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 Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander III M.D.
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yoguy

Switzerland
9 Posts

Posted - Jan 26 2013 :  10:10:36 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Message
Yogani-ji,
as this is my first post here, I want to express my deep gratitude for the AYP teachings. The further I read, the more I pick on the subtle terms like favoring, refining... it is like tuning into a radio station. I could go on for pages on the benefits,the profoundness of the teachings and how liberating they are, but in a way feel I would be putting myself first.

To the Forum,
Have been reading and searching around the forum and have got many insights from every one here, so my gratitude goes to every one.

Am reading a book by a neurosurgeon who contracted E. Coli in his brain and spent a week in a coma. The book tells about that NDE experience (near death experience). Have copied below what I have highlighted so far reading it on Amazon Kindle.

Thought this could be of interest to others here.




Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander III M.D.
You have 25 highlighted passages
You have 0 notes
Last annotated on January 25, 2013
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.Read more at location 167

The words used here registered much later, when, back in the world, I was writing down my recollections. Language, emotion, logic: these were all gone, as if I had regressed back to some state of being from the very beginnings of life, as far back, perhaps, as the primitive bacteria that, unbeknownst to me, had taken over my brain and shut it down.Read more at location 431

Because—hard as this is to picture if you haven’t been to this place yourself—my consciousness wasn’t foggy or distorted when I was there. It was just . . . limited. I wasn’t human while I was in this place. I wasn’t even animal. I was something before, and below, all that. I was simply a lone point of awareness in a timeless red-brown Read more at location 447

“You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.” “You have nothing to fear.” “There is nothing you can do wrong.”Read more at location 575

I know the difference between fantasy and reality, and I know that the experience I’m struggling to give you the vaguest, most completely unsatisfactory picture of, was the single most real experience of my life.Read more at location 585

Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place where I now was. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of those scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang. It seemed that you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it—without joining with it in some mysterious way.Read more at location 636

I would suggest that you couldn’t look at anything in that world at all, for the word at itself implies a separation that did not exist there. Everything was distinct, yet everything was also a part of everything else,Read more at location 639

Each time I silently posed one of these questions, the answer came instantly in an explosion of light, color, love, and beauty that blew through me like a crashing wave. What was important about these bursts was that they didn’t simply silence my questions by overwhelming them. They answered them, but in a way that bypassed language. Thoughts entered me directly. But it wasn’t thought like we experience on earth. It wasn’t vague, immaterial, or abstract. These thoughts were solid and immediate—hotter than fire and wetter than water—and as I received them I was able to instantly and effortlessly understand concepts that would have taken me years to fully grasp in my earthly life.Read more at location 648

This Being was so close that there seemed to be no distance at all between God and myself. Yet at the same time, I could sense the infinite vastness of the Creator, could see how completely minuscule I was by comparison.Read more at location 659

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.Read more at location 676

Insights happened directly, rather than needing to be coaxed and absorbed. Knowledge was stored without memorization, instantly and for good. It didn’t fade, like ordinary information does, and to this day I still possess all of it, much more clearly than I possess the information that I gained over all of my years in school.Read more at location 686

We can only see what our brain’s filter allows through. The brain—in particular its left-side linguistic/logical part, that which generates our sense of rationality and the feeling of being a sharply defined ego or self—is a barrier to our higher knowledge and experience.Read more at location 1001

It is my belief that we are now facing a crucial time in our existence. We need to recover more of that larger knowledge while living here on earth, while our brains (including its left-side analytical parts) are fully functioning.Read more at location 1003

The unconditional love and acceptance that I experienced on my journey is the single most important discovery I have ever made, or will ever make, and as hard as I know it’s going to be to unpack the other lessons I learned while there, I also know in my heart that sharing this very basic message—one so simple that most children readily accept it—is the most important task I have.Read more at location 1010

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self. —ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879–1955)Read more at location 1043

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 withinRead more at location 1050

the Core—was the knowledge that nothing can tear us from God, ever.Read more at location 1052

because I so completely forgot my mortal identity, I was granted full access to the true cosmic being I really am (and we all are).Read more at location 1074

I can’t claim to know why I had the experience I had, but I do know now (three years later), from reading other NDE literature, that the penetration of the higher worlds tends to be a gradual process and requires that the individual release his or her attachments to whatever level he or she is on before going higher or deeper.Read more at location 1081

To say that there is still a chasm between our current scientific understanding of the universe and the truth as I saw it is a considerable understatement.Read more at location 1117

The physical side of the universe is as a speck of dust compared to the invisible and spiritual part. In my past view, spiritual wasn’t a word that I would have employed during a scientific conversation. Now I believe it is a word that we cannot afford to leave out.Read more at location 1119

True thought is not the brain’s affair. But we have—in part by the brain itself—been so trained to associate our brains with what we think and 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.Read more at location 1149

