The Neurosurgeon Who Saw Heaven | Dr. Eben Alexander

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Well, deep in the middle of coma, I had no memory of my earthly life. In fact, I had no language, no words, no anything. And it all started in the realm that I called earthworm's-eye view, which was kind of a bubbling, muddy, foamy, monotonous, pounding, dark Underground and very unresponsive. As I said, I might— even though I had no language, I might wonder, you know, who, what, where, and there was never any kind of a response or answer at all. I felt like I was there a very long time because I had no memory of any prior existence. And then I was rescued from that by this spinning white light. It was a beautiful filamentous kind of golden white light that slowly came towards me, rotating. And then it had this lovely melody, and the notes of that melody were crucial later on. But at the time, it was just captivating and beautiful, and it served as a portal. It ripped open into a whole new reality.

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Hello, my friends. You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show. There are many vitally important questions in life, but there is one that since I was a child I have always realized has no question that is more important, and that is, is there something after this life? I am astounded that there are people who say they don't care, or who just dismiss the idea as wishful thinking on the part of religious people. I don't think you have to be religious, and I don't think that you have to be a philosopher to understand how significant it is. I mean, if there is no afterlife, if nothing happens, if this is it, all there is, then— Life ultimately is a, is a total crapshoot. Whether you suffer totally or you prosper is just a matter of fortune, and there is no ultimate justice. The, the torturer and his victim have the same fates. I, even as a kid, I realized that there, there has to be something beyond this. So when a A scientist writes that there is something beyond this because of his own experience, uh, it seems to make headlines. In this case, I believe it was a, a front page, uh, cover story in Newsweek magazine. And the man who was responsible for this is an academic neurosurgeon. And at the Brigham and Women's and the Children's Hospitals and Harvard Medical School. In Boston, Dr. Eben Alexander. The book is Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. Dr. Alexander, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.

Well, thank you, Dennis. It's great to be here.

Thank you. Let me ask you first, what would you have— when did you have this experience, which obviously we'll delineate in a moment? When did you have it?

Um, I had it, uh, 4 years ago right now. I just wanted to clarify, I'm, I'm not at the Brigham and Women's and Harvard Medical School in the Brigham now, but I was there from 1988 to 2001.

Okay, thank you.

The—

because the, uh— oh yeah, you're, you're right. The, the bio on your book says has-been, right? But you're not a has-been. I just want to make that clear.

That's what this is all about.

You're a will-be.

I'm an am, like we all are.

That's right. All right, let me— let me— so the reason I asked when this happened is If I'd have had you on my show 10 years ago, not, not in the last 4, and asked you, Doctor, I'm just curious, uh, do you believe in an afterlife? What would you have said?

Well, I would have said that, uh, that there is no way that any form of consciousness could exist after the death of the brain and the body.

Right, exactly. Okay, that's what I assumed you would have said. What happened that changed your mind?

Well, about a little over 4 years ago right now, one morning it was as if I had been struck by a freight train. I woke up, had severe back pain, and then rapidly went on to develop an excruciating headache. And by that point I was already too far gone to even put it together. My son Bon came in to rub my head and Felt like he'd driven a white-hot spike right through it. And I guess about the last words I said, my wife Holly wanted to call 911, and I said, don't call 911, just a muscle spasm, uh, you know, trust me, I'm a doctor, that kind of thing. And then the next thing she knew, I was lapsing into unconsciousness, and then she saw me having a grand mal seizure, and she did call 911.

All right. What, what was the cause of this?

Well, I—

it—

they took me off to the ER. I was already in coma, but I was very quickly suspected to have acute bacterial meningitis, and in fact they confirmed that. And I was put on a ventilator in an ICU for the next 7 days. I was deep in coma from before the ambulance even got to our house. Don't remember anything of those 7 days from the earthly realm. And I had an extraordinary experience deep in coma when the meningitis should have disabled all experience except for the most kind of mundane, rudimentary forms of awareness. And yet I had a very rich journey that was more real and profound than what my brain could muster even now.

It was more real and profound than the 3-dimensional universe you and I inhabit?

