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

Eben Alexander

Paradise Proof

Man must see things as they are, not as he wants to see them.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

When I was little, I often flew in my dreams. It usually went 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 climbed up. The first few inches of ascent into the air happened spontaneously, without any input on my part. But I soon noticed that the higher I climb, the more the flight depends on me, or rather, on my condition. If I exulted violently and got excited, then I suddenly fell 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 because of these dream flights, I later developed a passionate love for airplanes and rockets - and in general for any aircraft that could again give me a feeling of vast air space. When I happened 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 gliding class given by a guy named Goose Street on Strawberry Hill, a small grassy "flying field" not far from my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I still remember how excited my heart was pounding when I pulled the dark red round handle, which unhooked the cable connecting me to the towing aircraft, and my glider rolled onto the runway. For the first time in my life, I experienced an unforgettable feeling of complete independence and freedom. Most of my friends loved driving wildly for this, but in my opinion, nothing could compare to the thrill of flying at a thousand feet.

In the 1970s, while attending college at the University of North Carolina, I became involved in skydiving. Our team seemed to me something like a secret brotherhood - after all, we had special knowledge that was not available to everyone else. The first jumps were given to me with great difficulty, I was overcome by real fear. But by the twelfth jump, when I stepped through the door of the plane to free-fall more than a thousand feet before opening my parachute (it was my first skydive), I already felt confident. In college, I made 365 parachute jumps and flew more than three and a half hours in free fall, performing aerial acrobatic maneuvers with twenty-five comrades. Although I stopped jumping in 1976, I continued to have joyful and very vivid dreams about skydiving.

Most of all I liked to jump in the late afternoon, when the sun began to decline to the horizon. It is difficult to describe my feelings during such jumps: it seemed to me that I was getting closer and closer to that which was impossible to define, but which I passionately longed for. This mysterious "something" was not an ecstatic feeling of complete loneliness, because usually we 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 more delighted I was.

On a beautiful fall day in 1975, the guys from the University of North Carolina and a few friends from the Parachute Training Center gathered to practice group jumping with the construction of figures. On our penultimate jump from a D-18 Beechcraft light aircraft at 10,500 feet, we made a snowflake of ten people. We managed to assemble into this figure before the 7,000 feet mark, that is, we enjoyed flying in this figure for eighteen seconds, falling into a gap between the huge clouds of high clouds, after which, at an altitude of 3,500 feet, we unclenched our hands, deviated from each other and opened our parachutes.

By the time we landed, the sun was already very low, above the ground itself. But we quickly climbed into another plane and took off again, so that we managed to capture the last rays of the sun and make another jump before it was completely sunset. 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, basic skydiver, because he just needs to fly down, while the rest of the team has to maneuver in the air to get to him and grapple with him. Nevertheless, both beginners rejoiced at the difficult test, as did we, already experienced skydivers: after all, having trained young guys, later we could make jumps with even more complex figures together with them.

Of a group of six people who were to represent a star over the runway of a small airfield located near the town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, I had to be the last to jump. In front of me was a guy named Chuck. He had extensive experience in aerial group acrobatics. At 7,500 feet we were still in the sun, but the streetlights were already gleaming below. I've always loved twilight jumping and this one promised 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 fast. I decided to dive into the air, as if into the sea, upside down and in this position fly for the first seven seconds. This would allow me to fall almost a hundred miles an hour faster than my comrades, and be on the same level with them as soon as they began to build a star.

Usually during such jumps, having descended to a height of 3500 feet, all skydivers disengage their hands and disperse as far apart as possible. Then everyone waves their arms to signal that they are ready to open their parachute, looks up to make sure no one is above them, and only then pulls on the lanyard.

Three, two, one... March!

One by one, the four paratroopers left the plane, followed by Chuck and me. Flying upside down and picking up speed in free fall, I exulted that for the second time that day I saw the sunset. As I approached the team, I was about to brake hard in the air, throwing my arms out to the sides - we had suits with wings made of fabric from the wrists to the hips, which created a powerful resistance, fully opening at high speed.

But I didn't have to.

Falling vertically in the direction of the figure, I noticed that one of the guys was approaching it quite quickly. I don't know, maybe it was the rapid descent into the narrow gap between the clouds that frightened him, reminding him that he was rushing at a speed of two hundred feet per second towards a giant planet, hardly visible in the gathering darkness. Somehow, instead of slowly joining the group, he swooped down on her. And the five remaining paratroopers tumbled randomly in the air. Plus, they were too close to each other.

