Eben Alexander - Proof of Heaven. The true story of a neurosurgeon's journey to the afterlife. Proof of Heaven. Real experience of a neurosurgeonText Evidence of Paradise Eben Alexander

Eben Alexander

Proof of heaven. The true story of a neurosurgeon's journey to the afterlife

PROOF OF HEAVEN: A NEUROSURGEON’S JOURNEY INTO THE AFTERLIFE

A person must rely on what is, and not on what supposedly should be.

Albert Einstein

As a child, I often dreamed that I was flying.

It usually happened like this: I was standing in the yard, looking at the stars, and suddenly the wind picked me up and carried me upward. It was easy to get off the ground by itself, but the higher I rose, the more the flight depended on me. If I was overexcited, gave in too much to the sensations, then I would fall to the ground with a bang. But if I managed to remain calm and cool, I took off faster and faster - straight into the starry sky.

Perhaps it was from these dreams that my love for parachutes, rockets and airplanes grew - for everything that could return me to the transcendental world.

When my family and I flew somewhere on a plane, I was glued to the window from takeoff until landing. In the summer of 1968, when I was fourteen years old, I spent all the money I earned mowing lawns on gliding lessons. I was taught by a guy named Goose Street, and our classes took place in Strawberry Hill, a small grassy “airfield” west of Winston-Salem, the town where I grew up. I still remember how my heart was pounding as I pulled the big red handle, released the tow rope that was holding my glider to the plane, and banked toward the airfield. Then for the first time I felt truly independent and free. Most of my friends got this feeling while driving a car, but three hundred meters above the ground it is felt a hundred times more acutely.

In 1970, already in college, I joined the parachuting club team at the University of North Carolina. It was like a secret brotherhood - a group of people doing something exceptional and magical. The first time I jumped, I was scared to death, and the second time I was even more scared. It was only on the twelfth jump, when I stepped out the door of the plane and flew more than three hundred meters before the parachute opened (my first jump with a ten-second delay), that I felt in my element. By the time I graduated from college, I had completed three hundred and sixty-five jumps and almost four hours of free fall. And although I stopped jumping in 1976, I still dreamed of long jumps, as clearly as in reality, and it was wonderful.

The best jumps happened in the late afternoon, when the sun was setting on the horizon. It's hard to describe how I felt: a feeling of closeness to something that I couldn't quite name, but that I'd always been missing. And it’s not a matter of solitude—our jumping had nothing to do with loneliness. We jumped five, six, and sometimes ten or twelve people at a time, forming figures in free fall. The larger the group and the more complex the figure, the more interesting it is.

One wonderful autumn day in 1975, the university team and I gathered at our friend's parachute center to practice group jumps. Having worked hard, we finally jumped out of the Beechcraft D-18 at an altitude of three kilometers and formed a “snowflake” of ten people. We managed to form a perfect formation and fly for more than two kilometers, fully enjoying the eighteen-second free fall in a deep crevice between two tall cumulus clouds. Then, at an altitude of one kilometer, we dispersed and went our separate ways to open our parachutes.

It was already dark when we landed. However, we hurriedly jumped into another plane, quickly took off and managed to catch the last rays of the sun in the sky to make a second sunset jump. This time two beginners jumped with us - it was their first attempt to participate in figure building. They had to join the figure on the outside, rather than being at its base, which is much easier: in this case, your task is simply to fall down while others maneuver towards you. It was an exciting moment both for them and for us, experienced parachutists, because we were creating a team, sharing experience with those with whom we could form even larger figures in the future.

I was to be the last to join the six-pointed star we were about to build over the runway. small airport near Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. The guy who was jumping in front of me was named Chuck, and he had a lot of experience in free-fall formations. At an altitude of more than two kilometers, we were still bathed in the rays of the sun, and on the ground below us the street lights were already blinking. Jumping at dusk is always amazing, and this jump promised to be simply amazing.

- Three, two, one... let's go!

I fell out of the plane just a second after Chuck, but I had to hurry to catch up with my friends when they began to form a figure. For about seven seconds I was flying upside down like a rocket, which allowed me to descend at a speed of almost one hundred and sixty kilometers per hour and catch up with the others.

In a dizzying flight upside down, almost reaching critical speed, I smiled as I admired the sunset for the second time that day. When approaching the others, I planned to use the “air brake” - fabric “wings” that stretched from our wrist to our hip and sharply slowed down our fall if deployed at high speed. I spread my arms to the sides, spreading my wide sleeves and slowing down in the air flow.

