Conversations Beyond Proof of Heaven

This is a film that was recommended to me by one of my best friends. Following some of the posts I make on Life in the Right Direction many of you have been emailing me suggestions of things to read or look at. I’m so grateful for this. I can’t tell you how many very interesting things I’ve been exposed to through your help and recommendations. This is a very good example.

Conversations Beyond Proof of Heaven is a documentary, or really and extended interview, based on the experiences of Eben Alexander. He was (and is) a well renowned neurosurgeon who contracted spontaneous e-coli meningitis and went into a very serious coma for a week. Basically his brain turned into pus and doctors verified that he had zero brain activity during this time. He did not respond to any antibiotics and doctors thought his chance of surviving was only 2% and, even if he did survive, he’d spend the rest of his life in a nursing home. Yet he came out of the coma and said “thank you” when the breathing tube was removed. His made a full recovery in 3 months and remembered vivid “near-death experiences” from his time in a coma. He wrote a book (called Proof of Heaven) about his experiences and was later amazed to realize that his experiences were exactly the same as many other accounts of near-death experiences that have been documented over the last 3000 years.

One of the key moments was when he realized, months after the coma, that the pivotal beautiful girl in his coma experiences was actually a sister of his that he didn’t know he had and who had died some time before. This absolutely astounded him.

It’s almost as if this situation was engineered to make a point. Many people have had near-death experiences, but we tend to pass them off as people who were very sick and have basically had some sort of weird dream. In this case it seems like someone or something is trying to get a message through to us, and because we haven’t been paying attention, picked a top neuroscientist, put him through a perfect coma with a dead brain, a brain that couldn’t function for a week, and then had him make a full recovery at extreme odds so he could tell the story afterwards. It’s difficult to refute.

The bottom line of Eben’s story is the consciousness doesn’t rely on the human brain. He had conscious experiences when his brain was dead. He tried to find a scientific explanation but couldn’t. His story also clearly shows that consciousness exists independently from our existence here on Earth. Death of our current physical body doesn’t mean our consciousness ends.

You’ll have to watch the video or read the book and make up your own mind.

Let us know what you think.

My extended notes – Conversations Beyond Proof of Heaven

Most of these notes are approximated quotes from the dialog in the film.

