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Video: Neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander Experiences Heaven in Near-Death Experience
Dr. Eben Alexander, who worked for 15 years as an academic neurosurgeon at Harvard, claims that he had a 7-day near-death experience which convinced him that heaven does exist.
Dr. Alexander had bacterial meningitis in 2008 and no brain activity while he lay in a coma for seven days in a Lynchburg, Virginia hospital, reports the Daily Mail.
Appearing on the Sci-Fi channel to promote his new book 'Proof of Heaven,' Dr. Alexander said he entered a place filled with clouds and the sound of chanting and was met by a beautiful blue-eyed woman who led him around. He described the beings there as higher life forms.
Dr Alexander wrote in a recent article of Newsweek: "As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences."
Dr. Alexander wrote that he relied on "good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death."
Though he considered himself a Christian, Dr Alexander disregarded his patient's stories of near-death experiences as wishful thinking.
However, after experiencing it himself, Dr. Alexander said he "experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death."
"While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility."
"At the very heart of my journey [is this], that we are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand and unfathomably glorious than the one I’d learned."
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Comments
I read Dr. Alexander's book
I read Dr. Alexander's book and found it very interesting. I've never been near death, yet I've had experiences similar to his. Like me, Dr. Alexander still believes in the evolution of the human body (p. 84), and his view of the afterlife is decidedly non-Christian.
I can't say what he
I can't say what he experienced was legit or not, but there is something to consider: the biblical creation account tells of God creating Adam then making Eve from one of Adam's ribs while he was asleep. That sounds very much like an operation, perhaps to get a tissue sample? Then cloning with a little genetic alteration, possibly. If humans are as advanced as cloning animals now, why couldn't someone else be that advance in our distant past? -- maybe someone with a much greater intellect and technology that gives all the attributes the bible ascribes to God.
If so, that Being was at that stage of ability & power long before us, and who knows at what stage now. People should not be so arrogant as to think "God" cannot exist and make whatever rules He chooses. Among animals, some are more & less capable in intellect & abilities. Is that not a lesson to people, that maybe we are not necessarilly THE top beings in existence?
NEVER trust a man wearing a
NEVER trust a man wearing a poke-a-dotted bow tie.......rule number one!! ROFL!!
Never trust a man that will put his hands in your mouth....these are things you just do not do........LOL!!
I mean take a look at the
I mean take a look at the "God Helmet"......we can create the presence or experience of "God" by stimulating a part of the brain with eletricity/electro-magnetism.....
You would think that a doctor with this much experience in working with the brain would at least know about these very basic FACTS about the human brain. Much study and research has been done already had this doctor took the time to investigate as opposed to jumping on the "Lets Write A Book And Make Money" bandwagon.....very typical these days!! VERY SAD as well that this guy is suppose to be an expert on the human brain by his profession and training yet he does NOT even understand the very basics apparently....either that or this is just another feeble attempt to write and sell a book....the simplest answer is always the correct one.....FYI
Please learn a basic
Please learn a basic yourself. When in heavy comatose the brain does not dream. He was comatose before his brain neared such a damaged state. Therefore, it would be rather fallible to say it was another dream. Maybe if you would have actually READ the article, you would have seen the part about him believing NDE's were just hallucinations as well.
He didn't say that it was
He didn't say that it was another dream. Strawman arguments make your position look weaker.
I just love when people like
I just love when people like Doctors experience things that the rest of us already knew about for many many years......but because this guy is a doctor I guess his testimony is more valuable somehow....
I wish people would understand that we are ALL humans regardless of our profession or training....and this doctor's human brain is as acceptable as any other human brain of biological processes.....
For example the love a mother feels for her child is actually just a biological trick played by the brain for survival, so no matter how hungry the mother gets, she will not eat her child to survive in case there is no food.....
We think of this love a mother has for a child as well.... love.....
Everything we "feel" or experience is the result of a biological process. Near death experiences is no different.
It is now known that even the act of human kindness is just another survival instinct embedded in our brains so to speak....and controlled and activated by biological type methods/processes such as the secretions of chemicals, hormones, ect...
The brain can not tell what is dream and what is reality.....
Ever wonder why a person gets so angry and defensive when you tell them something they do not think is true? Because the same area of the brain lights up when you attack someone with a baseball bat with intent to kill...the brain does not know the difference nor does it care, it (the brain) thinks you are under attack and must defend to survive......
I mean take a look at the "God Helmet"......we can create the presence or experience of "God" by stimulating a part of the brain with eletricity/electro-magnetism.....
In recovering from a
In recovering from a short-circuit and a pretty hefty scrambling, of course the brain is going to try and make sense of what happened in the context of already-existing (yet completely false) beliefs and world views. It takes that scramble of information and tries to put it into a context that makes going on living seem less danger-fraught and the brain's owner more in control of themselves and circumstances than reality warrants or allows.