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Eben Alexander
Paradise proof. The true story of a neurosurgeon's journey to the afterlife

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

Prologue

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

Albert Einstein

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

Usually it happened like this: I was standing in the courtyard, looking at the stars, and suddenly the wind picked me up and carried me up. It was natural to get off the ground, but the higher I climbed, the more the flight depended on me. If I was overexcited, I surrendered too fully to the sensations, then I flopped to the ground with a swing. But if I managed to keep calm and cool, I took off faster and faster - straight into the starry sky.

Perhaps my love for parachutes, rockets and airplanes grew out of these dreams - everything that could take me back to the transcendental world.

When my family and I flew somewhere on an airplane, I did not come off the window from takeoff to landing. In the summer of 1968, when I was fourteen, I spent all the money I earned mowing lawns on gliding lessons. I was taught by a guy named Goose Street, and our classes were in Strawberry Hill, a little grassy "aerodrome" west of Winston-Salem, the town where I grew up. I still remember my heart pounding as I pulled the big red handle, dropped the tow rope that tied 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 have experienced this feeling while driving, but 300 meters above the ground, it feels a hundred times more intense.

In 1970, while still in college, I joined the skydiving team at the University of North Carolina. It was like a secret brotherhood - a group of people who are doing something exceptional and magical. The first time I jumped, I was terrified to the point of trembling, and the second time I was even more scared. Only on the twelfth jump, when I stepped through the door of the plane and flew more than three hundred meters before the parachute opened (my first jump with a ten-second delay), did I feel in my native element. By the time I graduated from college, I had three hundred and sixty-five jumps and nearly four hours of freefall to my credit. And although I stopped jumping in 1976, I still - clearly, as if in reality - dreamed of long jumps, and it was wonderful.

The best jumps were made in the late afternoon, when the sun was low on the horizon. It is difficult to describe what I felt at the same time: a feeling of closeness to something that I could not really name, but which I always lacked. And it's not about solitude - our jumps had nothing to do with loneliness. We jumped five, six, and sometimes ten or twelve people at a time, building figures in free fall. How more group and the more complex the figure, the more interesting.

One fine autumn day in 1975, my university team and I gathered at our friend's skydiving center to practice group jumps. Having worked hard, we finally jumped out of the Beechcraft D-18 at an altitude of three kilometers and made a "snowflake" of ten people. We managed to connect into a perfect figure and fly like this for more than two kilometers, fully enjoying an eighteen-second free fall in a deep crevice between two tall cumulus clouds. Then, at an altitude of one kilometer, we dispersed and dispersed along our trajectories to open our parachutes.

By the time we landed, it was already dark. 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 the second sunset jump. This time two newcomers jumped with us - it was their first attempt to participate in the construction of the figure. They had to join the figure from the outside, and not be 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 skydivers, because we created a team, shared our experience with those with whom we could make even bigger figures in the future.

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

- Three, two, one ... 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 line up. For seven seconds I was head 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 upside-down flight, almost reaching critical speed, I smiled as I watched the sunset for the second time that day. As we approached the others, I planned to use "air brakes" - fabric "wings" that stretched from our wrists to our hips and sharply slowed our fall if they were deployed at high speed. I spread my arms out to the sides, loosening my wide sleeves and slowing down in the air current.

However, something went wrong.

Flying up to our "star", I saw that one of the newcomers accelerated too much. Maybe the fall between the clouds had 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 signal with his hand as a sign of readiness to open the parachute, looks up to make sure that there is no one above him, and only then pulls the lanyard.

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

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

I looked around and was relieved - the disoriented paratroopers were moving away from each other, so that the deadly pile was little by little dispersed.

However, to my surprise, I saw that Chuck was walking towards me and stopped 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, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind when a bright pilot chute flew out of Chuck's backpack. It caught an air current rushing past at almost two hundred kilometers an hour and fired straight at me, pulling the main dome with it.

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

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

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

Sf has come face to face with the world of consciousness, which exists absolutely 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 in a vertical jump, slightly bending my legs. This position gave me acceleration, and the bend provided the body 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 drop.

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

And yet ... I managed to do it, and we both landed normally. My brain, being in a desperate situation, for a moment seemed to have gained superpower.

