But with the emerging spirituality, with consciousness evolving, expanding, it has shifted dramatically to where those, we still have the program forgetting to a degree. I mean people, obviously some souls are more advanced than others have been through more than others, are much closer to being one with a divine than others. And I think that is kind of a litmus test of how advanced a soul is, is basically how altruistic, how other focused they are. That would be a very advanced soul. But at this transitional phase, and that would be these few years around the current time, I think that NDEs and this expansion of consciousness is actually leading to some significant additional growth that goes far beyond what we were able to accomplish before when it was really that predator prey dance and the ego being dominant.

But now we're evolving to something where we can actually have transformation and evolution of consciousness through this deeper wisdom that comes from these kinds of experiences. And that's why I look at things like near death experiences as a beautiful gift. They serve as a catalyst to help you humanity, to come into an awakening of a grander sense of knowledge because in a sense, NDEs and other spiritually transformative experiences are a way of cheating that program, forgetting and allowing people to dip into those spiritual realms and then come back into this physical body as an adult and have an impact on our cultural general thinking about the nature of reality based on that person experience. So I think it's all shifting, and there's a big dynamic here. We're moving out of that older realm where that ego mind with so much in control, all the greed and selfishness, but now moving into a much more altruistic phase that reflects the deep lessons of NDEs and especially of the science of consciousness.

And religions have tried to teach us these lessons for thousands of years with some success, and sometimes religions cause more trouble than they bring in solution. But the fact that this is now becoming very much a scientific revolution, and that has everything to do with quantum physics with a deeper understanding of the measurement paradox and quantum physics, how every neuron is a quantum computer, absolutely none of it is a Newtonian deterministic machine. And this is where objective idealism or the notion of kind of the divine of spirit of mind in this top down causality comes into view and we start to make a better sense of all that. And this is of course where we go in our book, living in a Mindful Universe, we fully explain every bit of this kind of revolution and how quantum physics is related, modern neuroscience and the hard problem of consciousness, philosophy of mind, and what's known as the binding problem or the apparent unity of consciousness within individuals.

Also, all the evidence for non-local consciousness in parapsychology like telepathy, remote viewing, psychokinesis, all of these things are combined in what we call consilience, which is the agreement in many widely disparate scientific ways of assessment. But they all seem to be pointing to the primacy of consciousness and that our ultimate emergent reality is ultimately determined from this primordial mind. And the good news is, as sentient beings, we have access to that primordial mind or that God mind. And that is the deeper understanding that allows us to realize where there's free will, especially when it harvests these lessons of love and compassion and kindness from these extraordinary spiritual journeys that people have been describing through NDEs and other spiritually transformative experiences through thousands of years. That is where this revolution will be different from 5,000 years of failed efforts of some religions to bring this deep lesson of oneness, love, kindness, and compassion to the world at large. So the world is shifting dramatically along these lines. The science of consciousness is of the tip of the spear in helping us move into this next level of understanding.

Susie Moore:

So when you are meditating daily, are you able to just dip back into that spiritual realm? Are you able to kind of access anything near what you've accessed before? What's your, because I think sometimes people meditate and they go, yep, okay, I do feel a bit calmer now, but I didn't experience anything really euphoric or anything. I didn't see these fireworks or whatever we anticipate. What's your experience?

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Well, this is where that whole notion of remembering that little voice in your head is not your ally in getting to this kind of knowledge. It involves trust. It involves an awareness of this from hearing this kind of talk from someone or reading these books, watching these interviews, and that gives people the seed to work with. But the important thing to remember is the step one is that you're not that ego voice and that goes into timeout. It can certainly ask a question, make a request, kind of guide the meditation, but then it goes into timeout. And that's where I learned to just ride the tones. And here I'm speaking of sacred acoustics, binal, beat, brainwave entrainment. We fully explain that concept in living the mindful universe. You can learn a lot more@sacredacoustics.com, but it's really about learning to just coast with that kind of completely ego free awareness that allows us to explore beyond the veil and get out into the universe.