True thought is pre-physical. This is the thinking-behind-the-thinking responsible for all the genuinely consequential choices we make in the world. A thinking that is not dependent on linear deduction, but that moves fast as lightning, making connections on different levels, bringing them together.Read more at location 1151

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.Read more at location 1159

How do we get closer to this genuine spiritual 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.Read more at location 1164

escapado

Germany
88 Posts

Posted - Jan 27 2013 :  12:35:59 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
Amazing! Thank you for this, this man seems to have had a real meeting there :)
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krcqimpro1

India
329 Posts

Posted - Jan 27 2013 :  06:56:27 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
Hi All,

I had the good fortune to actually meet the man and listen to what he had to say (in a 3 hour session) at the Monroe Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year. It was a truly revealing experience for me. I would urge all AYPers, especially those living in the US, to attend at least the "Gateway Voyage" program they offer.
Krish
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yoguy

Switzerland
9 Posts

Posted - Feb 10 2013 :  08:41:48 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
These are the rest of my highlights of the book:

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. That knowledge must no longer remain a secret.Read more at location 1286

There is a sense in which all the losses that we undergo here on earth are in truth variations of one absolutely central loss: the loss of Heaven.Read more at location 1358

Emotions are different up there. All the human emotions are present, but they’re deeper, more spacious—they’re not just inside but outside as well.Read more at location 1360

how strangely and powerfully what we think of as “inside” and “outside” don’t really exist at all.Read more at location 1363

Physical life is characterized by defensiveness, whereas spiritual life is just the opposite.Read more at location 1532

the direct and instantaneous reception of concepts that normally would have taken a very long time and a great deal of study to comprehend, without any struggle whatsoever . . . feeling the intensity of unconditional love.Read more at location 1683

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. In fact, there are really no “objects” in the world at all, only vibrations of energy, and relationships.Read more at location 1911

Far from being an unimportant by-product of physical processes (as I had thought before my experience), consciousness is not only very real—it’s actually more real than the rest of physical existence, and most likely the basis of it all.Read more at location 1915

But one thing we do know about particles is that each one is connected to every other one in the universe. They are all, at the deepest level, interconnected.Read more at location 1922

Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, published in 2007.Read more at location 1960

Each one of us is more familiar with consciousness than we are with anything else, and yet we understand far more about the rest of the universe than we do about the mechanism of consciousness. It is so close to home that it is almost forever beyond our grasp.Read more at location 1967

What I discovered out beyond is the indescribable immensity and complexity of the universe, and that consciousness is the basis of all that exists.Read more at location 1977

the crucial power of belief in facilitating “mind-over-matter.”Read more at location 1986

The universe has no beginning or end, and God is entirely present within every particle of it.Read more at location 2004

There was no distinction between experiencing something and my understanding it.Read more at location 2009

it allowed me to see the staggering heights of communion and understanding that lie ahead for us all, when each of us leaves the limitations of our physical body and brain behind.Read more at location 2013

Another aspect of the good news is that you don’t have to almost die to glimpse behind the veil—but you must do the work. Learning about that realm from books and presentations is a start—but at the end of the day, we each have to go deep into our own consciousness, through prayer or meditation, to access these truths.Read more at location 2019

Just as my awareness was both individual yet at the same time completely unified with the universe, so also did the boundaries of what I experienced as my “self” at times contract, and at other times expand to include all that exists throughout eternity.Read more at location 2047

Another way of putting this would be to say that I momentarily saw an identity with the universe, which had been there all the time, but that I had just been blind to up till then.Read more at location 2050

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.Read more at location 2063

I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be. —ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879–1955)Read more at location 2068

Observation that honored consciousness itself as the single greatest entity in all of existence.Read more at location 2074

My NDE had convinced me that there is a secret part of ourselves that is recording every last aspect of our earthly lives, and that this recording process commences at the very, very beginning. So on a precognitive, preverbal level, I’d known all through my life that I’d been given away, and on a deep level I was still struggling to forgive that fact.Read more at location 2097

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AumNaturel

Canada
687 Posts

Posted - Feb 10 2013 :  2:59:00 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
Welcome yoguy.

This is good advice coming from that NDE: "Learning about that realm from books and presentations is a start—but at the end of the day, we each have to go deep into our own consciousness, through prayer or meditation, to access these truths."

Krish: from Rosalind McKnight, she states at one point (not going to search my hardcover book for exact quote) that during TMI's initial setup, subjects were screened according to natural ability, meaning those who responded best to the binaural beats. Her ability happened to be valued because she could still communicate while in deep trance. Monroe himself asserts that the technology is like 'training wheels.' Clearly, what you bring into the program is the determining factor. For that reason, they offer TGE (the gateway experience) for people to work with at home before attending in order to try and obtain some experience with trance and self-hypnosis.

