Classic - Proof of Heaven: Life After Death Revealed

0:00Carrot. Yes. You know how every once in a while you read a book that changes everything. Oh, yeah. Well, that is exactly what happened when I read The New York Times Best Seller Proof of Heaven by Dr. Evan Alexander. Nice. Now, this book is a personal accounting from Dr. Alexander of his near-death experience. What fascinated me the most about this book was not just his story, but in fact, when you frame it with the knowledge that he is a world-renowned academic neurosurgeon who could perhaps easily explain the experience with scientific studies and facts if the experience was not truly real, it kind of puts the story into such a bigger light that it was one of the first dominoes that helped topple my skeptical mindset. So you might be asking yourself, why is Will telling us all this? Well, it turns out that on today's episode we have the distinct honor and absolute pleasure to get the chance to have a conversation with Dr. Alexander himself. That's right. New York Times best-selling author of Proof of Heaven and so many other books is

1:04with us today on the skeptic manifestations. My name is Will and unlike Mulder and Scully, both want to believe. So we've embarked on a journey of discovery. Welcome to skeptic manifestations classic. You are listening to classic skeptic manifestations. Welcome to our version of our walk-down memory lane as we present classics from the skeptic manifestation library warts and all. Warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you are hiring, we at Zippercruder know you can feel frustrated. For Lorne even, like your efforts are futile and you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous

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3:08Zippercruder doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. It's powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So, while other companies might deliver a lot of hay, Zippercruder finds you what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack. See why four out of five employers who post a job on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Zippercruder, the smartest way to hire. And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free. That's right. Free at zippercruder.com slash zip. That zippercruder.com slash zip. You might hear that we sound a little different today. Hopefully a little better. Hopefully a little bit better, but you're definitely a little different. Well, it just turns out that things to a unbelievably kind friend. We have acquired brand new microphones on permanent

4:11loan. Is that what he said, Karen? That's what he said. But we're going to get it. We're going to pay him for it because I mean, these are really nice microphones. These are the Mac Daddy microphones. They are fantastic. And he does happen to work or used to happen to work in the audio industry. So he knows what he's talking about. So we're excited. We're hoping that we sound a little bit better for you, but we would love to hear from you whether or not you feel that we've got the settings right. Because on top of these microphones coming in in these professional grade microphones, they're a lot more complicated than the microphones we used to use. So let us know this sounds okay or not because there's some adjustments that we can make to make it sound better. I think it sounds okay, but I could be wrong because I'm not an audio guy. Maybe you should sing a little song. Oh, Danny boy. The pipes. Maybe not. Maybe not. No, that did sound very nice. Anyway, we wanted to appreciate Jason to the eighth degree for being so kind as to send us these microphones because holy smokes are we excited to use them. Yes, thank you so much, Jason.

5:15Thank you so much. And go to skepticmedivision.com, send us a voicemail or an email. Let us know what do we sound like? Does it sound better? We sound not so better. We need to adjust some settings in Jason if you have any suggestions. We are all ears. All right. Well, let's get on with the show. This week's listeners corner comes from a very different place than usual. Yes, you can always go to our website skepticmedivision.com and send us a message straight from there, but we're also on social media. And this message came to us from eBouch 123 on Instagram, and they were talking about the sole contract episode with Galiana Okin. And they go on to say this episode blew me away. I purchased a digital reading from sole contract practitioner, that's Galiana, in the middle of listening. I felt such a deep connection listening to this episode and they've been on a cloud ever since. Now, I bought Nicholas David Negan's

6:17your sole contract decoded Kindlebook and I could barely put it down to sleep last night. I'm so grateful to you, Will and Karen for being such incredibly helpful guests on your show and equally grateful to Galiana Okin for helping me to make sense of my human life and soul's plan with her digital reading. Her decoding videos are fantastic. I plan a book of one-on-one reading and a family reading soon. I'm still digesting. Well, eBouch, thank you so much for sending us this message on Instagram. We love hearing from folks that listen to the show. And if you are on Instagram or Facebook, please connect with us. On Skeptic Medivision Podcast, we'd love to hear your thoughts on any of our episodes or overall the show. And if you send us a message, we'll always reply back. I am Will and I'm Karen. Today's main topic revolves around the reality of life after death. Dr. Eben Alexander spent over 25 years as an academic neurosurgeon, including 15 years

7:19of the Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Children's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Over those years, he personally dealt with hundreds of patients suffering from severe alterations in their level of consciousness. So he thought he'd had a really good idea of how the brain generates consciousness, mind, and spirit. That is, until November of 2008, when he was driven into a coma by a rare and mysterious bacterial infection, forcing him to spend a week in a coma. His prospects for survival diminishing rapidly. Now, on the seventh day to the surprise of everyone, he started to awaken with memories of a fantastic odyssey deep into another realm more real than this earthly one. His story offers a crucial key to the understanding of reality and human consciousness and is going to have a major effect on how we all are on this planet in the youth spirituality, soul, and the non-material realm. He's the author of Proof of Heaven, neurosurgeons

