Thisbookisdedicatedtoallofmylovingfamily,withboundlessgratitude.

CONTENTS

Prologue1.ThePain2.TheHospital3.OutofNowhere4.EbenIV5.Underworld6.AnAnchortoLife7.TheSpinningMelodyandtheGateway

8.Israel9.TheCore10.WhatCounts11.AnEndtotheDownward

Spiral12.TheCore13.Wednesday14.ASpecialKindofNDE15.TheGiftofForgetting16.TheWell17.Nof118.ToForget,andto

Remember19.NowheretoHide20.TheClosing21.TheRainbow22.SixFaces23.FinalNight,First

Morning24.TheReturn25.NotThereYet26.SpreadingtheNews27.Homecoming28.TheUltra-Real

29.ACommonExperience30.BackfromtheDead31.ThreeCamps32.AVisittoChurch33.TheEnigmaof

Consciousness34.AFinalDilemma35.ThePhotograph

EterneaAcknowledgmentsAppendixA:StatementbyScottWade,M.D.

AppendixB:NeuroscientificHypothesesIConsideredtoExplainMyExperience

ReadingListIndex

PROLOGUE

Amanshouldlookforwhatis,andnotforwhathethinks

shouldbe.

—ALBERTEINSTEIN(1879–1955)

WhenIwasakid,Iwouldoftendreamofflying.

Most of the time I’d be

standing out in my yard atnight, lookingupat thestars,whenoutoftheblueI’dstartfloatingupward.Thefirstfewinches happenedautomatically. But soon I’dnotice that the higher I got,the more my progressdepended on me—on what Idid. If I got too excited, tooswept away by theexperience, Iwouldplummetback to theground . . . hard.ButifIplayeditcool,tookit

all instride, thenoff Iwouldgo, faster and faster, up intothestarrysky.

Maybe those dreamswerepart of the reason why, as Igot older, I fell in love withairplanes and rockets—withanything that might get meback up there in the worldabove this one. When ourfamily flew, my face waspressed flat to the plane’swindow from takeoff tolanding. In the summer of

1968,when Iwas fourteen, Ispent all the money I’dearnedmowinglawnsonasetof sailplane lessons with aguy named Gus Street atStrawberryHill, a little grassstrip “airport” just west ofWinston-Salem, NorthCarolina, the town where Igrewup.Istill rememberthefeelingofmyheartpoundingasIpulled thebigcherry-redknob that unhooked the ropeconnecting me to the

towplane and banked mysailplane toward the field. Itwas the first time I had everfelttrulyaloneandfree.Mostofmyfriendsgot that feelingin cars, but for my moneybeinga thousandfeetup inasailplane beat that thrill ahundredtimesover.

In college in the 1970s Ijoined the University ofNorth Carolina sportparachuting (or skydiving)team. It felt like a secret

brotherhood—a group ofpeople who knew aboutsomething special andmagical. My first jump wasterrifying, and the secondeven more so. But by mytwelfth jump,whenIsteppedout the door and had to fallformorethanathousandfeetbefore openingmyparachute(myfirst“tenseconddelay”),I knew I was home. I made365 parachute jumps incollegeandloggedmorethan

threeandahalfhours in freefall, mainly in formationswithuptotwenty-fivefellowjumpers. Although I stoppedjumping in1976, I continuedto enjoy vivid dreams aboutskydiving, which werealwayspleasant.

Thebestjumpswereoftenlate in the afternoon, whenthe sun was starting to sinkbeneaththehorizon.It’shardto describe the feeling Iwould get on those jumps: a

feeling of getting close tosomething that I could neverquite name but that I knew Ihadtohavemoreof.Itwasn’tsolitude exactly, because thewaywedivedactuallywasn’tall that solitary. We’d jumpfive, six, sometimes ten ortwelve people at a time,building free-fall formations.The bigger and the morechallenging,thebetter.

One beautiful autumnSaturday in 1975, the rest of

the UNC jumpers and Iteamed up with some of ourfriends at a paracenter ineastern North Carolina forsome formations. On ourpenultimate jump of the day,out of a D18 Beechcraft at10,500 feet, we made a ten-mansnowflake.Wemanagedtogetourselvesintocompleteformation before we passed7,000feet,andthuswereableto enjoy a full eighteenseconds of flying the

formation down a clearchasmbetween two toweringcumulus clouds beforebreaking apart at 3,500 feetand trackingaway fromeachothertoopenourchutes.

By the time we hit theground, the sun was down.But by hustling into anotherplane and taking off againquickly, we managed to getback up into the last of thesun’s rays and do a secondsunsetjump.Forthisone,two

junior members were gettingtheir first shot at flying intoformation—that is, joining itfrom the outside rather thanbeing the base or pin man(whichiseasierbecauseyourjob is essentially to fallstraightdownwhileeveryoneelse maneuvers toward you).It was exciting for the twojunior members, but also forthose of us who were moreseasoned, because we werebuilding the team, adding to

the experience of jumperswho’d later be capable ofjoining us for even biggerformations.

I was to be the last manout in a six-man star attemptabove the runways of thesmall airport just outsideRoanoke Rapids, NorthCarolina.Theguydirectly infront of me was namedChuck. Chuck was fairlyexperienced at “relativework,” or RW—that is,

building free-fall formations.We were still in sunshine at7,500 feet, but a mile and ahalf below us the streetlightswere blinking on. Twilightjumps were always sublimeand thiswas clearlygoing tobeabeautifulone.