However, something went wrong.

Approaching our “star”, I saw that one of the newcomers had accelerated too much. Perhaps falling between the clouds frightened him - made him remember that at a speed of sixty meters per second he was approaching a huge planet, half-hidden by the thickening darkness of the night. Instead of slowly clinging to the edge of the "star", he crashed into it, so that it crumbled, and now my five friends were tumbling in the air at random.

Usually, in group long jumps at a height of one kilometer, the figure breaks up, and everyone scatters as far as possible from each other. Then everyone gives a hand signal as a sign of readiness to open the parachute, looks up to make sure that there is no one above him, and only after that pulls the ripcord.

But they were too close to each other. The skydiver leaves behind an air trail of high turbulence and low pressure. If another person gets caught in this trail, their speed will immediately increase and they may fall onto the one below. This, in turn, will give acceleration to both of them, and the two of them can crash into the one who is under them. In other words, this is exactly how disasters happen.

I twisted and flew away from the group so as not to get caught in this tumbling mass. I maneuvered until I was directly above the “spot,” the magical point on the ground over which we would open our parachutes for a leisurely two-minute descent.

I looked back and felt relieved - the disoriented paratroopers were moving away from each other, so that the deadly pile of malas was gradually dissipating.

However, to my surprise, I saw Chuck heading towards me and stopping right below me. With all this group acrobatics, we passed the six hundred meter mark faster than he expected. Or maybe he considered himself lucky, who did not have to scrupulously follow the rules.

“He must not see me,” - before this thought had time to flash through my head, a bright pilot chute flew out of Chuck’s backpack. He caught an air current rushing at a speed of almost two hundred kilometers per hour and shot straight at me, pulling out the main dome behind him.

From the moment I saw Chuck's pilot chute, I literally had a split second to react. Because in a moment I would have fallen onto the opened main dome, and then - very likely - onto Chuck himself. If I had hit his arm or leg at that speed, I would have torn them off completely. If I had fallen right on top of him, our bodies would have shattered into pieces.

People say that time slows down in such situations, and they are right. My mind tracked what was happening microsecond by microsecond, as if I were watching a movie in extreme slow motion.

I came face to face with a world of consciousness that exists completely independent of the limitations of the physical brain.

Sf came face to face with the world of consciousness, which exists completely independently of the limitations of the physical brain.

As soon as I saw the pilot chute, I pressed my arms to my sides and straightened my body into a vertical jump, bending my legs slightly. This position gave me acceleration, and the bend provided my body horizontal movement- at first small, and then like a gust of wind that caught me, as if my body had become a wing. I was able to get past Chuck, right in front of his bright parachute.

Eben Alexander

Proof of Heaven

A person must see things as they are, and not as he wants to see them.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

When I was little, I often flew in my dreams. It usually happened like this. I dreamed that I was standing in our yard at night and looking at the stars, and then suddenly I separated from the ground and slowly rose up. The first few inches of lift into the air happened spontaneously, without any input on my part. But I soon noticed that the higher I rise, the more the flight depends on me, or more precisely, on my condition. If I was wildly jubilant and excited, I would suddenly fall down, hitting the ground hard. But if I perceived the flight calmly, as something natural, then I quickly flew higher and higher into the starry sky.

Perhaps partly as a result of these dream flights, I subsequently developed a passionate love for airplanes and rockets - and for that matter. aircraft, which could again give me the feeling of vast airy space. When I had the opportunity to fly with my parents, no matter how long the flight was, it was impossible to tear me away from the window. In September 1968, at the age of fourteen, I gave all my lawn-mowing money to a glider flying class taught by a guy named Goose Street at Strawberry Hill, a small grassy "airfield" near my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I still remember how excitedly my heart was pounding when I pulled the dark red round handle, which unhooked the cable connecting me to the tow plane, and my glider rolled out onto the tarmac. For the first time in my life, I experienced an unforgettable feeling of complete independence and freedom. Most of my friends loved the thrill of driving for this reason, but in my opinion, nothing could compare to the thrill of flying a thousand feet in the air.

