For seven
days, as I lay in that unresponsive coma, my consciousness went on a
voyage through a series of realms, each one more extraordinary than the
last — a journey beyond the physical world and one that, until then, I
would certainly have dismissed as impossible.
For
thousands of years, ordinary people as well as shamans and mystics have
described brief, wonderful glimpses of ethereal realms. I’m not the
first person to have discovered that consciousness exists beyond the
body. What
is unique in my case is that I am, as far as scientific records show,
the only person to have travelled to this heavenly dimension with the
cortex in complete shut-down, while under minute observation throughout.
There
are medical records for every minute of my coma, and none of them show
any indication of brain activity. In other words, as far as neuroscience
can say, my journey was not something happening inside my head. Plenty
of scientists have a lot of difficulty with this statement. My
experience undermines their whole belief system. But the one place I
have found ready acceptance is in church, where my story often tallies
with people’s expectations.
Even
the deep notes of the church organ and the glorious colours of the
stained glass seem to echo faintly the sights and sounds of Heaven. Here, then, is what I experienced: my map of Heaven.
After
the blinding headache, when I had slipped into the coma, I gradually
became aware of being in a primitive, primordial state that felt like
being buried in earth.
It was, however, not ordinary earth, for all around me I sensed, and sometimes heard and saw, other entities. It was partly horrific, partly comforting and familiar: I felt like I had always been part of this primal murk. I
am often asked, ‘Was this hell?’ but I don’t think it was — I would
expect hell to be at least a little bit interactive, and this was a
completely passive experience. I
had forgotten what it was even to be human, but one important part of
my personality was still hard at work: I had a sense of curiosity. I
would ask, ‘Who? What? Where?’ and there was never a flicker of
response.
After
an expanse of time had passed, though I can’t begin to guess how long, a
light came slowly down from above, throwing off marvellous filaments of
living silver and golden effulgence. It
was a circular entity, emitting a beautiful, heavenly music that I
called the Spinning Melody. The light opened up like a rip in the fabric
of that coarse realm, and I felt myself going through the rip, up into a
valley full of lush and fertile greenery, where waterfalls flowed into
crystal pools. There were clouds, like marshmallow puffs of pink and white. Behind them, the sky was a rich blue-black.
This
world was not vague. It was deeply, piercingly alive, and as vivid as
the aroma of fried chicken, as dazzling as the glint of sunlight off the
metalwork of a car, and as startling as the impact of first love. I
know perfectly well how crazy my account sounds, and I sympathise with
those who cannot accept it. Like a lot of things in life, it sounds
pretty far-fetched till you experience it yourself.
There
were trees, fields, animals and people. There was water, too, flowing
in rivers or descending as rain. Mists rose from the pulsing surfaces of
these waters, and fish glided beneath them. Like
the earth, the water was deeply familiar. It was as though all the most
beautiful waterscapes I ever saw on earth had been beautiful precisely
because they were reminding me of this living water. My gaze wanted to
travel into it, deeper and deeper. This
water seemed higher, and more pure than anything I had experienced
before, as if it was somehow closer to the original source.
I
had stood and admired oceans and rivers across America, from Carolina
beaches to west coast streams, but suddenly they all seemed to be lesser
versions, little brothers and sisters of this living water.
That’s
not to denigrate the seas and lakes and thunderstorms that I’ve
marvelled at throughout my life. It is simply to say that I now see all
the earth’s waters in a new perspective, just as I see all natural
beauties in a new way.
In Heaven, everything is more real — less dense, yet at the same time more intense.
Heaven
is as vast, various and populated as earth is ... in fact, infinitely
more so. But in all this vast variety, there is not that sense of
otherness that characterises our world, where each thing is alone by
itself and has nothing directly to do with the other things around it.
Nothing is isolated in Heaven. Nothing is alienated. Nothing is disconnected. Everything is one.
I
found myself as a speck of awareness on a butterfly wing, among pulsing
swarms of millions of other butterflies. I witnessed stunning
blue-black velvety skies filled with swooping orbs of golden light,
angelic choirs leaving sparkling trails against the billowing clouds.Those
choirs produced hymns and anthems far beyond anything I had ever
encountered on earth. The sound was colossal: an echoing chant that
seemed to soak me without making me wet. All
my senses had blended. Seeing and hearing were not separate functions.
