DR EBEN ALEXANDER

Well, I was a neurosurgeon, I grown up in a Neurosurgical family. My father was head of a neurosurgical training program so I was very scientific. I grew up with his guidance deeply steeped in modern science he was also very religious but for him, there was never a conflict between his very profound belief in God and his scientific understanding but I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s and like many of that generation, I came to see you know, science is the pathway to truth. Everything’s got to be scientific if it’s going to be believable and that is very much the case but I also came to realize through my coma journey and that was thanks to a beautiful case of severe gram-negative bacterial meningoencephalitis to understand how I could have had such a rich experience when our conventional neuroscience would very proudly say, I should not have experienced anything at all because meningitis completely wrecked my neocortex-the human part of the brain and that’s what this is all about is coming to that richer understanding of the nature of consciousness and the nature of reality.

 Well, I was very far gone from this universe and an important thing to point out is that my near-death experience is very much one where I had absolutely no memory whatsoever of Evan Alexander’s life before the coma. I had no words, I had no language, no religious concepts, and none of my scientific knowledge from more than 20 years spent in academic neurosurgery. Everything was completely deleted so I started with an empty slate now that’s atypical most near-death experiences involve some memory uh you know sole memory of one’s existence before that event uh.but I didn’t have that and so it makes it an unusual case initially I explained all that by you know taking the typical uh conventional neuroscientific approach of saying well if my neocortex was as badly damaged as my doctor said, of course, that would get rid of all memories and that’s why I had no words or language or memories of the earth of this universe uh, in fact, the true answer is much deeper than that the reason why I had an empty slate going in but it is what allowed for such a profound experience and profound shift in my thinking uh part of part of the whole journey was not to have my preconceptions that would kind of guide my interpretation of the experience and when I did first wake up in the uh…ICU room, it’s important for people to understand my brain was devastated uh…I woke up with my uh.. my mother, my sons, sisters at the bedside and I had no idea who these beings were when I first came back I had no words or language, my brain really was wrecked just as my doctors had predicted but I recovered very quickly, astonishingly and in fact words and language came back over hours and days, childhood memories over weeks. All of my previous knowledge of religion and in science returned over about eight weeks to the point where people would often ask me you know two and three months out, “Are you back at 90 or 80 percent?” and I would say well I’m back at about 120 percent. The memories were actually more complete than they had been before the coma and that’s a very difficult thing to explain and it didn’t become apparent to me for several years but the thing is when I did wake up in that ICU bed uh…not recognizing family members and all that I knew very well where I had just been it was an odyssey that seemed to last for months over years a very extensive journey that I went on and yet it had to fit within seven earth days because that’s how long I was in that coma and it was in an around very far removed from our 40 dimensional space-time in fact, the lessons of my journey uh…go very deeply into questioning everything about the nature of existence as we see it. Everything that we think about, our understanding of mass, energy, space, and time of all of existence you have to throw out the window and start over at square one and that’s why it was such a gift to have such an extraordinary journey even to the extent that I did of, of losing everything that I had before to fully frame up the experience the way that I often present it to people,

My journey showed many, many layers, uh and of course, those who’ve read Proof of heaven will realize it, all started what I call the earthworm eye view a very primitive course kind of foreboding uh and unresponsive realm, it was like being in dirty jello but I was rescued from that beginning by a slowly spinning white light, a clear white light with fine silver and golden tendrils coming off of it, spinning slowly and it came with a perfect musical melody uh turns out that music sound vibration uh provided uh portals they, they were the energy the, the way that my soul was able to ascend through these many layers uh heaven is in many ways a complex place, not a not a simple place, our spiritual home but it all goes towards that oneness, towards that core realm of pure infinite, unconditional love at the core and then as one is immediately outside of that and, and believe me our words, our language is so much into you know, separation and definability that our words do no good to really convey this but the general idea is that uh it’s almost like the event horizon around a black hole, there’s that pure oneness and being in that oneness but then right outside of that uh the ability to see kind of the structuring and what uh this apparent separation in our dualistic realm emerges from and then it would come all the way down. Now for in my journey uh it started in that earthworm’s eye view that very primitive course underground realm uh there was a beautiful spinning clear white light that served as a portal up into this rich brilliant ultra real valley, the issue there is you were not seeing with the eyes or hearing of the ears and your, your information stream is not limited by the veiling function that normally is present in our brain and so it’s full bore on consciousness that’s why it’s so overwhelming, so hard to explain you’re completely up and outside of space and time now in that Gateway Valley that’s where I would say that often uh reuniting with higher souls, soul mates, soul groups planning next incarnations all that kind of thing happens that’s where the life review occurs that is where we come full bore into that infinite healing power of that unconditional love that deity that presence of that God or whatever your word is for that but then there were higher levels beyond that for me that beautiful Gateway Valley, although it was very earth-like. I describe butterflies and a beautiful girl on the butterfly wing and all of these millions of flowers, trees blossoming, buds on trees, and all of this lush fertility, everything in growth and constant creation no death or decay. Thousands of souls down dancing below lots of joy and merriment all of it being fueled because up above swooping orbs, golden orbs of light leaving sparkling trails these were Angelic choirs emanating these chants, anthems, hymns that would thunder through me like tidal waves this incredible astonishment and awe the beauty of the place and yet that was only the beginning on the way out to that core realm to that infinite Oneness uh and so it’s, it’s so crucial to understanding that uh the home of our soul is a beautiful rich pure love place of, of kind of consolidation of these lessons and of approaching that oneness uh and yet we can see how that structure unfolds all the way out to these lowest levels um and this is where that love though is so important because we can all come in touch with that, we can remember that. I often say that we’re all death experiencers given the, the reality of reincarnation, we’ve all been there many a time so we can remember it uh there’s an emerging field of transpersonal psychology uh that is all about past life and between life regressions and there’s a tremendous body of research in those uh in those stories that help us to see that we are far grander beings and it’s this much grander knowing of who we are and why we’re here that I think is so helpful at coming to an understanding of, of, of our existence.