In the 1970s, while attending college at the University of North Carolina, I became involved in skydiving. Our team seemed to me like something like a secret brotherhood - after all, we had special knowledge that was not available to everyone else. The first jumps were very difficult for me; I was overcome by real fear. But by the twelfth jump, when I stepped out the door of the plane to free-fall for over a thousand feet before opening my parachute (my first skydive), I felt confident. In college, I completed 365 skydives and logged more than three and a half hours of free-fall flying time, performing mid-air acrobatics with twenty-five comrades. And although I stopped jumping in 1976, I continued to have joyful and very vivid dreams about skydiving.

I liked jumping most of all in the late afternoon, when the sun began to set on the horizon. It is difficult to describe my feelings during such jumps: it seemed to me that I was getting closer and closer to something that was impossible to define, but which I desperately longed for. This mysterious “something” was not an ecstatic feeling of complete solitude, because we usually jumped in groups of five, six, ten or twelve people, making various figures in free fall. And the more complex and difficult the figure was, the greater the delight that overwhelmed me.

On a beautiful fall day in 1975, the guys from the University of North Carolina and some friends from the Parachute Training Center and I gathered to practice formation jumps. On our penultimate jump from a D-18 Beechcraft light aircraft at 10,500 feet, we were making a ten-person snowflake. We managed to form this figure even before the 7,000-foot mark, that is, we enjoyed the flight in this figure for eighteen whole seconds, falling into a gap between the masses of high clouds, after which, at an altitude of 3,500 feet, we unclenched our hands, leaned away from each other and opened our parachutes.

By the time we landed, the sun was already very low, above the ground. But we quickly boarded another plane and took off again, so we were able to capture the last rays of the sun and make one more jump before it completely set. This time, two beginners took part in the jump, who for the first time had to try to join the figure, that is, fly up to it from the outside. Of course, it's easiest to be the main jumper, because he just has to fly down, while the rest of the team has to maneuver in the air to get to him and lock arms with him. Nevertheless, both beginners rejoiced at the difficult test, as did we, already experienced parachutists: after training the young guys, we could later make jumps with even more complex figures.

Out of a group of six people who had to make a star over the runway of a small airfield located near the town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, I had to jump last. A guy named Chuck walked in front of me. He had extensive experience in aerial group acrobatics. At an altitude of 7,500 feet the sun was still shining on us, but the street lights below were already shining. I've always loved twilight jumping and this one was going to be amazing.

I had to leave the plane about a second after Chuck, and in order to catch up with the others, my fall had to be very rapid. I decided to dive into the air, as if into the sea, upside down, and fly in this position for the first seven seconds. This would allow me to fall almost a hundred miles an hour faster than my companions, and be on the same level with them immediately after they began to build the star.

Usually during such jumps, after descending to an altitude of 3,500 feet, all skydivers unclasp their arms and move as far apart as possible. Then everyone waves their hands, signaling that they are ready to open their parachute, looks up to make sure that no one is above them, and only then pulls the release rope.

Three, two, one... March!

One by one, four parachutists left the plane, followed by Chuck and me. Flying upside down and picking up speed in free fall, I was elated to see the sun set for the second time that day. As I approached the team, I was about to skid to a stop in the air, throwing my arms out to the sides - we had suits with wings of fabric from the wrists to the hips, which created powerful resistance, fully expanding at high speed.

But I didn't have to do that.

Falling vertically in the direction of the figure, I noticed that one of the guys was approaching it very quickly. I don't know, maybe the rapid descent into a narrow gap between the clouds scared him, reminding him that he was rushing towards him at a speed of two hundred feet per second giant planet, difficult to see in the growing darkness. One way or another, instead of slowly joining the group, he rushed towards it like a whirlwind. And the five remaining paratroopers tumbled randomly in the air. Besides, they were too close to each other.

This guy left behind a powerful turbulent wake. This air current is very dangerous. As soon as another skydiver hits him, the speed of his fall will rapidly increase, and he will crash into the one below him. This in turn will give both paratroopers a strong acceleration and throw them towards the one even lower. In short, it will happen terrible tragedy.

I twisted my body away from the randomly falling group and maneuvered until I was directly above the “spot,” the magical point on the ground above which we would open our parachutes and begin our slow two-minute descent.

I turned my head and was relieved to see that the other jumpers were already moving away from each other. Chuck was among them. But to my surprise, it moved in my direction and soon hovered right below me. Apparently, during the erratic fall, the group passed 2,000 feet faster than Chuck expected. Or maybe he considered himself lucky, who might not follow the established rules.

