This is a title to a book, not my own exegesis - although, after reading the book, I feel it could be. It should be in the book section of the web, but I feel it will get wider reading here. It's an important book.
"Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife" by Eben Alexander was sent to me by my brother John as a Christmas present, and good thing - I might have been wary of it on my own because of the title. It seems a little too glamorous, too new-agey for serious consideration, but when one reads, one realizes that it was titled, and spaced, to present itself as a bestseller by the publishers. But that takes nothing away from the book itself. It is a story of a highly respected brain surgeon who undergoes a near death experience, and with it, realizes that his entire perception of the real is simply, and undeniably wrong.
There have been many books on this subject since Kenneth Ring and Raymond Moody brought the NDE experience to the general public in the 1970's, and this is one of the best. In the first place, as it is by a neurosurgeon, we know that he is well aware of the materialist view of reality - that is, that all that is our "self" is contained within the brain, which dies along with the body. Think of the times you might have tried to explain how the "soul" continues after the brain is dead to a skeptic who can readily point to experiments that indicate the contrary? Think, perhaps, of an old relative who is suffering from Alzheimer's - it certainly seems that with the deterioration of the brain, the self itself is destroyed. Eben knows all this and more - and yet insists that we are much, much more than the brain.
Which leads to the second reason this is one of the best books on the subject: the depth of his NDE. While most experience this after a brief cardiac arrest (I have a visiting Jehovah's Witness who did NOT have an NDE after a cardiac arrest. To him, this was proof that there was no heaven beyond - so he came to believe in the heaven that is to be delivered here on earth, as espoused by the Witnesses), his continued for a full week during a coma due to bacterial meningitis which had shut down completely his neo-cortex, the 'thinking' or human part of the brain. As he himself claims, with a self-effacing disclaimer, his NDE went well beyond the standard travel through a tunnel, hearing exquisite music, and seeing dead relatives. As he explains, there was no "him" there - he was simply a presence, with no past, no connections, nothing to drag him back to earth or to tether him to a particular world view. He was, instead, completely open to the being of the cosmos. And he got his cosmic fill. After traveling over (flying) terrain and people with his guide, a beautiful young woman, he was brought to what he describes as the Gateway, which led to the Core. The Gateway was where he lost contact with the familiar; the Core was akin to God Himself, a source of pure love, knowledge and purpose. Time after time during his coma he traveled there and was filled with knowledge of unimaginable, inhuman breath, while all around pulsed the ultimate sensation, Love , through it all.
When he miraculously came out of his coma - fully intact, a real miracle, as he should have been brain dead - he was able to slowly put some of his knowledge into words, for the knowledge was well beyond human description. He placed together materialistic hypothesis for what had happened to him, rejecting them all from a scientific perspective. Much more than that, though, he gave a beautiful and brief summary of how we survive beyond our brain, as well as a concise reason for evil in this world.
For the first, let me quote him: "...the brain itself doesn't produce consciousness. That it is, instead, a kind of reducing valve or filter, shifting the larger, nonphysical consciousness that we posses in the nonphysical worlds down into a more limited capacity for the duration of our moral lives." This is done because, "...forgetting our trans-earthly identities also allows us to be "here and now" far more effectively...If we knew too much of the spiritual realm now, then navigating our lives on earth would be an even greater challenge than it already is...this knowledge can prevent action while still here on earth." Why then live at all if all this world is but a speck in the knowledge that we already have as immortal spiritual beings? "Because love and compassion are far more than the abstraction many of us believe them to be." That is, that with free will, given to us by the possibility of the choice of evil (and thus we have evil in the world), love and compassion are made manifest under difficult situations - which, for a reason he cannot quite put into words, is necessary for the universe and all creation to perceive and enact.
As to the nature of God - or what he refers to often as Om - he is "...even more human than you and I are. Om understands and sympathizes with out human situation more profoundly and personally than we can even imagine because Om knows what we have forgotten, and understands the terrible burden it is to live with the amnesia of the Divine for even a moment."
All very clear, very well said, I believe. So well said that as I read it, I thought immediately, "I know this! I have know it all along!" And that is the way I feel. It also works well with the perennial philosophy - it can be adopted to such very different religious externals as Christianity and Buddhism, giving us a look at God that is intimately personal (Christianity) as well as beyond all language, sign and form (Buddhism). Very well done and recommended. And tell me that, after you have read it, you had not had that same thought from time to time that I did: "I knew that!"
Oh, and before I forget - his guide, the beautiful young woman: one finds out in the book that the author was adopted. After years, not long before his NDE in 2008, he finds his father and mother and two other siblings. He is also made aware that he had a sister as well, but she died when young. After the NDE, he came across a picture of that sister, and sure enough, it was the same woman who had been his guide. So he did, if only singly, have an earthly connection in the Beyond after all - as one would expec
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