8:21journey into the afterlife, which debuted as number one on the New York Times bestseller list and remained in the top 10 for over a year. He's since been a guest on the Dr. Osho, Super Soul Sunday with Oprah Winfrey, 2020, Good Morning America, Foxman Friends, and his stories even been featured on the Discovery Channel and the Biography Channel. He's been interviewed for over 400 national and international radio internet programs and his books are available in over 40 countries worldwide and have been translated into over 30 languages. Welcome to the show, Dr. Evan Alexander. Dr. Alexander, I'm not sure I'd have the right words to express how thrilled we are to have you join us on the show today. Well, it's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on. Well, thank you for saying that. It makes you feel better. It makes me good. Now, Dr., when I read your book, I was left stunned. I'd been to skeptic, second-guessing, everything I'd heard about life after death. Along comes a book from a very well-respected neurosurgeon that claimed to have proof of the afterlife and I was thrown for

9:25a complete loop. I mean, if anyone is going to be able to debunk all the new age stock that's been thrown around these days, it definitely would have to be you, right? But your book goes in a complete opposite direction. I can't recommend reading your book enough to our audience, but for those that may not have had a chance to do so, can you give us a quick recount of the story? Yeah, I think, very briefly, I should point out that the reason my story is so important to the scientific community is because it completely violates all the tenets of modern neuroscience in its mistaken notions of the brain creating consciousness. And that's where I think my story has the most value. Because really, the disease I had of severe case of grand negative bacteria and meningo and cephalitis is a perfect model for human death because of its selective destruction of the neocortex, the outer surface of the brain and the brain stem. And that's why to have the experience I had is so remarkable. In fact, there's a medical case report on my medical records

10:27by three doctors not involved in my care, but fascinated by my recovery. That's in the Journal of Nervous and Middle Diseases in September 2018. And they make two very powerful points, to just confirm what I did in Proof of Heaven. One is they strengthen my argument that my brain could not have had any kind of dream or hallucination, much less the most profound experience of my entire lifetime. And how did that happen? Especially at a time when my brain was demonstrably most offline. That's a real shocker. And then the second stunning kind of feature of the case report is my survival. The fact that, you know, over two months, I ended up having a complete return of all my memories and then some and then, you know, being in the peak of health for the next 15 years, which is what I've really witnessed. Now, to get back to your question, very briefly explaining my journey, it was in the setting of amnesia. That's very important to point out, because that's an atypical feature of my NDE that I had no memories of Ebon Alexander's life.

11:29The words, the language, knowledge of earth, humans, etc. was gone. And that empty slate was very important for the depth of where I was to go with all this. I didn't know that at the time, but it only became clear over the months and years of follow-up after the event. And in fact, the essence of my NDE was really in three different levels of the spiritual realm. The first was what I call the earth, or my view, very primitive. Of course, I'm responsive realm. If all I'd done was go there and come back, I would have had a hellish NDE or the stressing NDE, but I went beyond that as most, you know, 95% of NDE's do into a realm that is far more beautiful and kind of our spiritual home, very comforting. The gateway valley is what I call that. It had a lot of earth-like features. I had no body awareness. I was a speck of awareness on a butterfly wing, witnessing all that I did see in that realm, but that was a reality far more real than anything I was ever used to. And to kind of put that perspective, you need to realize that's the realm where, for example, we go through life reviews. And life review is experiencing birth to death,

12:35everything in between, all at once. It's completely outside of earth time in a more eternal realm. And that's what I witnessed as, you know, so many other have in that realm. Thousands of years of history of reports, all people with life reviews, and the life review is really just the gold rule written into the fabric of the universe. Treat others as you would like to be treated, because the life review is really a kind of a review of the events of your life, but from the emotional perspective of others around you who were impacted by your thoughts and action. And the life review also is more of a reliving than ever remembering. And it's like this disappearance of boundaries itself. Now, for me, that was only a stepping stone in the journey, the Gateway Valley, as I called it, because music provided yet another portal, just as it had, leaning the up from the earth where I view these melodies that came with this portal of light that allowed me to ascend to the next level. And likewise, in the Gateway Valley, there were angelic

13:37choirs and hymns, chants, anthems, thundering through my awareness that energized yet another portal to a higher level. And those who've read the book Proof of Heaven will realize the importance of the guardian angel by spiritual guide on the butterfly wing whose identity I only discovered four months after my coma. And I won't go into that in more detail now, but it's a huge part of the story. And then you should definitely read the book to find out who that was because that was there was a pivotal moment in the book and we went, what? It is a mind-bender, that is for sure, but it's really a story of love and connection and souls and of our interconnectedness turns out that the third level, the main level that I visited beyond that Gateway Valley, that ultra-real span was the core realm. That's where I realized that oneness with the divine is the very source of our conscious awareness, realized that all the dualities completely resolve as you get to that core level of oneness. And I would cycle through these levels multiple times, but all that is told

14:39in much more tale, of course, in Proof of Heaven and in my many talks about it, and in the sequel to that book, which is really living in my for universe, that was co-written with my partner Karen Newell. But it turns out I cycled through those levels as discussed many, many a time, and then finally there come a point where I could no longer conjure up the musical melody that led up into that Gateway Valley to say I was sad at that moment would be an understatement, but I also do I could trust in the universe that I would be taking care of as I was promised by that beautiful spiritual guide. And I knew that was the case. And so it turns out then I witnessed thousands beings going off into the distance heads bowed, murmuring energy a lot of them with holding candles or hands up like that. And when I called all that and coming back to this world in my early writings in the weeks after Returns from coma was the power of prayer. That's how I saw that was it was drawing me back to this world. And the last thing I saw in the coma experience were the six

