Section - GREAT AUTHORS - Eben Alexander
Dr. Eben Alexander - A neurosurgeon with remarkable experience -
Jump to a part of this page -
"Science and spirituality greatly strengthen each other, ... their natural synthesis is an inevitable aspect of human history, is one that I share deeply".
Wikipedia is curiously negative about the Afterlife in general - but it does say this about him -
Eben Alexander III (born December 11, 1953) is an American neurosurgeon and author. His book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife (2012) describes his 2008 near-death experience and asserts that science can and will determine that the brain does not create consciousness and that consciousness survives bodily death.
He has written various books since his stunning NDE experience in 2008, as follows -
Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife (2012)The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife (2014)
Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Heart of Consciousness (2017)
All are available from Amazon at this URL. You can probably find them at no cost on other websites if you are patient in your searching.
| At right, Dr. Eben Alexander, looking good, as
usual. |
 |
Ill-Informed Skeptics try to kill the messenger -
Various tweets and ill-informed skeptics try to kill this messenger, as usual, but, as usual, they have NOT looked at the overwhelming mass of evidence that is available. One of the debunkers' methods is to harp on about medical malpractice suits against Alexander - but those slanderers never mention how frequently medical malpractice suits are brought against almost every medical practitioner in the United States - "Which only goes to show, things are not what they seem - Sister Morphine, can my nightmares be turned into dreams? ... " (Rolling Stones - a rhetorical question, methinks).
Legally speaking, in a logical world (!), anyone, anywhere, anyplace can make allegations of fraud and confessions etc., but the information does not constitute technically admissible evidence until such time as it is tested for validity and credibility - Dream on, Giles - Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law? - Since when has that been evenly applied - anywhere.
 |
Looking
good, one more time! |
Now Eben Alexander is first and foremost a scientist, with
considerable knowledge of physics, chemistry and biology as befits
a medical doctor, and at last a surgeon of over two decades of
practice. So what he has to say is worth listening to, in the
following excerpts from his last book "Living in a Mindful
Universe" (2017).
>> ... I realized I had missed a giant body of
existing research on the phenomena of NDEs, past-life memories
in children, mystical experiences, and other examples of
non-local consciousness.
I began to realize there are many scientists and
physicians around the world who have already come to
appreciate that conventional scientific materialism is
hopelessly lost about any understanding of consciousness. The
past century has witnessed astonishing progress in our
understanding of the human brain. After millennia of guessing
what was happening in our heads during any human activity, we
developed exciting new tools for exploring the physical
actions within the brain
What is consciousness and where does it come from? -
The Hard Problem of Consciousness...
Return to
Top...
In the world of neuroscience and philosophy of mind, this
question is known as the hard problem of consciousness
(HPC), a term coined by the eccentric Australian
philosopher David Chalmers in his 1996 book, The Conscious
Mind. Many scientists believe it to be the most profound
mystery in the history of human thought. We know lots about
the mechanics of the brain, right down to the molecular level,
but when it comes to consciousness, we simply haven’t got a
clue.
Some scientists are ready to give up on the question. They
arrive at a point where they abandon all hope of ever
explaining how consciousness might arise from the physical
workings of the brain. Others decide to sidestep the issue by
declaring that consciousness does not even exist, or by
claiming that one day we will discover exactly how
consciousness arises from physical matter.
More modern scientific thinking ...
Return to
Top...
... more modern scientific thinking now sweeping the field
of consciousness studies concerns a wholly different concept
of the mind-brain relationship: that the brain is a reducing
valve, or filter, that reduces primordial consciousness down
to a trickle - our very limited human awareness of the
apparent “here and now.”
This conscious awareness can be liberated to a much higher
level when freed up from the shackles of the physical brain,
as happened while I was in coma.
The scientific implications are stunning, and provide
powerfully for the reality of the afterlife. But this is only
the beginning. As we come to realize that examples of
exceptional human potential (as in genius-level creativity,
telepathy, psychokinesis, precognition, and past-life
memories) really occur in some people, we begin to realize
that the latent ability is there in all humans. In other
words, these are skills that one can cultivate and enhance.
This is about a massive evolution of consciousness in which
everyone partakes. It became clear [to me] that the process of
telling my story helped others tremendously, but it also
helped me to realize the universal aspects of the message I
shared.
The risks to my career in academic neurosurgery were quite
real - I was rocking the boat in a major way, and the end
result could have been a forced separation from my tribe, that
of neurosurgery and neuroscience.
