Episode 05: What my Near Death Experience taught me - with Dr. Eben Alexander

Neurosurgeon and bestselling author Dr Eben Alexander never believed in life after death until he got a look behind the curtain when he experienced a Near-Death-Experience and came back to tell his story. When I came across his book, while working through my own grief, I was blown away by the hope it instilled in me. Let his journey inspire you to look at death and what comes after from a new perspective. 

Dr. Eben Alexander

Dr. Eben Alexander spent over 25 years as an academic neurosurgeon, including 15 years at the Brigham & 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. Many of those patients were rendered comatose by trauma, brain tumors, ruptured aneurysms, infections, or stroke. He thought he had a very good idea of how the brain generates consciousness, mind and spirit. 

In the predawn hours of November 10, 2008, he was driven into coma by a rare and mysterious bacterial meningo-encephalitis of unknown cause. He spent a week in coma on a ventilator, his prospects for survival diminishing rapidly. On the seventh day, to the surprise of everyone, he started to awaken. Memories of his life had been completely deleted inside of the coma, yet he awoke with memories of a fantastic odyssey deep into another realm – more real than this earthly one! His journey brought key insights to the mind-body discussion and to our human understanding of the fundamental nature of reality. His experience clearly revealed that we are conscious in spite of our brain – that, in fact, consciousness is at the root of all existence.  Find out more.

Links and Resources for this episode:

Anita Moorjani

after fighting cancer for almost four years, her body began shutting down - overwhelmed by the malignant cells spreading throughout her system. As her organs failed, she entered into an extraordinary near-death experience (NDE) where she realized her inherent worth... and the actual cause of her disease. Upon regaining consciousness, Anita found that her condition had improved so rapidly that she was released from the hospital within weeks - without a trace of cancer in her body! 

In her bestselling book Dying to Be Me, Anita freely shares all she has learned about illness, healing, fear, “being love,” and the true magnificence of each and every human being! Find out more.

Dr. Mary Neal

Spinal surgeon Dr. Mary Neal is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller and Books for a Better Life finalist, "To Heaven and Back.” As a result of her extensive medical training, she was definitely a skeptic before drowning on a South American river changed her perspective forever. She experienced God’s pure love and learned to trust the truth in all of God’s promises. Find out more.

Plato’s world of ideas

The theory of Forms or theory of Ideas is a philosophical theory, attributed to Plato, that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas. According to this theory, ideas in this sense, often capitalized and translated as "Ideas" or "Forms", are the non-physical essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are merely imitations. Find out more.

International Association of Near Death Studies

As an educational nonprofit organization, the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) focuses most of its resources into providing the highest quality information available about NDE-related subjects. Find out more.

William Peters - Shared Crossing Project

Founded by William Peters in 2011, the Shared Crossing Project’s mission is to positively transform relationships to death and dying through education and raising awareness about shared crossings and their healing benefits. Find out more.

Windbridge Research Center

The Windbridge Research Center is a non-profit research organization based in Tucson, Arizona, dedicated to the rigorous scientific study of mental mediums (people who claim regular communication with the deceased) Find out more.

Books to dive deeper into the subject