“The
view of human consciousness held by most scientists today is that it is
composed of digital information—data, that is, of essentially the same kind
used by computers. Though some bits of this data—seeing a spectacular sunset,
hearing a beautiful symphony for the first time, even falling in love—may feel
more profound or special to us than the countless other bits of information
created and stored in our brains, this is really just an illusion. All bits
are, in fact, qualitatively the same. Our brains model outside reality by
taking the information that comes in through our sense and transforming it into
a rich digital tapestry. But our perceptions are just a model—not reality
itself. An illusion.
“To
understand how the brain might actually block our access to knowledge of the
higher world, we need to accept—at least hypothetically and for the moment—that
the brain itself doesn’t produce consciousness. That it is, instead, a kind of
reducing valve or filter, shifting the larger, nonphysical consciousness that
we possess in the nonphysical worlds down into a more limited capacity for the
duration of our mortal life.
“There
is, from the earthly perspective, a very definite advantage to this. Just as
our brains work hard every moment of our waking lives to filter out the barrage
of sensory information coming at us from our physical surroundings, selecting
the material we actually need in order to survive, so it is that forgetting our
trans-earthly identities also allows us to be ‘here and now’ far more
effectively. Just as most of ordinary life holds too much information for us to
take in at once, being excessively conscious of the worlds beyond the here and
now would slow down our progress even more. If we knew too much of the
spiritual realm now, then navigating our lives on earth would be an even
greater challenge than it already is.
“Why
am I so sure of all this? For two reasons. The first is that I was shown it (by
the beings who taught me when I was in the Gateway and the Core), and the
second is because I actually experienced it.
“Free
will is of central importance for our function in the earthly realm: a function
that, we will one day discover, serves the much higher role of allowing our
ascendance in the timeless alternate dimension. 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
(those beings I saw originally far above me in the Gateway, and which I believe
are the origin of our culture’s concept of angels).
“We—the
spiritual beings currently inhabiting our evolutionarily developed mortal
brains and bodies, the product of the earth and the exigencies of the
earth—make the real choices. 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.
“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.
“One
of the biggest mistakes people make when they think about God 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—again, 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.
Eben
Alexander, Proof of Heaven: A
Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (Simon & Schuster, 2012).
The
anonymous gospel attributed to the apostle John begins: “In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . And the Word
became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of a
father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (Jn. 1:1, 14)