Well, I have grown up as I said my father the academic neurosurgeon, he was very religious he would take me to our Methodist church every Sunday, I wanted to believe what I heard in that church but I was very you know, scientific and very uh doubting and very skeptical and I, I wanted proof of anything I was going to believe uh and I will say that over many years in, in neurosurgery learning more and more about the brain I was mystified how could conscious awareness survive the death of the brain and body to me that was a very deep mystery, my coma Journey showed me very clearly how that is the case because in fact what it showed me is our brain is not the creator of consciousness. The consciousness is primordial and is, is the supporting base on which the whole universe exists now heaven to me uh before my coma I had a pretty conventional view, it was basically I based my ideas of heaven on what I read in the Bible and um that was really it and I thought that our existence was one Incarnation and then eternal uh heaven or hell and of course as I said that kind of faith uh left me over time just because of my, my work in neurosurgery and trying to figure out how we could have conscious awareness after ending of the uh of the body and brain, now my conception of heaven shifted uh completely 180 degrees very radically shifted. Heaven is absolutely real, Concrete Solid Rock Solid real, all around where we are the thing that is not as real is this material world. In many ways, the material world the four-dimensional space-time in which we exist is set up as a stage. I kind of like, I like to look at it as a Hollywood facade like they would film an old western or something, that’s what this material world is but it’s a very important facade in fact, I would say the entire uh reality of this universe exists to support this kind of Illusion of the four-dimensional space-time and our sense of being beings incarnate for a finite period in these physical forms uh and in fact what I came to realize is that our deep real eternal ongoing home of the now is that heaven and that heaven is very rich, it is something that generates all of this uh kind of illusory material realm out of it and that is our true home and we can, we are, we are there all the time important to understand that it is very much about love and about oneness. I think to, to get back to your original question about the view of heaven now uh is realizing that we, we exist in that heaven when our physical body dies it is actually the release of our awareness from the prison of our physical brain and body and we come back into a much grander awareness that’s the big shock about it all and it has to do with the fact that this is a spiritual universe, we’re Spiritual beings and we are eternal, we do not die with the death of a physical body but also different from my prior views reincarnation is absolutely crucial to understanding any part of this. Reincarnation was shown very clearly to me on this journey is the way that all of sentient beings are shown this, this kind of existence and this kind of temporary uh incarnations but in fact our bigger life is much grander than that involves multiple incarnations in this beautifully interwoven tapestry of, of ascendants of our coming to learn and know the lessons to learn and teach the lessons with our fellow beings in these incarnations, in this uh in this realm so the important thing to remember is as real as heaven is, as that blissful state that complete uh overwhelming sense of love, of compassion and of mercy of that deity at the core of our very consciousness uh the understanding of heaven is to see how this is the most important part of our existence in many ways that is this, these incarnations uh as real as that heaven is the way we progress in that heavenly realm uh towards ascendance, towards oneness with the divine is through the trials and tribulations of our life here on earth and over time, over these many incarnations we learn and teach and we grow so I came to see that in fact it’s the the kind of ugly words and Imperfections of this life uh the hardships and difficulties and challenges that in fact are the beautiful engines to drive our growth and ascendance and it’s how we deal with them and the more we learn to remember that we are eternal spiritual beings that we are essentially all completely divine and one with that God and what we are here to do is to remember that, remember it through the love for ourselves as those divine beings, come to realize that the love that so many near-death experiencers who see that love touch it and once you’ve felt and touched and become one with that unconditional love and come to recognize the infinite power it has to heal then all of this starts to make much more sense and what we’re here to do is to manifest that love to remember that divinity and kind of sacred infinite capacity within each and every one of us to manifest that love of the creator for the creation because we’re all in the process of co-creating this evolving universe. We’re all part of that and in our, in our Western culture sometimes we have a difficulty of identifying with the oneness of that God of that powerful essence of pure love, and yet that is exactly our birthright and this is what we are here to remember that’s what these lives are all about is to recover that love. I came back seeing that so much of the difficulty in our world today the vast majority of it. It’s because we don’t even love ourselves enough, we don’t remember that divine birthright that incredible power that all children know, you know children know that well. They come into this world knowing it and feeling it. unfortunately, our culture has a way of kind of covering it up and-and so this is really about just remembering what little children know uh helping our children to remember it and bring it into their adult lives that we are spiritual beings, that when a loved one departs the physical plane they’re not gone and of course children do that, know that very well, they’re often interacting with the souls of departed loved ones unless adults have told them, “no that’s just your imagination you’re making it up” to the point where they drill it out of them. All we’re doing is remembering that connection and that power because in fact, unconditional love has infinite power to heal at all levels whether we’re talking about uh physical illness in this Incarnation and some of the the trials that we all face in terms of addictions and relationships and, and all the troubles of human interaction but by remembering that love and the infinite power of that love and recovering that love for ourselves and manifesting that love by showing the oneness that we all share, that is how we can come to ascend and grow and learn by knowing that this heaven is absolutely real and is right.

