A skeptical scientist who had spent his career studying
the mechanics of the brain and dismissing patient tales of journeys to heavenly
realms has revealed his extraordinary conversion after his own encounter with
the afterlife during a near-death experience.
Dr Eben Alexander spent 15 years as an academic
neurosurgeon at Harvard but he was struck with a nearly fatal bout of bacterial
meningitis in 2008 and had no brain activity when he lay comatose for seven
days at a Virginia hospital.
Though he was unconscious and unresponsive during that
period, he is now describing a 'hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey' to
a place beyond, filled with butterflies and resounding music that has shaken
his scientific viewpoint on human consciousness. He says he entered a place filled with clouds
and the sound of chanting, and was met by a beautiful blue-eyed woman.
Dr Alexander describes his paradigm shift from focusing
solely on the scientific make up of the brain to considering the spiritual
realm of the mind, in a deeply reflective essay in Newsweek in advance of the
release of his book, Proof of Heaven.
'As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon
of near-death experiences,' he writes in his article, explaining how he had
previously relied on 'good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body
journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.'
Though he considered himself a nominal Christian he said
he lacked the faith to believe in eternal life.
When his patients would tell tales of going to heaven
during near death experiences, he relied on 'current medical understanding of
the brain and mind' and disregarded them as wishful thinking.
But after he became the patient, he says he 'experienced
something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in
consciousness after death.'
The 58-year-old has an impressive pedigree. His ancestors
were well regarded politicians and prominent fixtures in society in Tennessee.
His father was Chief of Neurosurgery at Wake Forest University from 1948 to
1978.
The younger Alexander graduated from Phillips Exeter
Academy and received his bachelor's degree from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975. He earned his medical degree from Duke in
1980.
He spent 15 years teaching neurology at Harvard Medical
School and the University of Virginia - lecturing on and researching brain
mapping, the treatment of brain tumors and trying to understand cognition. In
2008, the father-of-two was in 'good health and good shape,' preparing to
embark on a hike with his son of a volcano in South America, he said in a July
interview about the ordeal with Skeptiko.
Little did he know that he would soon become a patient at the very
hospital where he taught.
The doctor's life was nearly cut short on November 10,
2008, when he awoke at 4:30am to get ready to go to work at the Lynchburg
General Hospital in Virginia, where he worked as a neurosurgeon. All of a sudden, he developed a severe pain in
his back and within 15 minutes he was paralyzed in anguish and could barely
even move. His wife, Holley, rushed in to assist him and began to rub his back
to relieve the tension but his condition worsened.
Before he began convulsing in a seizure, his last words
to his wife were, 'Don't call 911,' and he lost consciousness and has no memory
of what happened for an entire week.
Fortunately for him, his wife disregarded his advice and
he was rushed to an area hospital and was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis.
'My entire cortex - the part of the brain that controls
thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human - had shut down,' he
writes in his essay.
'Doctors determined that I had somehow contracted a very
rare bacterial meningitis that mostly attacks newborns. E. coli bacteria had
penetrated my cerebrospinal fluid and were eating my brain,' he added.
He was placed on a ventilator at the intensive care unit
and for six days he was treated with triple antibiotics to fight the bacteria
but his brain had little functionality and he was unresponsive, leaving doctors
to believe he would not recover.
As his family prepared for the worst, on the seventh day
he suddenly opened his eyes.
His breathing tube was removed and he miraculously told
doctors, 'Thank you.'
He suffered from amnesia and could not remember his life
at all prior to his illness and remained in a haze for the first few days after
he came out of the coma.
As he recovered though, he began to recall vivid memories
of a magical mental experience during his time in the coma.
'There is no scientific explanation for the fact that
while my body lay in coma, my mind - my conscious, inner self - was alive and
well.
'While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete
inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness
journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never
dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy
to explain was a simple impossibility,' he writes.
He says he entered a 'place of clouds - big, puffy and
pink-white,' filled with butterflies and angel-like creatures that were 'simply
different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced.
Higher forms.'
In this heavenly realm, he says he heard 'a sound, huge
and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above,' providing him with a
sense of joy and awe.
A beautiful young woman accompanied him during his stay,
'she was young, and I remember what she looked like in complete detail. She had
high cheekbones and deep-blue eyes. Golden brown tresses framed her lovely
face.'
Alexander admits his description might sound like
something straight out of Hollywood, but to skeptics he says he has a clear
sense that is was indeed real and 'not some fantasy, passing and
insubstantial.' After his remarkable experience in 2008, Alexander says the
impact has been both on the professional and the spiritual.
Now the scientist has committed his energy to
'investigating the true nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are
more, much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my fellow
scientists and to people at large.'
But the self-described Christian-in-name-only, now says
his experience with heaven has deepened his understanding of God and
strengthened his faith.
'At the very heart of my journey [is this], that we are
loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand and unfathomably
glorious than the one I’d learned,' he concludes.
Culled from Daily Mail UK
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