Heaven is real, says neurosurgeon who claims to have visited the afterlife

[dissipate]

Dr. Eben Alexander has taught at Harvard Medical School and has earned a strong reputation as a neurosurgeon. And while Alexander says he's long called himself a Christian, he never held deeply religious beliefs or a pronounced faith in the afterlife. But after a week in a coma during the fall of 2008, during which his neocortex ceased to function, Alexander claims he experienced a life-changing visit to the afterlife, specifically heaven.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/heaven-real-says-neurosurgeon-claims-visited-afterlife-213527063.html


Hmm, not sure what to make of this. Did this guy really experience the afterlife or did he just wake up from a coma and decide that he was going to make money off a book and get publicity?

[juggalodarkclow]

relevant - http://www.venganza.org/

[bb113]

"According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent,"

ftfy:

"According to my current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent,"

This guys understanding is pretty limited. He probably experienced the whole thing in the minutes and seconds either entering or leaving the coma, while he was being rebooted.

That said these are probably good things to say to a dying/comatose person:

"You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever."

"You have nothing to fear."

"There is nothing you can do wrong."

[quasarbtc]

Could be for publicity.

Some people claim the consistency of features between these 'afterlife' experiences is too similar to be coincidental. I think that people are often quick to invoke religion..

I will not be reading the book, so I should not comment further other than saying I am not willing to voluntarily undergo an induced coma to potentially have an experience that I can judge for myself.

[dank]

Religion ≠ spirituality.

Life is eternal, you only change forms after death, back to your original state as a soul.

Death is the rebirth of your spirit, it's a beautiful thing.  Though you may never physically see a passed one, in this reality, again, a bond remains between your soul and those who are close to you, after death.

When my Grandma passed away, my cousin, very young at the time (5-7?) picked up the phone, a few days later, and told her Mom that Grandma had called her.  Spiritual happenings are often experiences by kids, as they are young and much closer to the pure, conscious state of mind.

[bb113]

Ah the wisdom of people who don't know anything. One time while very young I was on a camping trip and older kids tricked me into thinking a map to treasure they made was real. I refused to accept I was wrong even after they showed me how to make one. Now that I am older I realize I was right to think that the map they made randomly was actually leading to treasure, it was just a different kind of treasure.

[evolve]

his brain shut down and probably flooded his system with endorphins, dopamine, seratonin, and other hormones. He hallucinated in a similar fashion as when a heavy pscychadelic ( like dmt) is taken.

[dank]

Are you suggesting hallucinations are not real?

[evolve]

Hallucinations, by definition, aren't real. What he experiances was akin to a drug trip.

[dank]

Are you saying this from experience or only by definition?  If I told you I meditated and left my body, would you tell me what I experienced wasn't real, even if I said it was?

[NestEggNessy]

Dank is making a good point. This guy might not of seen heaven in terms of my heaven or your heaven, but he probably saw a "hallucination" of what his heaven is as a defense mechanism to keep his ego intact during such a life or death situation. Although what he saw might not be "real" it is still real because it was real to him and him alone.

[SkRRJyTC]

Are you saying this from experience or only by definition?  If I told you I meditated and left my body, would you tell me what I experienced wasn't real, even if I said it was?

Yes.  It is by definition, not real.

"Hallucinations involve sensing things while awake that appear to be real, but instead have been created by the mind."

You either have to accept that it was a hallucination, or decide that it wasn't a hallucination and was in fact real.

There is no such thing as a 'real hallucination'.

[ElectricMucus]

Those experiences were interpreted as memories during a time where the brain was inactive. This interpretation probably happened during recovery.
So in a sense those experiences didn't actually happen, he just remembers them.

[NestEggNessy]

Are you saying this from experience or only by definition?  If I told you I meditated and left my body, would you tell me what I experienced wasn't real, even if I said it was?

Yes.  It is by definition, not real.

"Hallucinations involve sensing things while awake that appear to be real, but instead have been created by the mind."

You either have to accept that it was a hallucination, or decide that it wasn't a hallucination and was in fact real.

There is no such thing as a 'real hallucination'.

Do you accept that experience of the hallucination was real?

[SkRRJyTC]

Are you saying this from experience or only by definition?  If I told you I meditated and left my body, would you tell me what I experienced wasn't real, even if I said it was?

Yes.  It is by definition, not real.

"Hallucinations involve sensing things while awake that appear to be real, but instead have been created by the mind."

You either have to accept that it was a hallucination, or decide that it wasn't a hallucination and was in fact real.

There is no such thing as a 'real hallucination'.

Do you accept that experience of the hallucination was real?

The experience was really created by the mind.  It existed.

It was not real.

[Atlas]

Dr. Alexander's experience is consistent with similar visions of the afterlife.

[ElectricMucus]

Dr. Alexander's experience is consistent with similar visions of the afterlife.

If god is all-knowing then how do he make an error in enabling certain people a 'preview' of the afterlife?
Shouldn't he know beforehand if a comatose patient would wake up or not?

[NestEggNessy]

Are you saying this from experience or only by definition?  If I told you I meditated and left my body, would you tell me what I experienced wasn't real, even if I said it was?

Yes.  It is by definition, not real.

"Hallucinations involve sensing things while awake that appear to be real, but instead have been created by the mind."

You either have to accept that it was a hallucination, or decide that it wasn't a hallucination and was in fact real.

There is no such thing as a 'real hallucination'.

Do you accept that experience of the hallucination was real?

The experience was really created by the mind.  It existed.

It was not real.

So then youre saying something can exist without being real. With that logic we could infer that heaven exists through his "hallucination" of it. If we want to go down that route then we can say that every experience is created by the mind and therfore all experiences exist but are not real, i.e music, relationships, movies, conversations etc...

[dank]

Everything we see is created by our mind, through different frequencies such as light waves and sound waves.  Our reality is one of infinite.

Mucus, don't think of god in terms of human attributions man gave to describe it, think on a more cosmic scale.

That is accurate, NestEgg.  Life is a illusory reality.

[Atlas]

Dr. Alexander's experience is consistent with similar visions of the afterlife.

If god is all-knowing then how do he make an error in enabling certain people a 'preview' of the afterlife?
Shouldn't he know beforehand if a comatose patient would wake up or not?

I know very little about the Christian idea of god. I wouldn't consider it valid for a second.