Binaural beat and other similar technology, from my experience, induce a state of relaxation and sleep, but not much beyond that in itself. Hemispheric synchronization is a natural result of ordinary alpha waves and meditation. AYP in contrast builds from the ground up, not relying on natural talent, biological predispositions, suggestibility, or other prerequisites. This isn't meant to downplay the success of TMI, but to place it in a more appropriate context, at least from my perspective.
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yoguy

Switzerland
9 Posts

Posted - Feb 11 2013 :  2:42:56 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
Thank you AumNaturel.

Posted it here not to suggest an easy way out. I practice more than I probably should, but this is another subject.

This experience and in a different way the one of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor apparently show some traits of spiritual results after a serious physical problem. Perhaps this could point to some understanding of what happens.
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krcqimpro1

India
329 Posts

Posted - Feb 20 2013 :  07:48:42 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
Hi Aumnaturel,

I was not trying to compare TMI with AYP at all. TMI is not about self-realization at all, while AYP is.
That said, TMI does offer an opportunity to use technology to experience some mind-boggling things.

Krish
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AumNaturel

Canada
687 Posts

Posted - Jul 06 2013 :  8:47:30 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
Yoguy, Krcqimpro1, I was just speaking from my experience from using both AYP and some limited experimentations with brainwave entrainment; did not mean to imply a comparison, since as you said Krcqimpro1 they have different approaches and aims.

Was meaning to update my perspective on the technology: it seems there have been advances, and some emerging (independent) research into its effectiveness. I see trance practice as worthwhile given the various books written that make use of such altered states towards seemingly-endless goals. Ideally, it would be great to learn this on one's own, but because of time limitations, such supportive stimuli might help facilitate the necessary experience more quickly, towards the goal of learning to induce it at will without any help.

When I experimented with one of TMI's programs, it felt that the emphasis on focus levels became a stumbling block. I never felt like I could reach f10, much less f12, and subsequent waves seemed to depend on that entirely. Cost is another part that is prohibitive, especially for the more popular programs, but even there, applications have reached or maybe even exceeded what those can do and for a lot less, empowering the user to design and share their very own entrainment tracks.

I look forward to hearing more from others who have experimented with it. If I get the chance or find the time, it would be great to give it a second look.
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bewell

1275 Posts

Posted - Jul 06 2013 :  10:12:23 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
quote:
Originally posted by AumNaturel
This is good advice coming from that NDE: "Learning about that realm from books and presentations is a start�but at the end of the day, we each have to go deep into our own consciousness, through prayer or meditation, to access these truths."



Hi,

In April, I heard Dr. Alexander speak here in Baltimore. At the book signing, I availed myself of the opportunity to shake his hand and connect more directly, although briefly. Afterward, I plowed through his excellent book in one sitting.

In his speach, he said that instead of the publisher's title, Proof of Heaven, his preferred title would have been "'N' of One" meaning, his case was unique. A brain surgeon gets a one of a kind brain disease, and experiences brain death, and survives to the amazement of his own colleagues who treated him. What are the odds? Truly a one of a kind situation. Add to that that he was adopted at birth and had never seen his birth sister who had died prior to his reunion with his birth family, but then he met her in his NDE, on the other side.

There was a palpable sense of stillness/silence in his presence, so that in spite of all the individual uniqueness, there was a sense of unity. I found the whole experience inspiring and supportive of my AYP meditation practice.

Be


Edited by - bewell on Jul 06 2013 10:25:05 PM
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yoguy

Switzerland
9 Posts

Posted - Jul 08 2013 :  09:40:16 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
From the Science & Nonduality conference 2013 in Doorn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avyUsPgIuQ0

The Mystery of Perception During Near Death Experiences - Pim van Lommel

He does not talk about Dr. Eben Alexander's experience, but discusses NDE and OBE (outer body experiences) by patients he studied.

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bewell

1275 Posts

Posted - Jul 08 2013 :  3:06:31 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
quote:
Originally posted by yoguy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avyUsPgIuQ0

The Mystery of Perception During Near Death Experiences - Pim van Lommel




"Who is seeing?" -- Near the end of the speech, having explored cases of NDE survivors seeing verifiable objective events, out of the body, the Dr. offers this inquiry: "Who is seeing?" Not the physical eyes, not the brain. Who is seeing?




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RobM

USA
3 Posts

Posted - Oct 17 2013 :  12:14:46 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote  Get a Link to this Reply
I did enjoy this book quite a bit. It was quite interesting to read about this brilliant brain surgeon who was a skeptic to describe such a remarkable NDE.

My favorite quote of the those you posted is probably the first one... "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." As well as "You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.” “You have nothing to fear.” “There is nothing you can do wrong.”

In particular, it is helpful to continually remind myself that God loves everyone I interact with just like that, including the guy who cut me off while driving, or the person who seemed to be a jerk at work, etc...
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