Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife

Great book - but lots of questions! If true, this is perhaps the most astounding, important, enlightening and uplifting story ever told. It complements, supplements and/or trumps all spiritual revelations and materialist musings up to this point in human history. If people think about this correctly (and I have little hope that the majority will), and if it can be confirmed, we would all come together and live happily ever after; this is the stuff of fairy tale; in the good sense. Is it real? Certainly for all intents and purposes, Dr. Alexander is highly credible. So either: 1) it is true, or 2) he is somehow misinterpreting a really strange hallucination caused by brain damage as reality or 3) he is making it all up. Personally I discount this last option. Is it possible that this was a strange hallucination caused by brain damage? Dr. Alexander is sure that it is not. The fact that he received validation with the photo of his sister at the end is really stunning! But I suppose it is possible that his mind (or brain) may have been playing tricks on him. A critical question for me is whether or not this journey actually did occur when his neo-cortex was non-functional as he says as oppose to being in a degraded state. He says he has time anchors which demonstrate that the majority of the really sublime experience did in fact occur when his neo-cortex was non-functional. If this journey really did occur when his neo-cortex was non-functional, then clearly, it would seem, consciousness is not reducible to material causation as materialism requires. However, even if there is some doubt about when the most exquisite elements of his journey occurred, the following very difficult question remains for those who adopt a materialist line of thinking: How can it be imagined that such advanced concepts discloses in the book which rang very true to me (there are more that are difficult to articulate) could be evoked out of a severely compromised brain? If this is real then virtually everything that nearly all the scientists in all the universities of all the world have been saying for decades about evolution, the brain and mind is spectacularly wrong! If there is a conscious mind apart from the brain then it must have been bestowed by some pre-existent intelligent entity--probably some divine entity. But materialist scientists are not going to like the idea that they themselves and the scientific paradigm itself could be regarded as fallible any more than the authority of the leaders of the church was challenged a few centuries ago. If this story gets traction, materialist scientists are going to wage war on Dr. Alexander. A few thoughts about the phenomenon of consciousness related to Dr. Alexander's experience. I have never understood how intelligent people--including Dr. Alexander until his NDE--could dismiss consciousness as a phenomenon of the physical brain. I have never accepted that for a wide variety of reason only one of which I will mention: If human consciousness were reducible to physical phenomenon then what accounts for the immutability of one's sense of self? How can it be imagined that, in Dr. Alexander's case, after the brain damage he incurred and once his neo-cortex was restored (miraculously), that his sense of self--that he is the same Eben Alexander he was before--be perfectly reconstituted? How can a physical algorithm--organic computer--account for that especially in light of the fact that his brain structure must have undergone catastrophic change? Personhood--self, identity whatever you want to call it--is constant despite radical changes in the underlying physical structure. In fact, how can trillions of firing neurons account for consciousness at all? When the best explanation offered by materialist to explain consciousness--the most real thing about us--is that it is an illusion, you know they are really grasping at straws. I am anxious to read more about Dr. Alexander's experience. He has written 20,000 words about it.

