Eben Alexander

Image of Eben Alexander
As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences.
- Eben Alexander
Image of Eben Alexander
There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind - my conscious, inner self - was alive and well.
- Eben Alexander
Image of Eben Alexander
Our spirit is not dependent on the brain or body. It is eternal, and no one has one sentence worth of hard evidence that it isn't.
- Eben Alexander
Image of Eben Alexander
I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon.
- Eben Alexander
Image of Eben Alexander
I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.
- Eben Alexander
Image of Eben Alexander
I'm not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body. Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history.
- Eben Alexander
Image of Eben Alexander
Laughter and irony are at heart reminders that we are not prisoners in this world, but voyagers through it.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Inspirational
Image of Eben Alexander
Those implications are tremendous beyond description. My experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness, that human experience continues beyond the grave. More important, it continues under the gaze of a God who loves and cares about each one of us and about where the universe itself and all the beings within it are ultimately going.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Brain
Image of Eben Alexander
Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it's the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times. Omniscient, omnipotent, personal-and loving us without conditions. We are connected as One through our divine link with God.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Links
Image of Eben Alexander
We-each of us-are intricately, irremovably connected to the larger universe. It is our true home, and thinking that this physical world is all that matters is like shutting oneself up in a small closet and imagining that there is nothing else out beyond it.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Home
Image of Eben Alexander
Our eternal spiritual self is more real than anything we perceive in this physical realm, and has a divine connection to the infinite love of the Creator.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Spiritual
Image of Eben Alexander
Evil was necessary because without it free will was impossible, and without free will there could be no growth—no forward movement, no chance for us to become what God longed for us to be. Horrible and all-powerful as evil sometimes seemed to be in a world like ours, in the larger picture love was overwhelmingly dominant, and it would ultimately be triumphant.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Powerful
Image of Eben Alexander
We can only see what our brain’s filter allows through.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Brain
Image of Eben Alexander
To experience thinking outside the brain is to enter a world of instantaneous connections that make ordinary thinking (i.e those aspects limited by the physical brain and the speed of light_ seem like some hopelessly sleepy and plodding event. Our truest, deepest self is completely free. It is not crippled or compromised by past actions or concerned with identity or status. It comprehends that it has no need to fear the earthly world, and therefore, it has no need to build itself up through fame or wealth or conquest.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Past
Image of Eben Alexander
We - each of us - are intricately, irremovably connected to the larger universe.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Connected
Image of Eben Alexander
My journey deep into coma, outside this lowly physical realm and into the loftiest dwelling place of the almighty Creator, revealed the indescribably immense chasm between our human knowledge and the awe-inspiring realm of God.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Journey
Image of Eben Alexander
I had a foretaste of another, larger kind of knowledge: one I believe human beings will be able to access in ever larger numbers in the future. But conveying that knowledge now is rather like a chimpanzee, becoming a human for a single day to experience all of the wonders of human knowledge, and then returning to one's chimp friends and trying to tell them what it was like knowing several different Romance languages, the calculus, and the immense scale of the universe.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Believe
Image of Eben Alexander
Our spirit is not dependent on the brain or body. It is eternal, and no one has one sentence worth of hard evidence that it isn’t.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Brain
Image of Eben Alexander
A story-a true story-can heal as much as medicine can.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Medicine
Image of Eben Alexander
The part of my brain that was responsible for creating the world I lived and moved in and for taking the raw data that came in through my senses and fashioning it into a meaningful universe: that part of my brain was down, and out. And yet despite all of this, I had been alive, and aware, truly aware, in a universe characterized above all by love, consciousness, and reality. There was, for me, simply no arguing this fact. I knew it so completely that I ached.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Meaningful
Image of Eben Alexander
Physical life is characterized by defensiveness, whereas spiritual life is just the opposite.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Spiritual
Image of Eben Alexander
How did I gain from not remembering my earthly self? It allowed me to go deep into realms beyond the worldly without having to worry about what I was leaving behind. Throughout my entire time in those worlds, I was a soul with nothing to lose. No places to miss, no people to mourn. I had come from nowhere and had no history, so I fully accepted my circumstances-even the initial murk and mess of the Realm of the Earthworm's-Eye View-with equanimity.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Eye
Image of Eben Alexander
I finally chalked it up to the fact that the brain is truly an extraordinary device: more extraordinary than we can even guess.
- Eben Alexander
Collection: Brain