Yes, very much so. And of course, that was a shocking aspect of it. And the meningitis was so effective at wiping out the human part of my brain that in fact, when I was deep in coma, I had no memory whatsoever of my life before, my life on Earth before coma. And yet I went through this beautiful, extraordinary journey, spiritual journey, deep in coma. And That included meeting the divine and, and having lessons about all of how this is put together and constructed and the purpose for all of this and in higher dimensional space. And, and then came back to this realm.

I have to say that it's a little sad to me that you didn't have any recollection in that realm of your earthly existence. Does that mean Or at least, do you interpret that now as meaning that in the afterlife we have none of the bonds that we make in this life endure?

No, in fact, I would say just the opposite. I think in many ways one has to see my experience, and I point all this out in the book, uh, it's kind of the exception that proves the rule. I think this journey happened for a reason. Of course, it took me more than 2 years to get to that point because initially I was trying to write it up as a neuroscientific about the ultra-reality deep in coma when I should have had no experience at all. But then I came to realize just what the bigger message was, and that it was far grander than just a little neuroscientific report of that ultra-reality that's often described in near-death experiences. So it, it really I would say that in fact, when you, when you read my story and get through to the very end and realize what's happened, that it points out that even though I had a somewhat anomalous journey by having this very fortuitous temporary amnesia for my life in the physical realm, it all served a much grander purpose because it had to happen that way for me to realize the— or to understand the reality or ultra-reality of that experience and of that realm and how it really happened outside of my brain.

So do you feel that you were chosen?

Um, well, like I said, it took me more than 2 years to finally get to a point where I thought, well, maybe this did happen for a reason, although I resisted that tremendously for a long time. I mean, especially when it was all about writing this up as a neuroscientific report and discussing it with my colleagues, trying to come up with explanations for how this might have happened in my brain. Which is what I thought when I first came back. I was stunned by the experience, just like everyone is. But on the other hand, I thought that there must be some brain-based explanation. And so I went back to my neuroscientific roots and tried and tried to come up with an explanation within my brain. And because I had such a severe meningitis, in fact, none of the hypotheses worked.

So one of the most obvious questions is, how have your colleagues reacted?

Well, I would say there, there are 2 kind of scenarios where they seem to respond pretty favorably. One is if they are at all versed in consciousness, and I can tell you I had to learn a lot about consciousness far beyond what I ever had to know as a neurosurgeon. Because in neurosurgery, you know, there are a few things that we know, and we certainly think we have a good idea of the kind of things that turn off consciousness. But you have to remember that we've been using general anesthesia for over 150 years, and yet we have no clue how general anesthesia works to turn off consciousness. And that should be a pretty good clue about how little we actually know about consciousness. And so that That's one group, or the neurosurgeons. If I have 10 or 15 minutes to talk with them about the hard problem of consciousness, as it's known to science, which is basically saying that nobody on earth can begin to describe to you how consciousness comes up out of the brain. Physical— if you know the physics, chemistry, biology of the human brain, you'd like to think that then somebody can explain how consciousness comes out of all that. And yet nobody can. It's a complete mystery. And that's very important for people to understand because that's right at the core of my understanding of my experience now. The other thing is the enigma of quantum mechanics, which drove the founding fathers of that field into mysticism because it suggested that consciousness plays a tremendous role in painting reality. And yet they couldn't understand that.

Explain that, explain that when we come back.

Okay.

I'm speaking to Dr. Eben Alexander. Proof of Heaven is his best-selling book, a neurosurgeon's journey into the afterlife. To say that this is an important subject is to understate this— the case considerably. I don't think there's anything more important, hence the time I'm devoting to the scientist and the subject. I'm Dennis Prager.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

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Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show, and I am speaking to Dr. Eben Alexander. His book is a huge bestseller. I don't normally have the authors of bestsellers on because they're usually not significant books. It just works out that way. This, however, is both a bestseller and a significant book. It's titled Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. And again, I just want to bring my listeners up to speed here. You are a neurosurgeon, and you were affiliated at the time— is that right? At the time you were, or you'd already left Harvard?

