Doctor tells convincing afterlife tale
Can there ever be proof of heaven? A doctor with decades of experience as a neurosurgeon, operating on the brains of many hundreds of patients and teaching at distinguished medical faculties, including a 15-year stint an as associate professor at Harvard University, has dropped a bombshell upon his peers. His name is Eben Alexander. His book, Proof of Heaven, is a leading bestseller in the New York Times and elsewhere. The subtitle is: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey Into the Afterlife.
In November 2008, at age 54, Alexander woke up one morning with a terrible headache and backache and then had a grand mal epileptic seizure. He ended up in a hospital emergency room where he sank into a deep coma for seven days. Hovering near death, he finally was diagnosed as suffering from an extremely rare and dangerous illness, an E. coli meningitis infection of the cerebral neocortex. The neocortex is the latest evolutionary addition to the brain, the part that makes us human beings. Repeated tests revealed that the neocortex had “completely shut down” and the attending doctors later told him “your brain was soaking in pus.” After five days of coma they discussed letting him “go” rather than prolong the losing battle and perhaps end up with a vegetative state.
However, while apparently his brain had lost all reasoning function, a miraculous journey was taking place, one that makes all previous accounts of near-death experiences seem pale by comparison. Raymond Moody, the best-known authority in the field, is quoted on the book jacket saying Alexander’s near-death experience “is the most astounding I have heard in more than four decades of studying this phenomenon. (He) is living proof of an afterlife.” I have followed Moody’s many years of writing and speaking on this subject and this is the first instance of him using the word “proof” when discussing the neardeath experience and its relevance for afterlife conclusions.
After the seventh day, Alexander emerged from the coma unharmed and after a few days of gradual recovery began a lengthy rehab in which he began to recall vividly the extraordinary details of what the experience had been as seen from the inside. Previously, he was a typical skeptic with modern medicine’s materialist view of the brain, the soul and the universe in general well steeped into his chromosomes. But as “ultra-clear” recall of what he had just experienced flooded into his consciousness, he knew he had encountered realities that challenged his whole outlook and being. Everyone had expected him to die. The mortality rate for such a rare condition hovers at 97%.
There can be no question about his thorough grasp of all the medical and neurological implications of what he experienced or the extraordinary nature of all he saw and did in what he describes as a wholly unconscious state. However, he took months to digest all that had happened to him before writing the book. He says, “The more my scientific mind returned, the more clearly I saw how radically what I’d learned in decades of schooling and medical practice conflicted with what I’d experienced, the more I understood that the mind and the personality (as some would call it, our soul or spirit) continue to exist beyond the body. I had to tell my story to the world.”
This book, with its description of meeting God, accessing “other worlds” and much more, cannot be described adequately here. It is a fascinating read. But I was put off by references to worlds “up there” and “down here” as the author repeated concepts of an earlier time.
I also think the publisher picked a terrible title. Sensational and attention-getting? Yes.But life beyond the grave, no matter what anyone’s credentials may be, is not within the realms of proof just yet. Perhaps never.