Proof of Heaven (Alexander)

Proof of Heaven:  A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife
Eben Alexander, M.D., 2013
Simon & Schuster
196 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451695199


Summary
A scientist's case for the afterlife.

Thousands of people have had near-death experiences, but scientists have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those scientists. A highly trained neurosurgeon, Alexander knew that NDEs feel real, but are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress.

Then, Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion—and in essence makes us human—shut down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. Then, as his doctors considered stopping treatment, Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back.

Alexander’s recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere. While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of super-physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the universe itself.

Alexander’s story is not a fantasy. Before he underwent his journey, he could not reconcile his knowledge of neuroscience with any belief in heaven, God, or the soul. Today Alexander is a doctor who believes that true health can be achieved only when we realize that God and the soul are real and that death is not the end of personal existence but only a transition.

This story would be remarkable no matter who it happened to. That it happened to Dr. Alexander makes it revolutionary. No scientist or person of faith will be able to ignore it. Reading it will change your life. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—December, 1953
• Where—Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina-Chapel
   Hill; M.D., Duke University
• Currently—lives in Lynchburg, Virginia


Eben Alexander, III, is an American neurosurgeon and the author of the best-selling Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, in which he describes his 2008 near-death experience and asserts that science can and will determine that heaven really does exist.

Education and training
Alexander attended Phillips Exeter Academy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (A.B., 1975), and the Duke University School of Medicine (M.D., 1980).

Alexander was an Intern in General Surgery at Duke University Medical Center, a resident at Duke, Newcastle (U.K.) General Hospital. He was a resident and research fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and is certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery and the American College of Surgeons (F.A.C.S.).

Academic and clinical appointments
Alexander has taught at Duke University Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the University of Virginia Medical School.

He has had hospital appointments at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and Lynchburg (Virginia) General Hospital-CentraHealth. He is currently an attending neurosurgeon.

Professional activities
Alexander is a member of the American Medical Association and various other professional societies. He has been on the editorial boards of various journals.

Proof of Heaven
Alexander is the author of the autobiographical book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (2012) in which he asserts that his out of body and near death experience (NDE) while in a meningitis-induced coma in 2008 proves that consciousness is independent of the brain, that death is an illusion, and that an eternity of perfect splendor awaits us beyond the grave—complete with angels, clouds, and departed relatives, but also including butterflies and a beautiful girl in peasant dress who Alexander finds out later was his departed sister.

The current understanding of the mind, according to Alexander, “now lies broken at our feet”:

What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are more, much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my fellow scientists and to people at large.

Alexander’s book was excerpted in a Newsweek magazine cover story in October 2012. (In May 2012, Alexander had provided a slightly more technical account of the events described in his book in an article, "My Experience in Coma," in AANS Neurosurgeon, the trade publication of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.)

Proof of Heaven has been on the New York Times Best Seller list since its release in October, 2012.

Criticism
In a wide-ranging investigation of Alexander's story and medical background, Esquire magazine reported (August 2013 issue) that prior to the publication of Proof of Heaven, Alexander had been terminated or suspended from multiple hospital positions, and had been the subject of several malpractice lawsuits, including at least two involving the alteration of medical records to cover up a medical error.

The magazine also found what it claimed were discrepancies with regard to Alexander's version of events in the book. Among the discrepancies, according to an account of the Esquire article in Forbes, was that...

Alexander writes that he slipped into the coma as a result of severe bacterial meningitis and had no higher brain activity, while a doctor who cared for him says the coma was medically induced and the patient was conscious, though hallucinating.

Alexander issued a statement after the Esquire article's publication:

I wrote a truthful account of my experiences in Proof of Heaven and have acknowledged in the book both my professional and personal accomplishments and my setbacks. I stand by every word in this book and have made its message the purpose of my life. Esquire's cynical article distorts the facts of my 25-year career as a neurosurgeon and is a textbook example of how unsupported assertions and cherry-picked information can be assembled at the expense of the truth.

