A couple weeks after Jack died I listened to Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander. I’m not sure how I found the book, although I think I might have been searching Audible for books on death and dying and it came up on the feed. Alexander, the author, is a neurosurgeon who, after experiencing near death when he succumbed to acute bacterial meningoencephalitis, emerged from a coma “knowing” what happens when one dies. 

That Alexander was trained as a neurosurgeon and was not a believer in God or an afterlife prior to his experience appealed to me. His epiphany derived from a direct experience: he believed one thing, then “died,” and now believed something else. No one knows what happens when we die--we are all alive, and hence cannot know. But if anyone might have a good idea, it seemed to me to be a person who was extremely well-educated in terms of the brain, the home of consciousness, and who also came so close to dying that for a period of time he was, in fact, declared to be dead. 

Alexander’s central premise is that when we die our consciousness does not. In fact, our consciousness travels, for lack of better descriptors, to Heaven. 

Alexander summarizes his near death experience here. (It’s not a long summary.) 

Could it be true that consciousness ultimately exists outside of the brain and outlives the material body? The possibility thrilled(s) me; I felt an incredible joy and peace when I allowed myself to truly entertain it. 

Red flags did fly up. The book is tidy and crafted--packaged for an eager and hopeful audience, and ultimately it made Alexander buckets of money. For this reason I did some research, reasoning the book must have been debunked somewhere, and I was right. The book has many detractors, but I found most impressive an article written by Luke Dittrich in 2013 and published in Esquire. This article takes down Alexander (his person as much as his account) step by painful step, unraveling the beautiful tapestry woven together in Alexander’s autobiographical account. The article was as well-crafted and tidy as Alexander’s book; its structure even mirrors the structure Alexander used to appeal to its audience.

Still, the Esquire article didn’t prevent me from finding the book enlightening. I had been talking to Jack in my thoughts, asking him whether any of Alexander’s experience was true, and when I did talk to Jack, I became flooded with positive thoughts--a warmth and a knowing that freed me from the constant, nagging anxiety about my own mortality that I had been experiencing. It was a great feeling to be freed, and I did not want to let it go. 

I wondered, is this what faith is like? Is this what those with faith feel--why they cling so hopefully and with such dedication to their religion of choice? If so, I now understood why. What a relief to not feel that with every second I’m advancing toward annihilation, that in fact, the time my consciousness has to live and grow is maybe…. infinite! 

Holding this type of faith, I could now see, would free me from my constant anxiety that I wasn’t doing enough to maximize the small amount of time my consciousness has on this planet. The sense that I have failed to do anything of memorable import in my life became less tragic. Who cares? If my consciousness lives on, I don’t have to leave footprints on this earth. I don’t have to be so memorable that the world does not forget I lived, if, in actuality, this life is but a mere blip on the timeline of my existence.

And so, this is where my reading journey began. Maybe Alexander’s experience can be burnt to the ground with a little investigative work on Dittrich’s part. But does that mean that Alexander didn’t experience anything at all? I find a more likely scenario that he woke from that coma knowing something--and knowing he wanted to share what he knew. Certainly his becoming so profoundly ill wasn’t premeditated, and his curiousity about near death experience following his own near death experience makes complete sense. It also makes sense that he wanted to package his experience in a way that his telling of it would make an impact and reach the common public. I don’t blame or shame him for this, but it means that his book cannot become a Bible of sorts, if you know what I mean. (Or maybe that’s exactly what it is...)

Here’s what I did in response to reading Alexander’s book:I read more.

And more.

And more.

I also continued to talk with Jack.

My next entries will continue with what I learned.