I was invited to give a keynote presentation at the
national conference of the International Association for
Near-Death Studies (IANDS) in September 2011 in Durham, North
Carolina.
Members of the general public often assume that my journey
and my sharing of it represent an anomaly that is antithetical
to our modern science, whereas the exact opposite has been my
experience. A number of the most advanced scientific minds in
this world, especially those deeply involved in some
understanding of consciousness, are not only on board with my
central message, but serve as mentors. They get it.
NDEs have been reported for millennia, but a major ramp-up
has taken place ever since the late 1960s, when doctors first
developed techniques to resuscitate patients who had suffered
cardiac arrest.
Before that time, almost all such patients went on to die.
The result is that we have now populated this world with a
huge number of souls who have been to the other side and come
back - and some doctors are paying attention.
[Among them] Dr. van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist [and] Dr.
Larry Dossey, a highly regarded physician who has written
influential books related to non-local consciousness
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell - wrote a book called Psychic
Exploration. I consider such enlightened individuals
(E.Mitchell & Alan Shepard, a fellow astronaut) to be
paradigm-shifting pioneers, heralding the next stage of
humanity’s evolving existence and leading us out of a world
that many feel is void of meaning or purpose.
Edgar’s intuition that science and spirituality greatly
strengthen each other, that their natural synthesis is an
inevitable aspect of human history, is one that I share
deeply.
Karen Newell ... [explores] commonalities among different
schools of thought. Rather than finding one approach that held
all the answers, she was intrigued to find that some concepts
were often repeated, such as the incredible value that comes
from truly knowing one’s inner nature by going within through
a practice such as meditation.
... experience is key to full understanding; it’s not
enough simply to read about certain topics
... There is a considerable difference between believing
something, and knowing it.
... The problem with ... the materialist
brain-creates-consciousness model, is that not even the
world’s top experts on the brain have even the remotest idea
how the brain could create consciousness. It’s the modern
equivalent of scientists thinking, Well, it sure looks like
the sun rises and sets around the earth, so the sun probably
revolves around the earth.
There is so much observable data that it is easy to jump to
the conclusion that a physical change causes the phenomenal
experience, when in fact the opposite might actually be the
case: the phenomenal experience might cause the enhanced
physical activity seen in the brain.
... just because sunflowers follow the sun does not mean
that their turning causes the sun to move across the sky.
There is no way to get behind the absolute requirement of
the observing mind in interpreting the results of quantum
experiments, leading ... to the startling conclusion that
consciousness paints reality.
The physics community has only become more befuddled by
recent experimental results suggesting that there is no
objective external reality and that consciousness (the
observer) is at the very core of all of emergent reality.
NDE reports by the tens of thousands - and similarly
numerous reports of deathbed visions, after-death
communications, shared-death experiences, and past-life
memories in children indicative of reincarnation - represent
data that demand explanation if one has any interest in
understanding the world as it is, and not just as they think
it should be.
Feeling the Future by Daryl Bem ...
In a controversial 2011 report
entitled “Feeling the Future,” psychologist Daryl Bem of
Cornell University presented compelling evidence of
precognition - that is, that people demonstrate conscious
cognitive awareness of impending stimuli seconds before the
computer has randomly selected the stimulus to present (!). Read the article here.
A follow-up meta-analysis, four of them rigorously
constructed from ninety experiments in thirty-three different
laboratories spread across fourteen countries, confirmed this
experimental violation of the most fundamental notions of
materialist science.
... By comparison, Bem concluded that the probability that
the observations in his meta-analysis could occur by chance
alone to be 0.000000012 percent, an astronomically robust
finding of significance
Arthur Schopenhauer said, “The discovery of truth is
prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance of
things present and which mislead into error, not directly by
weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion,
by prejudice.”
Conventional neuroscience teaches that memories are stored
in some form in the neural networks of the physical brain.
However, the neuro-scientific community has been seeking such
a site for the physical storage of memories in the brain for
more than a century, to no avail.
... failure to locate physical storage of memory within the
brain provides some of the strongest evidence against the
materialist position that somehow the brain must be the source
of memory, and of conscious awareness.
The more we learn about the structure and biology of the
brain, the clearer it becomes that the brain does not create
consciousness, nor serve as the repository for memory. The
brain doesn’t produce consciousness any more than it produces
sound waves when you hear music.
