Dr. Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon, and for most of his professional life, he had largely discounted the possibility of God or an afterlife. While he had heard descriptions of near-death experiences, he considered them to be mere hallucinations, dreams or other tricks of the mind. That was before he was struck with a rare case of bacterial meningitis. Alexander felt excruciating pain and fell into a coma almost at once.
While he was in the coma, his family went through an excruciating ordeal, never knowing whether or not he would recover. His prognosis was grim, and the doctors were nearly certain that even if he regained consciousness, there would be severe ramifications. When he awoke at the end of the week with nearly perfect cognition, everyone was stunned.
What no one realized at the time was what he had experienced while he was brain dead. Eventually, he would go on to describe his near-death experience in his book “Proof of Heaven.”
Though there were different elements of his trek, including being guided by an entity he later identified as the sister he never knew, the most profound was his contact with the Core, where he was told that he was perfectly loved and any mistakes he’d made were simply a part of his journey. He also was told that the goodness in the universe is far more vast than the evil.
While some people have responded to his book with skepticism, many have considered it an invitation to hope.