Before we look at exactly how his experience of the afterlife defies all scientific explanations, we need to explore his story a little. Before his experience, he did not believe in the existence of a non-physical mind. Trained in Western medical school and surrounded by medical colleagues deeply entrenched in the materialistic view of the universe, he found the idea of a soul bizarre. Like most “skeptics,” he believed that stories about the afterlife were hallucinations or products of the human imagination.
After returning to his body and experiencing a miraculous healing against all odds, he went on to write the NY Times best-selling book, “Proof of Heaven.” What Dr. Alexander affirms that our life here is just a test to help our souls evolve and grow, and the way we succeed is by moving forward with love and compassion. Here are just a few other notable points he made:
– The experience of the afterlife was so ‘real’ and extensive that the experience of life as a human being on earth seemed like an artificial dream in comparison.
– The structure of the afterlife was pure LOVE.
Love dominated the afterlife to such a degree that the overall presence of evil was infinitesimally small. If you want to know the Universe, know Love.
– In the afterlife, all communication was telepathic. No spoken words were needed, nor even any separation between the self and everything else happening around you. Any questions you asked in your mind were also immediately answered telepathically.
When asked what he wants everyone to know about the spiritual realm, he always answers: that you are precious and loved infinitely more than you can ever imagine.
You are always safe. You are never alone. The unconditional and perfect Love of God does not neglect one soul.
“Love is without a doubt the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard-to-fathom kind of love, but the everyday love that everyone knows: the kind of love we feel when we look at our partner and our children, or even at our animals. In its purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional.
This is the reality of reality, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or ever will exist, and no accurate understanding of who and what we are can be achieved by one who does not know . , and embody it in all their actions.”
Now let’s talk about credibility. What makes this experience so much more important than any other NDE story? Eben’s neocortex was completely non-functional during his coma due to his severe bacterial meningitis, so there is no scientific explanation for why he experienced this. In fact, in his book he provides refutations of 9 different possible scientific explanations for his experiences.
Exploring naturalistic explanations
Let’s look at the five possible explanations he outlines in Appendix B of “Evidence from Heaven.” Some of his statements would make no sense to us laypeople not trained in neuroscientific terminology, so here are the most common statements he refutes, all taken verbatim from his book:
1. A primitive brainstem program to alleviate terminal pain and suffering (“evolutionary argument” – possibly as a remnant of feigned death strategies of lower mammals?). This did not explain the robust, richly interactive nature of the memories.
2. The distorted recall of memories from deeper parts of the limbic system (e.g. the lateral amygdala) that have sufficient overlying brain to be relatively protected from the meningitic inflammation, which occurs mainly at the brain surface. This did not explain the robust, richly interactive nature of the memories.
3. DMT dump. DMT, a naturally occurring serotonin agonist, causes vivid hallucinations and a dream-like state. I am personally familiar with drug experiences related to serotonin agonists/antagonists (LSD) from my teenage years in the early 1970s. I have had no personal experience with DMT, but have seen patients under its influence. The rich ultra-reality would still require a reasonably intact auditory and visual neocortex as target areas in which I could generate as rich an audiovisual experience as I had while in a coma. Prolonged coma due to bacterial meningitis had severely damaged my neocortex, where all the serotonin from the raphe nuclei in my brain stem (or DMT, a serotonin agonist) would have had effects on visual/auditory experiences. But my cortex was shut down and the DMT would have no place in the brain to work.
4. A reboot phenomenon – a random dump of bizarre incoherent memories due to old memories in the damaged neocortex, which can occur when rebooting the cortex into consciousness after a prolonged system-wide disruption, as with my diffuse meningitis. Especially given the complexity of my extensive memories, this seems highly unlikely.
5. Unusual memory generation via an archaic visual pathway through the midbrain, prominently used in birds, but only rarely identifiable in humans. It can be demonstrated in people who are cortically blind due to the occipital cortex. It gave no sense of the ultra-reality I was witnessing and failed to explain the auditory-visual interleaving.
His NDE account ranks as the most credible account of all time, and given his materialistic scientific background, we have good reason to believe that he actually had a vivid encounter with something beyond this world.