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| Dante's Heaven (by Gustave Dore) |
can afford to vacation anywhere on Earth. However, he instead claims to have "vacationed" in Heaven
during a week-long coma.
According to ABC News, Alexander contracted a severe E. coli meningitis infection approximately four years ago. This plunged him into a state in which his "entire
cortex – the parts of the brain that give us consciousness, thought, memory and understanding – was not functioning." When medical staff would shine a flashlight into his eyes, it was "just like no one was there."
In some ways, that may have been the case. Although
Alexander's body remained alive in the hospital bed, only the most primitive parts of his brain seemed responsive. Nevertheless, Alexander remembers being "in a dark, murky environment… for a very long time…" During this experience, he had no bodily awareness or language. After what seemed like years, he was then "rescued by this beautiful, spinning, white light" that had
"an incredibly beautiful melody with it that opened up into a bright valley…"
Alexander further described this valley - which he now calls "Heaven" – as an "incredible, rich, ultra-real world of indescribable
complexity."
As if all this weren't amazing enough, Alexander then recalls soaring across time and space on the wings of a
butterfly. With him
was a beautiful young woman who telepathically communicated a message of unconditional love. God was vastly
present as love, and manifested as "an orb of brilliant light." After Alexander regained full physical consciousness here on Earth, he was shown a picture of a biological sister that he had never before met or seen. He then
recognized her as the woman he had met while in "Heaven."
Although some have theorized that this "vacation" was instead a dream, hallucination, or confabulation -
neuroscientist Alexander insists that a non-functioning cortex (such as his during the coma) would not have
allowed for those types of cortex-oriented experiences. Although he himself was a former skeptic, Alexander is now convinced that consciousness "does not depend on the existence of the brain in the physical
universe." He is also fully convinced that this "vacation"
provided "proof of Heaven."
Resources
http://gma.yahoo.com/heaven-real-saw-scientist-says-183522717--abc-news-health.html
Copyright October 27, 2012 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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