"He shouldn't see me!" Before this thought had time to flash through my head, a colored pilot parachute jerked upward behind Chuck. The parachute caught Chuck's one-hundred-and-twenty-mile-per-hour wind and carried him toward me while pulling the main chute.

From the moment the pilot chute opened over Chuck, I only had a split second to react. In less than a second I was about to crash into his main parachute and, most likely, into himself. If at such a speed I run into his arm or leg, I will simply tear it off and at the same time receive a fatal blow. If we collide bodies, we will inevitably break.

They say that in situations like this, everything seems to happen much slower, and this is true. My brain registered the event, which took only a few microseconds, but perceived it like a slow-motion movie.

As soon as the pilot chute rose above Chuck, my arms automatically pressed to my sides, and I turned upside down, bending slightly.

The bending of the body allowed me to increase my speed a little. The next moment, I made a sharp jerk to the side horizontally, causing my body to turn into a powerful wing, which allowed me to rush past Chuck like a bullet just before his main parachute opened.

I rushed past him at over one hundred and fifty miles per hour, or two hundred and twenty feet per second. It is unlikely that he had time to notice the expression on my face. Otherwise he would have seen incredible amazement on him. By some miracle, I managed to react in a matter of seconds to a situation that, if I had time to think about it, would have seemed simply insoluble!

And yet... And yet I dealt with it, and as a result, Chuck and I landed safely. I had the impression that, faced with an extreme situation, my brain worked like some kind of super-powerful computer.

How did it happen? During my more than twenty years as a neurosurgeon—studying, observing, and operating on the brain—I have often wondered about this question. And in the end I came to the conclusion that the brain is such a phenomenal organ that we are not even aware of its incredible abilities.

Now I already understand that the real answer to this question is much more complex and fundamentally different. But to realize this, I had to experience events that completely changed my life and worldview. This book is dedicated to these events. They proved to me that, no matter how wonderful the human brain is, it was not the brain that saved me on that fateful day. What came into play the second Chuck's main parachute began to open was another, deeply hidden side of my personality. She was able to work so instantly because, unlike my brain and body, she exists outside of time.

It was she who made me, a boy, rush into the sky. This is not only the most developed and wise side of our personality, but also the deepest, most intimate. However, for most of my adult life I did not believe this.

However, now I believe, and from the following story you will understand why.

//__ * * * __//

My profession is a neurosurgeon.

I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976 with a degree in chemistry and received my doctorate from the School of Medicine in 1980.

Eben Alexander

Proof of Heaven

A person must see things as they are, and not as he wants to see them.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Perhaps partly as a result of these dream flights, I subsequently developed a passionate love for airplanes and rockets - and indeed for any flying machine that could again give me the feeling of the vastness of the air. When I had the opportunity to fly with my parents, no matter how long the flight was, it was impossible to tear me away from the window. In September 1968, at the age of fourteen, I gave all my lawn-mowing money to a glider flying class taught by a guy named Goose Street at Strawberry Hill, a small grassy "airfield" near my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I still remember how excitedly my heart was pounding when I pulled the dark red round handle, which unhooked the cable connecting me to the tow plane, and my glider rolled out onto the tarmac. For the first time in my life, I experienced an unforgettable feeling of complete independence and freedom. Most of my friends loved the thrill of driving for this reason, but in my opinion, nothing could compare to the thrill of flying a thousand feet in the air.

Three, two, one... March!

But I didn't have to do that.

Falling vertically in the direction of the figure, I noticed that one of the guys was approaching it very quickly. I don't know, maybe the rapid descent into a narrow gap between the clouds frightened him, reminding him that he was rushing at a speed of two hundred feet per second towards a giant planet, barely visible in the gathering darkness. One way or another, instead of slowly joining the group, he rushed towards it like a whirlwind. And the five remaining paratroopers tumbled randomly in the air. Besides, they were too close to each other.

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Eben Alexander
Proof of heaven. The true story of a neurosurgeon's journey to the afterlife

PROOF OF HEAVEN: A NEUROSURGEON’S JOURNEY INTO THE AFTERLIFE

Prologue

A person must rely on what is, and not on what supposedly should be.

Albert Einstein

As a child, I often dreamed that I was flying.

Perhaps it was from these dreams that my love for parachutes, rockets and airplanes grew - for everything that could return me to the transcendental world.

I was to be the last to join the six-pointed star we were about to build over the runway of a small airport near Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. The guy who was jumping in front of me was named Chuck, and he had a lot of experience in free-fall formations. At an altitude of more than two kilometers, we were still bathed in the rays of the sun, and on the ground below us the street lights were already blinking. Jumping at dusk is always amazing, and this jump promised to be simply amazing.

