Neurosurgeon's NDE Challenges Scientific Norms

What is the purpose of life? Pioneering scientist and modern thought leader Dr. Eben Alexander was a neurosurgeon at Harvard. After his NDE, he has worked tirelessly to reconcile his miraculous recovery and rich spiritual experience with quantum physics, cosmology, and the philosophy of mind. In this podcast Eben explores 1) free will, relationships and the life review, 2) three realms of existence, 3) how to encounter these worlds without an NDE, 4) binaural beats and brainwave entrainment.

Transcript

S This is Kabala 99.

I'm Deborah Sophia.

We have on our call today Dr.

Eben Alexander,

Who served as a physician and academic neurosurgeon for over 25 years,

Including 15 years at the Brigham and Women's Hospital,

Children's Hospital,

And Harvard Medical School in Boston.

He is the author of the New York Times' number one bestseller,

Proof of Heaven,

As well as The Map of Heaven and his latest book,

Living in a Mindful Universe.

Welcome Dr.

Alexander.

Is it okay if I call you Eben?

Yes,

Deborah.

Great to be here.

Thanks for having me on.

I'm delighted to have you here.

You inspired me with your recordings of what happened to you,

And I'm looking forward to sharing that with our listeners.

You were once committed to the materialist worldview,

The belief that the physical world is all that exists.

It all dramatically changed in 2008.

So tell us what happened that shattered your certainty about the nature of reality.

Well,

I basically was in the same position as many who have studied in our modern world science and kind of the conventional worldview,

Which happens to be materialism.

And that's the piece that comes grinding to a halt when you have an experience like this.

And of course,

Millions have had experiences like this,

And there are scientists who study them.

But what really happened to me was waking up early in the morning of November 10,

2008 with horrific back pains and realizing I had a headache worse than anything I'd ever experienced,

And then lapsed into grand mal seizures and deep coma for seven days.

Turns out that people today can actually access a medical case report on my medical records that was not available when proof of heaven came out,

Performed by three physicians who were fascinated by my recovery.

And that case report appeared in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease in September of 2018 by Dr.

Servi Kanna and others.

People can access that case report and glean these horrific medical details.

But for me,

It was an incredible gift,

In spite of the fact that the description of it is one of the horrific life threatening illness where I came extremely close to death.

And the real gift of it,

Certainly from the perspective of the scientific community,

Is that extraordinary experience I had when the medically documented facts of my case,

Showing a severe bacterial meningoencephalitis involving all eight levels of the brain should have disabled all but the most rudimentary of conscious experience.

And yet I have the most extraordinary,

Ultra real,

Meaningful,

Memorable and powerful experiences of my entire existence.

Eppen,

What do you mean by ultra real?

Turns out that more than 50% of near death experiences are shocked by this kind of ultra reality of that realm that it's far more real than this one.

Not only that,

Those memories are more solid and kind of stable over long periods of time,

Than even memories of real life events that are very challenging.

And there have been several scientific papers comparing the quality of memories from an NDE with quality of memories from severe kind of emotionally laden events in this life,

As well as memory of things like dreams.

And what you find is the memory from NDEs is far more stable and resilient over long periods of time.

So that's what the ultra real quality is.

And a lot of it is because in those realms,

We don't experience things that are filtered by our eyes,

Our ears,

Our brain that kind of limits everything down to this tiny little trickle of conscious awareness.

It's really like breaking from a fire hose of a full bore consciousness.

And what that means is you're no longer isolated in these kind of moments of time and this apparent now and this apparent sense of self,

But you can actually experience a lot more of your existence at once.

I mean,

That's what people describe,

For example,

The life of you,

You know,

That notion,

Your life flashing before your eyes.

Well,

That's been part of more than 50% of NDEs going back at least 2400 years to the time of Plato.

And this ultra reality is really because we're being exposed to a realm that is kind of much closer to the heart of our existence than this material realm,

Even though this material realm is very important.

And I would say this is where our souls get the actual growth done because we do it temporarily dumbed down to what our higher soul knows between lives and,

You know,

In deep meditative states or NDEs where we reunite with our higher soul and soul group,

Where we start to glean this kind of much bigger picture of our existence than we're limited to with our little ego voice and kind of the existence we're used to in this material realm.

And so in my journey,

That adventure over a week in deep coma involved three separate phases.