This is a splendid and important book. Its author is a long-practicing neurosurgeon who is a former faculty member of the Harvard Medical School. A few years ago, he suffered an e-coli infection that developed into meningitis, attacking his brain, leaving him comatose—without consciousness or a functioning brain—for a week, and quite nearly killing him. Against great odds (100 to 1 or worse in his view), he has recovered completely, and written this book. The book concerns his illness, the reality he quite vividly and consciously experienced while nearly brain dead, and conclusions he has reached concerning God and reality based on his experiences. Before his illness, the author practiced as an academically inclined neurosurgeon. He considered himself a scientist as well as a practicing physician, and his views about reality and God reflected his training and his career. He saw reality as consisting of things that could be perceived with the senses, either directly or indirectly using machines and instruments. In his view, reality began and ended with the physical world and the observed physical reality of our galaxy and the greater universe. Notably he did not see consciousness as existing independently from this physical reality—instead, it was an artifact of physical brain structure and brain chemistry. Although I don’t believe that he expressly stated that he believed God did not exist, it is pretty clear that he didn’t view God as being a part of this observable physical reality, and the book seems to indicate that, regardless of his belief in God, matters spiritual and religious did not play a big part in his life nor attract much of his attention. During his illness, and while his brain (at least the higher level parts responsible for consciousness, congition, personality, memory, etc.) was completely non-functional, he experienced a new reality of great beauty, wonder and peace, the most vivid aspect of which he describes as being pervasive, unconditional love. When he recovered consciousness and in the months following his recovery, he sought to apply his scientific training and experience to understanding what he experienced. He has concluded that consciousness exists independently of the physical brain and that, freed from limitations resulting from our limited sensory abilities (seeing, hearing, touching, etc.) and from the limited processing power of the human brain, his consciousness was able to perceive a much greater, multidimensional reality—the heaven of the book’s title. Though he is obviously a bit frustrated by limitations on the concepts we can express using human language (after all, a language that, while quite useful and apt in dealing with the limited reality of our physical world, was not developed for use in connection with the greater reality he experienced nor for expressing his expanded perceptions of that reality) his book does a very good job describing that reality. His writing also reflects a certain intellectual rigor and scientific analysis, and I am compelled to give greater weight and credence to his descriptions and conclusions in view of his scientific approach as well as the relative unimportance of the spiritual component of his life before he developed meningitis. This book will be food for thought for me for a long time. I recommend it without reservation. Tom Hurley

While I have to disagree with the title Proof of Heaven that this book was actually not proof of heaven, I found the premise and the experience shared in this book quite fascinating. Dr. Alexander talks about his experiences while in a coma from a serious bacterial meningitis attack that is quite rare and shuts down the neo-cortex of the brain, the part that makes us, basically, human, and puts him in a coma he was not expected to live through or return from. He shares his vivid memories of experiences he had in a place outside of this realm of existence, memories of acceptance, love, inclusiveness, connectedness, peace, calm and so many good things. The main point that of love, unconditional and overwhelming, in a way that isn't even able to be expressed on this world. Dr. Alexander considers this absolute proof of God and Heaven, where I see it as proof that there is something after this life, but not necessarily the religious versions of God and Heaven as we have been told in the Bible or through other religious upbringings. I find the concept of unconditional love fascinating, and somewhat comforting, and I definitely like the perspective of life of some sort, existence and consciousness of some sort, after this body fades away, especially now that I have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and thinking about death and dying is something that has come to my mind sooner than it would for most people. I enjoyed his personal stories about his journey. I appreciated his honesty about how he was not really a believer prior to this experience, that he was a staunch man of science, to a point, and how this changed that. I like the way he now weaves these two things--the science and the faith--together to be a better doctor and a better person. I like that he provides other resources and information for the reader to read, to consider, and to decide for themselves what they think happened. I went to many of his other resources and read them and even saw him in some video where he was interviewed about his experiences. It's all very compelling... and again, somewhat comforting, especially to me. See, I have a terminal illness, and I know my death is more imminent than I had original expected it to be... life and death, this life and the afterlife, have both been big on my mind. This book did provide me some comfort, some feeling that there might be something else out there beyond this. I think I needed that. At the same time, there was some compelling stories that tied some things in his life together in a way that seems only able to happen outside of this realm. You'll have to read his story to learn more about it. If you're interested, but not sure about buying the book, look him up online and read some of the places where he talks about near death experiences with others who have had them too. Fascinating stuff, and it might help you make up your mind if this is something you want to consider buying or not. I consider it money well spent, if for nothing but the fascination factor. If you're not a believer, this book might make you think about an afterlife differently. If you are a believer, I think this book can really reenforce your faith. If you're a skeptic, you might still find this book fascinating in what it shares about how to live your life now. I think it's well worth considering and picking this one up to read, and he tells the story in a compelling way. There is enough technical and medical/scientific information to make you feel informed, but not so much it's bogged down. And there is enough personal anecdote and experience to feel you're reading a story too. Good balance.

