Dr Eben Alexander, a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon, fell into a coma for
seven days in 2008 after contracting meningitis.
During his illness Dr Alexander says that the part of his brain which
controls human thought and emotion "shut down" and that he then experienced
"something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in
consciousness after death." In an essay for American magazine Newsweek, which he
wrote to promote his book Proof of Heaven, Dr Alexander says he was met by a
beautiful blue-eyed woman in a "place of clouds, big fluffy pink-white ones" and
"shimmering beings".
He continues: "Birds? Angels? These words registered later, when I was
writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the
beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known
on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms." The doctor adds that a
"huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if
the winged beings were producing it. the sound was palpable and almost material,
like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn't get you wet."
Dr Alexander says he had heard stories from patients who spoke of outer body
experiences but had disregarded them as "wishful thinking" but has reconsidered
his opinion following his own experience.
He added: "I know full well how extraordinary, how frankly unbelievable, all
this sounds. Had someone even a doctor told me a story like this in the old
days, I would have been quite certain that they were under the spell of some
delusion.