One was a primitive force,

Earth,

On my view,

That I was led up to a portal of light and music into the second realm,

Ultra real,

Far more real than this world.

That was that gateway valley.

That's the realm where life abused,

Reuniting the souls of departed loved ones,

All of that kind of thing occurs.

And then of course,

The core realm was my next phase of the journey.

This is a step beyond where many NDEs actually go,

But getting into the pure oneness of that infinite healing force,

That God force at the core of the universe that so many NDEs have experienced.

And they come back having bathed in that ocean of love of that God source and realizing there's nothing to fear about death at all.

In many ways,

It's our spiritual home and it's kind of a reuniting with higher soul and soul group.

And of course,

A lot of my knowledge of that has been informed because my experience showed me very richly about how we come back again and again.

Our soul does not end with the death of the body,

But in fact,

Reincarnation is a very real part of this.

Our souls do come back and it's a process of growth,

Not just with some mechanistic wheel of suffering that you're trying to get off of,

But we're actually moving towards a goal,

Which I would say is the evolution of all consciousness and in many ways,

The challenge of humanity for the last 5,

000 years has been to uncover this deep mystery of the oneness of consciousness and that if we hurt another,

We're hurting ourselves.

And these are lessons that our religious systems have tried in various ways to teach us.

You can look at our world today and realize we're still in a lot of trouble from this false sense of separation that comes from materialist thinking.

So that's why this awakening in the scientific nature of understanding the consciousness is so important because it reveals that deep truth of kind of unification in connection with others.

Let me just review what you said.

So you said you had three stages.

The first was a life review where you connected with loved ones.

The second was an experience of pure oneness in an ocean of love.

And then the third level was?

Yeah,

Well,

The first level was that kind of primitive force earth for my view,

A very primitive kind of underground existence.

That's where my journey started.

But then I was led up through a portal of light and music into that beautiful gateway valley.

The other level is moving beyond that into the pure ocean of oneness.

That's what I call the core realm,

The sanctum sanctorum of the divine.

But for me,

That was at a point where all of I'd witnessed all of four dimensional space time in the material world collapsing down.

I then witnessed all of that spiritual realm,

That gateway valley that was so much more real than this world with a very different ordering and causality.

That's what allows things like life reviews to happen.

A life review is not a vague,

Seepy,

Attentive memory of events of your life.

It's a reliving and dramatic ultra real fashion.

Those events where you actually experience the emotional impact of your actions and thoughts on others around you from their perspective.

So the life review occurring in that level shows you very clearly how you've already suspended all the normal rules of temporal passage,

Temporal causality that we associate with this material realm.

I would say all of that is part of the stage setting,

What allows for the evolution of all consciousness.

There's a completely separate ordering that I call deep time.

And for those who worry about in reincarnation,

What if my loved one reincarnates before I get there?

Well,

The whole concept of deep time means that will never happen,

Given that the relationships and that information that connects souls is the important stuff.

It would never be disallowed because somebody has reincarnated too early.

Deep time is a very important concept that has to do with the sequential ordering and causality from the perspective of that higher spiritual realm.

But then of course you have the core realm where all of infinity and eternity are contained as kind of a teaching system.

Well,

Let's move to that.

As I understand a large component of your experience with sound,

And I wondered if you could talk about the sound that you heard and now in your everyday life,

Your experience with the binaural beats and the brain entrainment that you mentioned,

If you could talk about sound during your experience and then sound in your everyday life would be great.

Yes,

Sound was absolutely crucial.

I came to realize that sound was kind of the way that we remember our ability to traverse these various spiritual realms.

Now of course these are not sounds heard with the ears because in those realms you're no longer using your ears or your eyes,

Not using the physically limited senses you have for acquisition of data.

You actually are exposed to it.

It's what I call knowledge through identification where you become huge swathes of the scene the universe is presenting to you as a means of understanding.

But sound,

Vibration,

Frequency,

Music are the way our memories work to remember,

For example,

What I witnessed slowly spinning white light that came towards me in the earth where my view,

It was surrounded by these fine silvery and golden tendrils and as it came towards me it opened up like a rip in the fabric of that space time and provided a portal or a wormhole up into that gateway valley.

But the most essential feature was that beautiful music that came with that portal.

What would happen is I would ascend through that level and then of course the gateway valley and up into the core,

The sanctum sanctorum of the divine.

And then I would just tumble back down spontaneously to that earthworm I view.

