Have you ever wondered how to access a higher state of consciousness? Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon and author of the book Proof of Heaven, shares his extraordinary spiritual journey, which propelled him into a higher state of consciousness. After going into a coma, he realized that all that exists is consciousness, soul, and spirit.
In this episode, he shares how we can access a higher state of consciousness and states of oneness daily.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- Consciousness creates the brain, the body, and all of the physical reality.
- Most people who have near-death experiences come back, realizing that death is nothing to fear. It is not the end.
- We’re all part of one beautiful consciousness. When we access a higher state of consciousness, we become aware of how connected we all are.
- Our existence is a wonderful gift that includes the hardships, the challenges, and the difficulties in life.
- The death of the physical body is not the end of our connection to our loved ones.
- Binaural beats and differential sound frequencies are powerful tools to access a higher state of consciousness.
- Going within means acknowledging that the little voice in our head is not our consciousness.
- Part of the process of going within is taking that little voice in our head.
- Thinking that the physical is all that exists is a gigantic mistake. The exact opposite is the truth. The things that exist are consciousness, soul, and spirit.
- There’s no place in the physical brain where observation and collapse of the wave function occur. It’s all happening in the spiritual or mental realm.
- People can access a higher state of consciousness fairly quickly.
- Sacred acoustic tones are powerful because they jumpstart one’s ability to reach a higher state of consciousness.
Transcription: Higher State Of Consciousness – Dr. Eben Alexander
Kamala Chambers
In this episode, we’re going to be talking about a higher state of consciousness and accessing transcendental states and states of oneness.
Luis Congdon
Today, we have New York Times best-selling author and neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander.
His life and book are wonderful, and in his book Proof of Heaven, he talks about dying and leaving his body. Being in a coma for a full week, no brain activity. Yet he goes off into this beautiful, amazing space where he finds that heaven is real. This beautiful and blissful place is accessible to all of us right here right now.
We don’t have to go into a coma. We don’t need to die to experience a higher state of consciousness. Through today’s interview, we’ll discover how Dr. Eben advises us to go into these blissful states daily. He also explains what he discovered after dying and coming back into his body.
We are here with Dr. Eben Alexander III. We are so excited to be talking about a higher state of consciousness. I loved your book Proof of Heaven. It was a mind-boggling experience to go through that with you to read that book. It’s awesome to have you here today. Dr. Eben, are you ready to launch?
Dr. Eben Alexander
I am ready to launch.
Luis Congdon
It’s so exciting.
One of the biggest things I got out of your book is this experience of a higher state of consciousness. It’s not just our brains that are manufacturing consciousness. There’s a lot more to it, and there’s this whole world out there beyond what we tend to think about.
Achieving Higher State Of Consciousness
Dr. Eben Alexander
That is a beautiful gift of the journey, and it showed me very clearly, especially because the diagnosis itself is severe Gram-negative bacterial Meningitis. It should have devastated any conscious experience in my mind, and precisely, the opposite happened.
Dr. Eben Alexander
During this profound spiritual journey, deep in a coma when my doctors had full evidence from my neurologic exams, scans, and lab values. They knew that my brain could not have manufactured anything. I experienced this rich, extraordinary spiritual journey and higher state of consciousness that I talked about in Proof of Heaven.
That’s why I’m often asked to speak in medical and surgical groups regarding a higher state of consciousness. They realized this completely violates our simplistic and false notions that the “brain creates consciousness.” The entire neuroscientific world is headed away from that very erroneous thinking.
Consciousness creates the brain, the body, and all of the physical reality.
That’s the emerging idea that’s coming to the world of consciousness studies now, which is tremendously empowering for individual human beings. It brings us up to a much higher level in terms of our interaction with the universe. And our ability to manifest our free will and determine how the world turns out.
Getting Into Higher State Of Consciousness
Luis Congdon
One of the big questions I have for you. It’s something I tend to get curious about with people like yourself. People who have had this mind-boggling experience of nearly dying, leaving their loved ones, leaving their bodies, and then coming back.
What is life like for you now? Do you feel like you’re a more grateful person? Do you sometimes forget to have that gratitude? Or is it just something that resides in you on a deeper level and is present more often? What’s life like for you now after you were able to get into a higher state of consciousness?
Dr. Eben Alexander
I think you hit the nail on the head.
One of the most profound gifts of this is an extraordinary sense of gratitude and knowing that all is well. Those were among the first words I spoke when I came out of the coma. People must remember that when we take that really broad point of view. The much higher view of ourselves, our relationships with others, and our existence here in this world. That all is truly well, and that brings tremendous gratitude.
Most people who have near-death experiences come back, realizing that death is nothing to fear. It is not the end. Many people in our culture think that the death of the physical brain and body is the end of their existence. Of course, that is something that brings fear to many people. That is not the way this world works, and it’s because there’s far more to this universe than just the physical.
