In
this second extract from his book The Map Of Heaven, Dr Alexander, who
has taught at Harvard Medical School, reveals many others have also seen
what he described.
A
near-death experience will change your life in more ways than one. It
means you have survived a serious illness or a major accident, for one
thing, and that alone is one of the most significant events imaginable.
But
the aftermath, as you adjust to your radical new perspective, can be
even more significant. For me, it was as if my old world was dead and I
had been reborn into a new one.
Coping with that is hard: how do you replace your old vision of the universe with a new one, without unravelling into chaos?
How do you take that step from one world to another one, without slipping and falling between the two?
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One man had a vision of his father sailing a canoe towards a huddle of loved-ones on a pier as he took his final breaths
So
many people are going through similar versions of what I went through,
and the stories I have heard from other near-death experience witnesses
give me courage every day. They are a constant corroboration of
everything that was revealed to me — how we are loved and cherished much
more than we can imagine, how we have nothing to fear and nothing to
reproach ourselves for.
If
you have never seen yourself as a spiritual person, and perhaps did not
even believe in God, this new dimension to your understanding has an
even greater impact.
A
man named Pascale wrote to tell me about his father, who had a PhD in
astrophysics and was ‘100 per cent scientifically minded’ — in other
words, a complete atheist.
Pascale’s
dad (we’ll call him Pierre) was a heavy drinker. He’d suffered a
succession of emotional blows, and he used hard drink to numb the pain —
so much that his organs started one by one to pack up. Kidneys, liver
and then lungs gave way, and Pierre succumbed to double pneumonia.
He
was not expected to live, but to give his body the best chance of
repairing itself, the doctors placed him in an induced coma.
After
three months in intensive care, he started to come round — and all this
hard-headed scientific man wanted to talk about with his son were his
experiences of heaven.
He
had seen the after-life, just as I did. And he brought back the same
message: there were angel-like beings who loved us more than we could
imagine, and they would help us, if only we would let them.
Pierre
faced a major challenge. He could never drink again. One glass would be
enough to tip him back into alcohol abuse, and the end would be
inevitable.
The stories I have heard from other near-death experience witnesses give me courage every day
Somehow,
he found the strength to beat his demons. For the next four years,
Pierre didn’t touch a drop. But after his initial burst of spiritual
fervour in the hospital, he stopped talking about heaven.
Pascale
sensed that his dad, an intensely shy man, was embarrassed by the
massive contradiction between the atheism he had always preached, and
the heaven he had experienced during his coma. He found it easier to say
nothing.
But
he developed a quirky habit, which seemed to help him in his abstinence
— in all the places where he might be tempted to relapse and have a
drink, Pierre left Post-It notes. Every one was the same, with four
cryptic letters written on it: GaHf.
Pierre would not say what the notes meant. All he would admit was that they helped him.
After
four years, his heart gave out, and Pierre died. His son was deeply
comforted by words his father had said in the hospital: ‘I’m not afraid
of dying any more. I know it’ll be fine.’
After
the funeral, as he collected up the Post-It notes, Pascale had a sudden
insight. He knew what the letters GaHf meant, what his father was
reminding himself . . . ‘Guardian angels. Have faith.’
Not
every experience of heaven, and the change it brings, is so dramatic.
After I first shared my story with others in public, I received a
charming letter from a lady named Jane-Ann, who told me that she
underwent surgery for a brain abcess in 1952, when she was eight years
old, and that for two weeks after the operation she was in a coma.
Not every experience of heaven and the
change is brings is so dramatic as others. One woman recalls feeling an
overwhelming sensation of love at the exact moment her mother died
Her
mother was beside her bed when she awoke, and what Jane-Ann remembers
clearly is the expression of deep concern on that beloved face. Simply
and matter-of-factly, as only a child can, Jane-Ann explained that there
had never been any reason to worry — she had been with her great-aunt
Julie, sitting on her lap and being comforted.
Sixty years later, that image of her great-aunt was one of her clearest memories.
Sometimes,
it is the death of a loved one that induces or inspires a near-death
experience in us. A lady called Jean wrote to tell me what she had
experienced when her mother died, in 1980.
On
a Saturday afternoon, Jean was in her garden. She was due to fly to New
York on the Monday, to visit her mother who was being treated for
cancer in hospital, and who was not expected to live more than six
months.
As
she tended her flowers, Jean was suddenly overwhelmed by ‘a feeling of
an unbelievable amount of love’. It passed through her, like a puff of
air, and left her feeling exalted. As she stood wondering what she had
just felt, the sensation travelled through her again, pervading every
cell in her body.