If you Google Dr. Eben Alexander III you find that he has credentials pages long as a respected neurosurgeon and medical academic. He, like many of us technically trained folks, found it hard to truly believe religious concepts like prayer to a God, spiritual entities, and life after death. However, also like some of us, life dealt him a blow which resulted in a life changing spiritual experience. I read this book eagerly searching for similarities with my own encounter years ago, which turned me from a confirmed agnostic to a serious believer. Dr. Alexander's experience was much more severe and extensive than my own, but had enough similarities that I have probably have less trouble than some in believing that his story is true. The initiator of his encounter was a severe case of bacterial meningitis, an often fatal disease which damaged the outer cortex of his brain, putting him in a coma for seven days. His body became unresponsive, requiring a ventilator to keep it alive, but according to his later account, his consciousness or spirit remained active, and was taken out of the body through what the religious would call the heavenly realm. The journey seemed to include three levels that he later named as follows: 1.The underworld, a transparent mud-like space through which he rose until he encountered: 2. the Gateway, an entry to a land that looked like a more beautiful version of the World. He sailed above this land accompanied by a beautiful young woman (later found to be a deceased sister whom he had never met), finally approaching 3. The Core, "an immense void, infinite in size, pitch black but also brimming over with light" (I quote this because it did not make sense to me - apparently our linear brains cannot comprehend something being two things at once). In this place he was accompanied by an "orb" which interpreted the messages to his consciousness from the Creator, who seemed to completely surround this space. He felt as though he were in a "giant cosmic womb". He learned many things there. Some he could not explain in human language, such as the meaning of science's newly discovered "dark energy" and "dark mass". Three important messages he could explain were received shortly after he arrived: 1. "You are loved and cherished." 2. "You have nothing to fear." 3."There is nothing you can do wrong." He was told there are many universes. Evil is present in small amounts in all of them to allow the possibility of making the free will choices necessary for progression of the species, but love is overwhelmingly dominant. From the higher worlds one could access the lesser worlds at any time or place. To me, this all sounded like a combination of religious beliefs and science speculation. Yet, it did seem possible. Dr. Alexander suddenly woke up from his coma and after a long convalescence, regained his full mental facilities and began to write down his experiences. As a brain specialist and scientist he realized as much as anyone how farfetched it all sounded. He subsequently reviewed the physiology carefully, investigating nine possible physical explanations for the phenomenon he experienced. All had to be rejected, leaving his only conclusion that a person's consciousness exists outside the body in the heavenly realms and resides only temporarily in the body during its short period on earth. Dr. Alexander believes that this happened to him for a reason and that he is called to bring his experience to the attention of his fellow humans. Crazy as my summary might sound; this is not a crazy person. His book is well written, fascinating to read, and it certainly expanded my thinking about that part of life which is death. One final comment: I doubt if "Proof of Heaven" was Dr. Alexander's original title; it looks more like a publisher's idea. As a scientist, Dr. Alexander knows that this book is not a proof of heaven, it is only one more piece of evidence that life may be more than just a body.

