Leaps of Consciousness

Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon who went into a coma in 2008 due to bacterial meningitis. He was 54.

He was adopted and was rebuffed when he tried to contact his biological parents. He entered a career-threatening depression for seven years and finally created relationships with his birth family.

He was in a coma for seven days, and for this whole period, his entire neocortex, the front part of the brain that governs higher functions, like language and logic, was not working. His chances of survival were estimated at 10%.

No one had previously recovered after two days in a coma from bacterial meningitis. If he did survive, it was expected he’d have speech problems, and need nursing for the rest of his life.

On the seventh day, the doctors and family discussed letting nature take its course. His 10-year-old son, Bond, ran into the room and begged him to return to life.

Amazingly, Eben opened his eyes and, when is breathing tube was removed said, ‘Thank you’ and ‘All is well.’

He took several days to return to normal consciousness. Two months later, his neurosurgical knowledge returned, and gradually fully recovered.

His NDE had several stages.

It started with the ‘Earthworm’s-Eye view’ and then changed to see a slowly turning object radiating filaments of white-gold light and hearing indescribably beautiful music. He began to soar upwards through a lush green earth-like countryside of streams, waterfalls and happy people. While flying, he noticed a beautiful girl riding on a surface of intricate patterns and indescribable colours like a butterfly’s wing. The Girl on the `Butterfly Wing gave him a message:

‘You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong.'' He continued his ascension and felt he could not sense anything without becoming a part of it. When he thought of a question, the answer came ‘instantly in an explosion of light, color, love, and beauty. He saw flocks of flying transparent shimmering orbs, which he realised were advanced beings. He arrived at the ‘Core’ where he received information that ‘will take him the rest of his life to unpack: that there is not one universe but many, with many forms of life; that loves lies at the centre of all of them; and that although evil exists – including on Earth, because there is free will – it is relatively rare.’

After many trips between the Core and Earthworm, he found he couldn’t enter the Core again, which filled him with a sadness he’d never known before. As he descended, he heard countless beings praying for him and saw faces he knew were important to him on Earth.

‘Even though I’d forgotten my life down here, I had remembered who I really and truly was out there. I was a citizen of a universe staggering in its vastness and complexity, and ruled entirely by love … Ultimately, none of us are orphans. We are all in the position I was, in that we have other family: beings who are watching and looking out for us – beings we have momentarily forgotten, but who, if we open ourselves to their presence, are waiting to help us navigate our time here on earth … Each and every one of us is deeply known and cared for by a Creator who cherishes us beyond any ability we have to comprehend.'

He wished he’d met his father, who had died four months beforehand which left a seed of doubt in his mind. He then received a photograph of a biological sister Betsy, who had died before he reconnected with his biological family. She was the Girl on the Butterfly Wing.

‘My NDE had healed my fragmented soul’. ‘It had let me know that I had always been loved, and it also showed me that absolutely everyone else in the universe is loved, too’.

Source: Wehrstein, KM (2018). ‘Eben Alexander’. Psi Encyclopedia. London: The Society for Psychical Research

References

Media	Author/Director	Title
Book	Eben Alexander	Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey Into the Afterlife