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This being a New York Times Bestseller, I imagine a few people here have read this book, and in a nutshell I think his story is extremely compelling. His background as a neurosurgeon makes the mystery of what he went through even more intriguing. Just as many of the people on this forum, including myself, are searching for answers in life, Eben was smack in the middle of a faith crisis when he had his NDE. As he mentioned in a Q&A, Quote:I grew up in a religious home in Winston-Salem, went to a Methodist Church, prayed, believed in God (a healthy skepticism as a teen), but started losing my faith in 2000 due to a severe psychic blow. 2000-2008 at best I agreed with Einstein that there might be a creative God, but he absolutely cared not a whit for the likes of puny individuals on earth. Absolutely lost all faith in prayer. That all changed completely when I went into coma for a week, and I assure you I will never doubt an omnipotent God with unconditional love for the individual, the eternity of our souls, the profound mystery of our consciousness and being, and the power of prayer, again. This will all be greatly clarified in my book.
If you’ve read it, let me know what you think. If you haven’t, I suggest giving it a whirl.
One random jewel that I gleaned from this book is that Albert Einstein was not only a brilliant scientist, the man was a treasure trove of wise philosophical insights. Dr. Alexander quotes him throughout the book, and most of the quotes I had never heard but now love. For example:
Quote:A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Quote:The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.
Quote:I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.
My favorite quote, however, was from French philosopher René Descartes:
Quote:If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
This was definitely worth reading. I have already heard several near death experiences before but so far I always felt somewhat reluctant about reading that much into them because no matter how profound and meaningful some of them were to the person experiencing them to me they still sounded like they could easily be similar to an unusual dream and even if these people actually were temporarily on the other side I still suspected that some of them had basically misinterpreted their experience as a direct and conclusive confirmation of many beliefs they already held before hand. However, what is especially interesting about this story is that Dr. Alexander was actually an experienced neurosurgeon that was convinced that the brain was basically like a machine that created consciousness (I.E. if you pull the plug then the lights go out) but this experience he had when he was extremely sick and spent several days in a coma completely changed his mind about life after death as well as belief in a personal God. In fact, he sounded like precisely the type of guy that would generally try to dismiss the significance of experiences like this if there was any obvious “scientific” way to explain it very well or at the very least I would have expected him to mostly keep it to himself out of concern for what others would think about it. He did initially seriously consider possible scientific explanations for it but didn’t find any of them very convincing because the experience appeared so real, clear, and interactive to him where he would think of a question and quickly understand complicated concepts so well that after his recovery he felt like the physical brain was actually more of a limiting filter to process perceptions and ideas through than the primary source of consciousness and he struggled to put what he remembered from this experience into words. Also he claims that medical tests showed that the part of his brain that could create hallucinations induced by drugs, DMT, illness, etc. was not actually functioning at all for much of the time he was in a coma so to him this eliminated some of the most common theories typically used to try to explain NDEs during this time.
He also considered the possibility that his experience could have been remembered from before this part of his brain stopped working or after it was restored but in these scenarios he made it sound like he would have expected disjointed and confusing memories rather than what he actually experienced. Eventually he started to feel like it was his duty to share his story and decided to publish it. It was interesting to compare the similarities and differences between this and Betty Eadie’s story told in “Embraced by the Light.” Both said they received answers to specific questions they had; for example, the answer both remember about the “problem of evil” was very similar and basically related to the idea that free will was important for spiritual progress. On the other hand, it seemed like she was more interested in various theological questions whereas he was more interested in questions about things like the nature of the universe and claimed that he learned there are multiple universes/dimensions and what we see that started with the Big Bang is supposedly only a small fraction of everything that exists.
DevilsAdvocate, That was an excellent overview of the book…much better than I could have done.
Quote:he felt like the physical brain was actually more of a limiting filter to process perceptions and ideas through than the primary source of consciousness
This was a very interesting concept to me. If we assume that we truly are spiritual beings and our consciousness persists beyond the grave, this notion that our current physical bodies (or brains) are the very barrier between us and God is a plausible hypothesis. It would help explain why physical proof of God is so elusive. As he discussed this idea I couldn’t help but draw parallels to the Mormon “veil of forgetfulness”. He actually uses the term “veil” in several places, which surprised me because I always associate the veil with the doctrine of preexistence, which I thought to reside solely within the Mormon vein of Christianity.