15:39faces. It will kind of bubble up out of the muck, say a few words and disappear again. Now I remember those faces right now vividly, visually as realistically as if it all happened this morning. I mean, that's how fresh those memories are. But when I first saw them at the end of my seven day coma, I didn't know who they were. They were important because they were family and friends who were in the ICU room. But I asked 24 hours of coma as well as Susan Riches, a family friend who channeled to me. You know, if you'd asked me about channeling before my coma, I would have told it was nonsense. It's a materialist neuroscientist, but she was there is fresh and realist the others. So when I was first waking up in that first day or two and asking people around me, you know, who these people were there, one of those Susan Riches who was not there. But of course, as I said, she channeled to me from 120 miles away on Thursday and Friday nights, nights four and five of my coma. Very important to get the timing of all that right. That's explained more fully in the books. But the reality is that kind of channel experience and those faces I saw

16:44helped me to realize that the vast majority of the coma journey had to happen between days one and four of a seven day coma. And I go into why that is so important and it's crucial from the scientific interpretation. And then I came back to this world and those faces, I ended up being in and out of a 36 hour psychotic delusional nightmare as I exited the coma journey. But that was only even more instructive because it showed me that the real, a rich spiritual journey that occurred during days one and four of coma really happened. It was way too real to be real as I tried to explain to people. But to me initially, my doctors had told me that it all had to be a complete fake out that the dying brain plays all kinds of tricks. And of course, my own neuroscience knowledge hadn't come back yet. I was not yet fully advised and educated about the details of my own medical illness. And it was as I went through that process in the weeks and months or two after coma that I was shocked. You know, how could I have had any such experience when my brain was so

17:47disabled? And how was I doing this big recovery? Where was that coming? That was a complete shocker. And that's why the medical and scientific communities have been my biggest supporters oddly enough. You know, it's not the kind of lay public out there, although thousands of people contacted me after reading group heaven because it reminded them of a similar experience they had been through. Just the flavor of discussing those realms, how one feels that heart love and that divinity and every bit of that, all having been there, even though the words may be imperfect, the words actually convey enough to others who have been there that I heard from thousands of other experiences. Many of whom had never shared their story with anybody. And that, of course, is the material of the second book, The Map of Heaven, where we really share how common these experiences are. But Map of Heaven is not my own personal sequel of my journey, but proven heaven and then living in a mine for universe are my own personal story of my journey of discovery. And

18:48that includes the 15 years since my coma, working with scientists around the world, coming to a deeper understanding of the nature of consciousness. And it's one that the modern science of consciousness ends up supporting the reality of the afterlife and even of reincarnation. You'll find that, for example, UVADOPS.org University of Virginia, the vision of perceptual studies that studied more than 2700 cases, past life memories in children, suggested reincarnation. 1700 of those cases are solved. That is, they actually found the person described by the child. And, you know, people hear about this and they may say, well, I don't believe in reincarnation. Doesn't really matter what you believe. The scientific evidence is there. It's very strong. It's good that a big portion of the scientific community takes this seriously. And that community includes quantum physicists, includes a lot of medical doctors and nurses who have witnessed these things in their own patients. And of course, many other experiencers and students of psychology, parapsychology, you know,

19:52non-local consciousness to left the all these things are a giant body of evidence that supports consciousness as primary in the universe. And that's really where our book, Living in a Mind for Universe goes. And the good reality for all of us is that the evidence only leads one way. We'll never be making the stupid mistake of going backwards into the materialist mindset, where basically they just said, ignore the evidence, debunk it, deny it, don't believe it, because it doesn't fit our theoretical models in materialism. And, you know, there's no better way to fool yourself as the scientist than to deny and debunk evidence. And Carl Sagan is famous for saying that scientists should never deny evidence because they don't know which evidence is worthy of denial and not. So you really need to take all the evidence. And that's where scientists like those that University of Virginia and other centers around the world have gone far beyond conventional science and coming to a deeper understanding of how all this works and explaining the reality of the brain-mind connection, and especially the nature of

20:56consciousness itself, which seems to be much more unified with the brain as a filter that allows that primordial connected unified mind to come in as a little any current of an apparent individual conscious. But ultimately, we find that that is an illusion when we leave the physical brain and body at the time of death. And that's what near-death experiences have been trying to tell us for thousands of years about that primacy of consciousness, its inner connectedness, and that it's ongoing after bodily death. Wow. So now I have 10 million questions. Well, we've only got a certain amount of time here. So we got a little bit of them to like three. I kind of want to go back quite a bit into this conversation while not the beginning, but sort of the beginning. So you're a neurologist. I mean, you're a scientific man. You have this experience and you know that putting it out there into that community is really going to risk, potentially risk your reputation, your career. How did you know this was real? Like what compelled you so strongly to really get this information out? Well, you know, as I said,

22:00when I was first coming out of all this, you know, if I was very, my brain was very adult, my mental function was kind of up and down in and out. And my doctors were shocked because they thought I had a 10% chance of survival early in the week, a 2% chance of survival by the end of the week, but no chance of recovery at that point. That's why they recommended taking the alpha ventilator, stopping all the antibiotics and just letting me go. And that's when I started coming back to this world and they were surprised and then amazed because I started having a full recovery, which nobody expected was unprecedented in the medical literature. And you know, to me, I was blissfully ignorant of all that had happened during that week. I was just kind of coming back like, what are you guys doing here to my family? You know, and they're like, oh my god, what I'm saying to go through and then here he is coming back. Initially, he was quite frightening to them because they could tell that my brain was still very impaired. But literally, within a few days, that impairment seemed to resolve and I was coming back very strongly. And I