Living In Higher State Of Consciousness
Dr. Eben Alexander
Before a coma, a conventional neuroscientist believed, as many scientists do, that the physical world is the only thing that exists. All this confused me before I got into a higher state of consciousness.
My coma journey clearly showed me how I had it completely backward. And what I’ve come to realize is that the entire scientific community is also awakening to this. Mainly because those who tried to prove that the physical is all that exists, that the brain creates consciousness, and that our existence is birth to death and nothing more are wrong. The evidence that they are wrong is all around us in these kinds of experiences.
It is a very refreshing and beautiful way to look at life. Of course, as I point out in the book Proof of Heaven. One of the deepest scientific fruits of my journey is that love is fundamental to understanding every bit of this. So many near-death experiencers come in touch with that infinite healing power of unconditional love, which changes their lives forever.
It is about coming to realize that we’re all connected.
We’re all part of one beautiful consciousness that is throughout this universe.
Religious Aspects Of Higher State Of Consciousness
Dr. Eben Alexander
That one consciousness is directly connected with what we call God, Allah, Brahma, or Vishnu—whatever your word is for that source deity at the core of all existence.
It was a tremendous gift to see all this from my journey. The only appropriate response to it is gratitude.
Our existence is a beautiful gift that includes life’s hardships, challenges, and difficulties.
As a doctor, I would include illness and injury. In many ways, they are beautiful gifts that allow us to grow. It’s how we face those hardships that allows us to recover our sense of love and connectedness with the universe. If we learn that lesson from the challenges we face, we will all be interconnected.
The death of the physical body is not the end of our connection to our loved ones.
This much grander view of the nature of reality is very refreshing indeed.
Kamala Chambers
It’s so beautiful to hear your experience of interconnectedness and love at the base of all of us. Because we do share that connection.
I’ve had these experiences before. Never the way that you have experienced going into a coma. But definitely, the feeling of interconnectedness, of oneness. I think the more we practice accessing those states, the more natural it becomes for us. And the more it becomes normal to feel that interconnectedness between all things.
What do you think about a higher state of consciousness? Would you feel that the more we practice tuning into this state, the easier it becomes? And we don’t have to go into a coma to access that.
Experiencing Higher State Of Consciousness
Dr. Eben Alexander
Oh, very much.
I often tell people in my talks that you don’t have to wait until you die to experience a higher state of consciousness. Or wait until you almost die and have an NDE to know all of this.
Dr. Eben Alexander
Sentient beings think they should come to know it thoroughly by going within. This is why I do a lot of work with my life partner, Karen Newell, who is a co-founder of Sacred Acoustics. We try to provide tools that allow others to enter a higher state of consciousness and deep transcendental conscious states.
One thing that I discovered about two years after my coma when I was beginning to get into a pattern of meditation and going within to get to some of these deepest answers, was the whole phenomenon of binaural beats and differential frequency brain entrainment. I started working with that. It provides a tremendous tool.
Any form of going within, whether it’s centering prayer or other forms of meditation, is a real gift for coming in touch with that sense of connectedness, oneness, and shared purpose.
Higher State Of Consciousness And The Sense Of Connectedness
Dr. Eben Alexander
We’re all in this together. The most direct pathway towards that transcendence or oneness with the divine is to make choices in our lives out of love. Choices out of compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and mercy that transcend or oneness with the divine. This is something that we can come to see and appreciate in deep meditation. But then, of course, it’s up to us to bring that into our lives. Bring that beautiful message of love and connectedness into our daily activities.
Meditation helps to strengthen our connection with that oneness. It helps to see our much greater power as conscious, sentient beings.
Then, we might think if we succumb to the falsehoods of the materialist mindset that tries to preach that we’re all separate from each other.
I believe that it’s an emerging view of consciousness and scientific circles. It strongly points to the oneness of our consciousness and how we are all interconnected. Thus if I were to harm my neighbor or harm my enemy, I’m hurting myself in a very profound and real sense.
This is why this kind of meditation, a deeper understanding of the nature of reality, is so helpful. And luckily, the answers lie within us all. Going within is a beautiful way to get there.
Self Awareness And Higher State Of Consciousness
Dr. Eben Alexander
When I say going within, I’m talking about acknowledging that the little voice in our head is not our consciousness. One does not think their way there through rational and logical thought. That’s the reason why going within is so important, and part of the process of going within is taking that little voice in our head.
In his book The Untethered Soul, I love how Michael A. Singer calls that voice in the head the annoying roommate, which is exactly the right way to look at it. That little annoying roommate that might interfere with our meditation is something we just gently put into a timeout.
Our consciousness is our awareness. That is the profound mystery of a higher state of consciousness from the scientific viewpoint.
