Prominent scientist, and Harvard-educated neurosurgeon, Dr. Eben Alexander, previously dismissed the possibility of the afterlife, but says that he has reconsidered his belief after personally experiencing an out of body experience, which has convinced him that heaven exists.
Dr. Alexander fell into a coma for seven days during 2008, after contracting meningitis.While in a coma, the neurosurgeon says that the part of his brain which controls human thought and emotion “shut down”, and that he then experienced, “something so profound, that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.” In an essay for the American magazine, Newsweek, that he wrote to promote his book, ‘Proof of Heaven’, Eben says that he was met by a beautiful blue-eyed woman, in a “place of clouds, big fluffy pink-white ones, and shimmering beings”. Were they birds or angels? Alexander said, “These words registered later, when I was writing down my recollections. But, neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have ever known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms.” The doctor added that, “a huge booming, like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if the winged beings were producing it. The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin, but it doesn’t get you wet.”
Alexander said that he had heard stories from patients about ‘out of body experiences’ (OBEs), but disregarded them as ‘wishful thinking’. But now, following his own experience, he has reconsidered his opinion. He added, “I know full well how extraordinary, how frankly unbelievable all of this sounds. Had someone, even a doctor, told me a story like this in the old days, I would have been quite certain that they were under the spell of some delusion. But, what happened to me was far from being delusional. It was as real, or more real, than any event in my life. That includes my wedding day, and the birth of my two sons. I’ve spent decades as a neurosurgeon at some of the most prestigious medical institutions in our country. I know that many of my peers believe, as I did, the theory that the brain, and in particular the cortex, generates consciousness, and that we live in a universe devoid of any kind of emotion, much less the unconditional love that I now know God and the universe have toward us. But, that belief, that theory, now lies broken at our feet. What happened to me has destroyed it.”
