Mystery of Consciousness

The consciousness is not produced by or dependent on the brain. 

The Theosophists said so - because it is so.

Now Eben Alexander, M.D., a distinguished neurosurgeon who spent much of his career on the Harvard medical faculty (and who has authored 150 publications and delivered over 200 papers) got 

near-death-experience in 2008 at age 54 while in a seven-day coma when he battled the rarest of illnesses – bacterial meningitis caused by E. coli.

"The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed,"

says Alexander in Newsweek.

During his coma, the neo-cortex of Dr. Alexander's brain, which "is responsible for memory, language, emotion, visual and auditory awareness, and logic," shut down completely, making conscious experience, he says, impossible. 

Nevertheless, inexplicably, he began a spiritual journey that took him to three destinations. The first was a dark, Jello-O like, red-brown "muck," a mud pool with a rhythmic, pounding sound, that he calls "the Realm of the Earthworm's Eye." 

The second, which he calls the Gateway, featured a bright light, captivating music and song, and an angel guide, a beautiful woman with high cheekbones, blue eyes, and golden-brown hair. 

Here, with his companion, he found himself in clouds flying over trees, fields, streams, waterfalls, and people. 

The third, which he calls the Core, was the culmination of his journey. In the Core, which he describes as an orb-like ball of light, he encountered God, the all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing Creator, who gave him this message:

"God loves him and all others unconditionally;

Evil is necessary on earth because without it human free will and human growth are impossible - and

Love will triumph over evil."

Remarkably, after his visit to the spiritual world, Dr. Alexander's triple intravenous antibiotics defeated the E. coli and, slowly he awoke from the coma-

He find his earthly self, which had been absent during his journey, and eventually resumed his professional practice. 

But he was now a changed person with an urgent aim: to share his journey with others.

We are "spiritual beings currently inhabiting our evolutionarily developed mortal brains and bodies," we get closer to our genuine spiritual selves by manifesting love and compassion on earth, and the materialistic worldview embraced by many scientists is mistaken.

He invites skeptics near and far to do what he failed to do before his transformative journey, that is, to keep an open mind and to investigate the voluminous and ever-growing body of research on near-death and out-of-body experience. 

Here comes a book, Eben Alexander: Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, 2021.