So the importance of the music for me was remembering the notes of the melody because that's how I could conjure up that portal.

Every time I wound up down in this earthworm's live view I was able to conjure up the portal that would then take me up into the next level.

In fact,

The gateway valley was in many ways a very earth-like scene that I was a speck of awareness on a butterfly.

There were millions of other butterflies looping and spiraling vast formations.

There were sparkling waterfalls in the crystal blue pools and this absolutely gorgeous meadow and forest down below me with thousands of people dancing.

When I came back to this world weeks later I was writing it all up trying to record my memories and I called those people souls and I recognized they were souls between lives and there was lots of joy and merriment and that was being fueled because up above were these swooping orbs of angelic choirs and they were emanating chants and anthems and hymns that would thunder through me and that were empowering this incredible festivity going on in the meadow down below.

Of course those who've read Proof of Heaven will realize that I wasn't alone on that butterfly wing.

There was a lovely young woman,

Sparkling blue eyes and soft brown hair.

She was dressed in the same kind of simple peasant garb as all the thousands of souls dancing down below us but very rich colors to all of those garments.

I'll never forget her message to me.

I think that was the central message I was to bring back in Proof of Heaven.

She came to me telepathically.

She never spoke a word and with this look of pure love and this beautiful smile her message to me,

You are deeply loved and cherished forever.

You have nothing to fear.

You are cared for.

That was this extraordinary message that came just as those angelic choirs above were providing musical portal,

A new kind of spinning light that opened up and took me into that next level,

That core realm.

Again it was a musical portal.

What I remembered is those angelic hymns and so sound was absolutely essential throughout my entire experience even though important to point out again it was not sound heard with any ears.

So there's no way I could ever reproduce those sounds in this material realm,

In our four-dimensional space because physics won't allow it.

But that's why Karen and I instead offer up the binaural beats of Sacred Acoustics because it's interesting.

Within two years of my coma,

I became fascinated with the use of binaural beat brainwave entrainment to enhance my kind of meditative efforts trying to recall the memories and relive my NDE.

We believe these sounds are so effective at allowing conscious awareness to separate from the illusion of the here now and the sense of self is because these sounds,

Unlike any other sounds that you've heard,

Are processed down in the lower brainstem.

Every other sound you've heard are processed up in the neocortex in circuits that have arisen in the last few million years in primates and Homo sapiens.

That's very,

Very different from Sacred Acoustics and similar binaural beats that are interacting in circuits in the lower brainstem.

That's one of the reasons why people can have such extraordinary events of kind of conscious liberation from the illusion of the here now and sense of self and the little ego mind through these binaural beats,

Sounds,

And brainwave entrainment.

Eben,

You spoke a minute ago about deep time and how we needn't fear that we won't be born a time to reconnect with our loved ones.

I was wondering if you had some kind of experience of that nature with Karen.

Is Karen someone that you've known before?

Yeah,

We've definitely had some sense of prior engagement and it comes from many different avenues from our own personal meditation and kind of exploring our own personal journeys.

And we certainly run through a lot of traces of our connection over multiple lifetimes in this kind of work and awakening the world.

My problem as a scientist is I'm always looking for that objective validation for other sources that confirm the specific details.

And that I cannot claim that we have any great measure,

But we certainly have experience in our own kind of meditations and in dealing with others.

That this is work that we have done as a couple in previous lifetime and will do again in future lifetimes.

So to me,

That's no surprise.

You're speaking of Karen Newell,

Who is the founder of Sacred Acoustics.

Do you think she would be willing to do a podcast with us?

I suspect she'd be very willing to do a podcast.

Personally,

I can tell you that she has been,

I first met her in November 2011,

Immediately was stricken with kind of this sense of joint mission.

We'll interview her for next week and follow up so people can get a sense of what you're talking about with these binaural beats and brain entrainment.

People should understand that I was very attracted to her at that very early stage because of her very evident spiritual wisdom.

She had spent her whole life exploring much of this understanding,

And I was just beginning to do so,

Of a steeper spiritual realization about the universe.

So she is a real godsend.

You will see.

We'll look forward to that.

But let's swing back to you because you are the scientist and you had the materialist point of view,

And then you had this near-death experience which showed you what we view as reality is not complete.

It might work in this realm,

But it's not all the worlds that exist.