- Three, two, one... let's go!

However, something went wrong.

I looked back and felt relieved - the disoriented paratroopers were moving away from each other, so that the deadly pile of malas was gradually dissipating.

People say that time slows down in such situations, and they are right. My mind tracked what was happening microsecond by microsecond, as if I were watching a movie in extreme slow motion.

I came face to face with a world of consciousness that exists completely independent of the limitations of the physical brain.

Sf came face to face with the world of consciousness, which exists completely independently of the limitations of the physical brain.

As soon as I saw the pilot chute, I pressed my arms to my sides and straightened my body into a vertical jump, bending my legs slightly. This position gave me acceleration, and the bend provided my body with horizontal movement - at first small, and then like a gust of wind that picked me up, as if my body had become a wing. I was able to get past Chuck, right in front of his bright parachute.

We passed at a speed of over two hundred and forty kilometers per hour, or sixty-seven meters per second. I doubt Chuck could see my expression, but if he could, he would have seen how startled I was. By some miracle, I reacted to the situation in microseconds, and in a way that I would hardly have been able to do if I had time to think - it is too difficult to calculate such an accurate movement.

And yet... I managed to do it, and we both landed normally. My brain, finding itself in a desperate situation, momentarily seemed to gain superpower.

How did I do this? During my more than twenty-year career as a neurosurgeon, studying, observing, and operating on the brain, I have had many opportunities to explore this question. But in the end, I came to terms with the fact that the brain really is an amazing device - we can’t even imagine how much.

Now I understand that the answer had to be sought much deeper, but I had to go through a complete metamorphosis of my life and worldview in order to discern it. My book is about events that changed my views and convinced me that, no matter how magnificent a mechanism our brain is, it was not the brain that saved my life that day. What came into play the moment Chuck's parachute began to open was another, more deep part me. The part that can move so quickly because it is not tied to time like the brain and body.

In fact, it was she who made me yearn for heaven so much as a child. It is not only the smartest part of a person, but also the deepest, and yet for most of my adult life I could not believe it.

But I believe now, and in the following pages I will tell you why.

I'm a neurosurgeon. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976, where he majored in chemistry, and received his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine in 1980. During my eleven years of study and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard, I specialized in neuroendocrinology.

This science studies how the nervous and endocrine systems interact with each other. For two of those eleven years, I studied the abnormal response of blood vessels to bleeding from an aneurysm, a syndrome known as cerebral vasospasm.

I completed my fellowship in cerebrovascular neurosurgery in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, after which I spent fifteen years as an associate professor of surgery with a specialization in neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School. Over the years, I have operated on countless patients, many of whom were in serious or critical condition.

Most of my research work I have dedicated myself to developing high-tech procedures such as stereotactic radiosurgery, a technique that allows surgeons to direct a beam of radiation to a target deep in the brain without affecting neighboring areas. I helped develop neurosurgical procedures based on MRI images that are used for intractable diseases such as tumors or defects in the blood vessels of the brain. Over the years, I have authored or co-authored more than one hundred and fifty articles for specialized medical journals and presented my developments at more than two hundred medical conferences around the world.

In a word, I devoted myself to science. Using the tools of modern medicine to treat people, learning more and more about the workings of the human brain and body - that was my calling in life. I was incredibly happy to have found him. But not less work I loved my family - my wife and two wonderful children, which I considered another great blessing in my life. In many ways I was a very lucky person - and I knew it.

THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE CONTINUES UNDER THE LOVING GAZE OF A CARING GOD WHO WATCHES THE UNIVERSE AND ALL THINGS IN IT.

And then, on November 10, 2008, when I was fifty-four, my luck seemed to run out. I was struck down by a rare disease and was in a coma for seven days. For this week, my entire cerebral cortex—the very part that makes us human—has shut down. She refused outright.

When your brain stops existing, you don't exist either. While working as a neurosurgeon, I heard many stories about people who experienced amazing adventures, usually after cardiac arrest: they traveled to mysterious, wonderful places, talked with deceased relatives, even met with the Almighty himself.

Amazing things, no one argues, but they are all, in my opinion, a figment of fantasy. What causes these otherworldly experiences in people? I don't know, but I know that all visions come from the brain, all consciousness depends on it. If the brain doesn't work, there is no consciousness.