As someone who has experienced an NDE, and struggled with many of the same things that Eben discusses here, I am not surprised at the response that many are having to this book. To say "people who have NDE experiences often find the telling of their story, while trying to impart the information they receive during their experience, a difficult task," would be an understatement as vast as the universe. The clinical aspects of Dr. Alexander's experience are what make this story unique, along with his outright conversion from a "Scientific Reductionist" to someone who sees clearly that consciousness and the vast majority of "what is," are found outside of our space/time universe and current medical or science books. To get the most out of any book on NDEs, and especially one that intertwines a very personal journey to find family and self, you must start with an open mind and heart. Unfortunately, those who have already hardened their views on both sides of the spectrums of Science and Religion, will dismiss much of what anyone writes on this topic, because it doesn't fit their narrow, dogmatic view of the world. Even worse, it forces them to look outside of their safe little boxes, and take the effort to learn, while being open to the possibility that current models of both science and faith are a good starting point, but not the ENTIRE answer. Einstein's quote at the beginning of the chapter "A Final Dilemma" says it best... "I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be." Whether you begin as a Christian, a Buddhist, Quantum Physicist or a simple seeker of knowledge beyond current understanding, moving outside of the constructs of your current ways of thinking is imperative to discovery. Fundamentalism, whether it be religious or scientific, is really no different than intellectual bigotry, closed to expanded thoughts, or encompassing new ways of looking for expanded information. Eben's book embraces both worlds, and does so gracefully, without discounting any specific ideology. Eben's experience was certainly deeper, and far more expansive than most I have read (including my own NDE). I do agree that the lack of detail about his time in "heaven" (a term that I find limiting) is frustrating to a point. And yet, the need to spend much of this book on the technical side of his coma, his quest and victory regarding his family (past and present), as well as touching on the scientific aspects of the current science regarding external consciousness, make this short book an excellent jumping-off point for deeper study and discussion. And there's the rub... After experiencing my own NDE (in 1996), I spent almost two obsessive years trying in vain to "connect the dots of knowledge imparted to me," before putting it all back "in a box" so that I could get on with living my life. Through a series of events over the past two years, I find myself very much back into "telling the story." I now realize that no book, video, or movie is able to even scratch the surface of answering the great questions of life after death, consciousness, and how they all relate to quantum theory. Expecting "the answers" from a book of this size and configuration is naïve and lazy at best. There is a reason that the section in this book called "Reading List" is expansive. Much has been written on this topic from both the spiritual and scientific approach. If you are a true seeker of the truth, you will not start or end your journey for knowledge with Eben's book. Instead, you will appreciate the facts of his experience, the unique medical reality of his coma, and the amazing revelations about family, love and the eternal nature of consciousness, as the BEGINNING of the journey to true understanding. While this book in not an expansive, all-inclusive answer to the melding of Science and Religion, I give it 5 stars for being an important, unique story, bringing focus to the need for a global change in the perception and understanding of reality, consciousness and the interconnectedness of everything in creation.

Proof of Heaven was both interesting and surprisingly suspenseful; I always looked forward to picking it up and continuing my reading. The author is an impeccably educated and highly respected neurosurgeon who had been adopted and followed in the professional footsteps of his adoptive father; had been an experienced shy diver in college; married and had children; longed to meet his birth family and finally did; somehow contracted a very rare bacterial meningitis; and while moving toward death in a coma, claims to have gone to heaven where he met God, an angel, and had other unquestionably (for him) heavenly experiences that he lived to share with others, asserting that collectively they represent "the single most real experience of my life." A fascinating and gripping story!--but that said, it's time to take a close look at the author's claim, namely, that there is "Heaven" after death, or more generically, that consciousness survives death. I think it not unreasonable--indeed, fundamental--to require of someone who insists his or her experience proves consciousness survives bodily death both to have died and subsequently to have returned to life sometime prior to making such an assertion. Any claim to have experienced death and to know what occurs after it without having first died would seem absurd on its very face. Indeed, initially Alexander claims to have died: "My experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness, that human experience continues beyond the grave." (I think it premature to claim having experienced "death of the body" if one's respiratory, circulatory, and digestive systems are functioning, and only the