How did I do it? During my more than twenty year career as a neurosurgeon, as I have studied, observed, and operated on the brain, I have had many opportunities to explore this issue. 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 looked for much deeper, but I had to go through a complete metamorphosis of my life and worldview in order to see it. My book is about the events that changed my mind and convinced me that, no matter how great the mechanism of our brain, it did not save my life that day. What came into play the moment Chuck's parachute began to open was another, deeper part of me. The part that can move so fast because it is not tied to time like the brain and body.

In fact, it was she who made me yearn for the sky so much as a child. This 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 in it.

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

I am a neurosurgeon. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976 with a degree in chemistry, and in 1980 he received his MD from Duke University School of Medicine. During my eleven years of study and residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital and at 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 did my postgraduate studies in cerebrovascular neurosurgery in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, after which I worked as an associate professor of surgery with a specialization in neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School for fifteen years. Over the years I have operated on countless patients, many of whom were in serious and critical condition.

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

In a word, I devoted myself to science. Applying the tools of modern medicine to treat people, learning more and more about the work of the human brain and body - that was my life calling. I was unspeakably happy to have found him. But no less than work, I loved my family - my wife and two glorious 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 VIEW OF A CARING GOD WHO WATCHES THE UNIVERSE AND ALL THINGS IN IT.

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

When your brain ceases to exist, you also do not exist. As a neurosurgeon, I have heard many stories of people who have had amazing experiences, usually after cardiac arrest, traveling to mysterious, wondrous places, talking to dead relatives, even meeting God himself.

Amazing things, no one argues, but they are all, in my opinion, the fruit of fantasy. What causes these otherworldly experiences in people? I do not know, but I know that all visions come from the brain, all consciousness depends on it. If the brain does not work, there is no consciousness.

Because the brain is a machine that produces consciousness in the first place. When a car breaks down, consciousness stops. With the infinite complexity and mystery of the processes occurring in the brain, the whole essence of his work comes down to this. Pull the plug out of the socket and the TV will stop. A curtain. It doesn't matter if you enjoyed the show.

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

While I was in a coma, not only was my brain not working properly, it was not working at all. I now believe that is why the coma I fell into was so deep. In many cases, clinical death occurs when a person's heart stops. Then the cerebral cortex is 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 generally out of work. And then I came face to face with the world of consciousness, which exists absolutely independently of the limitations of the physical brain.

I appreciate my life more than ever because now I see it in its true light.

My case is, in a sense, a “perfect storm” 1
The perfect storm is an English idiom 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 converged so that it could not be worse. As a practicing neurosurgeon with many years of research and operating experience, I had more possibilities not only to assess the likely consequences of the disease, but also to penetrate into the deeper meaning of what happened to me.

This meaning is terribly difficult to describe. The 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 that exists 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 appreciate my current life, no, now I appreciate it more than ever. It's because now I see her in her true light.

Earthly life is not meaningless at all, but we do not see it from the inside - 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. But it will not be easy to do this, because it is very difficult to comprehend the reality on the other side of death. And besides, I can't shout about her from the roof. However, my conclusions are based on medical analysis of experience gained and on the most advanced scientific concepts of the brain and consciousness. Once I realized the truth about my journey, I knew I had to tell about it. Doing it properly has become the main task of my life.

This does not mean that I left medicine and neurosurgery. But now that I have been privileged to understand that our life does not end with the death of the body or the brain, I see my duty, my calling, to tell about what I saw outside the body and outside this world. I'm especially eager to get my story across to people who may have heard stories like this before and would like to believe them, but can't.

It is to such people that I primarily address this book. What I have to tell you is as important as the stories of others, and they are all true.

Chapter 1
Pain

I opened my eyes. The red-lit clock on my bedside table read 4:30 am—I usually wake up an hour late, since it only takes seventeen minutes from our home in Lynchburg to the Charlottesville Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation. 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 prior to that, I had spent almost twenty years in academic neurosurgery in Greater Boston.

Holly and I met in October 1977, two years out of college. Holly improved in fine arts and I went to medical school. She was then dating Vic, my roommate. Once we agreed to meet with him, 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 at all necessary to take Vik with her.

We finally agreed on our first real date. We were driving to a party in Charlotte - it's a two and a half hour drive one way. Holly had laryngitis, so 99% of the time I had to speak for two. It was easy.