No
sooner had the feeling faded than it happened a third time. And
suddenly, Jean understood what it meant. Her mother had died, and was
telling her how much she loved her, as she departed this realm and
embarked on her voyage through the next.
The
feeling that Jean had initially thought was simply going through her
had in fact enveloped and encompassed her, as only love can.
Sometimes, it is the death of a loved one that induces or inspires a near-death experience in us
‘The
feeling was like she was hugging me but going right through me. And
every time she did this, I felt this supernatural, unbelievable,
immeasurable amount of love.’
Jean
went to sit by her phone in the house. She knew what would happen next,
and within ten minutes it did: her sister phoned from New York, to tell
her their mother had passed away.
As
she wrote that letter, Jean told me she was crying — tears of joy, not
of sadness. Ever since that moment in the garden, she has felt utterly
safe and loved, confident that she will be reunited with her loved ones
in heaven, and safe in the knowledge that death is nothing to be
feared.
In fact, she confesses, she sometimes feels almost envious when people pass away.
One
of the most extraordinary things about my own glimpse of heaven was
that, back in this world, no one was aware of the transformation that I
was undergoing. All the monitors and sensors and computers could detect
no activity: my brain was flat-lining.
But sometimes, the eyes of those we love can see the change, as a sort of spiritual radiation.
A
man called David experienced exactly that, when his father died. With
his three siblings, he was sitting in a private room at a hospice where
his dad had been for 13 days. They had kept a constant bedside vigil,
and it was plain that the end was near.
At
4am, with the room in darkness except for a single night-light in the
wall, their father took his last breath — and as he did, a speck of
glowing dust seemed to settle on his temple. It was like a pinprick of
gold.
No
light was shining on the old man’s face, yet this particle of dust was
vivid and luminous. As David watched, it began to swell into a pea-sized
orb. Now it was a translucent blue, like the light underneath a candle
flame. White rays sparkled from it.
The
orb lifted, hovered, and then drifted across the room, still
effervescing with sparks, until it disappeared through the ceiling.
David followed it with his eyes, not daring to speak, until it was gone —
and then he turned to one of his sisters. ‘Did you see that?’ he asked.
His sister said: ‘You mean that light that just came out of the side of Dad’s head?’
Dr Eben Alexander was convinced out-of-body experiences were hallucinations until he went into a coma himself
People
ask themselves these questions all the time, when a loved one passes
and something inexplicable, something beyond the purely physical,
occurs. We know what we’ve seen, but we can’t quite bring ourselves to
believe it, without corroboration from someone else: ‘Did you see that?’
Perhaps
the most extraordinary story of a near-death experience was told to me
by John, the son of a war veteran, who believes he accompanied his
father on the first stage of his journey into heaven.
His
dad was a fighter, an ex-prisoner of war who was clinging to life in
his hospice bed despite having suffered a massive pulmonary embolism.
His
breathing was very laboured, and John was kneeling at the bedside,
holding his hand, with his ear close to his father’s chest — when
suddenly, he was thrown into another dimension.
The
scene was more vivid than any dream, he said: it was like being
immersed in a 3D movie. His perspective was airborne, like a helicopter
shot, and he was looking down at a rapid stream, flowing over rocks.
In
the water, clinging on for dear life, was his dad. A golden glow began
to spread across the water, like a celestial spotlight. In the middle of
the light, a white canoe appeared, with a red paddle, floating quite
still on the rushing water.
With
a shout of excitement, his father let go of the rocks and began to swim
for the canoe. Suddenly, he wasn’t a sick old man any more — he was an
athlete, with the strength of a man in his 20s.
He leapt into the canoe, and John felt himself race down, like a camera zooming in, to ride behind his dad’s shoulder.
His
father turned and gave him a look of such love and joy as he had never
seen on his face before. And then the perspective changed again, and
John was high in the sky, watching as the white canoe raced towards a
jetty where dozens of people were waiting and cheering.
He recognised them all — family members, friends and war buddies of his father’s.
As
the canoe docked, he saw his dad stand up and raise the paddle in a
salute, grinning and almost beside himself with delight. Then he leapt
ashore and disappeared into a huddle of embraces and back-slaps.
At that moment, John found himself back at the bedside. His father’s heart had stopped.
‘This
experience was transformative, a gift from my dad I could not repay,’
he wrote to me. ‘I can actually feel myself glowing when I tell this
story!’
New knowledge like this changes us for ever. It must do — that is its purpose. We evolve into someone fresh.
That’s what happened to me after my near-death experience, and to every one of the people in these stories.
Adapted
from The Map Of Heaven: a neurosurgeon explores the mysteries of the
afterlife and the truth about what lies beyond, by Dr Eben Alexander
with Ptolemy Tompkins (Piatkus).
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