Quantum physics - that is, the behavior of molecules,
atoms, and their constituents in the microscopic realm - is
the most proven theory in the history of science. The success
of the underlying math and physics supports roughly a third of
the world’s economy (in the form of microelectronics, notably
cell phones, computers, televisions, and GPS systems). Yet in
the roughly 115 years of its existence, the scientific
community has made no real progress in interpreting what the
experimental results in quantum physics actually imply about
the nature of reality.
... the only knowledge available to any human being is the
subjective. In fact, we never have access to any “objective”
reality. There seems to be a consensus reality that we assume
to be the external world, including all humans and other
beings in addition to ourselves, but we must be cautious not
to assume too much about any objective reality outside of what
is subjectively verifiable to us.
... reports from people around the world defy what
materialist science claims to be fact, and such empirical
evidence must be addressed if we have any serious interest in
understanding the nature of our world.
... much hinges on what humans believe to be possible, and
any limitations are largely “within the mind.” Such beliefs
have expanded dramatically in recent decades, with the
overwhelming evidence for non-local consciousness, such as the
reality of telepathy, precognition, presentiment, out-of-body
experiences, remote viewing, and past-life memories in
children indicative of reincarnation. Researchers of these
subjects are leading the charge in eliminating the simplistic
falsehoods of scientific materialism, and the self-imposed
limitations of human capability that they imply.
... conscious awareness itself is the only information
source available to any human being in existence. The
objective physical world is projected as outside of and
independent of our conscious awareness of it, yet our
assumption that it exists as we perceive it is only an
interpretation of our sensory experience, and not an
established fact.
In filter theory, the physical brain serves as the reducing
valve or filter through which universal consciousness, or the
Collective Mind, is filtered, or allowed in, to our more
restricted human perception of the world around us. Further, I
suggest the filtering function is intimately associated with
the neocortex, the outer surface (and human part) of the
brain.
Filter theory takes us much further in explaining a wide
variety of exotic human experiences, such as near-death and
shared-death experiences, precognition, after-death
communications, out-of-body experiences, and remote viewing.
Richard Feynman (1918–1988), who won the Nobel Prize in
Physics in 1965, is renowned for his statement, “If someone
tells you they understand quantum mechanics, then all you’ve
learned is that you’ve met a liar.”
That an outcome would depend on the choices of the
experimenter making the measurement is completely unexpected.
In addition to the surprising mathematical
comprehensibility of the universe, the precise tuning of the
values of physical constants that determine the behavior of
all of the components of our universe is, likewise, shocking.
If any of these twenty-six numbers varied by even a tiny
fraction from their measured values (far less than 1 percent),
the result would have prevented the formation of atoms,
molecules, humans (and other life-forms), planets, stars, and
galaxies—none of it would exist.
I believe that this ordering intelligence, which many might
see as a creative God, is actually the very source of our
conscious awareness as sentient beings. There is no separation
between this ultimate creative force and our conscious
awareness of existing in this universe. The observer, the
self-awareness of the universe for itself, is us at the
deepest level.
... biologists have found robust evidence that quantum
physics is crucial to any understanding of biological
processes such as photosynthesis (plants’ ability to convert
the energy of sunlight into living matter), the human sense of
smell, and bird migration (through their ability to see the
earth’s magnetic field).
The beauty is the perfect oneness of it all — that these
enormously separate perspectives are merely different facets
of the same perfect diamond—the gem of our existence.
(Read
Daryl Bem's "Science is Broken" - Here - 12 pages)
>> ... I realized I had missed a giant body of existing research on the phenomena of NDEs, past-life memories in children, mystical experiences, and other examples of non-local consciousness.
I began to realize there are many scientists and physicians around the world who have already come to appreciate that conventional scientific materialism is hopelessly lost about any understanding of consciousness. The past century has witnessed astonishing progress in our understanding of the human brain. After millennia of guessing what was happening in our heads during any human activity, we developed exciting new tools for exploring the physical actions within the brain
What is consciousness and where does it come from? -
The Hard Problem of Consciousness...
Return to Top...
In the world of neuroscience and philosophy of mind, this question is known as the hard problem of consciousness (HPC), a term coined by the eccentric Australian philosopher David Chalmers in his 1996 book, The Conscious Mind. Many scientists believe it to be the most profound mystery in the history of human thought. We know lots about the mechanics of the brain, right down to the molecular level, but when it comes to consciousness, we simply haven’t got a clue.