I’ve also read
Embraced by the Light, and I too found myself comparing and contrasting these two experiences. The most profound difference to me was that Betty Eadie seemed to have a very real awareness of our current physical existence, her past life on Earth, and how the spiritual realm interacts with the physical realm. Dr. Alexander claims to have had absolutely no awareness of any earthly existence while in the spiritual realm. He postulates that this allowed him to “travel further and deeper” and to experience and learn new things on a level that wouldn’t have been possible had he been harboring narrow, preconceived earthly ideas. Quote:He also considered the possibility that his experience could have been remembered from before this part of his brain stopped working or after it was restored but in these scenarios he made it sound like he would have expected disjointed and confusing memories rather than what he actually experienced.
This is his most common criticism. Wikipedia cites a few examples. Neuroscientist Sam Harris is cited as saying, “Even in cases where the brain is alleged to have shut down, its activity must return if the subject is to survive and describe the experience. In such cases, there is generally no way to establish that the NDE occurred while the brain was offline.” Dr. Alexander responds, “I know that my experience happened within coma because of certain anchors to earth time in memory.” This link provides some good back and forth between the two scientists, and I think it’s definitely valuable to hear both sides.
http://www.skeptiko.com/sam-harris-wont-debate-eben-alexander-on-near-death-experience-science/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.skeptiko.com/sam-harris-wont-debate-eben-alexander-on-near-death-experience-science/ In the end I view this as simply another mystical experience that can’t be fully explained and that gives us some very interesting ideas to think about. I think it was very bold to title the book “Proof of Heaven,” since he really has nothing more than a compelling story with some evidence to support his hypothesis.
Life_Journey_of_Matt wrote:Quote:He also considered the possibility that his experience could have been remembered from before this part of his brain stopped working or after it was restored but in these scenarios he made it sound like he would have expected disjointed and confusing memories rather than what he actually experienced.
This is his most common criticism. Wikipedia cites a few examples. Neuroscientist Sam Harris is cited as saying, “Even in cases where the brain is alleged to have shut down, its activity must return if the subject is to survive and describe the experience. In such cases, there is generally no way to establish that the NDE occurred while the brain was offline.” Dr. Alexander responds, “I know that my experience happened within coma because of certain anchors to earth time in memory.”…In the end I view this as simply another mystical experience that can’t be fully explained and that gives us some very interesting ideas to think about.
I think it was very bold to title the book “Proof of Heaven,” since he really has nothing more than a compelling story with some evidence to support his hypothesis.The title does sound a little over-the-top but maybe it wouldn’t have been such a popular bestseller if it was more subdued. Maybe he felt like it was sufficiently proven to him and he was already putting himself out there simply by sharing his story so there was no point in being coy about it. In any case, it doesn’t surprise me that many hardcore skeptics will try to explain it away and dismiss it out of hand. Personally I don’t really need or expect conclusive proof about things like God and life after death to believe in them. What’s the downside if you don’t start attaching specific and costly requirements to specific promised outcomes in the next life?
Beyond wishful thinking I have heard enough extremely unusual and unlikely experiences involving things that sounded like ESP, spirits, and precognition where I don’t believe people were lying that trying to make them all fit with the assumption that anything supernatural or paranormal should not be possible just doesn’t make as much sense to me as the idea that maybe there really is quite a bit more that is actually possible than what we can easily and directly verify one way or the other. Why should we assume that we know what is possible and what isn’t based on a limited range of what people repeatedly see or experience that we actually understand well enough to accurately predict or control?
To follow up on my criticism of the book, I should say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading about his experience. I get the sense that he’s being honest, and I’m convinced his experience was very real. I don’t have to interpret whathis experience was (though that’s my natural tendency) in order to say that reading about it filled me with excitement about what possibly awaits us when we die. His descriptions of unseen dimensions, a different understanding of space and time within those dimensions, a universal force of love and acceptance…many of these things line up very well with my own personal faith. Along those lines, I want to see what others think about 3 concepts that were communicated to him by his spiritual guide that “flooded him a vast and crazy sensation of relief.” He explains, “It was like being handed the rules to a game I’d been playing all my life without ever fully understanding it.”
Quote:1. “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”
2. “You have nothing to fear.”
3. “There is nothing you can do wrong.”