And that's where I gain so much benefit from my regular practice of meditation. And I would say that this is where people can come to realize, the universe can be trusted to give you certain vision, certain information. And in fact, I would say that many of the most creative minds in science, philosophy, music, art, have used techniques like this to get out of their little ego, mind, their linguistic brain, and get much more in touch with that universal mind. For example, Albert Einstein used to float around in a sailboat looking up at the sky, daydreaming, and that's where he would get his big ideas that revolutionized all of physics. It wasn't from working in a lab. He was doing thought experiments in his mind in this kind of hypnogogic space as it's called. That's the space between awake and dreaming, but he would use that very effectively.

Likewise, Thomas Alva Edison, a founder of General Electric who did probably has more patents than anybody in US history. And he learned to late at night when he was being creative, he would put weights in his hands and they'd drop off and he'd have some micro naps fall asleep, and then the waits would drop, wake him up, another one, another one, and then boom, he was off creating all night long with the inspirations that hit him from that hypnogogic space. Robert Lewis Stevenson had a technique similar to that that gave him ideas for his novels, music, poetry, et cetera, Salvador Dali, Beethoven, others, all these creative geniuses had ways of separating themselves from here now and the sense of self by entering this hypnogogic space, by getting into the dream awake space where the universe can offer tremendous wisdom and nuggets of insight to help us in our journey.

And I've found meditation to be tremendously powerful. And just to cut to the chase for those who might be wondering, the sounds of sacred acoustics have this incredible power because far beyond any other sound that you may have ever heard that helped engender a transcendental state of conscious awareness like a chant or anthem or him, those are all processed in the acoustic lobes, in the acoustic cortex, in circuits that are basically two or 3 million years old and have evolved mainly in homo sapiens and in primates, very, very different from the differential frequency, brainwave entrainment of sacred acoustics, those sounds with a slight different frequency hitting the ears simultaneously intersecting down in the lower brainstem is working with a circuit that arose more than 300 million years ago in evolutionary biology. And that's where the tremendous power of something like sacred acoustics comes to light. And these differential frequency, brainwave entrainment was known to create enhanced out of body states, enhanced states for remote viewing, which is one of the most scientifically validated forms of discerning information across time and space at a great distance.

And so this is where the science is kind of leading the way, the meditative science, and people don't have to wait for the scientific community and the world at large to get up to speed on this. You can do your own work meditating, start with sacred acoustics if you need a powerful tool. But really any way of silencing that ego voice, the linguistic voice in the head, that little voice of anxiety and fear that is so prominent these days with all the clickbait on social media, all the kind of conflicting polarized news from various disreputable outfits, et cetera. This is where we can find some peace and harmony and oneness is by going within. And that's why I highly recommend a regular practice of meditation.

Susie Moore:

I love what you say about how connected we can be. And I mean, I think the great news here is that everyone has access. It's not just Einstein, right? It's not just Edison. They weren't these special people in history. And in the book too, you say, which I love, true thought isn't the brains affair. It's not what offers inspired specific insight or write the inspired song. I think we all know that part of us that comes alive, we can't define it. There almost isn't language. So a question I have for you is what's the relationship then between the consciousness that we can all tap into and the function of the brain? How are they meant to work together for a highest level?

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Well, I think the best way to look at it is for one thing, you start with the assumption that consciousness is primordial, universal, connected, this kind of God mind of the universe, and that we are all connected to that. And that's really the starting point. And then people often in this conversation bring up quantum physics, and it's very important to point out that quantum physics is an essential part of the discussion. But to date, the scientific community has not agreed upon an interpretation of quantum physics where they all say, now we get it. There are at least 16, possibly as many as 29 different postulated systems out there to explain the measurement paradox, which is all about the intersection of mind and the free will of the observing scientists with the experiments and the results of the experiments that are found. But what quantum physics has been basically shouting at us for more than a century is that consciousness is fundamental in primary.

And in fact, many of the founding father of physicists like Wolfgang Polly, max Plank, Irwin, Schrodinger, Pasal Jordan, Eugene Wegner, I mean they all said something about consciousness is primordial. There seems to be one mind in the universe. In fact, Schrodinger wrote a beautiful essay about that whole question of the one mind. And that's where I think people need to realize that then, I mean, I don't have to go into it in great detail. I would really recommend just go read Living in a Mind for Universe where we explore this much more deeply. But it's really what quantum physics, when we examine the micro world around us, the subatomic world, the interesting thing is what you find is everything going on in that world is really dependent on the observing mind. It's not as if there is some physical world out there, a physical reality that's evolving simply by the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology to give us the reality that we see.

