Eben Alexander Quotes

“A story – a true story – can heal as much as medicine can.”

“Angels? These words registered when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher.”

“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.”

“Everything — the uncanny clarity of my vision, the clearness of my thoughts as pure conceptual flow — suggested higher, not lower, brain functioning.”

“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.”

“For all the successes of Western civilization, the world paid a dear price in terms of the most crucial component of existence – the human spirit.

The shadow side of high technology – modern warfare and thoughtless homicide and suicide, urban blight, ecological mayhem, cataclysmic climate change, polarization of economic resources – is bad enough.

Much worse, our focus on exponential progress in science and technology has left many of us relatively bereft in the realm of meaning and joy, and of knowing how our lives fit into the grand scheme of existence for all eternity.”

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”

“Hallucinogens affect the neocortex, and my neocortex wasn’t available to be affected.”

“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.”

“Humans are built to adapt.”

“I didn’t just believe in God; I knew God.”

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

“Laughter and irony are at heart reminders that we are not prisoners in this world, but voyagers through it.”

“Love is, without a doubt, the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard-to-fathom kind of love but the day-to-day kind that everyone knows – the kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse and our children, or even our animals. In its purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional.

This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or will ever exist, and no remotely accurate understanding of who and what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it, and embody it in all of their actions.”

“Most skeptics aren’t really skeptics at all. To be truly skeptical, one must actually examine something, and take it seriously.”

“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.”

“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.”

“None of us are ever unloved. Each and every one of us is deeply known and cared for by a Creator who cherishes us beyond any ability we have to comprehend.”

“Observation comes first, then interpretation.”

“On the subatomic level, however, this universe of separate objects turns out to be a complete illusion. In the realm of the super-super-small, every object in the physical universe is intimately connected with every other object.”

“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.”

“Paradoxically — 'Om' is 'human' as well — even more human than you and I are. 'Om' understands and sympathizes with our human situation more profoundly and personally than we can even imagine because 'Om' knows what we have forgotten, and understands the terrible burden it is to live with amnesia of the Divine for even a moment.”

“Physical life is characterized by defensiveness, whereas spiritual life is just the opposite.”

“Science — the science to which I’ve devoted so much of my life — doesn’t contradict what I learned up there.

But far, far too many people believe it does, because certain members of the scientific community, who are pledged to the materialist worldview, have insisted again and again that science and spirituality cannot coexist.”

“Small particles of evil were scattered throughout the universe, but the sum total of all that evil 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 awash.

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.”

“So I was communicating directly with God? Absolutely. Expressed that way, it sounds grandiose. But when it was happening, it didn't feel that way.

Instead, I felt like I was doing what every soul is able to do when they leave their bodies, and what we can all do right now through various methods of prayer or deep meditation.

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.”

“The brain itself does not produce consciousness. That it is, instead, a kind of reducing valve or filter, shifting the larger, nonphysical consciousness that we possess in the non physical worlds down into a more limited capacity for the duration of our mortal lives.”

“The false suspicion that we can somehow be separated from God is the root of every form of anxiety in the universe, and the cure for it — which I received partially within the Gateway and completely within the Core—was the knowledge that nothing can tear us from God, ever.”

“The physical side of the universe is as a speck of dust compared to the invisible and spiritual part.”

“There are really no 'objects' in the world at all, only vibrations of energy, and relationships.”