In the October 15th edition of Newsweek, there is an article . . .
In the
October 15th edition of Newsweek, there is an article by Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, who, by his own
admission, did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. Like many of us, he had heard the stories of those
who, on their deathbed, reported seeing a bright light and being lifted upward
on a heavenly out-of-body journey.
However, Dr. Alexander was convinced that there was a perfectly good
scientific explanation for this. “The
brain is an astonishingly sophisticated but extremely delicate mechanism,” he
writes. “Reduce the amount of oxygen it
receives by the smallest amount and it will react.”
In
other words, the people who claim to have experienced such things were simply
hallucinating. Their brains were not
being supplied with enough oxygen. They
may have felt as if their soul was traveling up from their body, but in
reality, they had not journeyed anywhere at all.
Then,
in the fall of 2008, Dr. Alexander awoke with a very intense headache. Within a few hours, his entire cortex (the
part of the brain that controls our thoughts and emotions) had completely shut
down. Doctors determined that he had
somehow contracted a rare bacterial meningitis that was literally eating away
at his brain. For the next seven days,
Dr. Alexander lay in a deep coma—his body unresponsive, his higher-order brain
functions totally offline.
Just as
the doctors were starting to discuss whether or not to discontinue life
support, suddenly his eyes popped open.
“There is no scientific explanation,” he writes, “for the fact that
while my body lay in a coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and
well. While the neurons of my cortex
were stunned to complete inactivity, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to
another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension that I’d never dreamed
existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to
explain was a simple impossibility.”
While
on this journey, Dr. Alexander felt as if he kept hearing the same message,
over and over and over again. The
message had three parts: (a) You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever; (b)
You have nothing to fear; and (c) There is nothing you can do wrong.
After
awaking from his coma, Dr. Alexander began sharing his story. However, among his medical friends, this
story of an out-of-body heavenly journey was met with polite disbelief and
skepticism. Interestingly enough, the
one place where his story was immediately welcomed and accepted was the church!
1 Comments:
I ger the same reactions when I talk of the times that Angels have visited me. He must be nuts.
By rhonsty, at 5:33 PM
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