23:02think this is really where the case has so much power and value to the scientific community. Because literally, I mean, when the case report was presented, the peer review editors said, well, this is absurd. There's no case like this in the literature of somebody this ill from back sure, I'm going to have a light is making a forward recovery. So how do you explain it? And the way the three doctors explained it is because I had a near death experience. That's what allows for this kind of recovery because they knew of other cases of miraculous healing and a near death experience. And you know, if we paid attention to miraculous healing through history, we should surely pay attention to it now. And these are cases medically vetted by the medical profession and then found to be, you know, recoveries that are inexplicable. So those are well worthy of our attention. And it turns out, the lesson is really about free will and about love and about connection with the universe and a sense of purpose. And what it does is it allows for us to see ourselves with a much more kind of wholesome

24:08purpose directed in a relationship with the universe. We're here to serve with love and kindness, compassion, mercy, acceptance, forgiveness when necessary. But these are the deep lessons of NDE's that we've been trying for thousands of years to share with the world originally various religions through the messages of the prophets. But now the good news is the science of consciousness and studying near death experiences is really taking us to the whole next level of learning this deep and profound lesson of connection that is shown to us through the life review of near death experiences going back thousands of years where we realized when we experienced the life review as those around us and not as ourselves. So if we're busy handing out pain and suffering to others in the life review, you receive that. And that's why I would say that I think our biggest notions of hell have come from people who had a life review where they'd been so busy handing out pain and suffering to others that when they had to feel it on the receiving end as

25:09part of the life review corrected process, it didn't feel good. They didn't like it. And hell is a very good description of that. So really, I mean, NDEers come back 90% of them over thousands of years across all belief system. Many of them had some agnostic or atheists. They come back believing 90% of them believe in a powerful loving force at the core of the universe that actually has an influence in our lives. And I came back realizing it doesn't matter if you want to try and label that force as God or Allah, Brahmin, Vishnu, Jehovah, Yahweh, great spirit. We don't own it. We can't control it. And NDEers have been describing it the same way for thousands of years across our cultures as is infinitely loving God for us that is not judgmental. In fact, the judgment really seems to come kind of from our higher soul and soul group. And not really, you know, it's just an embarrassment in the setting of that light and love of that realm to witness the things we did in

26:13life review that were selfish and greedy are just horrible. This is why it's so important. I am so glad as a materialist neuroscientist that I was rescued from the oblivion of continuing to believe my material is nonsense that there was no meaning to life that it was, you know, birth to death and nothing more that were all just chemical reactions and electron fluxes giving us an illusion of conscious reality and illusion of free will and realize that that is a ball of myth perpetrated by material scientists who have no clue what consciousness is and how to explain it. And that is why it is a modern effort by scientists to examine consciousness and the nature of reality is so incredibly important in the current era. And it involves an awakening of humanity that will also necessitate that we take proper stewardship for this planet and discontinue our very greedy and selfish, you know, addiction to fossil fuels, corporate greed at the energy industry, plastic pollution, twice the

27:15size of Texas and the Pacific Ocean. These are all results of the false sense of separation of materialists. And the more we realize we're part of the universe and part of each other, we're all bound together through this force of love, the more we realize that it's imperative we start behaving differently than we've been behaving. Homo sapiens is really not as wise as it labels itself to be when you look at the world today. And in its high time, we took proper stewardship of this planet, you know, burning fossil fuels and elevating the temperature of the planet, where it becomes an unlivable nightmare for our children and grandchildren. And especially when you realize the seriousness of that reincarnation literature and acknowledge the fact is Jim Tucker and Ian Stevenson who have done a lot of reincarnation work at UVA School of Value. Our memories are covered over at age five or six, so that you don't remember, busphabets as adults, teenagers and adults don't remember past life memory. But they're there in children

28:17and they're very real. And in fact, they often explain phobias, behaviors, things like that in these children who remember past life. But do know that age five or six, they start getting covered over. So by the time they're early teenager, they don't remember any of it. That's why most don't remember that, but we should pay attention to the scientific literature that tells us that a lot of children do remember past life memories and that they're very important and truly understanding our journey as a soul who we are, why we face the various hardships in life that we do. And how we can learn to grow from those hardships, challenges and difficulties and not just fear them and run away from them. And you mentioned being rescued from that type of thought process. And so I would say that you now are helping to rescue a lot of people out here that are stuck in that loop to say that this kind of thing is really hard to believe is an understatement because we have a lot of people in the scientific community who have poopued any that you just mentioned that this

29:19is really just chemicals firing in your brain and all that kind of stuff. But even in your book, you go or proof of heaven anyway, you actually go into as a scientist potential explanations for what you went through and then you debunk each and every one of them in an appendix in the back of the book, which is fantastic to hear a neuroscientist, an esteemed member of the scientific community like you explain, look, all the stuff is garbage. This is real that is incredibly inspiring to me anyway because as a pragmatist, I need someone like you to say, yeah, this stuff is real. You can believe it. You can take it to the bank. Now, the question that jumps to mind immediately once reading your book is your experience was very different than a lot of the experiences that you hear from other NDEs, right? You didn't see a tunnel that took you into a bright light. You didn't see your loved ones at the other end of it. How do you account for that? Why was yours your experience so different than others that we've heard before?