Actually, I'd left Harvard. This is 4 years ago. I was working as coordinating global research in focused ultrasound surgery for a foundation that was supporting that very innovative technique.

And you would have greeted a book by another neurosurgeon You would have greeted this book with skepticism, is that correct?

Right. I mean, I would say that, you know, if a patient had told me this before, had told me the story that I tell, I would have assured them that they were very sick and that, you know, we didn't think they were going to survive and not to take any of it seriously. But the important thing is that by seeing all that I saw within and seeing, seeing that ultra reality for all that it's worth, and then especially finding out just how sick I was with the meningitis and realizing there were certain clues about when certain events occurred and when these memories formed in my brain, I realized that this was very real and the experience was real. And came to realize how a large number of these near-death reports and afterlife reports going back 3,000 years occur in a real place. It's outside the physical universe. They don't happen in our brain, but our brain does some tainting of the information on the way back. That is, my personal and cultural background did reflect in what I brought back.

So you believe consciousness is independent of the brain?

Well, I— what I would say is we are conscious in spite of our brain, and that in fact the brain is a reducing valve or filter that reduces down a much higher level of consciousness that we get to when we're free of our brain. For instance, when we die and leave the brain and body behind, we are actually reunited with a much higher form of consciousness, which was really about the only way to explain my experience once I'd eliminated that it that it had happened in my brain.

Were you religiously active prior to the experience?

Um, I had grown up in a Methodist church and wanted to believe in an afterlife and God and prayer. Used to say prayers with my sons. But I would say after 20 years in academic neurosurgery, I didn't see any way that consciousness could survive death of the body and brain, and I'd kind of given up on that. And also, I was Adopted, and I had a kind of a psychic trauma around that and a rejection by my birth mother in the year 2000. I didn't realize till later, but that rejection basically crushed any hope of a personal loving God or of prayer. So for 8 years before my experience, I did not believe at all in a personal loving God or in any kind of benefit of prayer.

That's fascinating because it's a separate issue entirely, and I'd love to talk to you about that on another interview.

Uh-huh.

Because, uh, I have— I'm very interested in this subject on many levels because I don't believe that blood matters. I have an almost radical belief in that matter. Uh, I believe love matters far more than, than blood.

And it does.

Right.

All right, fair enough. Uh, but so— but, and usually it's girls who are more preoccupied with their adoption than boys.

Right. Well, I had gotten used to the fact that my birth mother was out there somewhere and did not want to reunite, and I thought that was fine. You know, that just— I looked for when I was younger, and North Carolina had pretty strict laws, and there was no sign that she wanted to reunite, so I let it go. It was actually my older son who in 2000 was in the 6th grade doing a school project on family genealogy They got me back into it, and he insisted that I write another letter to the children's home and try and find her.

Did you?

And I did. And of course, I was kind of shocked at what I found out, and that's part of what I report in the book.

Yeah, that's usually what happens. All right, anyway, it's, it's fascinating because I'm a— uh, one of my children is adopted, so it particularly fascinates me. But we'll have to leave that subject for now. So you had this experience, and now obviously, before time eludes us, what did you experience?

Well, deep in the middle of coma, I had no memory of my earthly life. In fact, I had no language, no words, no anything. And it all started in the realm that I call the earthworm's eye view, which was kind of a bubbling, muddy, foamy, monotonous, pounding, dark underground. And very unresponsive, as I said. I might, even though I had no language, I might wonder, you know, who, what, where, and there was never any kind of a response or answer at all. I felt like I was there a very long time because I had no memory of any prior existence. And then I was rescued from that by this spinning white light that was a beautiful filamentous kind of golden white light that slowly came towards me, rotating. And then it had this lovely melody, and the notes of that melody were crucial later on. But at the time, it was just captivating and beautiful, and it served as a portal. It ripped open into a whole new reality that was far more real than where I had been, and by comparison was more real than even this earthly realm. But of course, I didn't know that at the time. I just knew what I was seeing at the time. And that was Going up into a beautiful, brightly lit valley with flowers blossoming, buds opening, millions of butterflies. In fact, I had no body awareness, but I was a speck on this butterfly wing, and beside me was this beautiful girl. And the most comforting thoughts came from her, even though she never said a word, but looking at me with this lovely smile and sparkling blue eyes. You are loved. You are cherished deeply and forever. You have nothing to fear, and there's nothing you can do wrong in this realm.

