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Near-Death Experience
How does a
near-death experience change you?
Brain surgeon DR
EBEN ALEXANDER heard heavenly music and saw waterfalls flowing into crystal
pools
By DR EBEN ALEXANDER FOR THE DAILY
MAIL
Caroline
Cook was 16 years old when she attempted suicide.
Traumatised
by her parents’ divorce and struggling to cope with her mother’s mental
illness, she swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills.
After
spending three days in hospital in a coma, she awoke to a shockingly vivid memory
that has never faded.
Now aged 63, Caroline says: ‘I suddenly
found myself standing in a beautiful, lush, green forest, looking out over
pastures filled with flowers with snow-capped mountains in the distance, all
beneath a brilliant blue sky.
‘The colours were vivid, yet everything was
bathed in a white light, even the sky. I felt joyful and happy to be there.’
An
old man appeared beside her, with white robes and a white beard. He, too, was
bathed in white light.
‘You cannot stay here,’ he
told Caroline. ‘It is not your time yet. Go back and finish living your
life.’
Another
woman, Alison Leigh Sugg, had an experience that was both similar and
surprisingly different.
During
a difficult labour with her second baby, in 1999, she suffered a severe haemorrhage.
Bleeding profusely, she lost consciousness. Her heart rate slowed and then
flatlined.
The
emergency doctor in charge was Dr Margaret Christensen. Alison lay dying on the
operating table, but she could not be operated on until enough blood had been
pumped back into her veins to let the heart start beating again.
Unable
to begin surgery, Dr Christensen decided to lead the medical team in a short
prayer instead.
‘Please guide us to heal Alison’s body,’ she
prayed. ‘Please guide her spirit back into her body.’
Alison
was unconscious, but still somehow aware that her vital energy was leaving her
body through two areas simultaneously: her nose, mouth and throat; and the
point between her eyebrows.
This
energy seemed to flow together at a point above her body, until she was looking
back down at herself, with both indifference and compassion.
Other
energy seemed to swirl around her, in a spiral of light that propelled her up
and away.
She
drifted into inky blackness, before what she described as ‘a wondrous being
of light and sound’ appeared in front of her, emanating profound love.
She
had no language for what she was experiencing.
The ‘being’ communicated with her, seeming to
project a thought: ‘You have a choice.’
Realising
that it would be a mistake to turn away from this overwhelming sense of
serenity, Alison knew what she must choose. She had to return to her body. Her
children needed her.
Both
these women confided their deeply personal stories after reading my 2012 book
Proof Of Heaven, in which I detailed my own near-death experience.
What
happened to me was different — but just as vividly recollected. I’d woken up at
4.30am with a splitting headache.
As
my then wife frantically tried to massage away the pain, it spread to my back.
Within 15 minutes, the agony was so bad I could barely take a step.
I
was taken to the hospital where I worked as a neurosurgeon.
The
doctors discovered I’d contracted a type of meningitis, and very soon the part
of the brain that controls thought and emotion shut down as the bacteria ate
away at my brain.
After
being placed on a ventilator, a light came slowly down from above, throwing off
marvellous filaments of living silver and golden effulgence.
It
was a circular entity, emitting heavenly music that I called the Spinning
Melody.
The
light opened up like a rip, and I felt myself going through the rip, up into a
valley full of lush and fertile greenery, where waterfalls flowed into crystal
pools.
There
were clouds, like marshmallow puffs of pink and white. Behind them, the sky was
a rich blue-black, with trees, fields, animals and people.
There
was water, too, flowing in rivers or descending as rain. Mists rose from the
pulsing surfaces of these waters, and fish glided beneath them.
Sceptics
would say that, because of the many differences in our accounts, we must all be
wrong.
But
as a scientist, a neurosurgeon and an academic who taught brain science at
Harvard Medical School, I am fascinated to know how we all perceived these
versions of the hereafter — so vivid in the memory but so difficult to
describe.
The
evidence for near-death experiences is overwhelming. But the evidence for how
they occur is virtually non-existent.
How
were our minds conscious when our bodies were effectively dead and, in my case
at least, the brain had ceased to function? And where are these bright,
unfading memories stored?
To
explore these questions takes courage and a thirst for knowledge. In the nine
years since I first awoke from my coma, my mantra has been ‘believe in it
all, at least for now’.
My
advice to you, dear reader, is to do the same: suspend disbelief for now, and
open your mind as broadly as possible.
I
was in a coma for a week, suffering from meningoencephalitis — a brain
infection — of such severity that my odds of survival were estimated at 2 per
cent.
After
a week, my doctors gravely told my family that it was time to let me die.
Hearing this, my ten-year-old son ran into the room, pulled open my eyelids and
started pleading with me.
‘Daddy,’ he cried, over
and over again, ‘you’re gonna be OK.’
Across
the vast reaches of the spiritual realm, I felt his presence very clearly . . .
and began to wake.
In
the early weeks of recovery after my coma, I experienced a constant crackling
energy, a hyper-sense of life itself — a sizzling body sensation.
Just
two days after I came round, my older son, who was majoring in neuroscience at
college, saw me and was struck by this intense energy.
‘You are so clear, so focused, so much more
present than ever before,’ he said. ‘It is as if there is a
light shining within you.’
Bizarre
phenomena happened all around me. Street lights would blink as I walked beneath
them. My laptop seemed prone to crashing. I went through three wristwatches
before I found one that would work.
And
I had great difficulty sleeping, though this turned out to be a blessing
because it granted me the time I needed to read, study and reflect on what had
happened.