Either you’re talking about the hard problem of a higher state of consciousness, which is the impossibility of trying to figure out consciousness just from the physical workings of the brain. Or you’re talking about the measurement paradox in quantum physics, which is another expression of the same mystery.
It’s all about realizing that consciousness is the observer within. We can set that observer free to far greater wisdom. Then if it’s just locked into our little day-to-day thoughts and worries in the voice of our ego.
Higher State Of Consciousness – A Powerful Experience
Kamala Chambers
What I love about what you’re saying is that it makes it very tangible for people to access and that there are so many different ways to access these states of interconnectedness. We’re always connected, but bringing awareness of interconnectedness is a very powerful experience.
For many years, I’ve studied and gone to school for various forms of healing arts. You could access these states through breathing, movement, and prolonged eye contact. Also, through the binaural beats, you and your life partner work with through sound. There are many different ways, like meditation, that you’re talking about, which is so beautiful.
I’d love to hear what your experience of accessing those states has been like when you were in your coma.
Dr. Eben Alexander
I would say that a real breakthrough for me was about two years after my coma. As I was getting more and more into realizing that consciousness is fundamental and that our current scientific understanding of consciousness. The notions of the brain creating consciousness were especially wrong. That’s when I discovered the whole phenomenon of the binaural beats. And what I would say more generically is known as differential sound frequency brain entrainment, but it’s an incredibly powerful tool.
A sound can access parts of our lower brain stem that involve circuits. These had been here for 200 million years since the vertebrates crawled out. These circuits are very crucial to the initiation of conscious awareness.
Conscious Awareness And The Higher State Of Consciousness
Dr. Eben Alexander
The scientific view is coming to the fore about all of this higher state of consciousness. Given that the old production model, which is the physical brain that produces consciousness, has never gone anywhere, No one has ever made any sense of that. But the scientific model that is replacing it is that of the filter theory. It is basically that the brain is a reducing valve or filter that limits primordial consciousness down to this tiny little trickle of our normal waking awareness.
We have access to far greater wisdom by going within. I would say that this filtering mechanism is part of what we call the veil. The veil separates us from what we can know in our higher knowing when we reunite with our higher souls at the time of death of the physical body.
But we can also get to that knowing and transcend that veil through various techniques of thinning the veil. One of the most powerful tools I have experienced is using sacred acoustics type, a binaural beat. They have a profound power to them, and I would encourage any of your listeners to visit sacredacoustics.com.
Karen Newell has put up some very informative videos there for meditating. These are all free. Also, a beautiful 20-minute Om meditation that has some very rich binaural power to it that can help people get into deep transcendental states.
Just by visiting and downloading those free sound files and listening through headphones, people can start experimenting right now with going within. And use these incredibly powerful tools to do so.
Going Within And Getting Into Higher State Of Consciousness
Dr. Eben Alexander
I’m not denying that there are other excellent techniques out there. Like float tanks and other means of getting into deep transcendental states. But my experience with the sacred acoustics has been very extensive, and that’s what I would encourage people to do.
Going within is where we find the answers.
Luis Congdon
I appreciate you talking about a higher state of consciousness. It’s great to have a neurosurgeon or somebody from the medical community saying this. Because often, this segregation happens between science, medicine, and academia. They’re kind of over here, and spirituality, meditation, and the talk of consciousness is kind of in this other field. Our dialog today is merging these two, and you’re working as a bridge to merge these two.
I’m curious. How has that experience been for you to be somebody in the medical community who’s working as a bridge?
Dr. Eben Alexander
It’s interesting. One thing when I first came out of a coma and was trying to explain it to my doctors, of course, they did all the medical details in my case that I did not know at that time.
All of my prior knowledge of brain and mind consciousness had been deleted. Every bit of my memory had been erased deep in a coma. That gave me such an extraordinary journey, but all my medical knowledge took about eight weeks or so to return afterward.
Higher State Of Consciousness – Clinical Approach
Dr. Eben Alexander
So initially, trying to explain it to my doctors. They would just tap me on the back and say, “Well, your brain was full of pus. We have no idea how you’re coming back to us, but you can forget about it. Because your neocortex was far too damaged to have harbored any hallucination, dream, drug effect, or anything of that ill. You can use false it out the window.”
The more I reviewed my medical records, the more I came to realize what had happened. And how impossible it would have been for me to have any mental experience. That’s when my interest significantly peaks.
It turns out that soon afterward, in the next month or two, I encountered doctors and colleagues who were very interested in this. They knew enough about consciousness to know that I was on the trail of something fascinating and revealing about the nature of reality.
It’s now been eight years or so since my coma. I’ve met scientists all around the world, other physicians, neuroscientists, philosophers of mind, chemists, and engineers. I have also met quantum physicists and etcetera across the board who realized that the materialist paradigm is an absolute dead end.
Thinking that the physical is all that exists is a gigantic mistake. The exact opposite is the truth. The things that exist are consciousness, soul, and spirit.