And that's where quantum physics is so important. And in fact, over the last five decades, there've been a series of experiments that were all started really by Einstein's objection in 1935 to quantum physics in what's called the EPR paper, Einstein Podolsky Rosen. And he said that there was something missing in quantum physics, that he postulated hidden variables, that there was something we were not measuring about these particles, but it told the particles how to behave in the future so that even when they're separated by light years, they seem to behave as if they're still connected. That's the part that's so weird. And he called it spooky accident, a distance. And the interesting thing is, in 1964, John Bell, a brilliant Irish physicist, posted a paper that proposed a way to experimentally validate, ask Einstein's question, is it spooky action at a distance or hidden variables? And John Bell came up with an inequality that you could examine experimentally.

Every experiment done since the 1970s and early eighties to the current era has proven time and time and over and over again, Einstein was wrong. Spooky action at a distance is absolutely real. Entanglement is real. This is showing us the reality of mind and that mental layer overlying all of it in which all of the physical universe is contained. And that is why the Nobel Prize in 2022 in physics was so important. It was given to three scientists who were absolutely essential at those early questions in the bell experiments, and they finally won the Nobel Prize for entanglement. In many ways, to me, that marks a landmark in modern scientific evolution that the Nobel Prize Committee would honor something that has brought so much controversy and yet is so well proven. And just because it's mystifying doesn't mean we don't have explanations for it. The best explanation is to follow, for example, the relational interpretation of quantum physics of Carlo Vei. But even he doesn't go far enough when it comes to the deep metaphysics of the relationship with consciousness. And to make that leap, I would take Roe's interpretation and apply Bernardo Castro's metaphysics Castro with a K, check out Bernardo castro.com, and you'll realize all of this is very beautifully put together. Bernardo is, I love his work. He's an endorser of our work. He endorsed our book, living in the Mind Universe among many other thought leaders in the world of consciousness Studies like Ed Kelly, Jim Tucker, Bruce Grayson, Larry Dossey.

Susie Moore:

Sorry, you have a lot of support. You have a lot of support. Yeah,

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Scientists who are interested in this, Dean Radden is the other name I was blocking on. He works out at Institute of Neurotic Sciences, but really this is the name of the game and this is the way the world is going. It's a deeper understanding of the brain. Every neuron being a quantum computer is you have to stop looking at it from a materialist standpoint and look at it from the viewpoint of consciousness and what people perceive and the awareness and human experience. And when we do it that way, that's when you really have, you don't have the tail wagon the dog anymore, which is the problem with materialist science and trying to pretend that the brain creates consciousness, which leads to all kinds of problems because it doesn't fit the data.

Susie Moore:

So the brain, I heard you say this once in an interview, it almost acts like a filtering system in the 3D, the world with which we see with our eyes. And so our consciousness, the true thought, all of the magic, the love, it's within our consciousness. And the brain itself is just a very practical, it's a very practical daily tool that helps us make decisions and take actions that means, right?

Dr. Eben Alexander:

And the important thing to point out and again discussed fully in living the mind for universe is the brain not only does it not create consciousness, but only serves as a filter, a reducing valve to allow primordial consciousness to express in this apparently limited fashion. But this is all this notion of the brain as this filtering mechanism. And also the point I was going to make is the brain is not the ultimate register of long-term memories. And that's a shock to so many. It's a final nail in the coffin of materialist neuroscience. But neurosurgeons have known for a long time that out of the millions plus cranial operations on the brain that we've done over the last century never has been a case of any long-term sway of long-term memories removed with brain tissue removal. It just never happens. And in fact, it's a very important point.

But I think the other thing to point out here is that the brain, this filter idea is not a new idea. The filter filtering aspect of the brain in terms of consciousness was really rose to prominence in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds with the work of, say, William James, who was the head of psychology at Harvard. He was kind of the father of American psychology, and he studied many spiritual events in human existence and realized that the brain is a filter of what Aldi Huxley called a reducing valve. And it's interesting, people use the technological equivalent of the day. Back then the steam engine was big. And so that's why they used the term like reducing valve, because that's what you would have in a steam engine these days. People use computers, say computers like a brain, brain's like a computer. No, the brain is not like a computer at all.