here I think what stops US is um we get sucked into the kind of secular material uh version of things and we forget that Divinity within us all that love the power of that love uh and it’s by recovering the power of that love that really gives us the ability uh to come to all this knowing in this Incarnation now one thing that I strongly recommend to people who are serious about uh kind of coming to know these many people say oh I want my own near-death experience but the key is you don’t have to wait till you die or almost die to come to know everything I know about these realms, you can come to know that through a practice of going within centering prayer, deep meditation this is why I do a lot of the work that I do with sacred acoustics to provide tools for people to go into very deep transcendental meditative states. Once you realize the physical brain does not create consciousness you begin to realize that going within consciousness is actually a way of getting out into this universe. The modern, scientific model that is replacing that old worn out and untrue production model you know that the brain produces consciousness is called filter theory, the idea that consciousness is primordial it pre-existed the Big Bang, consciousness is the big creator of the universe many of us come to see that fantastic consciousness as God and a near-death experience or similar spiritually transformative experience but that knowing of that wisdom is something that is within us all, the brain allows consciousness in, in a tiny little trickle. It’s an illusion just the tiniest little smidge of illusory here and now and by going within, we can actually work our way to the other side go beyond the veil that people transcend in a near-death experience or other types of spiritually transformative experiences, and come into that universal and infinite consciousness in all of its power, it’s a tremendous source of guidance, of creativity, of the ultimate source of health, if one wants to heal in any sense and I would say that all physical, mental, emotional health fundamentally involves spiritual health. All of the illness and injury and-and hardships in our life at its very origin are opportunities for spiritual growth and it’s how we deal with those hardships and how we continue to bring back that memory of the infinite divinity within us all of that oneness and connectedness that by connecting with that one mind that we get to through that meditation or centering prayer what we’re doing is connecting with all. all other beings, all of this creation because any sense of separation is right at the heart of the difficulty and the distortion and understanding and of course that’s part of our language as Renee Descartes said, “to Define is to limit” well all of the definitions of our language give you this false sense of separability of everything and that’s why I love meditation going within it’s a top-down approach that allows you to see the big picture to see that all of this is really one process we’re part of one truth and by going within we can come to glimpse, in fact I would say it’s one of the Hallmarks of the difficulty with our current scientific paradigm, our conventional science right now is what is called reductive materialism first of all it believes the material world is the only thing that exists which is false, the thing that exists is consciousness, the material world as I said earlier is the illusion but in fact when one comes to realize that and realize that reductive materialism are conventional science splits everything down into subatomic particles the smallest piece is possible and then assumes that we can use the laws that govern those interactions to then figure out how the whole universe works they’ve got it completely backwards what we need is that top-down approach that one can get to through deep meditation this is why to me any approach to physics and cosmology can involve both that the subatomic physics and particle work but also combined with that top down that uh deep approach into consciousness and its rich source of creativity and understanding of the nature of the workings of reality to come up with the real way of understanding how this universe works but as long as we depend fundamentally on that reductive materialism, as our model for understanding all of truth and all of reality in the universe. We are forever stuck in this tiny little back corner of the bedroom closet thinking that we’re seeking truth right here where it can be found only because that’s where we understand things the best and so it really is a completely different way of looking at things the top-down approach meditation realizing that the universe is one and that any act of compartmentalizing and suffering it out into pieces introduces distortion and confusion

God is in Consciousness, I mean under for one thing I can promise you that those materialists and unbelievers with all their discussions don’t have even the remotest clue about how consciousness exists, now, in fact, the science that I worshiped before my coma that reductive materialism and I don’t use that word lightly it is a faith-based religion you know that all that exists is physical and that the brain creates consciousness is a faith-based religion and the more you get into consciousness into studying the mind-body relationship it’s called The Mind Body debate it’s been going on in a formal sense for more than 2 600 years ever since a time of Plato and Aristotle and other great Mystics East and West it has evolved to a point now where we really need to begin figuring it out. Now our conventional science that same science that grew out of the 400-year-old scientific revolution of pretending that there’s A Clockwork Universe out there that’s ticking away by the rules of the natural world completely independent of the Mind Of The Observer that should have been obliterated as a world view of 115 years ago with the Advent of quantum mechanics and yet they have not been able to move beyond it, what quantum mechanics is trying to tell us in a very deep fashion is that consciousness is fundamental in the universe that all emerges out of consciousness and so those materialists who insist on believing the brain creates consciousness and that the material world is the only thing that exists. end up hitting an absolute wall around the phenomenon of consciousness to the point where they will try and tell you that consciousness itself is an illusion that it doesn’t even exist that it’s simply the result, an Epi phenomenon of the workings of the subatomic particles in the brain assembling into atoms, molecules, cells of the brain following natural laws that are why they would tell you we have no free will, consciousness isn’t illusion they have it completely backward because they don’t realize the fundamental nature of consciousness in fact no human being has ever witnessed anything other than the inside of their own consciousness. All of the out there, everything that we see as out there in the world is uh but an internal construct, it’s a model within mind I mean not even the brain and all of that is within that realm it’s a consciousness itself is what is fundamental and generates it all.

I would say that consciousness is our awareness. Consciousness is the Observer uh very important to point out the little voice in my head is not my consciousness, little voice in my head is uh is putting a beautiful book “The untethered soul” is little more than an annoying roommate, now this is important to get because what we’re talking about in terms of meditation, in terms of going within is developing uh and strengthening that observer self-the awareness that is what is the real deep mystery if you’re talking about the measurement problem in quantum mechanics or the hard problem of consciousness is that awareness self and so to that eight-year-old boy what I would uh tell him is that it is who he sees himself to be but that he is far grander than just a being stuck for a certain period of time as an incarnation in a body here in the physical plane we are each and every one of us far grander than that all interconnected and all absolutely interconnected with that God with that creative deity, of the source of all that is and by exploring within our mind going within our awareness in, that observer self and letting the universe  present itself to us, we begin to see more and more about how all of this works our role in it, our way towards health and towards the right relationships with people and the right relationship with ourself in terms of growing and ascending towards that oneness with the divine, it’s all through coming to acknowledge that consciousness as the awareness, the observer within.