That’s what exists. You have to realize that all this material world is part of what Karen and I, and working on our next book about all this called The Supreme Illusion. That is the illusion that everything out there is out there, and this is not even debatable. It’s a simple fact from first principles and observation.
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Higher State Of Consciousness – Making A Shift
Dr. Eben Alexander
We need to realize that our brain and mind are so incredibly powerful in being able to do this. They put together a model within our mind of the external world that we believe is real, and it’s astonishing, but no, it’s not. It’s always been an internal construct within the mind. It’s only by starting to realize the truth of that and how far it goes in discussions of quantum physics in what’s called the collapse of the wave function that the observer seems to precipitate out reality.
The truth of the matter is that every fundamental principle of quantum physics is at work all the time in all of us about everything. Everything we witness is the “Collapse of the wave function” due to the observer. There’s no place in the physical brain where that observation and collapse of the wave function occurs. It’s all happening in that spiritual or mental realm of what generates the brain in the physical body and all this physical reality anyway.
It’s addressing that supreme illusion and coming to realize that we need to flip that around to come to a deeper understanding of the nature of reality. All this starts to make much more sense. That is right at the leading edge of where the scientific community is now. It is around the brain, mind, consciousness, and the fundamental nature of reality.
This is about a revolution that will dwarf the Copernican Revolution. That was when scientist Galileo and others hundreds of years ago determined that the sun might be the center of the universe and not the Earth.
I would say that the revolution was minuscule compared to what is coming into this world. We have come to realize that consciousness is fundamental and creates all of the emerging reality.
Higher State Of Consciousness And Deep Meditation
Luis Congdon
I’m 100% with you in what you’re saying. What I love about it is it resonates with truth. I found the truth through my own time in deep meditation, prayer, and various practices. I found this through tuning into that internal and seeing how much is being created within. And just going into these deep spaces where there’s this entirely different reality from the one that I’m even thinking about available to me, which then changes the external reality.
You’re doing this work with sounds and sacred sounds, and I think that’s breathtaking. We had Bruce Lipton on the show, who talked about different brain waves. He also discusses how we can change the unconscious mind by accessing these various brain waves.
One of the questions I have for you because you’re talking about entering these blissful or powerful states through sound. One of the things a lot of traditions is they say it takes a lot of practice. It takes a long time, and now, we have people like yourself and other meditation teachers, sound teachers, and all sorts of healers saying it doesn’t have to take a long time.
Through your work, have you found that if somebody went to your website and listened to some of your music, people could go into these states right away, or does it take a long time? What’s that like?
The Profound Experience Of Higher State Of Consciousness
Dr. Eben Alexander
I would say they can go in fairly quickly. It’s surprising.
When Karen and I do workshops, sometimes we’ll have people who’ve never meditated before who will have a profound experience in the workshop. Something like having radical contact with a departed loved one and things like that.
It doesn’t necessarily take a long time to get there, but I will also add that I try to meditate an hour or two a day. I’ve been doing that for the last six years. I find that it has vastly improved my life.
Dr. Eben Alexander
The scientific evidence for the benefits of meditation is growing all the time, which includes the benefits of strengthening the immune system for the genius level of insights and creative experiences.
Also, the ability to communicate with the souls of departed loved ones, seek guidance from spiritual guides and come to a much greater wisdom of how one’s life unfolds. That can all originate from an ongoing practice of meditation.
I just like to encourage people to give it a serious try. Use meditation. Try it for weeks or months. Not just try it once or twice and say, “Well, I don’t see where this is going.” Again, this is why I think you’ll find that the sacred acoustics tones are so powerful; they jumpstart one’s ability to get into this deep transcendental conscious state.
Higher State Of Consciousness And Great Wisdom
Dr. Eben Alexander
The answers do lie within us all, and we can all come to far greater wisdom. You don’t think your way into the mystery of consciousness.
You can read all the books about a higher state of consciousness. You can watch the DVDs. You can go to the various lectures and presentations. All of that is wonderful.
To get to any of these truths, you need to go within, and going within involves your efforts to quiet the little voice and the ego.
That is the little voice in the head that is what we’re used to using tools like fear and anxiety to try and guide our behavior.
Your ego is not your friend in all this, although it serves an important role. So we gently put the ego into a timeout, and these tones from sacred acoustics are very helpful at accessing that much grander observer within.
The true mystery of consciousness is the awareness. Awareness has access to a tremendous amount of knowledge, understanding, and information that it only comes from going within.
Kamala Chambers
I love that quote. That’s a great quote. You can’t think your way into the mystery of consciousness.
We’ve been here with Dr. Eben Alexander talking about consciousness, accessing transcendental states, and oneness. It has been an incredible experience talking about a higher state of consciousness.
Thank you so much for tuning in, everyone. We have been talking about a higher state of consciousness.
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