As a pioneering scientist and modern thought leader with a passionate interest in physics and cosmology,

How have you reconciled your new rich spiritual experience with your knowledge of quantum physics,

Cosmology,

And the philosophy of mind?

I think that's a very good point that you bring up because near-death experiences in and of themselves will never,

Ever give us the ultimate answer about what happens when we die.

The reason is those people didn't die.

I didn't die.

I came extremely close.

And people who read that medical paper for,

Especially physicians,

Will be as shocked as the peer reviewers were asking,

How do you explain this case?

This is the medical record of someone who's going on to die and certainly not one who is destined to have a full recovery.

So how do you explain it?

And that's where I think what we have to do is look at this as really a much bigger question.

This is about the nature of reality.

Thus,

It has everything to do with the relationship between the physical universe,

Physical body,

And brain with our mental realities,

That inner kind of world that we all seem to be destined to have as our own.

It turns out when you study consciousness and the mind-brain relationship in a much bigger sense,

You start to glimpse how all of this is absolutely possible.

And in fact,

In our book,

Living in a Mindful Universe,

Karen and I take a multidisciplinary approach to the issue of consciousness.

So we're not only talking about near-death experiences and shared death experiences and other aspects of non-local consciousness that had been studied by modern scientists.

So that would include things like remote viewing,

The ability to discern information at a distance,

Knowing simply coordinates or some other way to attach it to the information field of the universe,

Out-of-body experiences,

Remote healing,

Distance healing,

Psychokinesis,

Precognition,

The ability to know the future a few seconds to longer periods before it occurs,

Pre-sentiment,

Where you can document scientifically that your autonomic nervous system recognizes the coming future seconds to minutes in advance.

All of that non-local consciousness in the world of parapsychology is tremendously important,

But it goes beyond that because then we need to also include neuroscience and what is known as the hard problem of consciousness.

First a term first used by David Chalmers in his 1996 book,

The Conscious Mind,

That the hard problem of consciousness is actually an impossible problem for material science trying to explain the origins of consciousness because none of it ever works.

You cannot connect the dots in any way that take you from physicalist materialist thinking about the brain to conscious experience.

It's a gigantic gap and it's because the brain does not produce consciousness as much as serve as a filter for it.

So neuroscience of consciousness and the hard problem contribute here,

As does philosophy of mind.

Specifically,

I would say what's known as the binding problem,

Which has to do with the apparent uniformity of consciousness.

That is,

Here I am consciously aware of things that I smell,

Hear,

See,

Remember,

Feel,

And all of those things are united in this one very unified version of existence.

That's a deep mystery,

How you would actually combine multiple neural networks to give you that apparent uniformity is something that really goes beyond the capabilities of the modern neuroscience and philosophy of mind.

So that's a very important concept.

Adding to this kind of conciliance of the evidence showing the primacy of consciousness across multiple fields is quantum physics,

Because quantum physics as the most proven field in the history of science is very defended as a real model of reality.

And yet the deep mystery is when you look at the experiments in detail and get right down to what they're trying to tell us.

It's a very kind of nonsensical and counterintuitive view of the world that actually places consciousness as fundamental.

But I will confess that the modern scientific community still has approximately 16 accepted explanations for what's known as the measurement paradox.

That's the actual central core of the mystery in quantum physics.

The measurement paradox is simply revealing that our choices of mind influence the outcome of results of experiments in physics in ways that are profound,

That you could not ignore the mind in subjectivity and that sense of existence.

You cannot eliminate it.

You cannot pretend this is all just some mechanistic wheel of material,

Electrons,

Quarks,

Protons,

Photons,

Et cetera,

All following the laws of physics.

So if you don't want to admit the primacy of consciousness,

You can always say,

Well,

There are infinite parallel universes.

They're flying off in this tremendous conflagration of all possible outcomes into all these universes.

And somehow our mind navigates a pathway that goes through and makes it look like there's just one universe.

Well,

I would say that there's a better solution in quantum physics and the interpretation of measurement paradox,

And that would be Carlo Rovelli's relational interpretation,

Which is a very bare bones version of quantum physics.

It doesn't have to lay on a lot of additional stuff like infinite parallel universes.

And then also I would add that the metaphysical underpinnings of that along the lines of Bernardo Kastrup.

People can learn more at Bernardo Kastrup with a K dot com.

Bernardo is one of the endorsers and supporters of our book,

Living in a Mindful Universe,

As both we and he and his books and writings.