The ego is the part of me that identifies as-as myself and the ego is a very important construct, it gets a little bit of a bad rap in spiritual circles but in fact, the ego is to be embraced but the important thing to remember is if the ego gets it all out of control uh as we often see say in cases of addiction um uh and addiction in the broad sense of you know where people’s lives get wrecked by their behavior, by seeking certain kinds of pleasure and affirmation that are unhealthy for them. What’s going on there is the ego is taking control uh it’s, it’s kind of leading away from remembering the infinite uh powerful sacred divine being that you are and instead kind of dragging you down into the uh kind of here and now of a, of a zero-sum game in this material realm where we think well this ego has to do the best and that’s to the expense of the other egos around me and that’s where it starts leading you down a false pathway, in fact you can honor the ego by realizing that, by reconnecting to my higher soul to that much greater wisdom and awareness that universal consciousness and infinite knowing what I’m able to do is see the win-win situation that it’s not a zero-sum game that there is no lack of abundance and that is where the ego can get one in trouble but the ego itself can grow beautifully with us as long as we realize that we’re interconnected with all other beings, this is not just about humans, we’re interconnected with all life, it’s not even limited to life on earth and as long as we can reconnect with that higher soul and with that connectedness of all existence and realizing that love is the fundamental coin of the realm and that we can come to solutions of love, compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and mercy that can guide all of our actions and decisions with a very healthy ego. As long as it’s realizing that the benefit of all is what we’re shooting for, not just the benefit of one in that limited kind of zero-sum game, Illusion of thinking that material realm um is a lack of abundance and this is where I think uh ego gets a bad rap but we can easily keep ego alive but it’s by realizing that a lot of what our modern culture tells us about the limitations and that we’re competing with others and we must defeat others to gain our goals is wrong and that’s where the ego can get way out of control and lead us down pathways that are very damaging for our own health and for our relationship with others and for the health of the evolving soul group and all of humanity.

In many ways that can be the voice of the ego kind of out of control, the ego that has been over uh influenced by our modern secular culture a culture of limitation, a culture of conflict, a culture of competition and, and uh victor and defeat as opposed to one that sees the win-win situation, the annoying roommate is that ego uh kind of out of control, this is really very much about balancing ego with kind of awakening and the more we can awaken to the oneness that we are all part of this so if I hurt someone else, I’m hurting myself in a very deep and very real sense and that’s why this is such an important lesson for people to get there’s a recent book that I just love it’s by a good friend of mine Dr. Larry Dossey it’s called the “One Mind” and it talks about this very issue of, of how modern consciousness science is getting deeply into an understanding that there is one consciousness throughout this universe. We are all part of that consciousness and its deepest. richest message to us is all about that love and the healing power of love and this is all about recovering that memory that we are eternal infinitely powerful divine sacred spiritual beings. We’re not these little bodies and birth to death, we are far more than that the point is to make choices out of love and not out of fear I mean the main tools of the ego especially the ego out of control are fear and anxiety you know, anxiety over the uh past fear of the future usually a fear of lack of abundance of not having something that we think is important for us and this is why it is in many ways I would say that our modern culture does seem a bit mad when you look at it from the outside and so much of that, is related to that kind of worship of the ego and of competition and of success whereas the greatest success that we can achieve as human beings comes through remembering that love for us, the love of the divine for us that, that the universe loves us that we are created and in every way are perfect all is well in a very rich sense but only if we can kind of come to open up to that balance that harmony uh that adjustment because the way our modern culture deals us especially with an ego that’s out of control uh is really something that can be maddening and extremely frustrating and yet the answers lie within us all we all have the capacity as conscious beings to go within and to actually come away with very rich peace and harmony and and just a oneness with existence that’s easily within our grasp but it’s just a question of taking a slightly different view and remembering that incredible power that we have as spiritual beings, a huge part of this is denying that simplistic can false material paradigm and that’s where I think our our modern science is so misleading.

 It’s one of the reasons why I’m such a big proponent of-of meditation because for me meditation is a beautiful gift because what it does is especially when I use those sacred acoustics tones that I talked about, they allow me to really develop that observer self. The awareness that takes the big view that is way outside of you knows this little ego and this little body living in this Incarnation but sees me in that broader sense. I look at it as a way of reuniting with our higher soul and even though that annoying voice, the annoying roommate can keep chattering away when I meditate with these tones I’m very easily able to simply acknowledge it see it is there but realize that the observer within me is far grander than that and it is one that is freed up from the ego that is something that comes at a, at an early stage in this kind of meditative practice as I said I try to meditate an hour two or more a day if I can, I’ve been doing that for more than the last five and a half years and to me it’s absolutely crucial, I can’t understand why anyone would not meditate it’s such a rich source of creativity of insight of guidance of health and healing for self and others for understanding, there are rich gifts that come from it but it is the most ready and uh reliable way that I know of uh.. to put that little voice the ego and especially if the ego is trumpeting fear and anxiety to put that in its place because in fact that much greater view that enables us to see the win-win situation enables us to see that by loving ourselves fully as these divine eternal beings that we are and by showing that love best by manifesting it for those around them around us all in a way of acknowledging the oneness that this is really a way out of all of that fear and anxiety, a way to completely disconnect that annoying roommate that often drives our lives uh.. of the fear and anxiety about competition in this world and coming to see that, that in fact by, by that bigger view that we can get from going within consciousness, finding those answers that lie within us all, is a very ready key to being able to escape the shackles of that annoying roommate.

