Barbara’s Pick:
April 2014
Proof of Heaven
Eben Alexander, MD, Published 2012
I am always looking for a good read, so I tend to linger in the book section of Costco to see what’s new. My tastes are usually historical fiction or biography, but I recalled that Eben Alexander’s “Proof of Heaven” was on my book group’s “possible” list, so I picked it up. It was especially appealing because it’s relatively short, only 208 pages.
In neurosurgeon Alexander’s memoir, he takes on the discord between the worlds of science and spirituality. Part medical mystery and part spiritual experience, the book chronicles Alexander falling ill to bacterial meningitis and being in a coma for 7 days. By all rights he should not have lived, much less fully recover. Interspersed with chronological detail of the week he was unconscious, he vividly describes his near death experience (NDE) and eventual journey back to the living.
Alexander admits he was not a religious person prior to the NDE, so his experience while in the coma was surprising to him. He feels that he was chosen to live through the NDE in order to explain its authenticity; he has studied the brain throughout his career, so he is able to skillfully rebut the scientific claims that he had been hallucinating in his coma.
You don’t have to be a believer or a science nerd to enjoy this book. It’s made for discussion since it seems to strike everyone differently.