We married in June 1980 in Windsor, North Carolina at St. Thomas Episcopal Church and moved into the Royal Oaks apartments in Durham, where I trained in surgery at Duke. There was nothing royal about this place, and I don't remember a single oak 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 gnat season in the Carolinas, and our tent didn't offer much protection from this scourge. However, this did not spoil our enjoyment. One evening, while swimming in the shallows of Ocracoke, I figured out how to catch blue crabs that ran up from under my feet. We caught a mountain of them, dragged them to the Pony Island Motel where our friends lived, and grilled them. There were enough crabs for everyone.

Despite the austerity regime, we soon found ourselves firmly stranded. One day we got the idea to play bingo with our best friends Bill and Patti Wilson. Bill played bingo every Thursday for ten years every summer and never won. Holly had never played bingo before. Call it rookie luck or providence, but she won two hundred dollars! At that time, for us it was like five thousand. This money covered the cost of our trip, and we became much calmer.

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

I worked for fifteen years at Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Womens Hospital, and these were Good times. Our family cherishes the memories of those years spent in Greater Boston. But in 2005, Holly and I decided it was time to return to the South. We wanted to be closer to our relatives, and for me it 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 that was more familiar to us, southerners.

But back to the main story. I woke up abruptly and just lay there for a while, languidly trying to figure out what had woken me up. Yesterday was Sunday - clear, sunny and frosty, a classic late autumn in Virginia. Holly and I and ten-year-old Bond went to barbecues at the neighbors. In the evening we talked on the phone with Eben IV - he was twenty, and he studied at the University of Delaware. The only annoyance is a mild flu, from which we have not quite recovered from last week. Before going to bed, my back 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 in me.

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

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

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

Reflecting on the comedy of the situation, I reached for a towel hanging from a hanger right above me. Sliding 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? Climbing out of the slippery bathtub and putting on a plush red bathrobe, I slowly made my way back to the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed. The body was already wet with cold sweat.

Holly stirred and rolled over onto her other side.

- 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 do not like to get sick, and I am no exception. At some point, I decided that the pain - whatever its cause - was finally starting to subside. However, by 6:30 am - the time I usually left for work - I was still in the throes of hell and was actually 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 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 sent lightning through my head, worse pain than my back. I screamed. Not expecting such a reaction, Bond jumped back.

“It's all right,” Holly said, though her face was different. - You're not here. Dad has a terrible headache.

Then she said, speaking more to herself than to me:

I'm thinking about calling an ambulance.

If there's one thing doctors hate even more than getting sick, it's lying in the ER as an ambulance. I vividly imagined the arrival of the ambulance crew - how they fill the whole house, asking endless questions, taking me to the hospital and forcing me to fill out a bunch of papers ... I thought that soon I would feel better and I shouldn’t call an ambulance for nothing.

“No, it's all right,” I said. “Now it’s bad, but it looks like everything will pass soon. Better help Bond get ready for school.

Eben, I think...

“Everything will be fine,” I interrupted my wife, not taking my face off the pillow. I was still paralyzed with pain. “Seriously, don't call 911. I'm not that sick. It's just a muscle spasm in the lower back, plus a headache to boot.

Reluctantly, Holly led Bond downstairs. She fed him breakfast, and he went to 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 still ended up in the hospital, we would not see each other in the evening. I gathered my strength and hoarsely called 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 me, 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 might have happened to me.

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

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

If I were conscious, I would tell Holly what happened to me during 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 it.

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

Attention! This is an introductory section of the book.

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

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. Struck by a sudden and inexplicable form of bacterial meningitis, he miraculously recovered from a seven-day coma. A highly educated physician with vast practical experience, who before not only did not believe in afterlife, but he did not allow the thought of it, experienced the displacement of his "I" in higher worlds and encountered there such amazing phenomena and revelations 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

Chapter 4. Eben IV 5

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8. Israel 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13 Wednesday 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17 Status #1 15

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22 Six Faces 17

Chapter 23 First morning 18

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Apps 26

Bibliography 27

Notes 28

Eben Alexander
Paradise Proof

Prologue

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

Perhaps partly because of these dream flights, I later developed a passionate love for airplanes and rockets - and in general for any aircraft that could again give me a feeling of vast expanse of air. When I happened 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 gliding class given by a guy named Goose Street on Strawberry Hill, a small grassy "flying field" not far from my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I still remember how excited my heart was pounding when I pulled the dark red round handle, which unhooked the cable connecting me to the towing aircraft, and my glider rolled onto the runway. For the first time in my life, I experienced an unforgettable feeling of complete independence and freedom. Most of my friends loved driving wildly for this, but in my opinion, nothing could compare to the thrill of flying at a thousand feet.

