The story of Eben Alexander
OCTOBER 24, 2020 (updated on october 17, 2023)
Table of contents
The final instalment in my (far from exhaustive) exploration of the links between the brain and consciousness. “Is your brain really necessary?” is the question posed in the first article, while the second features neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor’s testimony following a stroke. Here, I turn to another neuroscientist, the American Eben Alexander. Following his 2008 Near Death Experience (NDE), he teaches us that the brain does not create consciousness [1].
Suffering from a fulminant case of bacterial meningitis, Eben Alexander was plunged into a deep coma within hours. As is usual in such situations, the bacteria first attacked the cerebral cortex, the organic tissue covering the brain. The cortex is involved in many cognitive functions, including memory, language and logical reasoning. It houses the neocortex, located just above the surface of the brain and considered essential to the production of consciousness.
Eben Alexander saw his neocortex become totally inactive as a result of his coma…
An unrecoverable brain?
It turns out that Eben Alexander’s neocortex became completely inactive as a result of his coma. When he arrived at the emergency room, he had less than a 10% chance of survival and a brain that was considered irrecoverable, since it was already at minimum function. Over the course of the days, he lost what little neurological activity he had left. His examinations then showed that, in theory, he could only have a primitive and rudimentary conscious experience. Faced with this major deterioration in his clinical condition, with no hope of recovery, the doctors were considering “unplugging” him.
It was against all odds that Dr. Alexander woke up after his 7th day in a coma. He finally returned to a normal state of consciousness. And without any neurological sequelae. When he woke up, he remembered nothing except the near-death experience (NDE) he had just had. His « earthly » memories came back little by little, and when he consulted his medical records and realized the state of his neocortex during his coma period, he could only realize that the conscious experience he had just had could not have occurred in his brain.
Then everything he had learned and believed up to that point was called into question. Starting with the IMEs, which he considered simply as “extraordinary stories, without question. But all this was, from [his] point of view, pure fantasy” [2]. His experience now told him that he had just “[encountered] the reality of a plane of consciousness that existed totally independent of the limitations of [his] brain.” [3]
A NDE for a new consciousness
Finally, thanks to this experience, Eben Alexander had an irrefutable proof of the existence of Love and Eternity. An absolute certainty commensurate with – or rather excessively so – his scepticism of yesteryear:
“Before my coma I thought I understood how the brain, mind and consciousness worked. I spent 20 years in neurosurgery, 15 years at Harvard Medical School, operating on people with very serious brain diseases (…). [Yet] one thing became very clear at the end of my journey is that the only thing that exists is consciousness. This little voice of rational thought, it’s not me, it’s not consciousness. The consciousness in me is watching this voice.”
EBEN ALEXANDER [4]
In the end, he found himself in a situation where it was simply impossible for him – as a man and as a scientist – to challenge the fact that consciousness exists independently of the brain. I came to the same conclusion… by taking the opposite path. Indeed, my beliefs were the opposite of Eben Alexander’s. My experience was a reflection of this. My Glasgow score was 15, while hers was almost the opposite, at 5.
For the scientist, « the brain is like a reduction valve, it takes the universal consciousness, which pre-exists, and reduces it to a form that [limits it] to a survival goal » [5]. I would qualify his point a little by saying that it is the brain as we use it, that is to say, asphyxiated by the mind, which acts as a filter reducing consciousness to an illusory form limited to our space-time. But our brains can function just fine – and even better! – if we expand our consciousness.
The power of experience
Cortex or not cortex ?
Let’s get back to the questioning of conscience. When we say that the brain produces consciousness – or does not produce it – what exactly are we talking about? The difference, in my opinion, between consciousness and the experience of consciousness.
Let us ask the question differently: Do we need the neocortex to experience our habitual plane of consciousness, the mental plane? Obviously, yes. But do we need the neocortex to experience an expanded consciousness beyond the mental plane? Obviously not, in Eben Alexander’s experience. Conversely, is the neocortex a hindrance to experiencing such consciousness? Obviously not, in my experience. If the brain simply produces, through the neocortex, our experience of consciousness, the fact remains that consciousness underlies this whole process.
A solitary point of consciousness
Finally, I would like to say that there is controversy over the fact that Eben Alexander was allegedly put into a coma not by meningitis, as he says in his book, but by the medical team when he arrived at the emergency room. Similarly, he claims to have conducted an NDE, which some experts dispute, as his description is not consistent with the usual narratives of those who report these types of facts.
As far as I’m concerned, whether he was put into an artificial coma or not, and whether he had an NDE or not, doesn’t make much difference to the case. It is not my purpose to talk about comas or NDEs, since I have not experienced either. My point is to talk about the fact that our existence is not just about our brain and mental activity. My point is to talk about an expanded consciousness, to which we have access.
What interests me about Eben Alexander’s experience is that he came to see himself as a « solitary point of consciousness » [6] a consciousness without memory or identity. For me, the only reason why a man, who is so cartesian, would make this kind of statement – and make it public – is because he has undeniably experienced it, whatever the exact circumstances may have been. And to have experienced it to the point of upsetting his vision of things, of consciousness and of life.
What about science ?
Finally, what I find very beautiful in his story is that his experience did not cut him off from science for all that. On the contrary, he views it with openness. For him, « all the scientific and technological successes of the 20th century invalidate the materialistic conception of the world because they have absolutely nothing to say about the mechanism of creation of consciousness by the physical brain ». [7]
And for good reason… Yet he explains:
“I’m still as scientific as I’ve always been, but it’s Science with a capital « S », Science that seeks to know the truth about our existence. There are certain aspects of the scientific method that can help us, but the scientific method, by its very design, is extremely limited and can only reveal small facets of reality.”
EBEN ALEXANDER [8]
It did indeed seem relevant to me to question the scientific method, in connection with consciousness. And you can read about this in the article Obectivity, the blind spot of science.
Notes & references
[1] ALEXANDER Eben, La preuve du paradis [The proof of heaven], Paris : Editions Trédaniel, 2013.
[2] ALEXANDER Eben. (2013). Dr Eben Alexander : un neurochirurgien apporte des preuves scientifiques de son EMI [Dr. Eben Alexander: neurosurgeon provides scientific evidence of his NDE]. In : La télé de Lilou
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
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