Notes & Quotes: Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander III M.D.

The following are my favorite quotes from Eben Alexander III M.D.'s Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife.
  1. 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.
  2. When you go to a place where there's no sense of time as we experience it in the ordinary world, accurately describing the way it feels is next to impossible. When it was happening, when I was there, I felt like I (whatever "I" was) had always been there and would always continue to be.
  3. Om told me that there is not one universe but many -- in fact, more than I could conceive -- but that love lay at the center of them all.
  4. To think of the Spinning Melody was to make it appear, and to long for the higher worlds was to bring myself there.
  5. Love is, without a doubt, the basis of everything.
  6. "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
  7. The penetration of the higher worlds tends to be a gradual process that requires that the individual release his or her attachments to whatever level he or she is on before going higher or deeper.
  8. I saw the earth as a pale blue dot in the immense blackness of physical space. I could see that earth was a 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.
  9. Our life down here may 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 lucent orbs.
  10. 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.
  11. Even though I'd forgotten my life down here, I had remembered who I really and truly was out there. I was a citizen of a universe staggering in its vastness and complexity, and ruled entirely by love.
  12. "There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." - Soren Kierkegaard
  13. I can tell you that most skeptics aren't really skeptics at all. To be truly skeptical, one must actually examine something, and take it seriously.
  14. 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.
  15. "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." - Rene Descartes
  16. For all of the success of Western civilization, the world has paid a dear price in terms of the most crucial component of existence -- our human spirit. The shadow side of high technology -- modern warfare and thoughtless homicide and suicide, urban blight, ecological mayhem, cataclysmic 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.
  17. Laughter and irony are at heart reminders that we are not prisoners in this world, but voyagers through it.
  18. "I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be." - Albert Einstein
  19. "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others." - Cicero