Because the brain is a machine that primarily produces consciousness. When a car breaks down, consciousness stops. Given the endless complexity and mystery of the processes occurring in the brain, the whole essence of its work comes down to this. Pull the plug out of the socket and the TV will go silent. A curtain. It doesn't matter if you liked the show.

This is roughly how I would have told you the essence of the matter before my own brain failed.

While I was in a coma, my brain not only worked incorrectly, it didn’t work at all. I now believe that this is why the coma I fell into was so deep. In many cases, clinical death occurs when a person's heart stops. The cerebral cortex is then temporarily inactive, but does not suffer much damage to itself, provided that the flow of oxygenated blood is restored within about four minutes - the person is given artificial respiration, or his heart begins to beat again. But in my case, the cerebral cortex was completely out of work. And then I came face to face with the world of consciousness, which exists completely independently of the limitations of the physical brain.

I value my life more than ever because I now see it for what it truly is.

My case is in some sense a “perfect storm” 1
The perfect storm is an English phraseologism meaning an unusually ferocious storm that arises due to the confluence of several unfavorable circumstances and causes particularly severe destruction. – Note ed.

Clinical death: all the circumstances came together in such a way that it could not be worse. As a practicing neurosurgeon with years of research and operating room experience, I was in a better position not only to assess the likely consequences of the disease, but also to gain insight into the deeper meaning of what had happened to me.

This meaning is terribly difficult to describe. Coma showed me that the death of the body and brain is not the end of consciousness, that the human experience continues beyond the grave. More importantly, it continues under the loving gaze of a caring God who watches over the Universe and all things contained within it.

The place where I ended up was so real that our life here looks ghostly in comparison. This does not mean at all that I do not value my current life, no, now I value it more than ever. This is because now I see her in her true light.

Earthly life is not at all meaningless, but from the inside we cannot see this - at least most of the time. What happened to me while I was in a coma is without a doubt the most important thing I can tell you. But this will not be easy to do, because it is very difficult to comprehend the reality on the other side of death. And then, I can’t shout about her from the rooftops. However, my conclusions are based on medical analysis of my experience and on the most advanced scientific concepts of the brain and consciousness. Once I realized the truth of my journey, I knew I had a responsibility to share it. Doing this properly has become the main goal of my life.

This does not mean that I left medicine and neurosurgery. But now that I have the privilege of understanding that our life does not end with the death of the body or brain, I see my duty, my calling, in telling about what I saw outside the body and outside this world. I am especially eager to share my story with people who may have heard similar stories before and would like to believe them, but cannot.

It is to such people that I primarily address this book. What I have to tell you is as important as what others say, and it is all true.

Chapter 1
Pain

I opened my eyes. The red-lit clock on my bedside table showed 4:30 a.m.—I usually wake up an hour later, since the drive from our home in Lynchburg to the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation in Charlottesville, where I work, takes only seventeen minutes. My wife Holly was fast asleep next to me.

My family and I moved to the Virginia mountains just two years ago, in 2006, and before that I spent almost twenty years practicing academic neurosurgery in Greater Boston.

I met Holly in October 1977, two years after graduating from college. Holly improved in fine arts, and I was in medical school. She was then dating Vic, my roommate. One day we agreed to meet, and he brought her with him, probably to show off. When we said goodbye, I told Holly that she could come whenever she wanted, and added that it was not necessary to take Vic with her.

We finally agreed on our first real date. We were driving to a party in Charlotte, a two and a half hour drive each way. Holly had laryngitis, so 99% of the time I had to do both the talking. It was easy.

We were married in June 1980 in Windsor, North Carolina, at St. Thomas's Episcopal Church, and moved to the Royal Oaks Apartments in Durham, where I trained in surgery at Duke. There was nothing royal about the place, and I don't remember a single oak tree there. We had very little money, but we were both very busy and so happy together that it didn't bother us at all.

We spent one of our first vacations on a spring camping tour of the beaches of North Carolina. Spring is midge season in the Carolinas, and our tent did not offer much protection from this scourge. However, this did not spoil our fun. One evening, while floating in the Ocracoke shallows, I figured out how to catch the blue crabs that were scattering from under my feet. We caught a whole bunch of them, brought them to the Pony Island Motel where our friends were staying, and grilled them. There were enough crabs for everyone.