What does that mean? You can do nothing wrong in which realm?

Well, what it meant at the time was that you could do nothing wrong in that spiritual realm.

Oh, not on Earth.

A lot of people get all bent out of shape.

Yeah, I do.

Yeah, well, the issue though is in fact, though, strictly speaking, her words apply to Earth too, if you realize That we are here to manifest that unconditional and infinite love of the Creator for fellow beings in spite of the injustice and imperfections of this realm, and realize we can either do that in our free will and choices and follow very directly towards that deification in the outer realm, or we cannot do that and we can dish out evil and pain and mayhem.

All right, well, I want to— we'll continue on that. The book is up at Dennis prager.com. Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. Eben Alexander. I'm Dennis Prager.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

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Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

I'm Dennis Prager, and I welcome you back. I'm speaking to a neurosurgeon, Dr. Eben Alexander, 15 years at Harvard Medical School where, where he practiced his neurosurgery. The book is Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. He was struck suddenly with severe meningitis. The part of the brain involved with consciousness was to use a layman's term, I guess, turned off, and he went into a coma for a week. But he had an experience during that time which confirmed for him, uh, the afterlife. Uh, the message you got— let's review that again— the message you got was, you are loved, right?

You are loved, uh, dearly, forever. You are cherished. There is nothing you can do wrong.

This—

and again, by nothing you can do wrong, it was strictly speaking, it was in that realm, because one can definitely do plenty of wrong in this realm, as we were discussing. And in fact, the whole purpose for our existence is to manifest that free will and free will and do the right thing in this realm, which has everything to do with forgiveness and compassion and serving as a conduit for that unconditional love out to our fellow beings in this very imperfect and unjust realm.

Here's an— it's not an odd question, but it may be one of the few you have not been asked. And I— but I mean it sincerely because I do think about the— this issue, obviously. Could you imagine that experience for eternity? And I'm going to ask a very earthly question: might it not get boring after 10,000 years?

Okay, well, I'm glad you brought that up because one of the most crucial features of this is to realize that from that outer realm— and this was very apparent to me You know, from the beginning, I went through that gateway, the beautiful kind of earthly place with a beautiful girl and the butterfly and seeing angels and these pools of water and people dancing, you know, souls dancing below us. That was a gateway that was somewhat tainted by my brain when I came back and overlaid these kind of personal and cultural flavors onto my memories. But from there, it was outside of this universe, outside of the higher dimensional multiverse, and outside of all of time. I remember seeing Earth time, you know, or time in this universe collapse down into either a loop or a point, and realized that access from that outer realm was completely timeless. So for example, I give in my book, I have that story of that wonderful friend of mine who is the chairman of one of the leading neurosurgical programs on Earth, academic neuroscientist, very brilliant man. Who was wrestling with what he saw when his father passed over a year earlier. And he knew that his father saw the soul of his own mother, you know, the grandmother of my friend who had passed over 65 years earlier. Now what I can tell you is she wasn't sitting there watching the watch for 65 years waiting for that to happen, okay? And in fact, when you understand how time flow in that realm and causality is completely separate and freed up from what we see as time flow, it starts to explain a lot of things about reincarnation, deathbed visions, near-death experiences, and encountering departed loved ones. I mean, all that makes far more sense when you realize they're not going along with this little clock the way we are.

Right, yeah.

And in fact, it's a much richer experience where You know, I mean, you have to look at it that all of our time is compressed into nothing, and yet seconds of our time could be greatly expanded to allow for things in that realm. But that is the dominant realm, and that is the one that gives rise to what we see here.

Why is there a here if we end up there anyway?

