{"id":1637,"date":"2013-06-14T18:16:28","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T22:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/?p=1637"},"modified":"2015-06-05T16:29:46","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T20:29:46","slug":"the-bookshelf-proof-of-heaven%e2%80%94a-neursurgeon%e2%80%99s-journey-into-the-afterlife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/?p=1637","title":{"rendered":"Proof of Heaven\u2014A Neursurgeon\u2019s Journey into the Afterlife"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>On November\u00a010, 2008, Eben Alexander was admitted to the Lynchburg General Hospital emergency room with excruciating back pain. Within four hours he slipped into a deep coma that lasted seven days. At the end of those seven days, he opened his eyes and thrashed around in bed. After the doctor removed his ventilator, Alexander took his first unassisted breath in a week, calmed down, and then said, \u201cthank you.\u201d Looking around the room at his family and doctors, he smiled and said, \u201cAll is well. Don\u2019t worry, all is well.\u201d<\/p>\n

This book about his Near Death Experience rocketed to #1 on The New York Times<\/em> best-seller list. Oprah did an hour-long special about it. The publisher has printed a million copies.<\/p>\n

Before his NDE, Alexander was a friendly sceptic. He wasn\u2019t religious, and only went to church on Christmas and Easter. He had spent twenty-five years as a neurosuxrgeon, including fifteen years at Harvard Medical School. He had published over 150 peer-reviewed scientific articles. Faith in empirical science was his only creed.<\/p>\n

His eventual diagnosis was so rare that he made medical history. Somehow he had contracted spontaneous E. coli bacterial meningitis. The doctors never determined how or why. No one could find even one other case like his. \u201cOfficially, my status was \u2018N of 1,\u2019 a term that refers to medical studies in which a single patient stands for the entire trial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexander\u2019s prognosis was catastrophic. His type of meningitis was almost always fatal, and so his doctors gave him little chance for recovery. His brain\u2019s neocortex had shut down; he describes it as \u201cinoperative.\u201d It wasn\u2019t that his brain was working improperly or poorly, he says, but that \u201cit wasn\u2019t working AT ALL\u201d (his emphasis).<\/p>\n

Such was Alexander\u2019s medical condition. But his book is mainly about the \u201cprofound spiritual experience\u201d he had when he was \u201ccompletely free of the limitations of my physical brain.\u201d Whereas Alexander has no memory of any events during the week of his coma, he retains absolute clarity about what happened \u201coutside my brain.\u201d He now believes something that\u2019s antithetical to the materialist model of all brain science\u00a0\u2014 that consciousness exists entirely independent of the brain.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t spoil the story, nor address the fire storm of controversy his book has ignited. Suffice it to say that Alexander gives a vividly detailed description of his NDE. \u201cWe will show you many things,\u201d an angelic being told him, \u201cbut you will be going back.\u201d One message in particular was more important than all the rest.<\/p>\n

Alexander compares his NDE to lifting a veil. A veil can function like a filter, and so can the brain. Although the spiritual realm beyond the brain is available to us, \u201cduring the brain-based, physical portion of our existence, our brain blocks out, or veils, that larger cosmic background, just as the sun\u2019s light blocks the stars from view each morning.\u201d This brain-filtering is good and necessary for life on earth; imagine if you always heard every sound at once. But this brain filtering also obscures the more important realm of the spirit, unless we take deliberate steps to see \u201cbeyond the veil.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title of Alexander\u2019s book is unfortunate. No amount of debate can conclude whether there\u2019s a \u201cheaven\u201d beyond normal consciousness. To me this doesn\u2019t matter, because I already believe that. What\u2019s important is not Alexander\u2019s medical miracle but his spiritual message\u00a0\u2014 that despite this veil of tears which is life, and whether you feel it or not, nothing can separate you from the Perfect Love that exists at the heart of the universe. \u201cThis is the reality of realities,\u201d he writes, \u201cthe incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or that ever will exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

reviewed by\u00a0Journey with Jesus<\/a><\/em> webzine, www.journeywithjesus.net, with founder Dan Clendenin\u2019s permission<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before his NDE, Alexander was a friendly sceptic. He wasn\u2019t religious, and only went to church on Christmas and Easter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,13],"tags":[104,139,105],"class_list":["post-1637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-community","tag-book-review","tag-death","tag-spirituality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1637"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2444,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1637\/revisions\/2444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalaltarguildassociation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}