It's a quantum computer, which is an entirely different animal. And yet we still pretend that brains are like computers and vice versa. But essentially that filter theory is one that was promoted by William James Bergal in France, FCS Schiller. And of course, as I mentioned, Aldis Huxley who had some profound experiences with mescaline. And he came to realize the brain was not creating consciousness at all, and he was the one who used that term reducing valve. But the brain as a filter is receiving a huge resurgence and interest now in the scientific community. And that filtering mechanism really has to do with noting the primacy of consciousness, kind of our spiritual journey. And that top-down causality from the spiritual realm and how mind over matter can have such power. And for me as a healer, the evidence of that mind over matter is crystal clear. When you look at things like placebo effect, people think, oh, placebo effect sugar pill fixing a headache.

Well, no, it's much more than that. Spontaneous remissions, like if you go to noetic.org, the Institute of Noetic Sciences website put in a search terms spontaneous remission, you'll find a book they published back in the mid 1990s with more than 3,500 cases of people healing from advanced cancers, advanced infection, whatever, beyond any medical intervention. And it was all through this kind of power of mind over matter. And then when you hit near death experiences and the profound healing, for example, in my case in Anita Mojo's case where her lymphoma disappeared, Dr. Mary c Neil, over 30 minute warm water drowning, but she had a full recovery. But they all involve a profound spiritual experience in the form of a near death experience. And that's where I think the power of mind over matter, kind of spirit over matter, as my partner Karen Newell keeps reminding me is a major concept to dwell on that we do have tremendous power over our health and healing. And that's one of the most fundamental examples of Mind Over Matter that I know of.

Susie Moore:

So Evan, you mentioned reincarnation, and I have to ask this because I know everyone's thinking, Ooh, what happens then? As someone who's experienced with your own unique experience, all of the subsequent work that you've done, what happens to us? Can you simplify it? So we have this life experience, there's an end to our life experience. What can we expect? What can we anticipate? I know this is the question that our listeners have.

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Well, when we leave the physical body, what happens is, first of all, we reunite with souls of departed loved ones. That is the fact of near-death experiences across all cultures, especially prominent in ancient cultures, et cetera, is encountering souls of departed loved ones. And then very common in 25 to 50% or so of cases is the life review going through a reliving of events of life. Very important to point out, this is not a remembering, it's not from any memory, and it's not vague. It's detailed, it's incredibly powerful, a reliving of the events of life that are important for helping to determine future pathway and learning of that soul. So the life review, every bit of that, and then this becoming one with the divine, that kind of going back into that ocean of oneness, that ocean of God love that so many Indy ears describe that, that is basically telling you why they don't fear death anymore.

They know it's not extinguishment, it's not the end of conscious awareness. It's a much grander awareness. In fact, the awareness here in these bodies is very limited and constricted and confined. And that's one of the most obvious things is when we are liberated from the shackles of the brain and body, it's clear that our kind of awareness and our mode of knowing has expanded dramatically. And then the thing is though, you could just possibly, okay, so it's back into a notion of oneness. The afterlife is very real and be done with it, except for all of those incredible stories of the past life memories in children. And then of course there's the whole world of transpersonal psychology that began with the work of Carl Jung and then the work of people like Stan Groff, Michael Newton, Brian Weiss, and that whole world of transpersonal psychology is all about the fact that to best explain and treat the psychic issues of this existence means you've got to know about where that soul has been before.

So doing hypnotic regression to retrieve past life memories, things like that is very important in transpersonal psychology. But it's just acknowledging that we're much more than a body living birth to death in this incarnation. And so this is where, and especially when you look at that literature out of UVA divisional perceptual studies, all those childhood memories of past lives that are then proven to be real, and these children, it's not just some vague contact that they got the information from some psychic a well of information, they lived it. That's why they have behaviors, they have fears, all of that. They can have nightmares based on events of their prior life. And in fact, a great book on those lines. I love Jim Tucker's work. He's done excellent scientific work on this. I highly recommend his books, especially the book before, which is an excellent book, but one that's a very exciting read just about an individual American story of reincarnation is called Soul Survivor by Bruce and Andrea Leininger.

