About a week ago, I finished a book called Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife and I can't stop thinking about it. I know this isn't a book review blog or a blog about religion, but I hope you'll indulge me for a bit.
The author, Eben Alexander MD, is a neuroscientist who back in 2008 suffered an attack of bacterial meningitis that left him in a coma for a week. While he was in this life-threatening coma, he experienced a near death experience. He should not have survived this violent bacterial infection, but he was "sent back". Perhaps simply to write this book.
He recounts his experience afterwards using our limited vocabulary.
" ... I had already been taught the one thing - the only thing - that, in that final analysis, truly matters ... It came in three parts, and to take one more shot at putting it into words (because of course it was initially delivered wordlessly), it would be something like this:
You are loved and cherished.
You have nothing to fear.
There is nothing you can do wrong.
If I had to boil this entire message down to one sentence, it would run this way:
You are loved.
And if I had to boil it down further, to just one word, it would (of course) be, simply:
Love
Love is, without a doubt the basis of everything ... This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exits or that ever will exist, and no remotely accurate understanding of who and what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it, and embody it in all of their actions."
Dr. Alexander was a scientist who looked at religion, God and NDEs from a purely scientific point of view. Every event during sickness or at the end of life could be explained away with science. They were hallucinations that the brain concocted as a way of helping the patient deal with the end of his life. But Alexander's own NDE gave him an understanding that his colleagues refused to accept. These events were not merely fantasies of the brain, but rather God wrapping the patient in His/Her infinite love and ushering that patient from this world into the next.
His colleagues have become critics asserting that he is irresponsible and knows nothing of brain science and that his book is "anti-science". He recounts his story and responds to his critics here.
So maybe I'm a misinformed layman who enjoyed this book simply because I'm searching for something, anything, that will give me a greater sense of purpose and understanding for why we're all here. Or because I will latch on to anything that affirms my long-held belief that we are all connected by a power greater than us. But I would like think that no matter what you believe, the idea that love is all around us, even in the traumatizing and unknown, would be comforting and empowering. And I'm much happier living in that reality than any other.
