A top doctor who claims to have visited 'heaven' while he was in a coma has revealed what he experienced, which left him convinced that there is life after death.
American neurosurgeon and author Dr Eben Alexander explained that he felt 'reborn' after suddenly regaining consciousness while doctors were weighing up whether to continue providing him with life support.
Talk about in the nick of time, eh?
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The medic's life changed forever in November 2008 when he woke up one morning with a 'searing headache' while working at the Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia.
"Within a few hours, I went into a coma: my neocortex, the part of the brain that handles all the thought processes making us human, had shut down completely," he explained.
It was determined that Alexander was suffering from bacterial meningitis, which was 'eating into his brain like acid' and inflaming his spinal cord - and his chances at survival were little to none.
The academic, who taught brain science at Harvard Medical School, was experiencing seizures, and doctors decided to place him into a medically-induced coma to give his body a chance to recuperate, even though the prognosis didn't look good.
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"I was in deep coma, a vegetative state, and all the higher functions of my brain were offline," an excerpt from his book, The Map of Heaven, said as per the Daily Mail.
"Scans showed no conscious activity whatever - my brain was not malfunctioning, it was completely unplugged. But my inner self still existed, in defiance of all the known laws of science."
Alexander admitted his line of work had made him 'skeptical' about patients claiming they had experienced out-of-body experiences, angelic encounters and hallucinations, as he believed it was the brain's way of coping with trauma.
"And then, in the most dramatic circumstances possible, I discovered proof that I was wrong," the neuroscientist said. "For seven days, as I lay in that unresponsive coma, my consciousness went on a voyage through a series of realms, each one more extraordinary than the last - a journey beyond the physical world and one that, until then, I would certainly have dismissed as impossible."
What he saw
Alexander explained that medical records for every minute of his coma show zero indication of any brain activity, which he believes proves that what he experienced was not just unfolding inside of his mind.
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After slipping into the coma, he recalls feeling as though he was in a 'primitive, primordial state that felt like being buried in earth' - but he was aware this was not the world he was familiar with as he sensed, heard and saw 'other entities'.
Alexander described what he witnessed: "After an expanse of time had passed, though I can't begin to guess how long, a light came slowly down from above, throwing off marvellous filaments of living silver and golden effulgence.
"It was a circular entity, emitting a beautiful, heavenly music that I called the Spinning Melody.
"The light opened up like a rip in the fabric of that coarse realm, 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.
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"This world was not vague," he said. "It was deeply, piercingly alive, and as vivid as the aroma of fried chicken, as dazzling as the glint of sunlight off the metalwork of a car, and as startling as the impact of first love."
It was paradise, and Alexander wanted to travel into it 'deeper and deeper'.
He describes heaven as being as 'vast, various and populated as Earth', but says that 'nothing is isolated, alienated or disconnected' there, adding: "Everything is one."
Alexander explained that while soaking up the sheer beauty of the place, he eventually encountered an 'infinitely powerful' deity who he referred to as Om, who served as his guide.
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"She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman who first appeared as I rode, as that speck of awareness, on the wing of that butterfly," he said. "I'd never seen this woman before. I didn't know who she was.
"Yet her presence was enough to heal my heart, to make me whole in a way I'd never known was possible. Her face was unforgettable.
"When she looked at me, I felt such an abundance of emotion that, if nothing good had ever happened to me before, the whole of my life would have been worth living for that expression in her eyes alone.
"It was not romantic love. It was not friendship. It was far beyond all the different compartments of love we have on Earth. "Without actually speaking, she let me know that I was loved and cared for beyond measure and that the universe was a vaster, better, and more beautiful place than I could ever have dreamed."
Being 'reborn'
She reassured Alexander that he was loved, cherished and had nothing to fear - which he said made his alleged time in heaven an 'utterly wonderful experience'.
Meanwhile, he'd been in a coma for a week and showed no signs of improvement, prompting doctors to consider whether they should turn his life support off - but he then suddenly regained consciousness.
"My eyes just popped open, and I was back. I had no memories of my earthly life but knew full well where I had been," he explained. "I had to relearn everything: who, what, and where I was.
"Over days, then weeks, like a gently falling snow, my old, earthly knowledge came back. By eight weeks, my prior knowledge of science, including the experiences and learning from more than two decades spent as a neurosurgeon in teaching hospitals, returned completely.
"That full recovery remains a miracle without any explanation from modern medicine."
After his near-death experience, he felt like a 'different person' due to the things he had experienced, and he found it especially difficult to get Om off his mind.
But everything made sense when the doctor, who was adopted as a child, received a letter four months later.
Alexander explained he remembered nothing of his birth family and grew up not knowing that he had a biological sister, Betsy until he later went in search of his parents.
"But for Betsy it was too late: she had died," the medic said. "This is the story of how I was reunited with her - in heaven."
One of his relatives, whom he had been in touch with, sent Alexander a photograph of his sister, which solidified his alleged afterlife experience — Betsy was the woman he had encountered.
"The shock of recognition was total," Alexander added. "The moment I realised this, something crystallised inside me.
"That photo was the confirmation that I'd needed. This was proof, beyond reproach, of the objective reality of my experience.
"From then on, I was back in the old, earthly world I'd left behind before my coma struck, but as a genuinely new person. I had been reborn."
Alexander went on to write three books—Proof of Heaven, The Map of Heaven, and Living in a Mindful Universe—about his experience after being left utterly convinced that the afterlife is real.
Olivia Burke