nervous system is damaged--however severely.) So, I could only shake my head in wonderment when he claimed later not to have died but to have had a NEAR death experience (NDE). Throughout, he refers to his experience as an NDE and compares the experiences of other NDE survivors to his own, noting--until nearly the end of his book--that his NDE was similar to those recounted by other NDE survivors save their meeting deceased relatives and reviewing their life's good and bad actions: "I experienced none of these events, and taken all together they demonstrate the single most unusual aspect of my NDE." Then, in a patently self-contradictory statement, he writes, "At the risk of oversimplifying, I was allowed to die harder, and travel deeper, than almost all NDE subjects before me." With a sentence like that, I don't think he need worry about oversimplifying. So, we have an author claiming to know what happens to consciousness after death based on his own experience of death even though he repeatedly admits that he had not died at any time prior to his claim. For me, this turns his assertion of having entered the foyer of heavenly life into evidence that, at most, he had arrived only at the derriere of his earthly life. My second quandary is the medium responsible for his right to claim he was in heaven, namely, sensing and feeling: While in what he calls the "Realm of the Earthworm's-Eye View," he notes, "...gradually this sense of deep, timeless, boundaryless immersion gave way to something else: a feeling like I wasn't really part of this subterranean world at all, but trapped in it." A little further down, he writes, "I heard an occasional dull roar," and, "the movement round me became less visual and more tactile...," and, "then I became aware of a smell." Later, after he had passed through the portal of heaven, he was told something by an angel, and her "message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief." When he's in the Core (of heaven), he writes, "Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place where I now was. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of those scintillating beings above, and I could see [sic] the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang." It's curious to me that sensation, however modified his seeing and hearing were in heaven, were, nonetheless, one of his modes of knowing. This would make earthly hearing and seeing weak analogues of their heavenly counterparts, but more remarkably, not only our consciousness survives death, but also our senses! This implies that the material organs of sight and hearing are not essential to these capabilities. We do know that we can hear music in our mind that we are not hearing with our ears and see things in our mind that are not present to our eyes under two conditions: we're dreaming, or we've consciously induced them. But Alexander insists he is not dreaming and others are generating the sounds, sights, and smells. Although his claim fits his theory of post-death consciousness, he never died, and for those of us who are still pre-dead, a dreaming or inducing explanation is simpler and less fantastical. Also, we do know that physical eyes and ears are essential to earthly seeing and hearing under either of the main concepts of the body-mind relationship: that we are a mind (soul, spirit) trapped in a body and finally freed of it upon death, or we exist as an inseparable body-mind unity. Under the first condition, there would have to be some plausible theory to explain how the soul retains senses once it's left the body. Under the second condition, body and soul exist only as an integrated entity, at death extinguishing together. A related problem, advanced by his description of consciousness after death, is duality--or, if you will, the multiplicity of separately distinguishable beings/things/experiences in the post-death realm. Alexander's heaven eliminates the ego but retains distinct beings outside himself (for example, he doesn't claim to be God or the angle). Okay, maybe he wants to suggest that none of these separate and distinct beings have an ego, but something has to account for his recognizing that they (perceivable beings, music, smells, visuals of various kinds) are real and are not just his projections. Maybe they exist like thoughts, perceptibly existing immaterial objects. The only problem with this is that we conjure our thoughts, and subconscious mechanisms conjure our dreams. I'm sure Alexander is not suggesting that his heaven is populated by conjured images--and he insists they're not dreams--but I don't see how he can escape the conundrum. Celestial existence for Alexander often seems conceptually similar to earthly experience, differing primarily in quality and seeming often little more than exquisite extensions of ordinary life. He does write, "The blurring of the boundary between my awareness and the realm around me went so far at times that I became the entire universe." What is surprising about this statement is the "at times." At one point in my life, I was an intermittent TMer. After several years of erratic adherence to my meditation practice, I routinely experienced extended periods non-dualistic absorption into a unitary bliss, timelessness, spacelessness, even occasional out-of-body consciousness. Thus, "at times" I had earthly experiences that were not dissimilar to what he describes as a peak heavenly experience--and I didn't have to die to experience them, making me wonder just how other-worldly they are. Alexander states that "up there" there's no emotional distinction between "inside" and "outside" because changes of "mood" experienced there are so vast as to include and affect both