As a neurosurgeon raised in a scientific household, Dr. Eben Alexander did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences.
“I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.”
That held true until Dr. Alexander’s brain suddenly fell under attack from a rare E. coli bacteria. He was in a deep coma for seven days and his “entire cortex—the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human—had shut down.”
He awoke suddenly, eyes wide open, after undergoing a “vivid and completely coherent odyssey” into another realm.
He described meeting beings of an “advanced and higher form” and a sound, like a joyful “glorious chant,” coming from the beings that were producing it.
(READ the featured essay from Newsweek, in the Daily Beast)