It was as if I could hear the grace and elegance of the airborne
creatures, and see the spectacular music that burst out of them. Even
before I began to wonder who or what they were, I understood that they
made the music because they could not contain it. It was the sound of
sheer joy. They could no more hold it in than you could fill your lungs
and never breathe out.
Simply
to experience the music was to join in with it. That was the oneness of
Heaven — to hear a sound was to be part of it. Everything was connected
to everything else, like the infinitely complex swirls on a Persian
carpet or a butterfly’s wing. And I was flying on that carpet, riding on
that wing.
Above
the sky, there was a vast array of larger universes that I came to call
an ‘over-sphere’, and I ascended until I reached the Core, that deepest
sanctuary of the Divine — infinite inky blackness, filled to
overflowing with indescribable, unconditional love.
There
I encountered the infinitely powerful, all-knowing deity whom I later
called Om, because of the sound that vibrated through that realm. I
learned lessons there of a depth and beauty entirely beyond my capacity
to explain.
During
this voyage, I had a guide. She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman
who first appeared as I rode, as that speck of awareness, on the wing of
that butterfly.
I’d
never seen this woman before. I didn’t know who she was. Yet her
presence was enough to heal my heart, to make me whole in a way I’d
never known was possible. Her face was unforgettable. Her eyes were deep
blue, and her cheekbones were high. Her face was surrounded by a frame
of honey-brown hair.
She
wore a smock, like a peasant’s, woven from sheer colour — indigo,
powder-blue and pastel shades of orange and peach. When she looked at
me, I felt such an abundance of emotion that, if nothing good had ever
happened to me before, the whole of my life would have been worth living
for that expression in her eyes alone.
It was not
romantic love. It was not friendship. It was far beyond all the
different compartments of love we have on earth. Without actually
speaking, she let me know that I was loved and cared for beyond measure
and that the universe was a vaster, better, and more beautiful place
than I could ever have dreamed.
I
was an irreplaceable part of the whole (like all of us), and all the
sadness and fear I had ever suffered was a result of my somehow having
forgotten this most central of facts.
Her
message went through me like a breath of wind. It’s hard to put it into
words, but the essence was this: ‘You are loved and cherished, dearly,
for ever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong.’
It was, then, an utterly wonderful experience.
Meanwhile,
back on Earth, I had been in my coma for seven days and showing no
signs of improvement. The doctors were just deciding whether to continue
with life support, when I suddenly regained consciousness. My eyes just
popped open, and I was back. I had no memories of my earthly life, but
knew full well where I had been.
I
had to relearn everything: who, what, and where I was. Over days, then
weeks, like a gently falling snow, my old, earthly knowledge came back.
Words
and language returned within hours and days. With the love and gentle
coaxing of my family and friends, other memories emerged.
By
eight weeks, my prior knowledge of science, including the experiences
and learning from more than two decades spent as a neurosurgeon in
teaching hospitals, returned completely. That full recovery remains a
miracle without any explanation from modern medicine. But
I was a different person from the one I had been. The things I had seen
and experienced while gone from my body did not fade away, as dreams
and hallucinations do. They stayed.
Above all, that image of the woman on the butterfly wing haunted me.
And then, four months after coming out of my coma, I received a picture in the mail.
As
a result of my earlier investigations to make contact with my
biological family, a relative had sent me a photograph of my sister
Betsy — the sister I’d never known.
The shock of recognition was total. This was the face of the woman on the butterfly wing.
The moment I realised this, something crystallised inside me.
That photo was the confirmation that I’d needed. This was proof, beyond reproach, of the objective reality of my experience.
From then on, I was back in the old, earthly world I’d left behind before my coma struck, but as a genuinely new person.
I had been reborn. And as I shall reveal on Monday, I am by no means the only one to have glimpsed the afterlife — and the wonders it holds.
Extracted
from Map of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon Explores the Mysteries of the
Afterlife & The Truth About What Lies Beyond by Dr Eben Alexander,
published by Piatkus at £14.99.
©
2014 Dr Eben Alexander. Offer price £12.75 until 25 October. Order at
mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0808 272 0808, p&p free for a limited
time only.
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