I think they are just like all the hardships in life, the difficulties and challenges, they are gifts they are the opportunities for the growth of our soul, and the more we come to see that the difficulties in our life are there to serve as stepping stones, they’re there to assist us in our growth and I often uh tell people that no matter how dark the valley you walk, no matter how great the loss and tragedy that you sense. If you are able to step outside in this, in this manner through deep meditation, through taking this uh this bigger view, you are able to then rise up and, and grow beyond it. It’s, it’s through the process of remembering, the power that we have as divine beings that are connected as one with that creative force in the universe with that God that deity uh that is how we are able to then manifest and co-create the world that we want to bring into existence and the more we see those difficulties and challenges uh that allows us to heal all healing at its fundamental uh level is spiritual in nature so that I would say that addiction is one of the most clear-cut examples of, of how we can use that as a stepping stone. Addiction is so much about that ego kind of taking control, letting fear and anxiety rule our lives uh forgetting the divinity within us, forgetting that love has infinite power to heal, and by forgetting all those things which are our birthright which are there when we start this life but by forget getting them or losing track of them which we are prone to do in this culture that’s where all the trouble comes in. You know in addiction one thing that’s been very successful is the 12-step programs and 12-step programs are about turning it over to a higher power and this is uh realizing that, that higher power is something accessible to us as our higher soul that we can get in touch with through deep meditation and centering prayer uh by turning it over realizing that our ego is not the big driver and that all the problems and, and vexing challenges in our existence here actually have solutions that are very ready, if we can take that much bigger grander view from above and that includes problems that come in in the form of addiction and addiction can come in many many different ways not just alcohol and drugs but addiction to work, addiction to sex, addiction to love, addiction to all kinds of things. It’s an addiction because it drives our behavior in a very uh unhealthy way and this is where reconnecting with our higher soul and that bigger view that can see the win-win in every situation and can even see its way through tragedies like a terminal diagnosis, loss of a spouse, death of a child these extremely vexing challenges no matter how dark that valley as I said there are ways by going within and coming to see this bigger view that we can come to a much greater understanding that disables that ego and the destruction that we face with addiction. What I would say is addiction is looking for love in all the wrong places and the other side of it to remember is addiction really is trying to fill a spiritual whole with something material and there I would include material would be relationships whether it’s love, sex what have you some affirmation and again it comes from forgetting the divine eternal spiritual beings we are one with that deity and by forgetting that we lose track of that of that knowing so, in fact, addiction is kind of like the task of Sisyphus you know, from Greek mythology where Sisyphus had to push this round stone up to the top of a conical hill and every time it got to the top, it would roll down and so he had to keep pushing it up. Very much, addiction is the same thing, it’s an endless battle that is unwinnable um I have had many uh close associations with addiction, I myself stopped drinking alcohol in 1991 because I had great trouble with it that was never a problem at work but it was a deep problem in my personal life. I know what that addiction is like from the inside and-and to me, it is an unfillable hole and if, if we come to realize to me, one of the biggest problems in our modern civilization is especially when you buy into the secular materialism we completely lose track of our spiritual nature and I’ve come to realize that the entire universe is entirely spiritual we are all spiritual beings and the more we’ve lost sight of that the more difficulty we have in and navigating this life and essentially alcoholism and addiction of all forms, is an example of trying to fill that bottomless pit uh you know with material stuff and it just doesn’t work it’s a spiritual vacuum and so that’s what needs to fill it and that’s why turning it over in a sense that going for a higher power works so well because we realize that we’re not here having to drive the bus every second and I would say in that from that point of view I’m speaking of the ego that gets so caught up in the fear and anxiety of having to control and make things work in this life and it’s by turning it over in a sense and from my point of view that is connecting with our higher soul, with that higher good, with that oneness and connection we share with all fellow beings, where that love and compassion and forgiveness have so much power and that’s what that success of kind of turning it over uh really has to do with because addiction itself is deadly and you cannot think your way to this solution. I’ve known many people who are very smart, known physicians, fellow physicians who died from alcoholism or drug addiction uh knowing all they needed to know but what they were not doing – was experiencing with with the heart and going in with that love of self and love of others and feeling that love in that very deep way. It’s something you can’t think your way into and that’s why I also often tell people on a spiritual pathway that you can read all the books and study everything you want to about consciousness, go to all the workshops, all the great speakers but at the end of the day the answers lie within us all and the only way to truly get there is going within that’s why meditation is absolutely essential. Centering prayer whatever means we have for reconnecting to that higher power which is really our higher soul and our connectedness to all of the other life throughout the universe.

Well! I think that um medications in every sense tend to be overused in our society. I’m a firm believer that a lot of the real difficulty with things like depression uh and suicide that we face as an epidemic in this country today and in our culture um the way out is not more pills, the way out really depends a lot on gaining that spiritual health that I was talking about coming to reconnect with our spiritual self, connecting with others, connecting through that love, remembering that love for self. I believe that uh this real scourge on our, on our modern society in the form of depression and a lot of that kind of illness dissatisfaction with our lives is a result of that spiritual vacuum that in its extreme forms lead to addiction of all the, all the sorts that we’ve discussed and so this is really about a complete shift. I see that all of healing will be revolutionized as a practicing or As a neurosurgeon, I see that a tremendous amount of shift, that is coming with the awakening. This kind of expansion of conscious awareness that we’re discussing will involve improvement in health that in fact we’ve come to rely way too much on an industry uh in this country that gobbles up more than uh three trillion dollars a year uh that is our uh kind of health care complex in the United States uh and it’s all about going after illness and there’s such a heavy focus on, on illness and on sickness and every bit of that whereas in fact what we can do is get a far grander uh result in terms of focusing on health and starting with young children and focusing on spiritual health and really kind of getting into that love and recognition that letting that love flows through us remembering the love for us, manifesting it as a love for others, compassion, forgiveness gives us tremendous power to overcome a lot of what can lead to depression and suicide that we try to treat with all of these medications uh and in fact, the deeper answer to all of it has to do with this spiritual awakening and. and basically a remembering of the divine spiritual beings that we are and I see it as one of the greatest benefits coming from the awakening that I see coming to the world has to do with health and healing and it all begins with that spiritual health and that will filter down into physical mental and emotional health for the whole civilization. 

