The Spiritual Realm

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (Second half of Chapter 15)

by Eben Alexander, M.D.

Transcribed by Kristin Shaeffer (Please note that I purchased this audiobook on Audible. To study and share my favorite part of the book, I transcribed the audio of and around Chapter 15 to the best of my ability. Please excuse errors of grammar, punctuation, and format. I transcribed this for my personal use and to share as a direct quote, giving all credit to Eben Alexander.) 

(Unusual words Eben uses to describe places and people in his near death experience are defined earlier in the book. These words include gateway, core, earthworm’s eye view and Ahm or God. I encourage everyone to read the book to understand Eben’s definition of these words and all his descriptions better.) The following is the second half of Chapter 15:

“Up there, a question would rise in my mind and the answer would rise in my mind at the same time, like a flower coming up right next to it. It was almost as if just as no physical particle of the universe is really separate from another. so in the same way there was not a question without an accompanying answer. These answers were not simply yes or no fare either. They were vast conceptual edifices, staggering structures of living thought. as intricate as cities. ideas so vast they would have taken me life times to find my way around If I had been confined to earthly thought, but I wasn’t. I had sloughed off that earthly style of thought like a butterfly breaking from a chrysalis.

“I saw the earth as a pale blue dot in the immense blackness of physical space. I could see that the earth as the place where good and evil mixed. And that this constituted one of its unique features. Even on earth there is much more good than evil, but earth is a place where evil is allowed to gain influence in a way that would be entirely impossible at higher levels of existence.

“That evil could occasionally have the upper-hand was known and allowed by the Creator as a necessary consequence of giving the gift of freewill to beings like us.  Small particles of evil were scattered about the universe but the sum total was as a grain of sand on a vast beach compared to the goodness, abundance, hope and unconditional love in which the universe was literally a wash. The very fabric of the alternate dimension is love and acceptance and anything that does not have these qualities appears immediately and obviously out of place there.

“But freewill comes at the cost of a loss or falling away from this love and acceptance. We ARE free but we are free beings hemmed all around by an environment conspiring to make us feel that we are not free. Free will is of central importance for our function in the earthly realm. A function that we will all one day discover serves the much higher role of allowing our ascendence to the timeless alternate dimension. 

“Our life down here might seem insignificant, for it is minute in relation to the other lives and other worlds that also crowd the invisible and visible universes, but it is also hugely important. For our role here is to grow toward the divine. And that growth is closely watched by the beings in the worlds above. The souls and lucine orbs. Those beings I saw originally far above me in the gateway and which I believe are the origins of our cultures concepts of angels. 

“We, the spiritual beings occupying our evolutionarily developed brains and bodies, the product of the earth and the exigencies of the earth make the real choices. True thought is not the brains affaire. But we have in part by the brain itself, and so trained to associated our brains what we think who we are, that we have lost the ability to realize that we are at all times much more than the physical brains and bodies that do or SHOULD do our bidding. 

“True thought is pre-physical. This is the thinking behind the thinking responsible for all the genuinely consequential choices we do in the world. A thinking that is not dependent on linear deduction but that moves fast as lightening, making connections on different levels, bringing them together. In the face of this free inner intelligence our ordinary thought is hopelessly slow and fumbling. 

“It is this thinking that catches the football in the end zone, that comes up with the inspired scientific insight or writes the inspired song. The subliminal thinking that is always there when we really need it but that we have all too often have lost the ability to access and to believe in. … 

“Our truest deepest self is completely free. It is not crippled by some past actions or concern 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. This is the true spiritual self that all of us are destined someday to recover.

“But until that day comes, I feel, we should do everything in our power to get in touch with this miraculous aspect of ourselves, to cultivate it and bring it to light. This is the being living within all of us right now and that is in fact the being God truly intends us to be. How do we closer to this genuine self? By manifesting love and compassion. WHY? Because love and compassion are far more than the abstractions many of us believe them to be. They are real. They are concrete. And they make up the very fabric of the spiritual realm. 

“In order to return to the heavenly realm we must, once again, become like that realm, while we are stuck in and plodding through this one. 

“One of the biggest mistake people think is to imagine God as impersonal. Yes, God is behind the numbers, the perfection of the universe that science measures and struggles to understand, but Ahm is human as well. Even more human than you and I are. Ahm understands and sympathizes with our human situation more profoundly and personally than we can even imagine because Ahm knows what we have forgotten and understands the terrible burden it is to live with amnesia of the divine for even a moment.” (Alexander, Eban, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife. Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2012.)

Aren’t these truths profound? Dr. Alexander’s experience sheds light on my understanding of Divine Nature, agency or free will, Satan, The Fall, angels, abundance mindset, inspiration, mercy, and more. Read this book and other books that teach truth. Study and pray to:

• Understand your real, spiritual self.
• Access truth that is all around you.
• Grow closer to the Divine.
• Be filled with and spread love and compassion.

I know that God lives. Our bodies and brains are secondary to the eternal spiritual beings we truly are. I know that there is life before and after our mortal lives on earth. God loves us with a love beyond our comprehension. His grace will heal us and bring us to be more like Him if we have faith in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. He understands us and calls us to Him.