Dr Eben Alexander - Neurosurgeon

Eben Alexander attended Phillips Exeter Academy (class of 1972), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (A.B., 1975), and the Duke University School of Medicine (M.D., 1980).
Alexander was an Intern in General Surgery at Duke University Medical Center, a resident at Duke, Newcastle (U.K.) General Hospital. He was a resident and research fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and is certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery and the American College of Surgeons (F.A.C.S.).

He has taught at Duke University Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the University of Virginia Medical School.
He has had hospital appointments at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and Lynchburg (Virginia) General Hospital-CentraHealth. He is currently an attending neurosurgeon.
Alexander is a member of the American Medical Association and various other professional societies. He has been on the editorial boards of various journals.

A Harvard neurosurgeon describes what he says was a near-death experience in his latest book -- and there are skeptics.

Eben Alexander's quick trip to heaven started with a headache.

It was November 2008 and a rare bacterial meningitis was fast on its way to shutting down the University of Virginia neurosurgeon's neocortex -- the part of the brain that deals with sensory perception and conscious thought.

"For seven days, I lay in a deep coma," he recalled. Yet at the same time, Alexander "journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe, a dimension I'd never dreamed existed."

There he found "big, puffy, pink-white" clouds against a "deep, black-blue sky" and "flocks of transparent, shimmering beings… quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet."

It turns out Alexander was not alone.

His travelling partner in the afterlife was a young woman with high cheekbones, deep blue eyes and "golden brown tresses" who, amid "millions" of butterflies, spoke to him "without using any words."

"You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever," she told the doctor, a father of two with movie star looks. "You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong."

Alexander recounts his story, and seeks to explain it, in "Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife," to be published in the United States on October 23.

His New York publisher failed to respond to interview requests, but an excerpt from "Proof of Heaven" in Newsweek magazine has stirred the enduring debate about life after death.

Brain Waves Surge Moments Before Death
Inevitably, sceptics wonder if Alexander, who teaches at Harvard Medical School, is going out on a paranormal limb.

"It sounds like he had nothing more than an intense lucid dream," wrote one reader on Newsweek's website. "A personal anecdote is not evidence or proof, as moving as it may be," added another.

The sarcastic New York blog Gawker challenged its readers to spot the difference, if any, between Alexander's portrayal of paradise with published accounts of LSD trips.

But others stood firmly by Alexander, who has previously spoken of his near-death experience on science TV programs and in a lengthy interview last year with Skeptico.com, a science and spirituality blog.

"If there is evidence and proof of an afterlife, this is probably as good as it gets," Catholic Online, a Web-based Roman Catholic news service, wrote approvingly.

http://news.discovery.com/human/life/neurosurgeon-life-after-death-121015.htm

Hmmm, I've heard about this one.   Not sure .............

The "puffy cloud" bit puts me off, sounds so much like a child's vision of heaven.  Plus, he wasn't dead, as such - near-death experiences usually occur when there is no heart beat.  I have friends who have been in comas, and they all have said they had weird, colourful dreams at the time.

But, who knows.  Your consciousness is in a strange place when in a coma, so anything could be possible.

What I like about it is the fact that he and Peter Fenwick are both highly qualified professionals and with very scientific brains kind of fell into this belief and both started doing research.
Do check out Peter Fenwick. I'm not sure if it's because he's British but I find him so easy to understand and the way he explains it all seems to just flow.
He specialises in patients who have had a heart attack and are clinically dead for some time then come back and tell all. He explains that they should have no memory of anything in that time as they were actually dead and not in a coma.
It's fascinating stuff