It was very clear to me on my journey that love is absolutely the coin of that realm and that in fact, we are love. It, it’s uh to even think of it as an act or something that we must think about doing or not doing, making a choice about to manifest that we are Love, we are created in love, we come into this world in love and to serve as a conduit for love. I like to look at it uh. as being a conduit for the love of the creator for the creation because we’re all co-creating this universe as all of consciousness evolves and it’s really more of a remembering that we are love and the best way to manifest that love for ourself because first and foremost it must begin with that. There’s no way to love others knowing to love our enemy if we don’t first Love ourselves and so

and yet um that’s such a cause of uh travesty in this world today I would say that the vast majority of the world’s problems are that we don’t love ourselves so it’s really about being the love that we are. I often credit my life partner Karen Newell uh who taught me that uh coming back from my NDE, I was so focused on brain, mind, consciousness. You know as a neurosurgeon focusing on what it revealed to me about consciousness and she helped me to connect the dots to realize it is all about love which I look at as kind of a heart consciousness uh and that is a much richer way for me to look at it and it’s by, by bringing that love uh into my awareness so through meditation uh through any kind of memories of my NDE, through just living this life and manifesting that love for self and we can all do that. So it’s not a kind of an egotistical love, it’s not the kind of love that says well I need to have all the biggest toys you know and that’s how I win uh it’s there’s a much richer love for self that really comes from seeing that connectedness with all fellow beings realizing that we love ourselves by loving others uh and of course that old saying you know “love your enemy” well guess what, that has absolutely tremendous power uh one cannot overstate the importance of forgiveness uh in this, in this whole business and forgiveness sets free the forgiver and this love is something that we manifest we are the love and the love has infinite power to heal the more we visualize that and come to know it and manifest it in every one of our choices so the choices are not made out of fear but out of that love uh this world becomes a much better place.

Forgiveness is one of the most powerful tools on, in this universe. forgiveness is the greatest gift to the forgiver and this is something that people would do well to keep in mind. There’s a beautiful book on this topic that I often recommend to people it’s called “The Deal” it’s by Richard Smoli and when you read it, it will change your life in showing how forgiveness empowers one tremendously and I don’t care what the transgression is no matter how severe and unforgivable it may seem that’s where the true power of forgiveness comes through and shines in all of its beauty so forgiveness is really uh setting free the other one it’s it’s acknowledging that we’re all in this together that in fact by loving others and by letting go of, of any kind of hatred I may have or of any dislike for a perceived transgression of someone else against me. It sets me free that forgiveness uh has amazing power and it is really uh a gift that I have seen over and over again in the talks that I give when people tell me their own stories. What I see over and over is the power of that forgiveness to release us from the shackles of the prison that binds us if we harbor that kind of resentment against another human being.

Well I think when it comes to parents it’s important to remember uh our parents have done the best they could do at the time with what they had and of course most people uh for their parenting skills they look to their own parents and they either try to model and emulate what their own parents did if they think they got most of it right or they try and do the opposite which is of course often the case um so always remember that, that our parents were trying to do their best and uh remember that they were a reflection of the struggles that they had as a child and, and that often those kind of imperfections are not cleared up by the time one becomes apparent uh so parents are not perfect uh just like no one is, is perfect in that sense and I think that as we can come to take that bigger view and really see the love that they manifested and then come to see that there were times when they may not have been so loving and try to open our minds to see how that could have been and and enlarge our field of view uh to where we’re considering what they had gone through as a child because that’s what kind of shaped their abilities as a parent and the more we can kind of expand that and, and see it uh with all of the features a positive and negative that were involved the more we can come to a place of forgiving our parents uh it’s for any kind of lapses.

I’ve, I’ve said for a long time the only way out is through this is kind of a way of seeing the hardships and difficulties in life as something we need to move through, you can’t just deny them and sugarcoat them this is why it’s so important to process grief and I would say that suffering is a gift it’s a beautiful part of our existence but we, we don’t let it run away with us in terms of being the goal it’s important to see that the challenges and hardships in our lives and the suffering that we, we feel. The loss of a loved one or rejection by a loved one, etc that these are our growth opportunities but we must live through it, we must take that broader view uh comes into it with our higher soul perspective try and to see the greater good in it all, try and remember the beautiful loving power of our spiritual nature and in that sense, we can come to a much richer understanding and processing of those challenges and life.