And one of his most recent ones of note is the idea of the world.

But when you get through these kind of metaphysical ideas that Bernardo presents and similar ideas that we present,

You start to realize that primacy of consciousness is something that emerges naturally out of study of the world around us.

It's really kind of shocking.

You mentioned Carlo Rovelli,

And he's one of my favorite theoretical physicists.

He is taking time out of the equation,

Which goes back to your comments about deep time and about the primacy of consciousness rather than space and time.

Consciousness is primary,

Which gives us a different understanding of the function of the brain rather than having mind arise out of this thing in our head.

It is part of the universe that our brain can act like a radio tuner or somehow use it.

But I think that the intelligence seems to be everywhere,

Not just in the brain.

I think you're absolutely right that it's an intelligence of the universe.

And you bring up a very good point about Carlo Rovelli and how essentially he's removing time from the equation.

It reminds me of the work of John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt when they came up with a wave function for the universe.

And one of the interesting kind of consequences of that formulation is that time disappears as irrelevant.

In many ways,

It is so crucial for us to understand this thing we call time as it unfolds in this physical universe is merely part of the stage seven.

And it actually is laid into the whole situation by the function of consciousness.

It's one of the most intriguing kind of clues at the core of it all that we're on the right track that we have this renewed understanding of what time might actually be,

How time has a more primordial flow from the viewpoint of those higher perspectives.

And I would say that time and space are actually injected into this kind of consensus worldview by the process of consciousness and its filtering into the brain.

So in other words,

There's not some fundamental physical reality ticking way out there by its own little clock that is independent of the observing mind.

Every bit of this involves the observing mind because mind is primary.

And that absolutely opens up the door to a tremendous revolution in human understanding of the nature of reality.

I really want to bring this into everyday life.

We need to come to the understanding that if we harm another,

We harm ourselves.

And if we really understood that,

What a different world this would be.

And then you mentioned how we have free choice.

And that's something that I've thought a lot about because sometimes science nowadays says free choice is not real.

It's all predetermined,

Which is just to me a misunderstanding of the science that they're finding.

We can change the outcome by changing our attitude.

We've all experienced that.

These things that you talk about,

We experience in everyday life.

One of the things that fascinates me is what's called the arrow of time.

So living in this world,

I'm drinking this glass,

And if I happen to drop it and it shatters,

There's no way I can ever put that back to look like it does now.

Right?

So that is our everyday experience.

And it's what makes this world so different from the dream space,

Which in the dream space it never really broke.

So have you thought about the reality of this world versus the reality of the dream world?

Is that something that you've pondered?

Well,

Yes.

And I would say that,

For example,

The realms that I encountered in my NDE,

Especially the Gateway Valley and the Core Realm and the dream world and the world that one can witness,

For example,

Through using certain psychedelic plant medicines like psilocybin mushrooms,

DMT,

The active principle in ayahuasca,

These are all versions of the world.

And especially when you realize kind of the ultimate presentation of it is through the NDE,

Where you've got this ultra real form of that world.

They're all aspects of the same spiritual side of reality.

You brought up the arrow of time.

It's interesting in the physical universe,

Most of what we think of in physics,

Time should be able to flow both ways.

The vast majority of equation physics allow for time and the reaction and equation to go both directions.

But the thing that keeps this world going in one direction is the second law of thermodynamics,

Which has to do with entropy.

Things in this physical world in general are going to flow more in a direction with increasing entropy,

Increasing disorder.

As you talk about,

You drop the glass,

It breaks.

There's a lot more kind of chaos and entropy in that broken glass than in the assembled intact glass.

So I think that the arrow of time is a very fascinating concept,

I would say at a quantum level in many ways,

Time flows more in loops,

And you're really just kind of oscillating around them now.

It makes me think of the labyrinth.

I really loved bringing it into our everyday life.

If anyone has walked a labyrinth,

That's circular.

And why does walking the labyrinth tend to bring us into a deeper sense of ourselves?

Because it's that circular nature,

Which taps into something more fundamental.

So I just want to bring your perspectives into what we experience in nature.

Well,

I think that's a very important point.

And I think the main point I would add here,

As we mentioned a few minutes ago,

Free will.

And I would remind you that conventional materialist scientists would stop if you claim to have any free will at all,

Because they basically think it's a chemical reactions,

Electron fluxes in the brain producing an illusion of consciousness.