It's worth remarking that every single case of near-death experiences (or NDEs for short) has the individual experiencing the sort of thing that is spelled out by their previously-held religious beliefs, regardless of what religion they hold. If an NDE was in any way a proof of the existence of some kind of afterlife, wouldn't they necessarily all see pretty much the same thing instead of the wildly different visions of different afterlives that have been reported? They can't ALL be true, can they? Why does this doctor think that his fever-ridden delusion contains any more truth than those of Muslims, Jews, Jedis, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Zorasters, Jains, Mithraists, Mayans, or Native Americans?
I'm thinking everyone should be coming up with their own beliefs where THEY are the most powerful, all-knowing, and generally awesome being in this world and the next, since what you believe in as far as the afterlife goes seems to be what you find on the "other side". Why put up with believing in some judgmental, ridiculously childish, murderous bastard running your afterlife when you can find yourself running the whole show and never want for anything? The most prominent person in the bible who has committed all seven deadly sins is the one named God.
Yeeeeeaah you're only showing
Yeeeeeaah you're only showing your complete ignorance of religion. The 7 deadly sins are not actually part of the bible and whether or not they are canon is actually debatable. The 7 deadly sins were written over a thousand years after the supposed death of Christ. Much more laughably however is your argument that somehow the Christian god has committed all 7 of these. Really? Can you find proof? It's ok to dislike Christians but telling blatant lies is just intolerable for a person of reason from any faith.
You might want to hold off on
You might want to hold off on calling others out on ignorance when you are off to such a great extent as regards to the seven deadly sins.
The writings of the theologian John Cassian, who lived in the fifth century not the eleventh or later as you indicate with your claim of, "over a thousand years after..," are core to the seven deadly sins.
Of course you can then go back another century to Evagrius Ponticus for references applicable here.
Hmm, Galatians reference to certain vices is also applicable here.
The fact that the list didnt come to its final version, nor receive its current title until much later doesn't mean that it didn't exist previously.
In the future you might want to do a little homework before calling others out for ignorance on a subject of which your own knowledge is so completely inaccurate.
Did I even say the 7 were in
Did I even say the 7 were in the bible? No, I just said the god in the bible exhibited them. Sodom & Gomorrah: wrath. Mary getting pregnant by god while she's married to Joseph: lust and adultery (a commandment and deadly sin rolled into one). Thou shalt have no other gods before me because your god is a jealous god: envy and pride. You can find examples of all of them in there.
The good doctor knows that
The good doctor knows that when the brain is oxygen-starved hallucinations occur, usually associated with something from the past. I feel certain this was one of those times. What, additionally, he chose to express was his choice, of course.
jaysea
If I remember correctly there
If I remember correctly there was more to his story. He already believed that out-of-body experiences were from an oxygen deprived state. Oh, there is actually a large difference between being asleep and being comatose/dying. When asleep the parts different sections of your brain are still communicating with each other. If you send an impulse through one part of the sleeping brain it reverberates throughout the brain. On a sedated, dead, or heavily comatose brain, there is no reverberation. No communication. That's why when you are sedated you don't dream. This doctor was severly comatose and dying for well over a week if I recall correctly. It doesn't make sense that he would have these visions during that. His theory about how the mind survives after death is certainly unorthodox, but it is every bit as sound as some of the more out-there fields of quantum physics.
The NDE's are created after
The NDE's are created after the fact, during the recovery - it's the brain trying to create something consistent with what it already "knows" out of the fragments of what it has about the time period in question. That's why it's so easy for disreputable psychiatrists to create false memories in patients and why honest eyewitness testimony can be completely at odds with video footage of the same event.
Where do you get the idea that people under sedation don't dream? It happens all the time according to the National Institutes of Health: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22430554
Likewise, where do you get the idea people in comas don't dream? There's plenty of anecdotal reports of it found with a simple google search: http://www.everydayhealth.com/blog/zimney-health-and-medical-news-you-can-use/knocked-out-what-is-medically-induced-coma/?comment_id=28095 http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/797358
Reverberation? Are you trying to use that pseudo-scientific term/babble as some kind of validation for your own hallucinations?
Seeing as you're neither a doctor nor a physicist, I don't see how you're qualified to make a comparison between the poor doctor's hypothesis (not a theory, since there's no evidence) and various theories in the fields of quantum physics.
I take the statements of "no brain activity" in this article as hyperbole of the author, as that is what happens with brain death, not coma. When in a coma there is still plenty of low-frequency brain activity, along with vastly decreased activity in the Ascending Reticular Activation System.
For those willing to do the
For those willing to do the proper amount of research, this man has actually come up with a startling idea about the brain. One that you would not even have to believe in religion to believe. Basically, his idea is that the brain is actually a sort of quantum computer. Quantum in this case havin in the sense, and it's been some time since I have heard this, that the mind would actually exist in space even after the body has died. There is not too much proof to his idea yet but I find it is about as sound as some other aspects of quantum physics. He may be turning his idea into a proof of heaven, but at it's core, is honest scientific thinking. For more info on his theory, just google "brain tubules."