Well, mainly this is what I call soul school. This is where our souls get done what they have to do out there. You know, we're privy to, to all of this, and, and all of us come to know this, the reality of that realm between lives when we leave this realm. And we can get to know it through deep meditation and centering prayer and things like that. You don't have to go through a near-death experience to have a very powerful spiritually transformative experience that acknowledges the eternity of our spiritual Well, I'm going to ask you exactly about how the transformative experience affected you when we come back. Okay.

Proof of Heaven is the book. It is up at DennisPrager.com. A neurosurgeon's journey into the afterlife. Dr. Eben Alexander. This is The Dennis Prager Show.

Hi, my name is Gloria and I live in Agoura Dulce, California. I was driving home one night and you came on, and I was late, very late, and I literally had to pull over to listen to you because I knew I was going to drive into an area where I have no reception, and that's how much I wanted to hear you. I stayed there in front of somebody's house the whole time, and after you finished, I drove away, but I felt It looks rather criminal with me parked in front of some innocent person's home, but we miss you and we'll be happy when you come back. But I liked hearing these also.

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A neurosurgeon, 15 years at Harvard Medical School. Proof of Heaven is the book. It was a cover story of Newsweek, and it's a big bestseller. A neurosurgeon's journey into the afterlife. He had this experience while in a coma that can only be described as consciousness independent of the brain, and hence a journey into the afterlife. Uh, before I ask you how it has transformed you, I'll ask you a question that, uh, I'm very, very curious to know your answer to. You obviously went to a realm that we would describe as heavenly.

Yes.

Uh, to be blunt, if a, uh, a mass murderer went into a coma and had such experience, would he also have a heavenly experience?

Well, the thing is, when people commit, uh, that kind of evil and, uh, injustice and, uh, you know, in any form, anything that varies from that unconditional love of the Creator They end up facing their own higher soul and soulmates when they leave this life in a life review. And they were— they will end up feeling the pain and suffering they've dished out to others, but feel it far more powerfully than it was ever felt by their victims. So I would not say that people get off— that souls get off scot-free by serving as agents of that kind of mayhem and suffering to others. I mean, we end up Thank God. Yeah, and I'm very happy.

Yeah, I'm happy to hear your answer because I root for ultimate justice, and that means heaven for some, and I don't care what people call it, but something else for the people who have really done evil. I mean, otherwise our, our sojourn here is, is morally meaningless if everybody has the same fate.

Well, in fact, what I would tell you is that my journey showed me that this life matters far more, has much more meaning and purpose than I ever would have thought before. And, you know, realizing that our souls are eternal and, and that it's not all about this kind of materialist mindset that everything is between birth and death and that's all there is to it, that we actually find that our reason for being here is far more important. And it has everything to do with manifesting that forgiveness, compassion, and that unconditional love of the Creator in everything that we do in this realm. And that is the only way that we actually progress as souls in that higher realm, you know.

So by way of asking you, since you call it transformative, as I could well imagine it would be, I'm going to ask it to you in a, again, a slight variation of the way I was going to originally, and that I think most people would ask you: how has it transformed your life? I'm going to ask it in a different way.

Okay.

Looking back, how would you have led your life differently had you had this experience 20 years earlier?

Well, for one thing, I realize, um, the, uh, purpose of our being here, not just for ourselves, but then in fact it has so much more to do with our network of connections with our fellow souls and soulmates. And some of these could be just little chance encounters, uh, You know, they don't have to be, you know, family members and those that we spend decades and decades with. Some of our soulmates— in fact, I came to realize that some of my soulmates previously I thought of as my nemesis in this life, that I saw them as somebody who was really causing me difficulty. And what I came to realize is that they were actually there teaching me important lessons, and that the hardships, difficulties, and challenges in this life And that certainly includes the illness and disease, which as a healer, I'm very interested in those hardships, has everything to do with being opportunities for growth and for learning. And sometimes they're very difficult. I'm not saying that things are easy, but that some of these hardships and difficulties are actually there for that very reason.

Are necessary.

We are here to learn those lessons they have to teach, right? And that's what this life is all about here.

All right, so, all right, so now we'll go from henceforth. So how have you been transformed? In what way?

