In the October 15th edition of Newsweek, there is an article . . .

In the October 15^th 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!