And I highly recommend it's a reincarnated World War II pilot who was born in 1998, even though he died in 1945. But you read the details of that story and it's just absolutely mind blowing. But when you read all this huge body of work from these rigorous scientific minds, you realize, of course, reincarnation is real. We don't understand how it works. We need to open our minds to the possibilities. But to each and every one of us as an individual soul, the important thing is to recognize we've been here before that kind of set the stage for the events of this life. And if we want to really make progress in this life, let's spend some time going within connecting with our higher soul, connecting with that grander sense of purpose. And that's where we can really start to bring those lessons into live in these physical bodies in this lifetime and actually make soul progress.

Susie Moore:

You also say, which I love, humor, irony, pathos, these things when they show up in our life, it's almost like a recognition of something. It's true.

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Well, It's that humor, the divine is nothing, if not has a great sense of hilarity and humor, irony of it all. I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about this is one of the biggest shocks you get when you die is to realize your existence hasn't ended. And it's almost like this nudge wink from the universe, like, well, you'll finally get it now. But it absolutely, in fact, I would say that the best test for true intelligence is not a Turing test. The Turing test is a notion that if you ask a computer a bunch of questions and it has an expert system in it that can intelligently answer your questions, if it fools you into believing it's human, then it's passed the touring test. But that does not mean or anything like that. But I think a much better version of finding true intelligence and creativity and self-awareness than the touring test would be if a computer could do standup comedy, which involves self-deprecating humor, then it would really get the wisdom of the universe. And this divine sense of humor would come through loud and clear. But to me, an active inner child, beautiful sense of humor is very much related to the divine and to our ultimate kind of meaning and purpose in life.

Susie Moore:

Oh my gosh. I could keep you for hours and hours on this topic. I've got two last questions for you. I would love to know from your perspective, why are we all here? You said it's to love each other, to give to each other, to help each other. If you had to define what was the purpose of us being here in these temporary bodies at this time altogether on earth, many versions to follow, hopefully, what's the reason behind it? Well,

Dr. Eben Alexander:

I kind of agree with the statement that's on the entrance to the temple of Apollo or Temple of Adelphi in Greece. And that statement is know thyself. And I believe that ultimately our existence is consciousness that is the mind of the universe exploring to probe and find out much more about its own nature. So in essence, and my thinking on this kind of goes back to the writings of Pierre who wrote that beautiful book in the mid 20th century, the phenomenon of Man, and he was a French paleontologist, so he was a scientist used to billion year time cycles, and he was a French Jesuit priest. So he was also very aware of spirituality. And he realized that this huge discussion of Darwinian evolution in the mid 20th century was a valid discussion. But he also realized much, much, much more was going on than just puny little evolution of biological systems on planet Earth.

That in fact, through the cosmos, there was a much grander evolution of all of consciousness. And this is where this notion of primordial mind of the one mind that we promote so heavily in the book, living the Mind for Universe starts to really gain some traction. And we realize that consciousness itself is what is doing the evolving. And from my perspective, it is far, far grander than just humans on earth. We're a part of it. But just like each individual is a part of human conscious evolution of earth, conscious evolution is only part of this much grander kind of cosmic conscious evolution that I believe is ultimately what is going on in the universe. So it's very much a process of kind of self-discovery, understanding, a sense of shared meaning and purpose and coming into alignment with all of human history and all of human experience to help us realize where we fit into this universe. And that's, I think, is the true reason for existence in the here and now. And just like that old saying, all politics is local. Well, all evolution of consciousness throughout the cosmos is nothing more than individual sentient beings coming to a deeper understanding of their kind of relationship with the one mind and sense of meaning and purpose, with the evolution of all consciousness throughout the cosmos.

Susie Moore:

And we keep coming back until we get the message, until we learn the lessons, until

Dr. Eben Alexander:

We keep it. And I think that even in our deepest and richest spiritual awareness in the current era, we can only see so far, we cannot see the ultimate destination. And I would say that's probably because the ultimate destination doesn't exist yet. It's something that's being figured out and understood by this one mind examining itself and coming into this evolutionary process of transformation.

Susie Moore:

Wow. And then eventually, I mean, I hope this is true. Once we arrive, however that's defined, the Gateway Valley core, do we stay there? Can we stay there? It sounds very nice.