Alexander’s book and publicity campaign have been criticized by scientists, including neuroscientist Sam Harris, who described Alexander’s NDE account (chronicled in Newsweek, October 2012) as "alarmingly unscientific," and that...

everything—absolutely everything—in Alexander’s account rests on repeated assertions that his visions of heaven occurred while his cerebral cortex was "shut down," "inactivated," "completely shut down," "totally offline," and "stunned to complete inactivity." The evidence he provides for this claim is not only inadequate—it suggests that he doesn’t know anything about the relevant brain science.... Even in cases where the brain is alleged to have shut down, its activity must return if the subject is to survive and describe the experience. In such cases, there is generally no way to establish that the NDE occurred while the brain was offline.

Neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks agreed with Harris, saying that...

to deny the possibility of any natural explanation for an NDE, as Dr. Alexander does, is more than unscientific—it is antiscientific.... The one most plausible hypothesis in Dr. Alexander's case...is that his NDE occurred not during his coma, but as he was surfacing from the coma and his cortex was returning to full function. It is curious that he does not allow this obvious and natural explanation, but instead insists on a supernatural one.

In November 2012, Alexander responded to critics in a second Newsweek article:

My synapses—the spaces between the neurons of the brain that support the electrochemical activity that makes the brain function—were not simply compromised during my experience. They were stopped. Only isolated pockets of deep cortical neurons were still sputtering, but no broad networks capable of generating anything like what we call "consciousness." The E. coli bacteria that flooded my brain during my illness made sure of that. My doctors have told me that according to all the brain tests they were doing, there was no way that any of the functions including vision, hearing, emotion, memory, language, or logic could possibly have been intact.

(Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/04/2013.)

Book Reviews
Dr. Alexander, 58, was so changed by the experience that he felt compelled to write a book, “Proof of Heaven,” that recounts his experience. He knew full well that he was gambling his professional reputation by writing it, but his hope is that his expertise will be enough to persuade skeptics, particularly medical skeptics, as he used to be, to open their minds to an afterworld
Leslie Kaufman - New York Times


A neurosurgeon’s first-person account of his near-death experience after an E. coli meningitis-related seizure and seven-day coma will reassure afterlife believers, though it is unlikely to convince skeptics. Alexander’s credentials are impressive: medical school at Duke and 15 years at Harvard-affiliated hospitals. But to agnostics and atheists, Alexander may not come across as a completely objective observer. He writes that he attended his Episcopal church even as he questioned how God, heaven, and an afterlife could exist, yet the heaven he describes seeing certainly seems like a biblical one; a typical line is, “the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of those scintillating beings above.” His story includes interesting asides about past struggles with alcohol and with adoption. (His birth mother delivered him when she was 16 and for years did not want to meet him.) But the book mostly focuses on religion. It ends with a request to support Eternea, Alexander’s nonprofit that has as its mission, “increasing global acceptance of the reality of our eternal spiritual existence . . . under an all-loving God.” For believers, not skeptics. —Karen Springen
Booklist

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion on Proof of Heaven:

1. Alexander opens the chapter "A Final Dilemma" with a quotation from Einstein: "I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be." Why has he included the quote and what is its significance to the book?

2. What do you make of Alexander's experience of heaven—the butterflies, clouds, sounds, and beings? What about the beautiful woman's message to him, that he is loved, he should not fear, and he can do no wrong? If you've read other accounts of NDEs, how is his experience of heaven different from, or similar to, the experiences others have written about?

3. Talk about Alexander's transformation following his NDE. How has his experience changed his life?

4. Does Alexander's medical background bolster his claims for having experienced heaven? In other words, does the fact that he is a man of science accord him more credibility than others who have had mystical NDEs?

5. Why did Alexander decide to publish Proof of Heaven knowing that he would be subjected to cricticism and would possibly risk his medical reputation?

6. Do you envy individuals like Eben Alexander and others who have had powerful religious encounters during NDEs? Have you ever had a similar mystical experience, near death or not?

7. Have you read any of the criticism directed toward Alexander after publishing Proof of Heaven? (See the author bio above.) What would you say to these critics?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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