I was a bit uneasy when I read the third one. I think subconsciously I interpreted it as “There is no evil or sin, so do whatever you want.” However, I don’t think that’s the intended interpretation. My own personal interpretation of that statement would be that this life is more about
the experiencethan many of us realize. We think it’s all about the choice, and if with any given choice we choose evil, that was the wrong choice. However, I’ve come to realize that life is probably not that simple. We have all had situations in our lives where we have been presented with a choice, and with our limited experience, we chose poorly. That decision may have caused someone pain. Only after making that choice did we fully come to realize (or experience) the potential consequences, or the potential right or wrong (good or evil) of our choice. It’s not as easy as taking a piece of fruit and instantly knowing the difference between good and evil. Some things just have to be experienced (or observed indirectly, but that again is a form of experience). I believe Dr. Alexander made the observation during his NDE that the force of good in what we think of as the universe so greatly dwarfs the force of evil as to make the evil almost imperceptible. He claims that evil is only
allowedto exist in very limited realms (including Earth) so that it can be used for our experience and growth. There was nothing in his discussion, that I noticed, that hinted at the idea that our consciousness (or spirit) was inherently flawed and that we’re here to test our consciousness to see if we can become perfect. There was nothing about necessarily wracking ourselves with guilt. From his perspective it seems like all flaw resides in the flesh, and that’s not our fault. In fact, as I’ve described, those flaws are a necessary part of the experience of this existence. Now, given that good and evil do in fact exist, the question of faith, as Fowler explains it in
Stages of Faith, is what do we set our hearts upon? Whatever ability we have to recognize good and evil will lead us to align ourselves a certain way morally on this Earth. It’s a personal journey that all of us are on, and our choices do have far reaching consequences I’m sure. This leads me to wonder about Hitler? He’s often used as an example of the epitome of evil and avoidable atrocities. Would his spirit guide have told him “there is nothing you can do wrong”? It’s possible. If you think about it, Hitler may have had an earthly flaw that left him deficient in his ability to recognize the pain and suffering of others as evil. Or maybe he was driven by some other manic fear or belief that overrode his ability to choose wisely. Maybe Hitler didn’t get an equitable chance in this life to assess the consequences of his actions logically, and thus “set his heart upon” the better choices. Also, if this life is more about
the experiencethan the choice, Hitler provided those of us who can recognize those atrocities for what they were with an “indirect experience” of those things. For far too many people, they were on the receiving end of those atrocities, and had a “direct experience” of that evil. If the experiencereally is of such great value in this existence, that helps explain to me why an all-loving deity would allow such things to happen. Sorry this kind of ran on. I’ll let others provide some thoughts.
Life_Journey_of_Matt wrote:To follow up on my criticism of the book, I should say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading about his experience. I get the sense that he’s being honest, and I’m convinced his experience was very real. I don’t have to interpret
whathis experience was…in order to say that reading about it filled me with excitement about what possibly awaits us when we die…Along those lines, I want to see what others think about 3 concepts that were communicated to him by his spiritual guide that “flooded him a vast and crazy sensation of relief.” Quote:1. “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”
2. “You have nothing to fear.”
3. “There is nothing you can do wrong.”
I was a bit uneasy when I read the third one.
I think subconsciously I interpreted it as “There is no evil or sin, so do whatever you want.” However, I don’t think that’s the intended interpretation.My own personal interpretation of that statement would be that this life is more about the experiencethan many of us realize. We think it’s all about the choice, and if with any given choice we choose evil, that was the wrong choice. However, I’ve come to realize that life is probably not that simple…There was nothing in his discussion, that I noticed, that hinted at the idea that our consciousness (or spirit) was inherently flawed and that we’re here to test our consciousness to see if we can become perfect. There was nothing about necessarily wracking ourselves with guilt…. This leads me to wonder about Hitler? He’s often used as an example of the epitome of evil and avoidable atrocities. Would his spirit guide have told him “there is nothing you can do wrong”?It’s possible. If you think about it, Hitler may have had an earthly flaw that left him deficient… When I read these three points I thought they only applied to him under the specific circumstances while he wasn’t in control of his body in the physical world and also didn’t remember his earlier life so it sounded mostly like something to comfort and reassure him when he didn’t really know where he was or what was going on. Maybe he read more into this memory after the fact but I definitely don’t believe this applies very well to everyone in this life because people clearly have understandable reasons to fear what can go wrong and they often make decisions that turn out terribly for them and/or others involved.
Maybe there was more to it than that but I have a hard time making any sense of it if these points are supposed to be true for everyone in general in this life. However, if you want to take the general experience as a whole at face value it definitely has significant implications for many traditional doctrines of various organized religious groups because it makes God sound far less judgmental and harsh than what we hear about in the Bible and other scriptures as if God was not particularly offended by Dr. Alexander’s lack of belief and didn’t reject him over this or other things we repeatedly hear that God supposedly cares so much about but instead he mostly experienced love and acceptance.
Good observations. I very well may be reading too much into it. I have never read the book, but I always find NDEs interesting. In most stories I hear and read about, God is more loving and less judgmental than how he’s portrayed in the Old Testament, but I have heard a couple stories that makes God sound more like he is from the Old Testament. So I don’t know what to believe. Ilovechrist77 wrote:I have never read the book, but I always find NDEs interesting.
