Understanding
Proof of Heaven

ABOUT THE BOOK

In November of 2008, neurosurgeon Eben Alexander contracted an extremely rare case of Escherichia coli bacterial meningitis, a condition that few victims survive. Against incredible odds, Alexander fully recovered from his seven-day coma and his raging, brain-destroying infection. Before he regained consciousness, Alexander’s doctor pegged his chance of survival at 3 percent. The odds that he would regain his cognitive abilities and memories were even slimmer. His recovery was astounding, but according to Alexander, what happened to him while he was in the coma was the true miracle. Though his neocortex, the part of the brain that’s responsible for higher-level functioning, was inactive the whole time, his conscious mind experienced rich spiritual worlds that are recounted in great detail in Proof of Heaven.

Prior to his brush with death, Alexander had established himself as a respected neurosurgeon, whose illustrious career had included fifteen years as an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and innumerable publications. He was aware of the stories that near-death experience (NDE) patients told about traveling to other worlds and talking to God, but he firmly believed these experiences to be fantasies. Before his own NDE, he thought that consciousness ended with the death of the brain. Now he is convinced of life after death.

Since its hardcover publication in October 2012 by Simon and Schuster, Proof of Heaven has been widely reviewed and debated around the world. The book has spent approximately six months on the New York Times best-seller list since its publication, and it has been featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine and in dozens of other secular and religious publications.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eben Alexander III was born in 1953 in Charlotte, North Carolina. His adoptive father, Eben Alexander II, was chief of neurosurgery at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His great-grandfather was a prominent Greek scholar who served as President Grover Cleveland’s ambassador to Greece.

Alexander graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975 and from Duke University School of Medicine in 1980. After completing a cerebrovascular fellowship in England, he returned to the United States and spent fifteen years in Boston working and teaching neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Children’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. During his twenty-five-year career, he has authored or coauthored more than one hundred and fifty papers and articles and presented two hundred professional papers around the world.

Prior to his NDE, Alexander was absolutely committed to traditional scientific conventions about consciousness, God, and reality. It was only after he wrote about his remarkable experience that the true meaning and power of his journey became clear to him.

Alexander lives in Lynchburg, Virginia, with his wife Holley. He has two sons, Bond and Eben IV.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

The Upside

Upon publication, Proof of Heaven generated a flood of articles and reviews. While most mainstream reviewers do not deny the authenticity or sincerity of Alexander’s experiences, his extraordinary claims all but guarantee an incredulous reception. This means that even the articles that praise the book in some manner tend to qualify that praise. For example, while Peter Stanford of London’s Guardian appreciates how afterlife accounts help fulfill our human need to understand the nature of life and death, he also says that any attempts to describe the afterlife are futile.

Certain religious publications offer stauncher support for Proof of Heaven. Gordon Houser noted in the Mennonite that Alexander’s account “encouraged” him, but he notes that, in the end, belief is a matter of “faith.” The review concludes that despite Alexander’s credentials, “most nonbelievers . . . will simply deny the truthfulness of his experience.”

Online reviews of the book were overwhelmingly positive, and many reviewers on Amazon.com praised Alexander for validating their own NDEs or beliefs. Other reviewers, including some with scientific backgrounds of their own, like Charles T. Tart, gave the book a qualified thumbs-up, suggesting that people with open minds should “absolutely” consider reading it.

The Downside

Given the unique perspective of its author and the controversial title, Proof of Heaven has provoked controversy across the board. While scientists have deconstructed Alexander’s book, pointing out blatant factual errors, religious leaders have complained that he misinterpreted his experiences or was perhaps duped by sinister forces.

In his Huffington Post review of the book, Victor Stenger, author of God and the Folly of Faith, directly rebuts Alexander’s claim that no scientific explanation can be made for his journey into the afterlife. He calls Alexander’s claim “nothing more than the classic argument from ignorance, which forms the basis of almost all ostensibly scientific arguments for the existence of the supernatural.” Mark Martin’s review in Salon.com is tinged with more cheek, but it still dismisses Alexander’s experience. He writes, “A posthumous future where ‘You have nothing to fear’ . . . sounds like infinite boredom—inhuman and alienating in its contentment.” In a review for the Center for Biblical Spirituality, Donald S. Whitney specifically counters Alexander’s spiritual and religious claims, concluding that Alexander is an “untrustworthy source.”

Some of the more secular readers on Amazon.com similarly dismiss Alexander’s credibility. After an extensive point-by-point rebuttal of Alexander’s scientific claims, Amazon reviewer Paul W. concludes that the book cannot be trusted since it “cloaks its emotional conclusions in pseudoscientific misinterpretations.”

SYNOPSIS

In the first few chapters of the book, Alexander describes how he and his wife, Holley, relocated from Boston to Lynchburg, Virginia, with their two sons, Eben and Bond, returning to their Southern roots. All was going well until he awoke one day in November 2008 with severe spinal pain, which he chose to ignore despite his wife’s pleas to call 911. When he finally arrived in the emergency room, he soon entered into a deep coma.

In one strand of the narrative, Alexander writes of his doctors’ frantic quest to properly diagnose and treat him, the symptoms he was exhibiting, and the potential causes of his condition. In the other, he writes about the rich spiritual worlds his consciousness experienced while his brain was under attack and his neocortex was essentially not functioning.

Alexander’s spiritual body first entered a world of darkness, where he was aware and awake but not cognizant of anything beyond his immediate environment. He calls this primal place the “Realm of the Earthworm’s-Eye View.” After a time, a glowing white being appeared to him in a rush of beautiful music, providing a portal to a world that was beautiful beyond description—a lush green countryside, punctuated by streams and happy children at play. Here, in the “Gateway,” he was joined by a beautiful companion who told him that while he would eventually return to earth, he would first experience things that were beyond his understanding. This companion took Alexander to a vast place of bright darkness, which he calls the “Core,” where he was able to communicate with God. Here he learned about the never-ending vastness of the universe and was given a message of unconditional and individual love from the creator.

During his time in the spiritual realm, Alexander traveled freely between these three places—the Realm of the Earthworm’s-Eye View, the Gateway, and the Core—several times. Time had a different meaning for him, and most of what he learned is impossible to verbalize in any human language. While he was in the spiritual realm, he had no memory of his life on earth, but before he awoke from his coma, he began to regain memories and even see glimpses of familiar faces.

In between the material about his doctors’ quest to save his physical body and these immersive descriptions of his near-death experience, Alexander fills readers in with details about his family history, his issues growing up as an adopted child, and his search to find his birth parents. The reader also learns why Alexander’s condition is unique in the annals of medical literature, why such strong bonds exist among his family members, and why his background as a neurosurgeon makes his out-of-body experience so unique.

The final chapters of the book tackle the validity of Alexander’s NDE and how it compares to others’ experiences, exploring the unique set of circumstances that compelled Alexander to write this book. A detailed discussion of all of the possible scientifically based explanations for his experience is included as an appendix.