Well, it, it basically has changed everything about the way I see everybody around me, the way I see myself, see family, see others, very much knowing The, uh, not just the physical, mental, emotional, but especially the spiritual aspects of each and every one of us, seeing each and every one as an eternal soul, uh, knowing how reincarnation is important and that in fact, uh, we, you know, learning is not just limited by, okay, well, when you die, that's all gone, because in fact, uh, we bring back and some of this knowing back into our future incarnations. Of course—

Oh, so wait, all right, well, that's a new issue here, is it not? Whether you can believe in an afterlife without reincarnation.

Well, for me, it was absolutely clear that my experience was proving consciousness that is much richer when freed up from the brain and body. And implying very strongly eternal life of spirit and soul. And there was really no way for me to see all of that and, and acknowledge the power, the infinite power and infinite personal unconditional loving nature of that God that I encountered, to reconcile those 2 features of love and power with the suffering of innocence. the suffering of children and animals. And to see that there was just this one physical life made no sense whatsoever.

And so you've taken essentially the Buddhist view that— and the Hindu view of karma?

Well, I would— well, I think that is certainly part of it. And I would also say that I think certainly being— having grown up a Christian, that I'm quite convinced now, especially having read the Gnostic Gospels and become much more familiar with the teach— and the Christian teachings in their pure form, you know, not necessarily filtered through the councils centuries later, that in fact Jesus knew very well of reincarnation. Of course, he is a prime example of reincarnation.

All right, all right, all right, hold it there because I want to— I guess Our final segment will be on that.

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Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

I'm Dennis Prager, and it's gone very fast, which is a credit to my guest. Proof of Heaven is his book, the subtitle A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. It's exactly who he is, a neurosurgeon who has journeyed into the afterlife. He would have been skeptical of his own book had he not experienced it. Eben Alexander is the Thank you. And we just have a couple of minutes, literally, and you added this fascinating addition, to be redundant for a moment, and that is that the consciousness that outlives our physical body, which otherwise we wouldn't have such a thing as, obviously, as a mind and as an afterlife, But it also— we do revisit this world. That's what reincarnation is, and that is how you have come better to explain the suffering of children, etc. Is that correct?

Right. That there's no way— I mean, for one thing, going on the journey I went on, seeing that power and the unconditional love in its strength, because people Don't really know it unless they've been there, just how powerful that really is. It explains everything about our religious writings, but often in a different way than we interpret. But seeing that intense and very personal love of that creator for each and every one of us explains so much, and especially that reincarnation had to be there because there was no way to see the suffering of innocents, children, animals, etc., if it was just that one single pass-through. And there was no way to see an eternal hell. Eternal hell made no sense whatsoever from that all-powerful creator because it was far too imperfect.

Wow.

So finally, do you treat people differently as a result of this?

Well, totally. I mean, it, it has everything to do with seeing that much higher purpose, realizing that we are here to learn, we are here to face the hardships, difficulties, challenges, disease, illness. And to do it in, in a fashion that manifests that wonderful love of the Creator. And in fact, it has so much to do, for instance, with people who are bereaved or grieving, with knowing how that personal love for each and every one of us is so deep that that's what drives that wanting on the behalf of God for us to not forget our connection to the divine. And I make that point, I hope, clearly in my book and talk about my own adoption story and, and how that served to offer up some lessons.

Well, you will have a lot of new readers as a result of this. Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. Thank you for your book, Doctor, and thank you for your time.

Tomorrow, Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

All right, everybody, welcome to The Dennis Prager Show, the Happiness Hour. Come hell or high water, And there's a lot of the former going on. We talk about happiness. That's right. Happy people make the world better. Happy people make everything better. A happy producer makes a better show. A happy engineer makes a better show. A happy intern makes a better show. Just to give things off the top of my head.

You're a happy person.

Yeah.

I can't repeat it. It was the— but it was a gem. All right, I have to repeat it, right?

Sean.

Oh, Roy, stop laughing.

He hired you.

Are you sure about the happy producer thing? That's what cracked us all up. Today it is about a theme that cannot be stated often enough, and that is about not keeping all your happiness eggs in the same basket.

Join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. We wanna take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the podcast. Go to lifeaudio.com to find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network, including shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.

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