Three, two, one... March!

But I didn't have to.

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. Struck by a sudden and inexplicable form of bacterial meningitis, he miraculously recovered from a seven-day coma. A highly educated physician with vast practical experience, who before not only did not believe in an afterlife, but also did not allow the thought of it, experienced the transfer of his "I" to the higher worlds and encountered there such amazing phenomena and revelations that, returning to earthly life , considered it his duty as a scientist and healer to tell the whole world about them.

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The Freshest! Book receipts today

Restart: How to live many lives
Khakamada Irina Mutsuovna
Science, Education, Psychology, Religion and spirituality, Self-improvement

What to do if everything around has lost its meaning, is annoying or just tired? How to start over when there is no strength, inspiration and it seems that everything went wrong? Irina Khakamada offers her knowledge and experience. She talks about losses and gains, about motivation and energy, about how to turn on the “reset” button and not be afraid to start from scratch.

The purpose of this book is to help you clear your mind of past, negative experiences, turn on your intuition to the maximum and tune in to cool, dramatic, bold changes.

After all, each of us can live many exciting lives, you just need to decide.
Pot of gold
Stevens James
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James Stevens (1880–1950) was an Irish prose writer, poet and BBC radio host, a classic of 20th-century Irish literature, an expert and popularizer of the medieval Irish language tradition. This active participant in the Irish Renaissance gave us five novels, three author's collections of legends, a scattering of small prose and incredibly diverse poetry. Stevens is a bright and memorable star in the constellation of Irish modernism and ironic tradition with a strong Irish flair. In 2018, in the Hidden Gold of the 20th Century project, his collection Irish Wonderful Tales (1920) was released; readers immediately fell in love with it - both those who are well versed in the Irish literary universe, and those who, thanks to this collection, have just started with it meet. In 2019, we decided to present our audience with Stevens' most famous work, a novel that has become the writer's calling card and forever established his reputation in the world of Western literature.

From the collection "Five New Poems" (1913)
Savage. Part 11. Gray cardinal
Usmanov Khaidarali
Fiction, Action fiction, Space fiction, Science fiction

Get into someone else's body? Yes Easy! Survive in a foreign world? Yes, easily! Especially if in a past life you were some kind of scientist or an elite special forces soldier ... But what to do if you remember practically nothing from your past life? Was there an old man nearby who passed away, barely able to get you back on your feet? Yes, and you ended up on a planet where life itself implies ... Death? The adventures of the Savage in the worlds of the Commonwealth continue! Contains foul language.

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Guardian Awakening
Minaeva Anna
Romance novels, Love-fiction novels

The night that became a nightmare for the world turned my life upside down. Now I, who not so long ago learned about my strength, must subdue all four elements. Fortunately, I'm not alone. Yeah, but that probably won't help me much.

But even in the hours when hands drop, there are people who can support. I would never have thought that one of them would be Kane Lacroix. The one who annoys me with his mere existence. Whose motives are incomprehensible to me, but from just a close look it makes me shudder.
Dragon Tradition
Geyarova Naya

I'll introduce myself. Tiana Fat is a witch. In addition, an artefact of the highest category. I signed a contract to teach artefacts in a state beyond the borders. I was promised an amazing career, amazing pay, and my own home. But no one warned me that I would have to work with dragons. And in the dragon academy there is an unspoken, but obligatory tradition. The teacher must get married. And be sure to ... the dragon!

What is this strange custom? Who invented it? Ah, is this a curse cast by an ancient demon? Well, we'll have to disturb him and rewrite this item of dragon traditions.

What do you mean there are no spells to summon a demon? I will call him! Even if you have to retrain as a demonologist.

And don't you dare ask me to marry you, impudent dragons! I'm not here for this.
Witch in a white coat
Lisina Alexandra
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From time immemorial, kikimors, goblin, vampires, werewolves, brownies lived next to people. For a long time we hid our existence, but over time, magic, like human technology, reached such a level that it became unprofitable to hide in forests and dungeons. Now, thanks to spells, we live freely among people: in cities, side by side with you, although you do not suspect it. And we, like everyone else, work, use the Internet. We even have our own police! And, of course, my own medicine, which I, Olga Belova, know firsthand. After all, I am a doctor by profession. Although more often they call me a witch in a white coat.

