Afterlife (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 16, 2012, 19:49 (4422 days ago) @ dhw

I have just read an article about a book entitled Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander (published by Piatkus). David drew our attention to this author last December, and I am posting this as a reply to my own post at that time. Apparently the new book recounts the story of his Near Death Experience in 2008, when he was in a coma and his neocortex had shut down. What makes this special is that the author is a neurosurgeon, and "the experience contradicted everything that he, as a man of science, thought he knew ... including his scepticism about religion."-Alexander is well aware of all the academic theories explaining his experience, but having sifted them, "in the end he rejects them all (on careful scientific grounds) in favour of a much more surprising one: that it was real." He was adopted as a baby, and months later he "discovers from a previously unseen photograph that the young woman who'd welcomed him to the afterlife was a dead birth sister he'd never met." (Assuming he is not lying, it is always this kind of information that adds authenticity to such experiences.)-The article, in the November issue of 'Reader's Digest', contains an interview with him. Some more quotes: 
"I was encountering the reality of a world of consciousness that existed completely free of the limitations of my physical brain." 
He now believes in "a God who loves and cares about each one of us and about the universe itself." 
"My conclusions are based on a medical analysis of my experience, and on my familiarity with the most advanced concepts in brain science and consciousness studies."
He is well aware that he is risking the scorn of his peers by writing the book, but he regards it as "hands-down the most important story I will ever tell."-We shouldn't believe everything we read. But until we have grounds for disbelieving, we should at least keep an open mind. A neurosurgeon seems hardly likely to risk ruining his reputation by trying to con everyone with a fraud that will make his peers ridicule him. Nor, as a former sceptic, is he likely to take the objections lightly. NDEs are a field of fairly common experience which, just like the mystery of consciousness itself, is not going to go away. Since we don't have any answers, it would be sheer arrogance to claim that one day we will, and the answer will be pure materialism.