Proof of Heaven - A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife - Dr Eben Alexander

[MisterBus]

Proof of Heaven - A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. By Dr Eben Alexander
Piatkus 2012

The Near Death Experience (NDE): a person clinically dies but is revived minutes or hours later by doctors and tells how they journeyed to an afterlife during their 'death'. Normally a journey through a tunnel towards a bright light, a Christ-like figure reviews their life, they meet 'dead' friends and family in what can only be described as a heavenly place before they return to earth. To those who have experienced them they are usually utterly convincing proof of life after death.

Many scientists have lazily explained such experiences away as a natural result of the brain dying - a dream, incredibly life-like and pleasant, but a dream nonetheless. Such NDEs have been recorded by all cultures over hundreds of years but this dichotomy between vague explanation versus utter personal conviction seemed to be an investigative dead end. Unless, perhaps, a neurosurgeon himself experienced such an event while wired up to brain monitors in a hospital.

Enter stage left, Dr Alexander, an American neuroscientist (incidentally, he trained for a while in Newcastle, England) who - and it's hard to escape this conclusion - God picked on to provide a message to any doubting Thomases. In November 2008 he collapsed and died. Not just any death - a complete, final, clincially measured and recorded death. He contracted a rare form of bacterial meningitis (fewer than one in 10 million in adults in one year in the USA contract it) and entered a coma. The mortality rate is 40 to 80 per cent.

His neocortex shut down. As he explains it: "When your brain is absent, you are absent too... If you don't have a working brain, you can't be conscious.. During my coma my brain wasn't working improperly - it wasn't working at all." After seven days the doctors were preparing to turn off life-support. The mortality rate for patients with this condition after seven days in a coma is over 97 per cent. But Dr Alexander did wake up and made a complete recovery - in a month.

He says he journeyed to an after-life where he was more alive than he has ever been on earth. "The place I went was real" he writes. "Real in a way that makes the life we're living here and now completely dreamlike by comparison." And, perhaps surprisingly, he felt compelled to brave the storm of ridicule from his fellow neurosurgeons and talk publicly about his experience. He could also argue well against the previous explanations of a drug-induced or brain-death hallucination. As he points out, there was nothing operating in his brain to provide hallucinations. It was dead.

He tells his story in Proof of Heaven. No two NDEs are identical but his contain many of the common themes - plus some more unusual experiences. He cleverly interweaves his experience alongside chapters describing how his doctors and family tried to find out what was wrong with him and tried to fight the e. coli infection.

To be honest I found his relaying of life after death as disappointing. On the one hand, it's good a scientist experienced such an event - but on the other hand, he struggles to find the right words to describe what is literally an indescribable event. Perhaps we next need a writer or artist to have an NDE of this magnitude (if you're reading this God, count me in).

I've been fortunate as a journalist to meet several people who have had NDEs. They've all had a life-changing experience and they all seemed to exude an incredible aura, a zest for life that lit up a room the moment they walked in. They're very good people to spend time with. While their experience has been fascinating and compelling it's the message on the meaning of life that has always interested me. Indeed, many have dramatically changed their lifestyle upon their return. For instance, most of them have said that in death they suddenly realised what talents they had as a human being (anything from artistic talents to an opportunity to help other people) but realised after death that they had never used these to the full. On being given a second chance they just 'went for it', full of confidence and realising they only had one chance on earth.

Dr Alexander's message - and since he believes he spoke directly to God it's an important one - can be summed up in a nutshell as 'Love'. Which is of very little help to me and I suspect most other mortals. Out of a nutshell his message from God was:

• You are loved and cherished, dearly forever
• You have nothing to fear
• There is nothing you can do wrong

Which, I'm sorry, is still not much practical help to me. I pass it on in case it helps others.

Dr Alexander's experience may not be relayed particularly well in this book but it's undoubtedly an important event and is making him and other scientists to revisit previously dismissed NDEs and ask questions. Above all, I salute his courage in speaking out. I do suspect, however, that he has not yet told the full story. Early in his experience he found himself in an 'underworld' where "grotesque animal faces bubble out of the muck, groaned or screeched, and then were gone again". Is he saying there's proof of hell as well as of heaven? I look forward to Volume 2 of Proof of Heaven.

[Ooshie]

That looks very interesting, MisterBus.  My husband was declared completely brain dead after a massive brain haemorrhage but went on and recovered, and has very vivid memories from that time although nothing God-like, so it's a subject that interests me quite a lot. 

 

I do remember reading once that quite a high percentage of people who report these experiences have visions of hell-type places but that we don't seem to be told about them quite as often!

[vodkafan]

Thanks MisterBus I am quite interested in this subject too.