Some scientists are ready to give up on the question. They arrive at a point where they abandon all hope of ever explaining how consciousness might arise from the physical workings of the brain. Others decide to sidestep the issue by declaring that consciousness does not even exist, or by claiming that one day we will discover exactly how consciousness arises from physical matter.
More modern scientific thinking ...
Return to Top...
... more modern scientific thinking now sweeping the field of consciousness studies concerns a wholly different concept of the mind-brain relationship: that the brain is a reducing valve, or filter, that reduces primordial consciousness down to a trickle - our very limited human awareness of the apparent “here and now.”
This conscious awareness can be liberated to a much higher level when freed up from the shackles of the physical brain, as happened while I was in coma.
The scientific implications are stunning, and provide powerfully for the reality of the afterlife. But this is only the beginning. As we come to realize that examples of exceptional human potential (as in genius-level creativity, telepathy, psychokinesis, precognition, and past-life memories) really occur in some people, we begin to realize that the latent ability is there in all humans. In other words, these are skills that one can cultivate and enhance.
This is about a massive evolution of consciousness in which everyone partakes. It became clear [to me] that the process of telling my story helped others tremendously, but it also helped me to realize the universal aspects of the message I shared.
The risks to my career in academic neurosurgery were quite real - I was rocking the boat in a major way, and the end result could have been a forced separation from my tribe, that of neurosurgery and neuroscience.
I was invited to give a keynote presentation at the national conference of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) in September 2011 in Durham, North Carolina.
Members of the general public often assume that my journey and my sharing of it represent an anomaly that is antithetical to our modern science, whereas the exact opposite has been my experience. A number of the most advanced scientific minds in this world, especially those deeply involved in some understanding of consciousness, are not only on board with my central message, but serve as mentors. They get it.
NDEs have been reported for millennia, but a major ramp-up has taken place ever since the late 1960s, when doctors first developed techniques to resuscitate patients who had suffered cardiac arrest.
Before that time, almost all such patients went on to die. The result is that we have now populated this world with a huge number of souls who have been to the other side and come back - and some doctors are paying attention.
[Among them] Dr. van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist [and] Dr. Larry Dossey, a highly regarded physician who has written influential books related to non-local consciousness
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell - wrote a book called Psychic Exploration. I consider such enlightened individuals (E.Mitchell & Alan Shepard, a fellow astronaut) to be paradigm-shifting pioneers, heralding the next stage of humanity’s evolving existence and leading us out of a world that many feel is void of meaning or purpose.
Edgar’s intuition that science and spirituality greatly strengthen each other, that their natural synthesis is an inevitable aspect of human history, is one that I share deeply.
Karen Newell ... [explores] commonalities among different schools of thought. Rather than finding one approach that held all the answers, she was intrigued to find that some concepts were often repeated, such as the incredible value that comes from truly knowing one’s inner nature by going within through a practice such as meditation.
... experience is key to full understanding; it’s not enough simply to read about certain topics
... There is a considerable difference between believing something, and knowing it.
... The problem with ... the materialist brain-creates-consciousness model, is that not even the world’s top experts on the brain have even the remotest idea how the brain could create consciousness. It’s the modern equivalent of scientists thinking, Well, it sure looks like the sun rises and sets around the earth, so the sun probably revolves around the earth.
There is so much observable data that it is easy to jump to the conclusion that a physical change causes the phenomenal experience, when in fact the opposite might actually be the case: the phenomenal experience might cause the enhanced physical activity seen in the brain.
... just because sunflowers follow the sun does not mean that their turning causes the sun to move across the sky.
There is no way to get behind the absolute requirement of the observing mind in interpreting the results of quantum experiments, leading ... to the startling conclusion that consciousness paints reality.
The physics community has only become more befuddled by recent experimental results suggesting that there is no objective external reality and that consciousness (the observer) is at the very core of all of emergent reality.
NDE reports by the tens of thousands - and similarly numerous reports of deathbed visions, after-death communications, shared-death experiences, and past-life memories in children indicative of reincarnation - represent data that demand explanation if one has any interest in understanding the world as it is, and not just as they think it should be.
Feeling the Future by Daryl Bem ...