I think that’s a beautiful point the whole notion of Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey. This is all, this is soul school. in fact, I would say of all of existence is about learning and teaching, it’s about sentient beings uh that come into these incarnations to learn and to teach and we do that through the challenges uh in our life and it’s really about growing up that’s what in fact our entire culture all of humanity is in the process now of growing up, of awakening uh and in, in our culture I would say you’re looking at basically a, a 3,000 year plus period of growing up. I would put the 400-year rise of the Scientific Revolution is a kind of the turbulent adolescence of that growing up uh and in fact what we’re all here to do is to serve in that process of awakening and growing up, it’s maturation and it’s something that in many ways has been stultified by our, our culture uh it’s, it’s uh it’s been challenged and yet this is what we are each here to do is our own growth as a soul towards reconnecting with that higher self, to realizing the oneness and connectedness of all and that we are that that infinite uh creator of this universe. We each play that role we have that capacity that’s why it’s so important. What I, when I often give talks uh to junior high schools, high schools, college, med school, nursing school to the younger ones. I make that point that this is all really about soul growth, about our finding our true self and that is something we can find within but also it’s out there in this world it’s how we uh interact with others. The only thing that’s important are our relationships with ourselves, relationships with others. There’s really nothing in this material world that has any importance other than it may serve to help enhance our relationships uh with others in this learning and teaching process and really this is all, what all of evolution is. The evolution of consciousness is Teilhard de Chardin discussed this process that uh in kind of a holographic sense we’re all a microcosmic version of what the entire universe is going through in terms of awakening, in terms of learning and coming to know ourselves go within to know ourself, this is the most prime directive of existence is to know thyself and that’s what our culture is doing, that’s what each and every individual is doing if they’re growing in this lifetime I mean the most we can expect, the most beautiful gift that we can get from this life is to grow to grow as a soul in remembering our interconnectedness with others and our connectedness to the divine and our power as creators of all that manifest in this world of reality that’s what we are all here to do and that’s what the young would be well served to know at the outset and not get seduced down into the dark cul-de-sacs that lead nowhere, that have to do with egotistical driven competition and you know winning at the expense of others etc. This is all about when when the one is the higher good and the more each and every one of us can come to manifest that through our own love and choices in this life the better our lives and the better this world will be.

Well I think one of the, the biggest problems um has to do with the fact that if you have lots of guns and we have very easy access to guns all through the United States and if you don’t have an extremely good mental health network that is there to identify and treat people with mental health issues you’re asking for big trouble and that’s what we keep seeing time after time after time and it has become a form of madness that we allow this to happen and to think that more guns and more access to guns are going to fix the problem is wrong that is not the solution and again I think that the, the, the real solution to this has to do with kind of awakening and spiritual growth that we’re talking about reconnecting uh with our kind of higher souls and who we are as, as beings and that that in itself is going to help in a tremendous way towards restoring a more balanced and harmonious uh existence. The gun problem in this country is abominable and I think we need to do something very different than just say more guns, more police, more control of those kinds of things. That’s really not going to fix it especially when you have a health care system that has a pretty weak safety net for trying to identify people with mental illness and trying to give them treatment and help them get better that’s why I think it’s important in our culture to realize that there are so many messages of they come to us about separation and about kind of competition and in fact the greatest successes in all of evolution uh and certainly the greatest successes of humanity have come through collaboration and inclusion not through exclusion and separate, separateness and so the more we can bring that back as a value into our society, the more parents can give that kind of value to their children that loving others is a very uh wonderful gift that comes back to us including others um is uh will serve a tremendous goal, recognizing the oneness of consciousness this is all something that I believe at all levels our society is coming to realize over time but we’ve let ourselves go way down into a fairly dark hole of this kind of secular materialist thinking that denies our spirituality, denies our connectedness whereas in fact uh some of the best evidence we have about the nature of consciousness and the nature of reality is all about that interconnectedness and this is why I believe that um having that kind of change and awakening in our modern society will affect us at all levels and that includes uh you know school children in fact I find it especially valuable to give these lessons to younger people and the more we can inculcate in this in school, school systems and what have you.

I think separation um you know we, we believe as humans that you know Rene Descartes said “to define us to limit” so we put everything out there and we define these objects and we define their inner relationships and we assume that they are all separate entities that might interact but that fundamentally they are separate and what the science of quantum mechanics has been trying to show us for 115 years is there’s one universe, there’s one truth and the more we can come to incorporate that kind of oneness that this is all one beautiful process of interconnectedness. The more we can come to see a way forward that gets closer to truth and to that, that harmony and this is something that has a very strong power in terms of our relationships because in fact I’ve come to see that the most important thing in this world and the best way to look at it is the thing that matters is those in a relationship of, of conscious beings throughout all, all living beings and that this is a flow, it’s a pattern, it’s a process of that the more we can look at it as that one flow the more we realize uh that any notions of separation and of separateness can be misleading especially when taken to the extremes of that our modern culture often does. It, the idea of separation brings in great distortion and confusion when it comes to approaching any kind of deeper truth about the nature of reality, and again that’s where uh if the ego is left to go to extremes it leads us into fully believing that we’re separate from the rest of this world and that couldn’t be further from the truth and yet it is a, a world view that people can come to uh.. if they buy into some of the messages that are so heavy in our culture and this is why it’s important to realize my being here is an essential part of the universe being here. The evolution of the universe and of consciousness is essentially part of the evolution of my awareness and my opening and understanding so there really is that’s why for me, the meditation is so important because it’s a great way for me to go into that one mind and that oneness and to rise above those false boundaries of self that are so much a part of the veil uh.. and this is one of the greatest values of any spiritually transformative experience is realizing the oneness and the connectedness and not only connectedness will with all else that is in this universe but especially and foremost is that connectedness with that divine infinitely loving power at the core of all being, that is that consciousness that many would call God or Allah, Brahm and Vishnu, Jehovah, Yahweh. Once again the words get in the way of those definitions and the uh differences that come at us from dogmatic religious interpretations through our linguistics take us away from the truth, there’s a much deeper truth at the core of all the great religions, all the great faith-based traditions, that is, is part of this much bigger message and it’s when we separated-out into all that superficial level kind of noise uh and miss the deeper message of the oneness and the connectedness at the core is where we really start to get lost and that’s why I see that what is really involved in this awakening. Well also be in many ways a convergence of the mystical traditions of all the great faiths in fact, they already are one when you get to the deepest aspects of Hinduism, Buddhism, of transcendental Meditation of Christianity, Sufism, Islamic mysticism uh kabbalism uh Jewish mysticism they all converge into one kind of knowing and the more we try and describe that and put it into words the more we kind of give a false sense of separation to it. Whereas in fact, they all converge to one much deeper understanding that we can all come to know through that deep love of self and sense of oneness.