Dr. Eben Alexander:

I think that the real satisfaction in soul existence and in spirit existence is in this process of self-discovery. So it's never static. It never gets to the destination, excuse me. But I think the journey is the joy and who knows? I mean, I don't pretend to have an answer to some of these deepest questions. I just know where my investigations currently seem to point. And I think currently that's about the best we can do. But it points in a very optimistic and favorable direction for humanity and for life on earth. That's where this awakening that we're talking about is so crucial for our very survival, not just a few homosapiens, but really much life on earth. About a million species are currently threatened with extinction due to human activities. And it's actually, when you think about it, just downright travesty, that one species evolves to a point where they have the power to destroy all of life on earth through their own stupidity and ignorance. And this is where I think this awakening is absolutely essential for all of humanity to wake up to this sense of oneness and a greater sense of stewardship for this planet.

Susie Moore:

So Doctor Eben Alexander, you already shared a couple of links throughout the episode, but before I ask my final question, if there's one best place to capture all things that you discuss, where should all of our listeners head to today? Well,

Dr. Eben Alexander:

I've mentioned sacred acoustics.com and evan alexander.com, but I would highly recommend inner sanctum center.com, I-N-N-E-R sanctum center.com. And that's a site that it was really Karen's idea. She's the brilliant one in this couple. And there are several resources there, many of which are free. But especially I would point out the inner sanctum center set of interviews that we did during the pandemic. Every two weeks, we would interview one of the thought leaders or other experiencers, one of the scientists of consciousness, et cetera, around the world that we would've been seeing at these conferences that were all canceled because of the pandemic. And that interview series, I would say, is a crash course in learning every bit of this from some of the world's experts. So go to inner sanctum center.com and investigate various options that are available there. But certainly that series of pandemic interviews is really worth more than it's weight and gold to help people get up to speed on all of this.

Susie Moore:

I'll be checking it out too. Thank you. So final question. I mean, there are a million more, but for the sake of timing, if you could impart one message. So just say there's almost like a group of people before you, and it's the last words you could speak maybe a group of say like young people, so like 18 year olds, 19 year olds, 20 year olds. And you could pass on one message, one truth, something just from your heart. What is it you'd most like people to know?

Dr. Eben Alexander:

No soul left behind? This is what Karen and I preach all the time in our work, that this is a revolution that involves all of humanity, and no one is too little or too unimportant to be part of this tremendous awakening. It all is an expression of the binding force of love that we share as spiritual beings living in a spiritual universe. And so I would encourage all of your listeners, for your own beautiful benefit and wellbeing and advancement and transformation and evolution is get on board. Start learning more and more about meditation, centering prayer. Bring all that to action in your daily life because meditation does no good if you don't bring the gifts of love, kindness, and compassion back into every act and thought that you share with this world in the acts of daily living. So it's just an invitation to join a tremendously empowering and refreshing revolution to bring meaning and purpose to your life by being of service to others and expanding this notion of the shared mind and the fact that we are bound together through love, kindness, compassion, mercy when necessary, forgiveness, but we're all in this together.

That's the ultimate message.

Susie Moore:

Dr. Eben Alexander, thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you'll come back. I would love to continue this conversation again and again and again.

Dr. Eben Alexander:

Well, I would love to, Susie, so certainly we could talk again sometime. And what I'd recommend if you want to really make it fun, is invite Karen Newell. She's the brain behind this operation, my partner life partner for the last 11 years. She's the co-author of Living in Mine for Universe. She's the co-founder of sacred acoustics.com, and she is a foun of wisdom when it comes to meditation, when it comes to personal journeys and the tremendous benefit that individuals can gain from this revolution. Karen is the cat's meow. So I would have Karen, we get on with Karen. Karen,

Susie Moore:

I'm coming for you, Karen. Stay tuned. Audience listeners, we are getting Karen. Karen will be next too. Well, what a treat, Dr. Eben Alexander, thank you so much and to all our lovely listeners. Until next time, love and ease. Hey friend, I've got something really cool for you. I want to give you free access to my signature course called Slay Your Year, which typically sells for $997. You can check it out, all the details@slayyouryear.com. All you have to do to get access is leave me a review. Leave a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Take a snapshot of it and send it to info@suzy-more.com. That's info@suzymore.com, and we'll get you set up with access.