In a controversial 2011 report entitled “Feeling the Future,” psychologist Daryl Bem of Cornell University presented compelling evidence of precognition - that is, that people demonstrate conscious cognitive awareness of impending stimuli seconds before the computer has randomly selected the stimulus to present (!). Read the article here.
A follow-up meta-analysis, four of them rigorously constructed from ninety experiments in thirty-three different laboratories spread across fourteen countries, confirmed this experimental violation of the most fundamental notions of materialist science.
... By comparison, Bem concluded that the probability that the observations in his meta-analysis could occur by chance alone to be 0.000000012 percent, an astronomically robust finding of significance
Arthur Schopenhauer said, “The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance of things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.”
Conventional neuroscience teaches that memories are stored in some form in the neural networks of the physical brain. However, the neuro-scientific community has been seeking such a site for the physical storage of memories in the brain for more than a century, to no avail.
... failure to locate physical storage of memory within the brain provides some of the strongest evidence against the materialist position that somehow the brain must be the source of memory, and of conscious awareness.
The more we learn about the structure and biology of the brain, the clearer it becomes that the brain does not create consciousness, nor serve as the repository for memory. The brain doesn’t produce consciousness any more than it produces sound waves when you hear music.
Quantum physics - that is, the behavior of molecules, atoms, and their constituents in the microscopic realm - is the most proven theory in the history of science. The success of the underlying math and physics supports roughly a third of the world’s economy (in the form of microelectronics, notably cell phones, computers, televisions, and GPS systems). Yet in the roughly 115 years of its existence, the scientific community has made no real progress in interpreting what the experimental results in quantum physics actually imply about the nature of reality.
... the only knowledge available to any human being is the subjective. In fact, we never have access to any “objective” reality. There seems to be a consensus reality that we assume to be the external world, including all humans and other beings in addition to ourselves, but we must be cautious not to assume too much about any objective reality outside of what is subjectively verifiable to us.
... reports from people around the world defy what materialist science claims to be fact, and such empirical evidence must be addressed if we have any serious interest in understanding the nature of our world.
... much hinges on what humans believe to be possible, and any limitations are largely “within the mind.” Such beliefs have expanded dramatically in recent decades, with the overwhelming evidence for non-local consciousness, such as the reality of telepathy, precognition, presentiment, out-of-body experiences, remote viewing, and past-life memories in children indicative of reincarnation. Researchers of these subjects are leading the charge in eliminating the simplistic falsehoods of scientific materialism, and the self-imposed limitations of human capability that they imply.
... conscious awareness itself is the only information source available to any human being in existence. The objective physical world is projected as outside of and independent of our conscious awareness of it, yet our assumption that it exists as we perceive it is only an interpretation of our sensory experience, and not an established fact.
In filter theory, the physical brain serves as the reducing valve or filter through which universal consciousness, or the Collective Mind, is filtered, or allowed in, to our more restricted human perception of the world around us. Further, I suggest the filtering function is intimately associated with the neocortex, the outer surface (and human part) of the brain.
Filter theory takes us much further in explaining a wide variety of exotic human experiences, such as near-death and shared-death experiences, precognition, after-death communications, out-of-body experiences, and remote viewing.
Richard Feynman (1918–1988), who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, is renowned for his statement, “If someone tells you they understand quantum mechanics, then all you’ve learned is that you’ve met a liar.”
That an outcome would depend on the choices of the experimenter making the measurement is completely unexpected.
In addition to the surprising mathematical comprehensibility of the universe, the precise tuning of the values of physical constants that determine the behavior of all of the components of our universe is, likewise, shocking.
If any of these twenty-six numbers varied by even a tiny fraction from their measured values (far less than 1 percent), the result would have prevented the formation of atoms, molecules, humans (and other life-forms), planets, stars, and galaxies—none of it would exist.
I believe that this ordering intelligence, which many might see as a creative God, is actually the very source of our conscious awareness as sentient beings. There is no separation between this ultimate creative force and our conscious awareness of existing in this universe. The observer, the self-awareness of the universe for itself, is us at the deepest level.
... biologists have found robust evidence that quantum physics is crucial to any understanding of biological processes such as photosynthesis (plants’ ability to convert the energy of sunlight into living matter), the human sense of smell, and bird migration (through their ability to see the earth’s magnetic field).
The beauty is the perfect oneness of it all — that these enormously separate perspectives are merely different facets of the same perfect diamond—the gem of our existence.
(Read Daryl Bem's "Science is Broken" - Here - 12 pages)
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