30:20I wouldn't say mind so different at all, especially if you look at Bruce Grayson's NDEscale, which he published in 1983. It has 16 different elements in four broad categories and the maximum score you can get for an NDEs 32. If you score seven on his testing, it's an NDEs. I get a 28 or a 29 depending on how you score it. So I had mind was absolutely right down the alley. In fact, the only reason I lost points was mainly due to my amnesia and non-having a personal life review. I couldn't have an Ebonylex and a life review, but I ended up seeing life reviews and reincarnation in gigantic bore into visions I had when I call the flying fish vision. The other much more powerful at a later passage through the core realm was the Indra's net vision, and that was a very profound kind of experience of the interwoven soul lines of all of our souls involved in this evolution of conscious, very profound experience. So I think

31:24that's the important thing to get is when you really know about NDEs, study NDEs a lot, mind end up getting an incredibly high score. It was every bit of that, but that amnesia was a very kind of key sticking point because it's so unusual. And yet when I first came out of coma, to me, amnesia made perfect sense because I was still harboring that outmoded beliefs that memories might be stored in the neocortex. But of course, I didn't yet know that all my memories were going to come back and it'd be even more complete than they were before coma, which is what happened over about two months. So it's really all, you know, this is why I had to share this story. Once I've figured out what had happened, as I tell in the book, Fruit of Heaven, that happened four months after coma, when I received a picture in the mail from a birth sister, and that's how I identified that beautiful loving guardian angel on the butterfly wing. That's when I realized it always wait too real to be real because it actually occurred. That was the real wake-up call, the identification of that beautiful spiritual guy.

32:27And that's when I really dove in in earnest. Now, I'll point out for you and your audience, the scientific evidence for the reality of these experiences is already overwhelming. There was a contest held in 2021. BigelowInstu.org is your resource site for the 29 winning essays of that contest. But it was held by an entrepreneur in Las Vegas who wanted to know what's the best scientific evidence for continuation of consciousness after permanent bodily death. He held a contest in 2021. They ended up receiving 204 essays, all from people who had spent at least five years scientifically researching the afterlife question. So, very high quality, not from, you know, armchair philosophers who know nothing about this and who commented on it from a position of complete ignorance. These people know what they're talking about. You go to bigelowInstu.org, you can read all 29 winning essays for free. I highly recommend do that, and you'll realize after reading any of these essays that we're already partly far along the pathway to a scientific

33:30kind of explication of the reality of these experiences, and then we'll need to move into understanding mechanism much better. But the reality is that first place essay by Jeffrey Mishlaw really hits it out of the park for those who absolutely insist on a very strong, leading edge scientific analysis. I would recommend several of the essays, but in particular Pimman Lommel's essay, The Second Place Winner, also Bernardo Castro, whose these are all also supporters of our book, Living in a Mind for Universe, these scientific endorsers, and also Julie Bichel. She wrote a beautiful scientifically derived essay on the reality of mediumship and mediums that interact with the souls of departed loved ones. And Julie Bichel's done a lot of very good scientific work, fully supporting the reality of this. So it's no longer a question of whether not this is compatible with science. What you end up finding is a scientist is either familiar with the data, or they're willfully ignorant, and there are enough of them or out of the willfully

34:34ignorant ones who keep claiming things even though they really don't have any basis for knowing it at all. Like Sean Carroll, I had the pleasure of debating Sean, he's a brilliant physicist, and I really love his physics work, but this was back in Intelligence Square in 2014, a debate with him in Steve Novela, but I must tell you that he has no experience to be answering these questions of the spiritual nature, and yet he keeps claiming as a particle physicist that he has proof there is no God, there is no heaven. And I would say he's dead wrong, put him up against all those winning big low institute essays, and you'll realize he might know quite a bit about quantum physics, but he's not very educated about this particular question. So there are a lot of scientists who are, you go to scientificandmedical.net, go to galaleocommission.org, these are groups that I've worked with from around the world, scientists who realize that the materialist model that pretends you know, physicalism, that only the physical world exists, the brain creates consciousness,

35:35that that isn't supported by the evidence at all, and we are much better off looking consciousness as being a unified field that's interconnected with our brain serving as a filter that allows us to access that level, the mental layer of the universe. But the interesting thing is when our brain and body die, it's not a shrinking down unconscious awareness to nothing as a materialist would predict, but it's a liberation from the shackles of the present. So it's an enlargement and enrichment and a reconnection of consciousness. So it's the complete opposite of what materialism supports, and yet there are millions and millions of NDE's out there around this world to attest to the reality of this. It happens in something like 15% of cardiac arrest patients, they have a profound spiritual experience that can be labeled an NDE. Probably something like 5% or more of Americans and Western Europeans have had a near-death experience, and these after-death communications are even more common, probably the tune of 20% or so of the people having

36:38a very powerful connection with a loved one who's left the physical plane, that to them completely proves the reality of their ongoing connections. And in this regard, we just lost one of our great pioneers, Bill Guggenheim, who wrote with his former wife, Judy Guggenheim, in the mid 1990s, the book Hello from Heaven, which is about over 300 after-death communication cases that they investigated. And unfortunately, Bill has just recently passed over himself a few weeks ago, and Bill was one of my greatest mentors, and I miss him from the physical world, but I've already got Garin, and I've already had beautiful contact with him from the other side, and he's wow, well. And I was just going to ask you about that. We've talked to several or many people that have had NDEs, and they have all released the vast majority of them, have told us that they have changed. Obviously, they're prospective, they're beliefs, but so many of them have developed