So how could you possibly inject free will into those chemical reactions and electron fluxes to get a different result?

They think it's all just happening by the laws of nature,

Governing the substance of the brain and other stuff in the physical world.

And that's the end of the story.

But in fact,

I would say free will is absolutely essential to understanding all of this and the primacy of consciousness helps us get to that free will.

And probably one of the most beautiful examples of accepted science in our modern world,

Revealing this kind of mind over matter that we're posing here is placebo effect.

Medical sciences use placebo effect as their gold standard for assessing any new treatment modality going back six decades or more.

Placebo effect is nothing more than an admission by medical scientists that a patient's beliefs,

Attitudes and thoughts can play a tremendous role in their ability to heal from a given illness.

This kind of matter is alive and well in the world of placebo effect.

It's fascinating.

Do you feel that the human being is in a period of transformation right now?

I think we're,

When I look at kind of human history and destiny,

I see a good 5,

000 year or more struggle with understanding that we've been challenged with.

And I think we're finally getting to a point where that 5,

000 plus year challenge about the nature of reality is something we're actually going to make some real progress in,

In the coming decades,

All over this science of consciousness,

All over understanding primacy of mind.

And I think it will be revolutionary because so many of the world's problems have arisen from this false sense of separation that comes out of materialist thought and materialist science has kind of dominated our thinking in this world.

And yet the scientific revolution acknowledges that materialist science should have died out about 80 years ago with the advent of quantum physics.

There are many in the scientific community now who understand this primacy of consciousness.

I mean,

Some of the physicists who come to mind would be people like Roger Penrose,

Henry Stapp,

Menesco Patos,

Brian Josephson,

He's the Nobel Laureate,

Claude Swanson.

There are a number of others.

And these are all quantum physicists who recognize that consciousness is an absolutely essential part of understanding quantum physics.

And they're hot on the pathway to try and better understand it.

But yes,

I would say there's a tremendous revolution going on in the world of human existence now,

Trying to understand the nature of reality and that complete inflection and basically a return to a far more rational view that includes the spiritual,

The notions of afterlife and reincarnation.

All of that is inherent in the scientific revolution that is coming even as we speak.

How does ethics and empathy and kindness,

How do those values fit in with what you're talking about?

Well,

I would say in many ways,

The life reviews,

We mentioned it,

More than 50% of NDEs number thousands of years across all continents and belief systems,

Life reviews are a big part of near-death experiences.

And the life review is a beautiful example.

You hurt another,

You're hurting yourself.

The golden rule is written into the very fabric of the universe in the form of those life reviews.

If you ask near-death experiences,

The majority of them,

Probably better than 90,

95% of them,

Would confess that that realm and the kind of makeup of that deep spiritual realm is one of love,

Compassion,

Kindness,

Acceptance,

Mercy,

Gratitude,

Forgiveness when necessary.

I mean,

Those are the absolute concrete constituents of that realm.

They're not kind of mysterious,

Nebulous,

Maybe not qualities.

These are what make up the fundament of our very conscious awareness at the deepest layers of generation and that as witnessed through near-death experiences,

Shared death experiences and other very profound journeys into the spiritual realm.

And you find this extraordinary power of healing far beyond anything that would be explicable from a viewpoint of Western medicine.

In fact,

Those authors were challenged by the peer reviewers of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases.

You know,

How do you explain this case?

And they explained my miraculous recovery by saying I had a near-death experience.

To them,

That was enough.

Look at Anita Morjani's case.

And she wrote the book,

Dying Could Be Me,

And her advanced stage four lymphoma.

She was within hours of death by any doctor's assessment.

And yet she came back to this world after a profound NDE that changed her life and brought her back health and got rid of her cancer.

Likewise,

Mary C.

Neal,

The orthopedic surgeon who wrote To Heaven Impact,

Her story of a warm water drowning while kayaking in southern Chile.

She was underwater for more than 30 minutes,

Her legs broken,

Pinned under boulders.

You don't come back from that.

And yet she did.

She made a full recovery.

These are because of the spiritual power invoked in an NDE.

And as sentient beings,

We all have similar power.

We just need to know of these cases,

Realize that these kinds of extraordinary events are possible,

Realize the power of prayer,

Let go of the outcome,

And then see what the universe offers us.

So choosing an NDE sounds a little risky.

So how can someone experience what you're talking about without a near-death experience or taking a substance?