Reality Without a Veil by Ziad Masri is an amazing book. Albert Einstein wrote that "Reality is just an illusion, albeit a very haunting one," and Ziad Masri did his best to gather evidence for this for you. Each concept in the book builds on the previous one, and all the elements add up to a single picture. Seeing reality as a whole on the energy and spiritual levels, you will be able to take a fresh look at life, the world around, the Universe and the very meaning of being.

An excerpt from the chapter "The Path of the Soul" read below.

The term Near Death Experience (NDE) was coined by Dr. Raymond Moody in a very entertaining book. "Life After Life". According to the definition formulated International Association studies of near-death states, NDE - what a person experiences after an episode of dying; the experience of people who have been declared clinically dead, who have been very close to the state of physical death, or who have been in a situation where death is very likely or seems inevitable. Survivors of such experiences often claim that the term near death incorrect because it was state of death, and not just close to it, and indeed, many of them were declared clinically dead by doctors.

There are literally millions of people around the world who have had verified near-death experiences, including such eminent personalities as Carl Jung and George Lucas, so we have a vast base of empirical data from which certain conclusions can be drawn. A huge number of reports of NDE have come from children who always talk about what they see in the most ingenuous and open-minded way possible.

In the vast majority of cases, near-death experiences are accompanied by feelings of love, joy, peace, and bliss. Only a relatively small number of people report negative experiences associated with feelings of fear. At the same time, NDEs are invariably characterized as super-real - even more real than earthly life.

But what is most interesting is that millions of testimonials about near-death experiences and reports of experiences in a state of hypnosis, as it turns out, have a lot in common. In both cases, we are talking about an out-of-body state, full awareness (consciousness, however, stays outside the body, and sometimes even looks at it from above), a light tunnel (that is, a “wormhole” leading to another dimension), meeting loved ones who have passed away, connecting with loving spiritual beings, recapitulating life, incredibly beautiful landscapes, and an overwhelming sense of life's purpose and universal knowledge.

Despite the obvious transformative effect that such experiences usually have on people, and the overwhelming physical evidence of being out of the body in a state of complete loss of consciousness or even near-death experience (in particular, near-death experiences are aware of what doctors, nurses and relatives, even if they were in a different room; or spirit guides show them future events that later come true exactly), most doctors are still skeptical of NDEs, considering them to be hallucinations produced by the brain in a temporary traumatic state of near-death. However, definitive evidence that these experiences have Not hallucinatory character, according to Dr. Eben Alexander, who documented his own NDEs in an incredible book "Proof of Paradise. Real experience of a neurosurgeon.

The neurosurgeon Alexander, before having a near-death experience himself, was a staunch skeptic. Many of his patients reported deep NDEs, but he kept dismissing their experiences as hallucinosis. But the doctor had to drastically change his views when, having contracted a rare virus, he fell into a coma for several days. This case is interesting and stands out among others in that this virus affected the brain, as a result of which Alexander completely failed this organ, and the idle brain is not even able to create hallucinations. Therefore, if consciousness were indeed a product of brain activity, as many neurosurgeons believe, then in the situation of Dr. Alexander any experiences would be completely excluded. His brain could not produce thoughts or emotions, and, of course, all the electrical activity of the central nervous system, which was monitored throughout the week of coma, showed absolutely nothing. And yet what he experienced was not "nothing" at all.

Instead of seeing and feeling nothing, the doctor became a participant in extremely amazing events. He visited the next world and experienced incredible experiences - despite the fact that his brain was completely turned off. He couldn't imagine it all or see it in a dream because his brain, infected with a rare virus, was inactive. Since, from the point of view of science, this circumstance excludes all hallucinations, as well as suggestion and imagination, the only conclusion follows from this: Dr. Alexander was out of the body as pure consciousness and the world that he talks about, and everything that he saw, are real by 100%.

The message of the scientist, taking into account the facts presented by him, is extremely fascinating and revolutionary scientifically. It unequivocally proves not only that we never lose consciousness, but also that awareness can take on a variety of unique forms (Alexander writes that he was just a point of awareness in different time periods, devoid of ideas about himself and personal identity, which confirms scientific position, considered by us earlier: everything in the universe endowed with awareness). In addition, it indicates the existence of a completely real world which, in the most literal sense, is Paradise.

The story of Dr. Alexander is especially interesting in that, being a scientific confirmation of the near-death experiences of other people and the research of hypnotherapists such as Newton, it describes not just the spheres of life-between-lives, but, apparently, the real paradise - a perfect world of supreme beauty. - and allows us to look into the amazing realm beyond physical existence.