37:41these spiritual gifts, whether it's channeling or the ability to connect to source, and I wanted to ask you, if that had been your experience as well. Actually, you know what, before you answer that, let's take a break, it will be right back. Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along, which is why you should try Zip Recruiter for free. At ziprecruiter.com slash zip. Zip Recruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you, it finds them for you, it's powerful technology identifies people with the right experience, and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast, so while other companies might deliver a lot of hay, Zip Recruiter finds you what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack. See why four out of five employers who post a job on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within

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40:52to try Zip Recruiter for free. Don't forget that ziprecruiter.com slash zip. Finally, that ziprecruiter.com slash zip. And now back to the skeptic metaphysicians. We've talked to several or many people that have had NDEs, and they have all released the vast majority of them have told us that they have changed obviously their perspective, their beliefs. But so many of them have developed these spiritual gifts and whether it's channeling or the ability to connect to source. And I wanted to ask you if that had been your experience as well. Well, it has been in a huge way, but in many ways it's been cultivated. I realized, you know, in the first two years or so after my coma, I read more than 150 books, quantum physics, everything about brain, mind, connection. I could get my hands on spiritual texts east and west, going back thousands of years. I really wanted to get to it. But I realized ultimately, if I wanted to have any kind of deep understanding of my journey, I had to explore

41:56consciousness. I had to meditate. I had to use centering prayer. I had to go within. And so beginning about two years post-coma, that's what I started doing. And I wasn't just doing it randomly or kind of chaotically. I was quite focused. I had heard about a technology called Bionoral Beat, Brainwave Entrainment. It's a phenomenon discovered in the mid-1800s. I will help behind my dog. It basically says, if you put a pure tone in one ear, say 100 hertz, 100 cycles per second in one ear. And as an example, 104 hertz in the other ear. So four hertz difference between the two, you end up getting a four hertz signal somewhere in the brain. Heinrich Dove got this. And then in the late 20th century, Robert Monroe investigate Bionoral beats all the instigation of out-of-body experiences. And other investigators used Bionoral beats to enhance remote viewing, the psych expiabilities. And what have you? The remote viewing is one of

42:58the most scientifically validated forms of non-local consciousness in the world. It's been beautifully validated by Jessica Utt said of the American Statistical Association and her presidential address in 2015, where she talks about pre-cognition and remote viewing, saying the statistical scientific evidence for their reality is beyond dispute. And yet you find sources like Wikipedia, which is made up of rampant militant materialists, claiming that remote viewing is pseudoscience. Well, that's because Wikipedia is pseudo-incyclopedia. Well, they have no business. You know, any encyclopedia edited by the lowest common denominator can't be worth wasting your time on. Time to get rid of that. But that unfortunately is a sad truth if people use Wikipedia for information, especially about spiritual matters, they're going to find that there's this Gestapo that is right there to smash any kind of hint of spirituality of merging on Wikipedia. But luckily, there are plenty of excellent resources out there that show the deep truth of

44:02remote viewing in other things. But that was my key in abetitation, was using Bionoral Beat, Rainwave Entrainment. And in fact, my partner, Karen Newell, who had been very busy with Bionoral Beat's law before I discovered that. But she ended up, under my encouragement, she and her business partner, Kevin Kasey, who's a sound engineer, an electrical and mechanical engineer, but he uses it also for sound engineering. They ended up forming a company, Sacred Acoustics. And I was their alpha tester from the get-go. I use Sacred Acoustics daily, an hour to a day, I use it for meditation, very powerful technique. It allows us to be liberated from the here now in the sense of self of the physical body and brain. And that's where we have used our workshops. Karen and I have to prove that many of us who have never had a near-death experience that can come into the same kinds of knowledge that prove the reality of the NDE using Bionoral Beat, Rainwave Entrain Enhanced Meditation. You can go to sacredacoustics.com, you can learn a lot more, you can

45:05look at a lot of the testimonials there and download a free 20-minute on file, listen to that with headphones. But for me, I could not dispense with my tones. I use them not just to return to my NDE to recover memories, but really to cultivate and interact with the various denizens and guides and entities, and especially that instantly loving God for us at the core of the universe through my meditative efforts with sacred acoustic. I must confess I have not yet duplicated the full-blown ultra-reality of my near-death experience. It was so prominent. I talk about that in true heaven. How it's much more real than this existence. You know, people often think, well, an NDE must be kind of dream-like and murky. No, this is dream-like and murky. That is sharp and clear, memorable, defined, and transformational in ways that NDE has known full well and will describe by the millions. And this is where I think it's important for all of us to learn to go

46:05with them. We can all start to cultivate our rich relationship to the universe at large. I am absolutely giddy to hear you say things like this is exactly what I've been looking for my entire life. It feels like. And I think we should note that one of the most astounding things about your experiences is that you had really studied NDE or anything like that before. So when you came out, I believe it was your son or somebody and your family asked you to go ahead and write it down before you look into it. And then after it was all written down, that's when you started looking into it and finding the similarity. So that in and of itself is astounding to think that you had no knowledge of NDE's until that point. And it was all proven to you for a third-party verification. Right. And that was really both my sons, Evan and Bonn have been tremendous gifts in this kind of unraveling of this journey. Bonn, of course, was that 10-year-old boy that I saw at the end of my journey and knew I had to come back to this world even though I did not recognize him.