The
shift in my perceptions brought difficulties, too. Studies show around 80 per
cent of marriages break up after one partner has a near-death experience.
For
my then wife and me, it became clear that our life together was not meant to
last forever.
Our
marriage had been struggling in the years before my coma, and my significant
change brought us to an amicable parting.
My
newly awakened energy sometimes seemed out of control, though it also never
harmed me.
While
I was writing Proof Of Heaven, a massive branch tore itself away from the oak
tree outside my study window and landed parallel to one outside wall.
No
sooner had my sons and I sawed it up for firewood, baffled as to why a healthy
tree should lose a limb, than another giant branch fell — this time along the
adjoining wall of the house, at a 90-degree angle to the first.
That
alarmed me so much that I called a tree surgeon . . . only to be told the tree
was in fine condition, with no rot or insect damage.
There
was no good reason why those branches fell. It was as if some giant hand had
snapped them off. But one thing was certain: if either one had hit the house,
it would have smashed down to the foundations.
Little wonder that, around this time, one
friend told me: ‘You are sitting on a maelstrom of energy!’
Just
as my senses were heightened, so were my memories — at least those rooted in my
near-death experience.
This
is common: more than half of people who have near-death experiences are
astonished by their highly intense perceptions. It is as if reality has become
more real, and yet none of it is as truly real as their memories of the
afterlife.
In
order to bring this whirling energy under control, I began to explore other
ways to understand the brain than the merely medical.
In
the Eighties, I discovered, the Dalai Lama — the Buddhist spiritual leader and
winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — began working with Western doctors to combine
everything that science, mysticism and religion can teach us about the mind. He
calls this ‘contemplative neuroscience’.
For
me, one of the most effective Buddhist practices is a form of meditation called
mindfulness.
I
find I can accomplish it by placing all my attention on whatever activity is
taking place, whether it is walking, sitting quietly or just drinking a cup of
coffee.
Mindfulness
involves the constant awareness of the breath and the body, to move the mind’s
attention away from negative or distressing thoughts.
As
my attention remains focused only on the present moment, my mind eventually
becomes free of all other distractions.
Looking
back, I realise I did this instinctively when I was practising neurosurgery. I
saw the operating theatre as a sanctuary where I could focus exclusively on my
task.
Time
appeared to contract in this state, and a procedure that lasted hours might seem
to be over in a matter of minutes.
By
getting the brain ‘out of the way’, we can explore the world of universal
consciousness.
Many
of the world’s greatest geniuses have understood this, and achieved it in
individual ways.
Physicist
Albert Einstein would sometimes drift in a small sailing boat, staring into the
sky as his imagination wandered, and new possibilities for explaining reality
came to him.
Inventor
Thomas Edison learned to work for days on little sleep. He would sit, with
weights in his hands, and when he began to nod off, the weights would fall . .
. waking him up.
At
these moments, between sleep and wake, some of his most brilliant ideas would
come to him, and he would be ready to write them down.
The
novelist Robert Louis Stevenson used another technique, travelling to the edge
of dreams to harvest ideas for his stories.
All
of these men were active participants in the pursuit of inspiration through
free-form daydreaming, a level of awareness known as hypnagogia — the
borderline of sleep.
Meditators,
prophets and mystics have done this since the dawn of time. Perhaps this
receptive state of being is the ultimate foundation of all our great religions.
After
reading my book Proof Of Heaven, the Dalai Lama invited me to join him to
discuss modern scientific views on reincarnation.
He
said there were three sorts of phenomena. The first was the most obvious —
events that we perceive with our ordinary five senses.
The
second was more subtle: hidden phenomena which go unobserved but which can be
deduced from other evidence.
The
third was the most tantalising — hidden phenomena, which can only be
experienced personally, such as a dream, a secret wish, or a near-death
experience.
These
can be told but they might not be believed.
Unless
you’ve had such an experience yourself, you can’t know with certainty that it
took place, and so cannot investigate it using conventional scientific methods.
But
first-hand experiences are vital to our understanding. We have to trust the
experiences of others while cultivating our own, so that we can compare them.
And
that’s what I, as a scientist, am most interested in. Mysteries are around
every corner — we just need to learn to pay attention.
Adapted from Living In A Mindful Universe by
Dr Eben Alexander and Karen Newell, published by Piatkus Books at £14.99. To
order a copy go to www.mail shop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640. P&p
free on orders over £15
Eben
Alexander
III is an American neurosurgeon and author. His book Proof of Heaven: A
Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife describes his 2008 near-death
experience and asserts that science can and will determine that the brain does
not create consciousness and that consciousness survives bodily death.
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I was taken to the hospital
where I worked as a neurosurgeon. The doctors discovered I’d contracted a type
of meningitis, and very soon the part of the brain that controls thought and
emotion shut down as the bacteria ate away at my brain. Pictured: Dr Eben
Alexander
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Caroline, who had a
near-death experience, says: ‘I suddenly found myself standing in a beautiful,
lush, green forest, looking out over pastures filled with flowers with
snow-capped mountains in the distance, all beneath a brilliant blue sky'
|
|
More than half of people who
have near-death experiences are astonished by their highly intense perceptions.
It is as if reality has become more real, and yet none of it is as truly real
as their memories of the afterlife
|
|
Physicist Albert Einstein
would sometimes drift in a small sailing boat, staring into the sky as his
imagination wandered, and new possibilities for explaining reality came to him.
Pictured: The light at the end of the tunnel
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