In most stories I hear and read about, God is more loving and less judgmental than how he’s portrayed in the Old Testament, but I have heard a couple stories that makes God sound more like he is from the Old Testament.So I don’t know what to believe. My guess is that anyone that has a vision involving a heavy-handed Old Testament style God is probably just having a bad dream influenced by their existing beliefs and deep-seated fears. Personally I haven’t heard any NDE stories like that so far, it didn’t matter whether the person involved was Mormon, Muslim, non-religious, etc. none of them indicated that they experienced condemnation regardless of the very different beliefs some of them had before hand. Maybe there is some grace period before an actual final judgment will happen but as far as I’m concerned ideas like this are mostly based on hearsay and speculation. I actually like hearsay and speculation about the unknown as much as anyone but when it comes to how much relative credence I give them it easily makes much more sense to me to favor the most common experiences people I know about have had in my lifetime over a book written thousands of years ago by many different authors that we generally know little or nothing about that I also associate with stories about things like a global flood, the Tower of Babel, and talking donkeys.
The story that comes to mind involves a woman that appeared on the 700 Club. She was a member of our church. She had a near-death experience. She went to hell and was tortured by demons. She asked Jesus to help her and he rescued her from hell. Jesus told her the Mormon Church wasn’t his church and she shouldn’t belong to it anymore. After she returned to earth she became a born-again Christian. She became anti-Mormon at that point. Here is the Youtube link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDKlmb6nAaE The quality of the video sucks, but it’s still worth it to check out.
Ilovechrist77 wrote:The story that comes to mind involves a woman that appeared on the 700 Club. She was a member of our church. She had a near-death experience.
She went to hell and was tortured by demons. She asked Jesus to help her and he rescued her from hell. Jesus told her the Mormon Church wasn’t his church and she shouldn’t belong to it anymore.After she returned to earth she became a born-again Christian. She became anti-Mormon at that point… It sounds like maybe there was more going on than just a typical NDE in her case. My question about that is why did a handful of Mormons that I know have had near death experiences all come back feeling like there was nothing wrong with being Mormon and sometimes they became even more loyal to the LDS Church than before instead of having anything like that happen to them? On the one hand we have multiple experiences that all sound very similar from people with a wide variety of religious beliefs versus her isolated story that sounds very different from any I have heard so far.
Ilovechrist77 wrote:After she returned to earth she became a born-again Christian.
The evangelical-style presentation is hard for me to connect with.
Ilovechrist77 wrote:She went to hell and was tortured by demons. She asked Jesus to help her and he rescued her from hell.
Though her story is interesting, I have never believed in a literal interpretation of the fire and brimstone hell with demons and pitchforks. I actually identify more with the description in Mosiah 2:36-39, which says “that after ye have known and have been taught all these things, if ye should transgress and go contrary…that ye do withdraw yourselves from the Spirit of the Lord…the same cometh out in open rebellion against God. Therefore if that man…remaineth an enemy to God, the demands of divine justice do awaken his immortal soul to a lively sense of his own guilt, which doth cause him to shrink from the presence of the Lord, and doth fill his breast with guilt, and pain, and anguish, which is
likean unquenchable fire, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever. …mercy hath no claim on that man; therefore his final doom is to endure a never-ending torment. In my opinion, if there is a hell it is chosen by us, with full knowledge and understanding of that choice. What I love about that scripture is the fact that it doesn’t say that the Lord will actively withdraw himself, or that He will thrust the individual down to hell. God actually seems quite passive. Instead it’s the individual’s choice that “causes
himto shrink from the presence of the Lord.” If, with ample knowledge and understanding (which I honestly don’t know if I will ever have in this lifetime, though I try) we choose a path that leads away from God, there will be a natural separation which may, as described, be quite painful to endure. Life_Journey_of_Matt wrote:Quote:1. “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”
2. “You have nothing to fear.”
3. “There is nothing you can do wrong.”
I am just finishing this book. I saw the “There is nothing you can do wrong” as a reassurance and applying to the place of existence he was currently in, not to earth life. And I was hopeful that meant once we are out of this mortal existence, we can no longer do “wrong”. I was very much impressed that a respectable neurosurgeon is willing to put himself on the line in the medical community with this book, since scientific people, for the most part, do scoff at NDE events.
Yeah, that sounds like serious confirmation bias dream – not a “near death experience”. I like the “body / brain as a (perceptual) filter” view. It’s how I tend to phrase my own beliefs, and it’s why I see scripture as people’s best attempts to transmit what they have experienced through their own filters – and why I scoff at or dismiss relatively little when it comes to “sacred writing”.
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