47:08And Evan, the fourth, my older son, was the one he had been there at the bedside holding my hand with other family members while I was deep in coma. And then he got back to school as I was starting to show some signs of recovery just to finish off some final exams before he raised back home right before Thanksgiving. Two days after I got out of the hospital. And I remember he drove overnight to surprise me because he'd heard I was up all night because I couldn't sleep. I was so energized as my coma. And he got there about 6am gave me a big hug and he told me later he said it was like there was a light shining within me. I was far more present than I'd ever been and I remember telling him it was way too real to be real. That was the hint from my doctors. You know, my neuroscience knowledge was still not back. It was still partially and temporarily offline because of the illness. And yet my doctors were so shocked that I'd actually been able to leave the hospital making conversation able to communicate. That was such a complete shock to

48:08them given what they expected of this illness. They kept telling me, well, the dying brain plays all kinds of tricks. We have no idea how you're coming back to us. But you can forget about whatever you experience because the dying brain is tricky. And I believe to that. And in fact, I'd never really read the NDE literature. I always thought, well, it's nonsense. You know, it's hallucinations of the dying brain who cares. But now I realize my God is so much more than that. It's what happens when you die. These incredible visions. And so I dove in deep to the literature. But only after I written about 20,000 words in my own story. And that was due to my advice of Evan the fourth. He told me write it all down before you read anyone else's NDE account. And that was very, very important. That way I knew that everything that I written down about my own experience was my own experience. And nowhere was it tainted by someone else's NDE or their experience. And as I said, when you when you really line it up against other NDE's and are rigorous, you know,

49:12academic scholarly fashion, it scores very high on the on the Bruce Grayson NDE's scale. One of the things that surprised me, let's say that is is that because when you first, I don't know if the right term is woke up in the NDE where when you went to coma and you became aware, you were in this muck, this darkness, this area that didn't seem pleasant for lack of a better word. But then you rose up into the other realms which were the heaven that people talk about. What do you think that is? What is that muck that you awakened to in the beginning? Well, you know, it's what I call the earthworm's eye view. And it was a very primitive course unresponsive realm like being in dirty jello had no body awareness, body image at any point during any of this journey. And in that earthworm eye view, it really was kind of, you know, it's negative. When I talk about it, when I describe it, people think, whoa, that's kind of foreboding.

50:13But I had no memory of anything different. So to me, it was like, this is the way it is. And I had no complaints. So, you know, it was not foreboding until the very, very, very hint when I recognized the face of that 10 year old boy and realized I had to get back whatever back meant. And now I was sudden I realized it was very important whether I survived or not and what this outcome was. And yet I had no idea what the rules of this world were. And that's why, you know, my higher soul ended up kind of ushering me back in some fashion or another. I came back to this world. But that earthworm eye view was very primitive in course. And initially, I thought, you know, that was the best consciousness my brain could muster soaking and pus. And in reading more and more of the literature, especially when I started with a Tibetan book of the dead and other books into the dead, things like that, Egyptian book of the dead, to me, especially the Bardos and the Tibetan book of the dead was very much like my, my earthworm eye view. So I came to see it as

51:14probably a more universal layer. It's not one that you often hear about in Indies. People are so busy sharing the beautiful, you know, loving, incredible, uh, birth and joy, spiritual home nature of Indies. And not necessarily some of the kind of ragged edges around the entry points and center. But to me, it was just part of the experience that I had to report along with everything else. But the deep reality is by the end of my journey cycling through, you know, the beautiful gateway valley then up into the core and then back down to the earthworm eye view. And through these multiple times, I came to realize the ultimate reality of that loving core of the universe. And that's what showed me so purely. This is never a battle between good and evil. It can seem that way at our level way out here in the kind of lowest material realm. But the closer you get to the spiritual core of the universe, the more is pure love that God forth. There is no battle between good and evil. And in fact, I would say the good and evil is a

52:16gradient that drives our evolution towards the good. That's what that life review was all about. That's what Indies and their contribution to human knowledge you're all about is coming to a deeper understanding of how we, we are all part of this infinitely loving God force of the universe. And religions have tried to teach us that for thousands of years, religions tend to get locked up into ideologies and into conflicts that are perceived but not necessarily real from the deep spiritual level where there's such unity from the voice of Indie ears. No matter what their religious faith, they come back all with these discussions of that love, that kindness, that compassion, mercy, acceptance. These are the principles that really guide that spiritual world. And the more we understand that and the kind of leading edge of Indie's to lead us towards this deeper knowledge of unification and the binding force of love that can bring us into wholeness and healing, that's where the world can really grow into a positive

53:18transformation. Now you mentioned religion and a word that goes hand in hand with religion often is prayer and you mentioned prayer and the power of prayer earlier. So with your experiences and everything that you believe, how would you define prayer? I think prayer for me had changed, I will point that out before my coma and I really had not prayed for about seven years. I explained a lot of that proof of happening in many of my talks but I had a dark night of the soul perceived rejection from my birth mother in the year 2000. So not much prayer in the recent years before my coma but many attempts before that and sometimes I felt very successful. I've taken my sons to church, things like that. I enjoyed that attempting to see the power of prayer. Although for much my life, you know, it wasn't as obvious to me as it was, for example, to my father. He was a neurosurgeon, very advanced knowledge scientifically but for him, he grew up during the Depression, was a combat surgeon in the Second World War and he never had any conflict between