the mood feeler and his or her surroundings simultaneously. Commenting further on emotions, he writes, "All the human emotions are present [in heaven]...." Does he really want to assert that greed, avarice, lust, hate, and other such emotions reside with love in God's paradise? This completely contradicts other statements about the heavenly environment. He does mention evil, as necessary for there to be free will, which is required "for us to become what God longer for us to be." However, he does not raise the issue of moral behavior as a prerequisite for heaven or as even affecting one's access to or enjoyment of heaven. Should I ever enter Alexander's rapture, I hope not to attend a dance and see Mother Theresa grinding with Adolph Hitler. But maybe I will, given that "in the larger picture love was overwhelmingly dominant, and it would ultimately be triumphant" over evil. Finally, the author's recitation of numerous failed attempts to explain his mental states while in a coma go only so far as demonstrating that extremely rare phenomena are less susceptible to explanation than are common ones. I hardly think that such a recognition would startle anyone. So, at best, I see Proof of Heaven as an engaging addition to NDE literature and at worst, an unsupported, indeed self-contradictory and sloppily analyzed, claim to a reality that fails to meet even the most obvious precondition: One has actually to die, not just come close to it, before earning the right to assert the post-death condition of consciousness. Of course, my concern about basing a belief in an afterlife on Alexander's experience while in a coma is irrelevant to whether or not there is an afterlife. I just don't think Proof of Heaven gets us any closer to proving it than we were with former NDE accounts. He may have been "allowed to die harder" than previous NDEers, but like them, he didn't die. I think he should have remained more the scientist upon coming out of his coma and considered his experience as evidence of what the brain may still do after the cranial cortex is compromised. Rather than counting on eternal consciousness, I think we should work on coming to terms with death's being the close of our one and only, randomly engendered, and unrepeatable existence. If we awake to having been mistaken and find ourselves in another dimension, nothing will be lost. If we don't awaken in paradise, we will not grieve it. In the meantime, we won't violate the knowable and will experience how precious, fleeting, and irreplaceable life is--ours and that of all other beings. It might be easier to have compassion for one another, if we don't presume that upon death we're whisked off to "a better place" where we'll all be reunited in bliss.

I’m not a religious person so I read this book as a way to challenge my disbelief. It is a beautiful and well written description of a fascinating experience. I’m a scientist so this book being written by a neurosurgeon gave it a perspective that I personally needed for the words to hold my attention. While I won’t say it’s changed my mind, the book certainly made me think and got me interested in reading more on the subject. One big question, however, that wasn’t discussed was whether the author believes any single religion is closer to the truth than another and if so which one.

First, I enjoyed this well-written and easy to read book. I believe the author is sincere. Of course, I don't know if what the author recounts is real, but then reality itself is a difficult topic. What I wished the author would have done is to describe the other worlds and dimensions he saw in more detail. What size, color, texture were the orbs? How many were there? What are some examples of exactly what the author learned from these other worldly beings? What was it like to visit other dimensions? So little time was spent relating imagery, thoughts, sounds and memories in a detailed fashion so that the reader could get a sense of what the journey was actually like. In contrast, the biographical information, the descriptions of what transpired in the hospital room, the interpersonal relationships were all laid out in considerable detail. After reading the book, the reader had learned a great deal about the author's family, friends, associates and caregivers. It seems strange that the central journey was described in minimal detail and with broad generalizations. Experiencing unity with the universe must have evoked sensations, colors, emotions and detailed thoughts that could be shared with the reader. Why did a hyper-real reality not inspire vivid descriptions? The only character in the other world we learned anything about was the female angel, and the communications related as having taken place between her and the author were minimal. One final criticism I have would be that the author did not adequately discuss the possibility that the memories of his journey might have been generated before or after the inactivation of his neo-cortex. Even though his recollections indicate much time had transpired, proof of the timeline is obviously not available. In any interpretation, time in the non-material world seemed to be moving much more slowly than time in the hospital room of the material world. I am quite open to the idea that there is life after death. This book, interesting and worthwhile though it is, however, did not offer much in the way of proof. The most unusual aspect of the story, from my point of view, would be the rapid recovery from a seemingly hopeless illness. As for objective proof that something supernatural occurred on another plane of existence, I (not surprisingly) did not find it in this book whether or not it actually occurred.