Despite the austerity regime, we soon discovered that we were firmly broke. One day we decided to play bingo with our best friends Bill and Patty Wilson. For ten years now, Bill has played bingo every Thursday every summer and never won. Holly had never played bingo before. Call it beginner's luck or providence, but she won two hundred dollars! At that time, for us it was like five thousand. This money covered the costs of our trip, and we felt much calmer.

In 1980, I became an MD and Holly completed her degree and began her career as an artist and teacher. In 1981, I performed my first independent brain surgery. Our first child, Eben IV, was born in 1987 at the Princess Mary Maternity Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne in Northern England, where I completed my residency in cerebrovascular surgery. The youngest son, Bond, was born in 1998 at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

I worked for fifteen years at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, and those were Good times. Our family cherishes the memories of these years spent in Greater Boston. But in 2005, Holly and I decided it was time to move back to the South. We wanted to be closer to our family, and for me this was an opportunity to gain greater independence. So in the spring of 2006 we started new life in Lynchburg, in the mountains of Virginia. The arrangement did not take much time, and soon we were already enjoying the measured rhythm of life, which is more familiar to us southerners.

But let's get back to the main story. I woke up abruptly and just lay there for a while, sluggishly trying to figure out what woke me up. Yesterday was Sunday—clear, sunny, and frosty, classic late fall in Virginia. Holly, ten-year-old Bond and I went to a neighbour's barbecue. In the evening we talked on the phone with Eben IV - he was twenty and studying at the University of Delaware. The only trouble is a slight flu, from which we have not fully recovered since last week. Before going to bed, my back began to hurt, and I lay in the bath for a while, after which the pain subsided. I thought that maybe I woke up so early because I still had the virus inside me.

I moved slightly, and a wave of pain shot through my spine - much stronger than the day before. Obviously, the flu has made itself felt again. The more I woke up, the worse the pain became. Since sleep was out of the question, and I had a whole hour to spare, I decided to take another warm bath. I sat down on the bed, lowered my legs to the floor and stood up.

The pain became much stronger - now it throbbed monotonously deep at the base of the spine. Trying not to wake Holly, I tiptoed across the hall toward the bathroom.

I turned on the water and sank into the bath, confident that the warmth would bring immediate relief. But in vain. By the time the bathtub was half full, I knew I had made a mistake. Not only did I feel worse, my back hurt so bad that I was afraid I would have to call Holly to get out of the bath.

Pondering the comedy of the situation, I reached for the towel hanging from the rack directly above me. Having moved it so as not to tear the hanger out of the wall, I began to smoothly pull myself up.

A new blow of pain pierced my back - I even gasped. It definitely wasn't the flu. But then what? After getting out of the slippery bath and throwing on a red plush robe, I slowly walked back to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. The body was already wet from cold sweat.

Holly stirred and rolled over.

- What's happened? What time is it now?

“I don’t know,” I said. - Back. Hurts a lot.

Holly started rubbing my back. Oddly enough, I felt a little better. Doctors, as a rule, really don’t like getting sick, and I’m no exception. At some point I decided that the pain - whatever was causing it - had finally begun to subside. However, by 6:30 - the time I usually left for work - I was still in the throes of hell and was essentially paralyzed.

At 7:30 Bond came into our bedroom and asked why I was still at home.

- What's happened?

“Your father isn’t feeling very well, honey,” Holly said.

I was still lying on the bed, my head on the pillow. Bond came over and began to gently massage my temples.

His touch felt like lightning had pierced my head—an even worse pain than my back. I screamed. Bond, not expecting such a reaction, jumped back.

“It’s okay,” Holly said, although her face said otherwise. - You have nothing to do with it. Dad has a terrible headache.

Then she said, more to herself than to me:

“I’m wondering if I should call an ambulance.”

If there's one thing doctors hate more than being sick, it's lying in the emergency room as an emergency patient. I vividly imagined the arrival of the ambulance team - how they filled the whole house, asked endless questions, took me to the hospital and forced me to fill out a bunch of papers... I thought that soon I would feel better and there was no need to call the ambulance for trifles.

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “It’s bad now, but it looks like it’ll pass soon.” Better help Bond get ready for school.

- Eben, I think...

“Everything will be fine,” I interrupted my wife, without lifting my face from the pillow. I was still paralyzed by pain. – Seriously, don't call 911. I'm not that sick. It's just a muscle spasm in the lower back, and a headache to boot.