Well from my, my NDE, it was very clear that there is no eternal hell and damnation that made zero sense, part of that, of course, was my recognition that uh reincarnation is the only way to make sense of so many facets of this journey that our souls come here, again and again, all in that process of ascendance as soul groups um towards that oneness with the divine but it occurs over many incarnations not one and is a beautiful tapestry so there is no eternal hell and damnation. Now the life of you, you know that old saying “your life flashes before your eyes” I think many especially those who have handed out lots of pain and suffering to others will have a life review where they have to feel the impact of their actions on others uh they and, and uh when you hear life reviews and I hear many of them from the thousands of people I interact with uh in my talks from ordinary people who had this extraordinary uh near-death and shared death experiences uh and then have a life review uh if you’ve been uh an evil person uh your

life review will look exactly like hell the thing is it’s not eternal, it’s a corrective mechanism, it’s a way that we then in-reuniting with our higher soul and of course realize that in the life review uh boundaries of self disappear because the lessons of a life review come from our feeling the impact by becoming the other beings around us and feeling the results of not only our actions but our thoughts uh and this is a very powerful uh kind of concept that comes out of the near-death experience literature. Life reviews go back thousands of years, uh and that is what I, I believe the notion of hell comes from. It’s from the life review of people who have led particularly uh difficult and challenging lives of handing out pain and suffering to others.

Near-death experiences, I often say are the tip of the spear. Now I would, I would say that all of our religious concepts, spiritual concepts going back for millennia have come from people having near-death experiences and similar epiphanies extraordinary uh challenges to their world view where they were able to glimpse through the veil and see the reality of the heavenly realm uh now it turns out that you know for millennia those results were basically occasionally handed down as the word of prophets and mystics they are what emerged into our religious system. Well, it turns out that in the 1960s things shifted up a bit and this was no accident doctors gained the ability to resuscitate cardiac arrest patients, and in essence, you know in the last 50 years they have brought back tens of millions of souls who have been to the other side and come back to tell the story. So in fact near-death experiences are very much the tip of the spear in this awakening to the reality of our spiritual essence that is our true home and an understanding of it. It is something that near-death experiences the vast majority of them come back knowing – they have no fear of death, they realize death is not an ending that in fact it’s a great comfort to be released from the shackles of the physical brain back into that higher realm where we go through our life review, reunite with our higher soul, with our fellow soul mates, plan up that next Incarnation, come back in to do it again. An important concept to understand- there is our notion of time is undergoing a complete revision in the modern scientific thinking. Our current physics and cosmology really has no remote idea what time is but I can tell you from my journey – time flow is very different in that realm there’s what I call deep time and there’s causality kind of an ordering of the events of our higher spiritual souls in their work in that ascendance that trumps anything about the flow of time and causality down in this realm, in this realm it’s all set up as a stage on which the drama unfolds for beings in their incarnations to learn and teach these lessons but in fact time flow itself is very much a concept in flux.

Above, we essentially our very consciousness is, is a direct God. it is that God that deity that’s why it’s so important to recognize by going within, getting into that deep and infinite primordial consciousness we then become one with that deity. Now we come back to this world of duality, to the material realm but the more we can come to cultivate that relationship that, that knowing and that remembering of our oneness with that divine, the more we come to manifest that love in this world uh it from my point of view it’s it’s very misleading to look at God as separate. You know the creator of the universe because in fact given that consciousness is what exists, consciousness is what gives rise to all of this universe by remembering our connection through our consciousness with that oneness, with that divine, and realizing that all of this is set up in that beautiful fashion of oneness. We come to realize that we are that God now of course at that level you’ve left far behind any primitive barbaric little puny notion of ego and of self so this is very much about a liberation uh from those false ideas of self and separation. It’s about recovering that oneness of all that is because we can do that but we do it by completely uh seeing from the grand scope of our existence in this oneness, in this wholeness uh and that is that God is that infinite power what people who have near-death experiences, share death experiences other uh spiritually transformative experiences what they touch on? is the power of that unconditional love and the phrase unconditional love gets bandied about in many ways and in like words, it can be overused and we can kind of lose the meaning but that’s why it’s so important to experience it and we can each experience it you don’t have to wait till you die or almost die, going within is the way to come to know our oneness with the divine with that God and be and to see our role as co-creators of the evolving reality.

I’ve come to realize that, this was part of my-my life mission. We all have important roles to play in this awakening uh I came to see that my birth parents and adoptive parents also had as part of their kind of soul plan and soul journey for their lives all the factors that would lead to my existence. So in, in essence, there really is this beautiful dance uh a Tango going on between a kind of a divine plan uh, and yet free will. I believe that both are very active so we can come to see that, that planning for our life involves putting those hardships and difficulties, challenges, illness, injury in our path. Our higher soul is part of making that decision before we come into this world so this is really something where when we get that much, much bigger view that I gained through meditation that started with my near-death experience. We can come to see that all of this has a beautiful purpose and it’s how we deal with all of that and how we manifest those choices of free will and actually grow instead of being an automaton and just kind of falling back on our old behavioral paradigms but in fact taking that bigger view and growing with this that I think is such a gift.