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Is it strange that after a near-death experience and a week-long disease-induced coma that the exceedingly sick person would have a confused period during their return to normalcy? Dr. Alexander writes a fascinating story of his experience of his higher brain functions being totally shut down, and living for a week exclusively within his primitive brain. His disease was so severe that even the APACHE II score (Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation) for survival of his body was very poor, and if his body survived his chance of being in a permanent negative state was high. Lucky for him it took only a month for him to fully recover after he came out of coma, and a proof of full recovery is this well written book.

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife,by Eben Alexander, reads well and runs trippingly through some philosophical and scientific ideas in an attempt to explain to himself and to the world his transcendent experiences. He admits his proofs are not going to convince scientists of the validity of his experiences, meaning he went to heaven and met angels, but his visit to his deeper centers of experience is interesting. He may have spent more time living in the Core of his pre-human brain parts than anyone, and lived to tell the story.

I believe him when he states that he believes he visited heaven and communicated with angels, but my belief is limited to believing he believes, and not a belief that his interpretation of his perceptions are valid for me, or any other person. He claims that it brought him into a more loving relationship with humanity and his family, and that’s a good thing. Perhaps if others are aware of his trip it will help them to reach this more loving state too, but certainly we shouldn’t put people through similar dangerous experiences in an effort to achieve his claimed breakthrough into heaven.

A very similar book was written a hundred years ago by Jack London, The Star Rover,where a prisoner was squeezed in a straightjacket into a near-death experiences. Another more meaningful nonfiction book, for me, was Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus’s Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior, by James Stockdale, an American aviator shot down over Viet Nam, who endured seven years of torture while in prison.

Survivors of extended horrific experiences have astonishing stories of their coping with the impossible.