• 15 yrs as professor at Harvard and an internationally renowned neurosurgeon
• 2008 ecoli meningitis
• virtually unsurvivable
• one week coma
• medically verified no brain activity
• his father was a neurosurgeon
• upbringing was scientific
• Methodist upbringing
• university subdued his thoughts of a possible spiritual realm
• woke up with severe back pain
• then lost consciousness and a seizure
• medical records suggest he was dead for a week
• spontaneous ecoli meningitis
• 1:10,000,000 chance in adults
• cerebral spinal fluid was all pus
• not responding to 3 powerful antibiotics
• from the beginning 90% chance of dying
• worse without antibiotics
• if he survived, rest of life in nursing home and only 2% chance of that
• in 3 months he recovered completely
• as a neurosurgeon he would have thought a person could remember anything after coming out of coma
• no words, no body awareness, “eternal now”
• no memory of prior existence
• buried in muck seemed to go on for a very long time
• no concept of time
• seemed to go on for months or years
• in the midst of this came a spinning bright light
• came towards me with a beautiful melody
• saw it was like a rip in my world
• opening to a lovely valley
• was on the wing of a butterfly
• waterfalls, crystal blue pools
• beside him on the butterfly wing was a beautiful girl
• looked at him with look of pure love and adoration
• “her thoughts came straight into my awareness”
• “you are loved, cherished dearly forever, there’s nothing you can do wrong, you will be eternally loved and you have nothing to fear”
• lots of butterflies
• beautiful breeze
• awareness of divine, infinitely, unconditionally loving deity behind it all
• then left that world and could see everything
• brilliant orb of light, counterpoint to the darkness of the void
• orb of light felt like home
• not individual awareness but awareness of consciousness
• “we will teach you many things, you are not here to stay”
• love was tremendous overwhelming constituent of everything
• evil was there as a necessity
• because of our need to manifest free will
• lessons about higher dimensional spaces
• dark energy and dark matter
• then back in the muck without any transition
• by remembering the notes of the melody, the light would come back and open the gateway
• came a point where the melody didn’t work
• tremendous sadness
• then was coming down through billowing clouds
• could see people praying
• coming back to the earth world, but he had no awareness of it
• was waking up in ICU after 7 days of coma
• could see people in the muck – 5 were in the ICU
• one wasn’t but found out later she was a channeler
• saw his son, who pulled open his eyes and talked to him that day
• this was terrifying for him, no he had to figure out how everything worked again
• he woke up alertly and that was a huge surprise for the doctors
• he said “thank you” to the shock of the doctors
• during coma, brain was soaking in pus
• his memory of ultra-reality must have some explanation – he set out to prove that
• he lost 19 lbs – was fragile – but his son said he looked like he had a light coming out of him
• son advised him not to talk to anyone and don’t read anything before writing down what he could remember
• when he did read the books – realised how thousands of accounts have gone to exactly the same realm – for thousands of years – the same realm – the very same place
• happens in all manner of medical conditions – or even people without any medical problem – even standing beside a bed of someone who died
• brain doesn’t create consciousness
• we have no idea how to create consciousness
• hardest problem in science is mechanism of consciousness
• looked at quantum mechanics
• psi phenomena – well established now
• book “irreducible mind”
• very clear there is something not local about consciousness – not stuck in space and not stuck in time
• the brain does not create consciousness
• meningitis gets rid of the whole outer cortex (reminds me of the caterpillar story)
• hyper reality – you become part of the scene by observing – becoming all of it
• wonderful feeling of unconditional love
• we’re all connected to that
• figured out who the girl on the butterfly wing was
• he could remember her so well – he knew he hadn’t met her before
• why wasn’t it his father
• consciousness does not arise from the brain, in fact it is much richer when freed from the physical realm
• rich consciousness exists without the physical brain
• he was adopted
• a few months after the coma he received a photo of his dead birth-sister who he’d never met
• she was the one on the butterfly wing
• he cannot tell us how powerful that was
• what is this life all about?
• soul school
• consciousness linked as one
• consciousness parcelled out into what looks like individuals
• reincarnation makes sense
• time doesn’t flow like we think
• in the outer realm everything, all times, are accessible
• a nemesis might be a soul mate helping us learn a lesson
• everything is to help us learn
• but moving upwards to the deity
• loving and seeing as a conduit for that unconditional love
• sense that all is not going well with the world
• very strong sense that this world is about to go through a global conscious awakening
• going to allow for wonderful harmony, prosperity and peace
• science and spirituality belong hand in hand
• just a broadening
• spirits, souls are eternal
• each and every one of us is loved and adored by the creator, we have to manifest that, and love everyone, everyone is here for a reason, and derived from love
• this story is 3000 years old
• quantum theory makes sense with a divine creative source
• the world has a very promising awakening soon
• needs work, deep meditation, etc.
• putting voice in your head on time out for a while
• getting self and ego out of the way
• deepest lessons are deeper than self and ego
• free will – is it the purpose for all being? – I think it is
• voice in head is a spectator not a decision maker??
• manifesting appropriate choices using free will
• free will question is a big and wonderful question
• have to question everything about time, space, energy
• flow of time is a construct of our consciousness – it’s not the way it is really
• some research work now showing we can change the past – hard core physicists
• notions of causality are up in the air
• physical reality is vibrating strings of energy – almost all empty space
• his coma was almost perfectly arranged so that he could bring back this message
• I have a feeling our souls choose these missions, these lives
• with severe meningitis, there’s no room for such a rich experience in the brain or in this physical reality – evidence for extended non-local consciousness