Well,

I would recommend not taking the substance,

Actually.

My recommendation for people who want to cultivate these kind of experiences is use a tool like Sacred Acoustic.

The spinal brainwave entrainment is a very powerful tool,

Especially when you consider that the changes that are observed,

Say after psychedelic drugs,

Are usually fairly minimal.

It's like looking through a keyhole into the spiritual realm,

As opposed to the broad penthouse of panoramic view that you get from NDE.

And similarly with deep meditation,

Especially a daily regular practice over a long period of time,

You can get tremendous benefit.

I love in Christopher Bache's book,

B-A-C-H-E is his last name.

He wrote a book called Dark Night,

Early Dawn.

I think about 15 years ago it came out.

But he compared directly head to head his experience in spiritual journeying with binaural deep brainwave entrainment.

And he was using a form that I would view as more primitive and less effective than Sacred Acoustics,

But that's just my opinion.

But the reality is he compared it with high dose LSD work that he had done personally in seeking deep spiritual truths.

And in the book Dark Night,

Early Dawn,

Christopher Bache says you can get as much power,

If not more out of the sound and the meditation as you can out of the high dose LSD.

Given the side effects and potential for damage from those psychedelic drugs,

I would highly recommend the pathway of vinyl deep brainwave entrainment.

You'll make more progress over time than you can with the psychedelic drugs.

And when you think about it,

That makes sense because the psychedelic drugs are only influencing or their main influence I should say is in the neocortex as opposed to vinyl deep brainwave entrainment,

As we said earlier,

Having an effect in that ancient 300 million year old circuit in the lower brainstem.

That's 300 million years ago is before mammals even walked this earth.

So that's a very ancient circuit.

That's why I think the profound experiences that people describe on our meditation through sacred acoustics starts to make more sense.

We will interview Karen next week and make some of that available to our listeners.

Excellent.

I think that's a great idea.

And the other thing is to point out that any way of going within,

I'm not saying you have to use sacred acoustics or brainwave entrainment at all,

Any way of turning off the little linguistic voice in the head.

I love how Michael Singer puts it in,

Puts the other soul,

He calls that running stream of thoughts in our head,

Our annoying roommate.

So many people identify with that running stream of thoughts as who they are.

That is not true.

The deep mystery of consciousness is your awareness of that.

And so in deep meditation,

You can start exploring that awareness and move way beyond your little ego mind.

The ego uses fear and anxiety as its main tools.

And your ego mind is not giving you a realistic version of your soul journey and who you are and your purpose for existence and all that is a much deeper challenge to get.

And that's where I'm putting out power of meditation going within.

And sacred acoustics is just one way of doing it.

It's a very powerful way.

And we have a lot of people who have documented benefit from it.

But any mode you have of deep meditation and turning off that little ego mind can be beneficial.

Yes,

The ego mind can be a real trickster.

Do you see a more peaceful world as a potential for human beings?

I see a tremendous amount of peace,

Harmony,

And prosperity for all coming to this world as we start to take these lessons to heart and realize that we're really here to help each other.

We're all in it together and the best way to kind of share the love the universe has for you is to serve as a conduit to bring that love into this world and share it out with our fellow beings.

And yes,

I see the awakening around the science of consciousness that this whole conversation has been about will absolutely lead us into a far better and more harmonious and resonant world.

With that beautiful thought,

I wanted to thank you so much for coming and speaking with our listeners and sharing your experiences and I wish you all the best.

Well,

Deborah,

Thanks so much for having me on.

I wish you the best and look forward to talking again soon.

For more Mind Heart Awakenings like these,

You can follow us on this podcast and on our blog at Kabbalah 99.

That's where we discuss the weekly Torah portion through the lens of today's challenges and offer practices to stay sane,

Grounded,

And connected.

If you like this episode,

Please remember to tell one friend about it.

Next week,

We'll hear from another thought leader who will help us to explore our experience of life and our place in this universe of wonder.

Thanks for listening.

I'm Deborah Sophia.

See you next week.

Reviews

I really appreciated the podcast with Eben Alexander. I have read "Proof of Heaven". I I enjoyed how the episode deep dived into the mind - consciousness connection.

Excellent! Speaker is able to verbalize NDE in an easy-to-understand way. Really enjoyed this podcast; a great listen! 🙏

I love it. Thank you and Eben 🔥❤️🙏