Reluctantly, Holly led Bond downstairs. She fed him breakfast, and he went to see a friend with whom he was supposed to go to school. As soon as the front door closed behind him, it occurred to me that if I was seriously ill and ended up in the hospital, we would not see each other in the evening. I gathered my strength and hoarsely shouted after him: “ Have a good day at school, Bond."

A new blow of pain pierced my back - I even gasped. It definitely wasn't the flu. But then what?

By the time Holly came upstairs to check on my well-being, I had already fallen into unconsciousness. She thought that I had dozed off, decided not to disturb me and went downstairs to call my colleagues in the hope of finding out what could have happened to me.

Two hours later, Holly, thinking I had had enough rest, came back to check on me. Pushing open the bedroom door, she looked inside, and it seemed to her that I was lying as I was lying. But, taking a closer look, she noticed that my body was no longer relaxed, but tense as a board. She turned on the light and saw that I was twitching wildly, my lower jaw was unnaturally protruding forward, and my eyes were open and rolled up.

- Eben, say something! Holly screamed. When I didn't answer, she dialed 911. Less than ten minutes later, the ambulance arrived and they quickly loaded me into the car and took me to Lynchburg General Hospital.

If I had been conscious, I would have told Holly what happened to me in those terrible moments while she was waiting for an ambulance: a violent epileptic seizure, caused, no doubt, by some very strong effect on the brain.

But of course I couldn't do that.

For the next seven days I was only a body. I don’t remember what happened in this world while I was unconscious, and I can only retell it from other people’s words. My mind, my spirit—whatever you want to call the central, human part of me—all of it was gone.

Attention! This is an introductory fragment of the book.

If you liked the beginning of the book, then full version can be purchased from our partner - distributor of legal content, LLC liters.

In this book, Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon with 25 years of experience, a professor who taught at Harvard Medical School and other major American universities, shares with the reader his impressions of his journey to the next world. His case is unique. Stricken by a sudden and unexplained form of bacterial meningitis, he miraculously recovered after a seven-day coma. A highly educated physician with extensive practical experience, who previously not only did not believe in the afterlife, but also did not allow the thought of it, experienced the movement of his “I” into higher worlds and encountered such amazing phenomena and revelations there that, returning to earthly life, he considered it his duty as a scientist and healer to tell the whole world about them.

Prologue 1

Chapter 1. Pain 3

Chapter 2. Hospital 4

Chapter 3. Out of Nowhere 5

Chapter 4. Eben IV 5

Chapter 5. Other world 6

Chapter 6. Anchor of Life 6

Chapter 7. Flowing melody and gate 7

Chapter 8. Israel 8

Chapter 9. Radiant Focus 8

Chapter 10. The only important thing 9

Chapter 11. The end of the downward spiral 10

Chapter 12. Radiant Focus 12

Chapter 13. Wednesday 13

Chapter 14. A special type of clinical death 13

Chapter 15. The Gift of Memory Loss 13

Chapter 16. Well 15

Chapter 17. Status No. 1 15

Chapter 18. Forget and remember 16

Chapter 19. Nowhere to hide 16

Chapter 20. Completion 16

Chapter 21. Rainbow 17

Chapter 22 Six faces 17

Chapter 23. last night. First morning 18

Chapter 24. Return 18

Chapter 25. Not here yet 19

Chapter 26. Spreading the news 19

Chapter 27. Returning home 19

Chapter 28. Superreality 20

Chapter 29. Common Experience 20

Chapter 30. Return from death 21

Chapter 31. Three camps 21

Chapter 32. Visiting Church 23

Chapter 33. The Mystery of Consciousness 23

Chapter 34: Crucial Dilemma 25

Chapter 35. Photograph 25

Applications 26

Bibliography 27

Notes 28

Eben Alexander
Proof of Heaven

Prologue

A person must see things as they are, and not as he wants to see them.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

Three, two, one... March!

But I didn't have to do that.

Eben Alexander - Proof of Heaven. The true story of a neurosurgeon's journey to the afterlife. Proof of Heaven. Real experience of a neurosurgeonText Evidence of Paradise Eben Alexander

Eben Alexander Proof of heaven. The true story of a neurosurgeon's journey to the afterlife

Prologue

Chapter 1 Pain

Eben Alexander Proof of Heaven

Prologue

Eben Alexander
Proof of heaven. The true story of a neurosurgeon's journey to the afterlife

Chapter 1
Pain

Eben Alexander
Proof of Heaven