Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, has published a book “Proof of Heaven” that purports to show his personal view of the afterlife. Alexander says that he was a skeptic until he fell into a coma in 2008 with meningitis. He then claims to have experienced consciousness after death. He describes how he found himself greeted by a beautiful blue-eyed woman in a “place of clouds, big fluffy pink-white ones” and “shimmering beings.” He then came out of the coma . . . and eventually wrote a book.
Alexander insists that it was only later that he considered the beings that he saw might be angels but such “words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms.” He also describes a “huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if the winged beings were producing it. the sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet.”
What is most striking about this account is the acceptance of the memory as real as opposed to his own generated images during his coma. The fact that the images are so stereotypical would seem to raise this possibility. Experts like Dr. Bruce Greyson have found that electrical stimulation of angular gyrus in the brain creates the same (though not necessary all) of the visions described in out of body or near death experiences including a light in the distance and even out of body visions. The suggestion is that these images are the result of the brain misfiring under stress.
Likewise, Swiss researchers were able to trigger (through electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe) a patient seeing herself lying in bed from from above and experience a sense of floating near the ceiling. Of course, the ability to reproduce such sensations does not conclusively disprove accounts like Alexander’s book.
Alexander gave his account on this PBS “Wormhole” segment where he describes the realization that he was a spot on a butterfly wing in his out of body experience:
What do you think about these accounts?
Source: Telegraph
leejcaroll, Thanks for your account. I’m glad you’re still w/ us. I’m quite certain you are also.
Whereupon, the toilet promptly stopped up and they had to call a plumber.
Gene,
At least they had the good sense not to introduce “Crystal Gyges”
Bron:
“do you think Chris Jericho saw God?”
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Nah. Tyson’s too short.
Yeah. They tried the “New Gyges” recipe and their stock went in the toilet.
Gyges:
they would be physical copies but different consciousness. So not really you. Aliens want the real thing, not the new Gyges, they want original Gyges.
The other side of his experience was stereotypical was that it was stereotypical because it was real, so his was in line with the reports of others.
(I don;t believe it was afterlife but like many here the results of drugs, his consciousness level, etc.
There is much we don’t kknow, is it not also possible that there are leverls of consciousness we cannot measure, as there may be levels of life we cannot ascertain with the equipment we now use?
(I was given a Miracle, my doctors agree. Interestingly it is ministers who do not want to accept it. I wrote about it many years ago. If youre interested: http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Believe-In-Miracles/222139 Was that a Miracle as I and some med folk believe or something else? )
mespo:
do you think Chris Jericho saw God?
a preacher will get a hold of eben, and make him a saint with a little holy spirit. and jonathon turley will get a hold of him.
reincarnation is real, and you won’t be an f in ant ta see. I step on them for a reason.
reading the little bit on passing that’s given, the doctor is a liar. if he had truly died he would be full of information on GOD THE FATHER on the earth.
those that have died, and gone all the way as they asked in their childhood prayers, will not even tell you what GOD in heaven looks like as part of the deal of seeing HEAVEN. but it is cool with out drugs.
the jails on earth are not even close to hell. but some of you have some pretty interesting theories, but judgement is if you get to come back, again and again.
The Apostles Creed tells you that no one has been judged yet.
How do you describe a being that is not physical like we are physical? Final Judgment is described in Revelation 20 KJV.Read it. Fire goes out when wicked are consumed. No lost will equal no lake of fire.
Bron,
If they can build identical me’s why abduct me more than once?
Also, the abductions were only one of the things I experienced. Some of the other stuff would have resulted in people who are currently being alive being dead. It seems WAY more likely that my episodes of sleep paralysis resulted in different experiences than that my episodes of sleep paralysis resulted in different experiences AND I was abducted by aliens.
Gyges:
how do you know they didnt leave an identical Gyges that they had cloned so you wouldnt be missed?
Suspend the other person, place the fake Gyges and snatch you.
You really dont know, do you.
Did they probe you?
“He then claims to have experienced consciousness after death. He describes how he found himself greeted by a beautiful blue-eyed woman in a “place of clouds, big fluffy pink-white ones” and “shimmering beings.” He then came out of the coma . . . and eventually wrote a book.”
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Well, where else would you expect God to be except in your head? Here’s the God Helmet:
I’ve been abducted by aliens. Several times. Sometimes with another person in the room. Once with several other people in the room who were awake. Well, at least that’s what I experienced. They all experienced me sleeping soundly and then waking up extremely distraught.
Anyway, for whatever reason I occasionally have sleep paralysis. Which is a horrible thing that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Without going to much into it, what basically is that I experience these horrible events as real (not just alien abductions, other things). They don’t actually happen, but even in retrospect, they feel real. Different from a dream, different from even fevered hallucinations, they feel exactly like my memory of sitting down and eating breakfast this morning.
So, I think I’m a little more cynical when it comes to trusting people’s memories then most.
ElaineM,
Funny how fat Romney has gotten.
Frankly,
This hell is a good guess. congrats.
However some hindus and other re-incarnation belivers would say that perhaps you last were a demi-god, and now you are reletively speaking an ant.
What are your wishes for next time?
ElaineM,
You get the Nobel Prize for acuity for:
“My point was that the doctor hadn’t died. Maybe a coma experience is different from a real death experience???”
Quite, his brain was (proved by something) to be functioning on two cylinders. But that is not the same as approaching hypoxia (ie denial of oxygen) which would have a general effect. This btw could be taken as an indication that the last area sustained eith oxygen in the brain is the neo-cortex.
Of course, the effect of denial through cardio events of neoplasma effects are not included in this comment.
Now give me all your money and I will abscond to Singapore.
We are not unique to the life around us. The same things happen to all things in this existence. There is the finite that people make, and the infinite that people did not make. God is both heaven, and Hell. Hell to those not like Jesus is not living peaceably with all, Heaven for those that are like Jesus is . No fallen would equal no lake of fire. The soul that is eternal gives good. The soul that is not eternal gives what Jesus does not give. There will be two beings you will meet.One gives pulses of love.The other acts like God. There is a sense of foreboding being with the counterfeit of God giving guilt, and fear supporting the lies that religions teach regarding hell as being a place.There is no reincarnation. Once to live, and then the judgment. When Jesus laid his life down his soul could not be put in the devils condemning jail. Our jails on earth are a copy of the devils unseen jail.
Nick S,
You did not drink any more out of that bottle I guess, at least not that night????
JCBTree,
“Read Dr. Alexander’s description, I read it yesterday and if I recall, he basically says that he experienced total darkness and absolute light at the same time and ‘realized’ that that light was God or something similar to that.”
Try this the next time the light irritates you and ýou can’t sleep because of that.
You can shut off the perception of light which penetrate your eyelids by controlling the switch in your mind.
I discovered it by accident. It works, and almost always is followed by deep sleep.
Try it. Yeah, it isn’t science, but if enough of us can then it might progress from anecdotal to a better stage. Study funding anyone?