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Most people have heard of near-death experiences (NDE). Depending on a number of factors such as culture, age, and education, some may believe these accounts while others may not.
I recently read a book titled Proof of Heaven by American neurosurgeon Eben Alexander that details his very unique NDE. Alexander admits that before this experience, he had a materialist worldview and was very skeptical of the veracity of reported NDEs.
I will recount key parts of Dr. Alexander’s NDE, and discuss some important revelations from his journey into the afterlife.
Dr. Eben Alexander graduated from North Carolina University in chemistry and earned a Medical Degree at Duke University in 1980. He then completed a fellowship in cerebrovascular neurosurgery in the United Kingdom. He returned to the United States and spent the next fifteen years at Harvard Medical School as an associate professor of surgery with a specialization in neurosurgery.
Although Alexander devoted his life to science, by age fifty-four he also was a happily married man with two lovely children. He occasionally attended an Episcopal church with his family for Christmas and Easter, but his scientific training progressively made him question God, Heaven, and life beyond death.
On Monday, November 10, 2008, at 4:30 a.m., he awoke to intense, deep pain at the base of his spine. Thinking that it was caused by the flu, he decided to have a warm bath. The warm bath exacerbated the pain, and by 7:30 a.m. he had a throbbing headache. Two hours later, his wife found him in bed rigid as a board, jerking violently, his lower jaw unnaturally jutted forward while his eyes had rolled back into his head.
Alexander was taken by ambulance to the Lynchburg General Hospital emergency room (ER). At his arrival, several orderlies were needed to hold him down as he uncontrollably raved and writhed around. Intuiting that Alexander’s brain was under attack, the attending doctor performed a lumbar puncture to extract a small amount of cerebrospinal fluid at the base of Alexander’s spine.
Cerebrospinal fluid is normally a very clear, watery substance that coats the brain and runs along the spinal cord. The slightest opacity of this fluid indicates a serious infection. In Alexander’s case, the fluid was viscous, white with a subtle tinge of green – in other words, it was full of pus.
Tests revealed that Alexander had contracted an unknown type of E. Coli bacterial meningitis and that the lining of his brain was very swollen and inflamed. Curiously, less than 1 in 10 million of the adults worldwide are infected by such a bacterium.
Because his brain was already seriously damaged by the infection, and Alexander was plugged to machines (i.e., ventilator) to keep him alive, he was moved to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and given three powerful intravenous antibiotics to fight the infection. Close family and friends took turns staying by Alexander’s bedside for the 7 days he stayed in the ICU.
While his body was in a coma, Alexander “awoke” submerged in a dark, red, muddy, womb-like underworld. He named this place the Realm of the Earthworm’s-Eye View.
In this realm, there was a loud rhythmic mechanic sound that vibrated through this viscous substance. Monstrous animal faces bubbled up from this slimy sea, combined with a strange biological smell of death.
He had no memory of his earthly life, and he didn’t know if he was human, animal, or just a point of awareness in this murky, dark sea. There was a sense of timelessness, and after a while, Alexander started to panic and wanted to escape this realm.
Suddenly, a white-gold light appeared and Alexander heard the richest, most complex sound. The light lifted him up from the underworld through an opening to the most beautiful ultra-real world he had ever seen.
He flew over a green, lush earthlike countryside. There were trees, fields, streams, waterfalls, and people. Children laughed and played; people sang and danced; dogs ran and jumped around. These people wore simple yet beautiful and colourful clothes.
Alexander felt a presence next to him: a beautiful girl with blue eyes, high cheekbones, golden-brown tresses and dressed like the peasants. They both were riding on the wing of a butterfly and were surrounded by millions of butterflies.
The girl looked at him with the purest kind of love and telepathically said, “You are loved and cherished dearly, forever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong (in this realm). We will show you many things here. But eventually, you will go back.”
He arrived in a place full of big, pink-white clouds. Higher above these clouds were transparent, shimmering, advanced beings arced across the sky. These beings were so joyous that they continuously produced a glorious chant.
Seeing and hearing were interchangeable; one could “see” music and “hear” visual beauty. Also, the observer and the observed became one, and thinking of something automatically drew one to it. Curiously, any question posed was instantaneously and completely answered telepathically.
Alexander arrived at the Core and felt the presence of an immensely powerful, unconditionally loving Being – it was God. But the word “God” did not capture the infinite vastness of this Presence. Therefore, Alexander used the word “Om”, as it is the sound that he heard while being in the Core.
Back on Earth, by Thursday, the doctors declared Alexander’s case hopeless as none of the treatments were effective. A pastor led a small prayer group around the ICU bed, and the family prepared for the worst.
From Heaven, Alexander heard murmurs of a small group of people. Their prayers somehow called him back to Earth, and on Sunday, he suddenly awoke from his coma. Everybody was shocked that he came back to life, but most astonishingly, that he regained all his mental faculties after only a few months of rehabilitation.
Interestingly, Alexander was able to elucidate the identity of the beautiful girl on the butterfly wing. Alexander was adopted when he was a baby and often subconsciously wondered if he was truly wanted by his birth parents. This caused him great distress that he wasn’t able to heal on his own.
In 2007, he finally met his biological parents and siblings. Not only was he able to heal this deep wound, but he also discovered that the beautiful girl on the butterfly wing was his biological sister Betsy who died 10 years earlier.
We know that sooner or later, death awaits us all. People tend to deal with this subconscious knowledge differently – most by ignoring it, others through rationalization, while some find solace in religion.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander visited the afterlife and was very fortunate to live to recount his journey. A self-proclaimed “kind skeptic” of the spiritual world, Alexander subsequently became convinced that we are more than our bodies and there is life after death.
Alexander explains that there is no contradiction between our material world and the unmanifest one. The awareness of the spiritual realm only gives us a more complete picture of our universe. The core message that he wants us to remember from his extraordinary experience is that all of us are forever, deeply loved.
Interested in buying the book Proof of Heaven? Click here.
Literary Truths
Here are other revelations that were given to Dr. Eben Alexander while he journeyed through the afterlife:
- We are one with God: God deeply understands humans and possesses all our qualities but in an infinitely greater measure. The root of all fears is the fear of being separated from God. This is an impossibility because everything in the universe is God.
- The brain is a filtering device: The brain – particularly the left, linguistic, logical part – prevents us from experiencing a larger, more complex reality. Therefore, there’s no contradiction between the material world, and the spiritual one; one complements the other.
- The existence of a multitude of universes: There are countless universes that exist and have existed, and evil is present in all of them. However, evil is present in the tiniest trace amounts compared to Earth.
- The location of different universes: Universes share the same space, but are on different frequencies. To perceive a realm, we have to become that particular vibration and then we will perceive that realm. Therefore, to return to Heaven, we need to become love.
- The necessity of evil: Without evil, there couldn’t be free will. Without free will, there is no spiritual growth. But overall, love is overwhelmingly dominant and will ultimately triumph.
Truth in Motion
References
Alexander M.D., Eben, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2012.
Picture 1: https://www.amazon.ca/Proof-Heaven-Neurosurgeons-Journey-Afterlife/dp/1451695195/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391154855&sr=1-1&keywords=Proof+of+Heaven
Picture 2: https://www.hachette.com.au/eben-alexander/
Picture 3: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2012/11/27/proof-heaven-alexander