54:19belief and a loving personal God and the power of prayer in his work as a surgeon and his knowledge of science. But for me, I made the mistake of of thinking that science was the, you know, the New York Times scientific American version of science, which is very materialistic. You can therefore, is denying much of the evidence of the spiritual nature of the universe and of our self. But that is where they're all waking up now, including even scientific American with some of the essays that Bernard O'Castrup has published there recently. The show The Power of Idealism, that is, of this mental model of the universe with a mental layer being primary and causing all that we see emerging in the physical layer of the universe. So it's, it's really about modern science, quantum informed science, in fact, quantum physics in many ways demands this mental layer of the universe that it not, they'd be some simplistic mechanistic layer, but that what explain kind of human history and human destiny much better is realizing the power of our free will

55:23to kind of organize how those events unfold. And that's what shows us that it's not just some bottom-up causality based on the, you know, subatomic particles in our brains and around us and bodies, falling the laws of physics, chemistry, biology. But there's something much more afoot to explain human destiny. And that's where we really need to invoke that mental layer of the universe. And that's where I would say that top down kind of a notion of spirituality from mere death experiences is so much part of that emerging science. And the quantum physics, in fact, that old saying, the nature of horrors of vacuum, well, in fact, quantum physics of horrors in a universe, it doesn't involve that mental layer of top down causality. And that's exactly what we argue in our book, Living in a Mind for Universe, the Primordial Mind Hypothesis. And a lot of the scientific world is starting to move towards a model like that, where we have that primary God-mind that is

56:24split into these little associated eddy currents of individual self-awareness, but that then seem rejoined, the Primordial Mind, but in a way that preserves in a fashion that I call viscosity, some line between a past life and a current life. So it's not just that we are like a drop in the ocean between lives and that it's a complete mix and that there's never any preservation of the information from one life into the next life. Because in fact, that's where the past, like memories and children are so indicative of a strong kind of ongoing current of facts involved in one life that then become involved in the next life. That's where transpersonal psychology, the work of Carl Jung and Stan Groff, Michael Newton, Brian Weiss, Robert Shorterton, and other verses so important because they have uncovered through hypnotic regression and meditation, other techniques of recovering path-like memories that people can discover this on their own, their path-like memories can contribute tremendously to understanding the issues

57:26of this life. And that's why there's a knowledge of our bigger nature and that we've been here before, that there's a preservation of kind of a history of our choices and behavior sentient beings in the past that plays out in our current incarnation. And the best way to bring that to a most successful fulfillment in the maximum growth of a soul during a lifetime is to fully open to the reality of this loving interconnectedness we share with the universe at large and that we have a responsibility as souls to help all our fellow souls along that pathway of love and coming into wholeness as best we can. And that's where we end up getting tremendous kind of soul growth and personal benefit out of these efforts to connect with the universe at large and meditation, centering prayer, other ways of connecting. We don't have to depend on 2000 year old dogma reported in books where some of the church fathers handling those books are afraid of people who have had actual person experience and will try and tell you it's the devil's work.

58:30Well, that's not true. In fact, the vast majority of NDE's lead towards this notion of love, kindness, compassion, unconditional love, verse in acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, all of these profound capabilities of the human soul to help us to grow. And that's where I think all of us can benefit from awakening to these deeper truths. No doubt about it. Now, I could listen to you speak for literally days. I'll just sit here and listen to you speak. It is so rewarding to hear someone with your credentials speak about this stuff in such a matter of fact way that helps us really come to terms of the fact that we're much more than the three-dimensional bodies that we inhabit. I know you're an incredibly busy man. We don't want to take up any more of your time. We're going to lay in direct links to your books, proof of heaven, living in a mindful universe, all those books, as well as some of the resources that you mentioned in the interview. So if you're interested in doing further research, please feel free to go to skepticmanobsition.com and go to

59:33Dr. Alexander's episode page. You will see all the links directly listed there, as well as Dr. Alexander's website and social media accounts so that you can reach out to him directly if you're so inclined. Dr. I have at least 52 more questions that I wish I had more time for, but maybe at some point in future we can have you back and continue the conversation. Why? I think that'd be a great idea and what I recommend is we also include my partner and co-author of living in my universe, Karen Newell. She's been a very rich source of spiritual wisdom to me. Of course, so is an expert in the sound-induced meditative states. And maybe we should reconnect and have Karen join us next time so people can hear somebody who really understands all this. That would be great. We would love that. Absolutely love that. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for your expertise in the information you provided to us. And thank you so much for sharing your story because people like you standing up and talking about this kind of thing is what's going to help change the world. So thank you so much for what you're doing.

1:00:37Well, and Karen, thank you so much for having me on. I greatly appreciate it and look forward to our next conversation. As do we. Thanks for coming along on this journey discovery with us. We'd love to continue our conversation with you on our website at scepticmedifosition.com or on Facebook and Instagram under scepticmedifosition podcast. If you know someone who would benefit from hearing the messages we're sharing on the show, do them and us a favor and share the show with them. It will help get the word out about us and it may just change someone's life for the better. And if you're listening to this on the radio and you missed something, I'm not to worry. All of our shows including this one can be found at scepticmedifosition.com. We can also watch the videos where you send us an email or voice mail directly from the site. We absolutely love feedback and would appreciate hearing from you. I hope you've enjoyed this episode as much as we have it all for now. We'll see you on the next episode of scepticmedifositions. Until then, take care.

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