Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife (2012) is a memoir by American neurosurgeon Eben Alexander III written after he spent seven days in a coma. The book became a smash hit and a New York Times bestseller.

After contracting a rare form of bacterial meningitis in 2008, Alexander spent seven days in a coma. During this time, Alexander says he had a number of experiences that suggest to him that consciousness exists after death. Though the book is filled with various emotional and philosophical musings, Alexander uses his background as a neurosurgeon to argue that his experiences and the conclusions he drew from them stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Before delving into Alexander's experiences, it is important to discuss the controversy around Alexander's claims and why some doctors have raised serious alarms about what he writes. For example, Alexander repeatedly says that his coma was caused by contracting a rare form of bacterial meningitis. However, according to an exposé in Esquire magazine, the coma was actually medically-induced using large amounts of anesthetic. At various points during the "coma," the doctors would wean Alexander off the anesthetic, resulting in a "delirious but conscious state." It was during these periods, the exposé suggests, that Alexander experienced his visions of the "afterlife." And while it's impossible for them to know Alexander's own subjective experiences, it raises a red flag that Alexander didn't disclose at any point during the book that the coma was medically-induced and that he wasn't completely unconscious for the whole seven days.

Alexander begins with a disclaimer that he never used to believe people's claims of the "afterlife" or a "light at the end of a tunnel." He trusted verifiable science over these subjective experiences. However, that all changed after his experience in a coma. He talks in detail about what happened to him during this seven-day period. For example, Alexander says that after regaining what he perceived as consciousness, he was suspended in a kind of amniotic sac full of gelatin. A “beautiful girl with high cheekbones and deep blue eyes” took his hand and guided him out of the Jell-O sac, lofting him onto the wings of a butterfly. The butterfly flew through what he describes as a void that was both pitch-black and intensely bright. Then the girl introduces the narrator to a shining orb. The identity of the shining orb is revealed to be an "all-loving God." Also while in his coma, Alexander encounters his birth sister who died before he was born.

What's most puzzling to Alexander is that his comatose brain should not have been able to dream. "During my coma, my brain wasn't working improperly," he writes. "It wasn't working at all." Absent any scientific or rational explanation for his visions, the author concludes that his experiences are the result of divine intervention. Through his subsequent investigation of what caused him to see and hear such vivid perceptions in a coma, Alexander comes into contact with his "eternal spiritual self." Despite his long career as a scientist dealing with empirical observations of the material world, the author now views the physical realm as less real than the spiritual world.

Alexander's efforts to explain his comatose visions eventually transform into an exploration of consciousness itself. The author ultimately concludes that consciousness is not a function of the human brain. Rather, it is a function of the human soul. This, he explains, is how he managed to experience bouts of consciousness despite the fact that his neocortex—the part of the brain that governs higher functions—was effectively shut down. By extension, Alexander argues that consciousness may exist after death, given that it is apparently divorced from brain function.

Satisfied with his conclusions, Alexander is eager to share his revelation with the rest of the world.