EventhoughI’dbeexitingtheplaneameresecondorsobehind Chuck, I’d have tomove fast to catch up witheveryone. I’d rocket straightdown headfirst for the first

seven seconds or so. Thiswould make me drop almost100milesperhourfasterthanmyfriendsso that Icouldberight there with them afterthey had built the initialformation.

NormalprocedureforRWjumpswas for all jumpers tobreak apart at 3,500 feet andtrack away from theformation for maximumseparation. Each would then“wave off” with his arms

(signaling imminentdeploymentofhisparachute),turn to look above to makesure no others were abovehim,thenpulltheripcord.

“Three,two,one...go!”The first four jumpers

exited, then Chuck and Ifollowed close behind.Upside down in a full-headdive and approachingterminalvelocity, I smiledasI saw the sun setting for thesecond time that day. After

streakingdown to theothers,my plan was to slam on theairbrakesbythrowingoutmyarms (we had fabric wingsfromwrists to hips that gavetremendous resistance whenfully inflated at high speed)and aiming my jumpsuit’sbell-bottomed sleeves andpant legs straight into theoncomingair.

But I never had thechance.

Plummeting toward the

formation, I saw that one ofthenewguyshadcomeintoofast. Maybe falling rapidlybetween nearby clouds hadhim a little spooked—itreminded him that he wasmoving about two hundredfeet per second toward thatgiant planet below, partiallyshrouded in the gatheringdarkness. Rather than slowlyjoining the edge of theformation, he’d barreled inand knocked everybody

loose. Now all five otherjumpersweretumblingoutofcontrol.

They were also much tooclose together. A skydiverleaves a super-turbulentstream of low-pressure airbehind him. If a jumper getsinto that trail, he instantlyspeeds up and can crash intothe person below him. That,in turn, can make bothjumpers accelerate and slaminto anyone who might be

below them. In short, it’s arecipefordisaster.

I angled my body andtracked away from the grouptoavoidthetumblingmess.Imaneuvered until I wasfallingrightover“thespot,”amagical point on the groundabovewhichweweretoopenour parachutes for theleisurelytwo-minutedescent.

I looked over and wasrelieved to see that thedisorientedjumperswerenow

alsotrackingawayfromeachother, dispersing the deadlyclump.

Chuck was there amongthem.Tomysurprise,hewascoming straight in mydirection.Hestoppeddirectlybeneath me. With all of thegroup’s tumbling, we werepassing through 2,000 feetelevation more quickly thanChuck had anticipated.Maybe he thought he waslucky and didn’t have to

followtherules—exactly.He must not see me. The

thoughtbarelyhadtimetogothrough my head beforeChuck’s colorful pilot chuteblossomed out of hisbackpack. His pilot chutecaught the 120-mph breezecoming around him and shotstraight toward me, pullinghis main parachute in itssleeverightbehindit.

From the instant I sawChuck’spilotchuteemerge,I

had a fractionof a second toreact. For it would take lessthan a second to tumblethrough his deploying mainparachute, and—quite likely—right into Chuck himself.Atthatspeed,ifIhithisarmorhislegIwouldtakeitrightoff, dealing myself a fatalblow in the process. If I hithimdirectly, bothour bodieswouldessentiallyexplode.

People say things movemoreslowlyinsituationslike

this, and they’re right. Mymind watched the action inthe microseconds thatfollowed as if it werewatching a movie in slowmotion.

TheinstantIsawthepilotchute, my arms flew to mysides and I straightened mybody into a head dive,bendingeversoslightlyatthehips.Theverticalitygavemeincreasedspeed,andthebendallowedmybody toadd first

a little, then a blast ofhorizontalmotionasmybodybecame an efficient wing,sending me zipping pastChuck just in front of hiscolorful blossoming Para-Commanderparachute.

Ipassedhimgoingatover150 miles per hour, or 220feet per second. Given thatspeed, I doubt he saw theexpressiononmyface.Butifhehad,hewouldhaveseenalook of sheer astonishment.

Somehow I had reacted inmicroseconds to a situationthat, had I actually had timeto think about it,wouldhavebeen much too complex formetodealwith.

And yet . . . I had dealtwith it, and we both landedsafely. Itwasas if,presentedwith a situation that requiredmore than its usual ability torespond, my brain hadbecome, for a moment,superpowered.

How had I done it? Overthecourseofmytwenty-plus-year career in academicneurosurgery—of studyingthe brain, observing how itworks,andoperatingonit—Ihave had plenty ofopportunities to ponder thisvery question. I finallychalked it up to the fact thatthe brain is truly anextraordinary device: moreextraordinary than we canevenguess.

I realize now that the realanswer to that question ismuch more profound. But Ihadtogothroughacompletemetamorphosisofmylifeandworldview to glimpse thatanswer. This book is aboutthe events that changed mymind on the matter. Theyconvinced me that, asmarvelous a mechanism asthe brain is, it was not mybrain that saved my life thatday at all. What sprang into

action the second Chuck’schute started to open wasanother,much deeper part ofme.Apartthatcouldmovesofast because itwas not stuckin time at all, the way thebrainandbodyare.

Thiswas the samepart ofme,infact,thathadmademesohomesickfortheskiesasakid.It’snotonlythesmartestpartofus,butthedeepestpartas well, yet for most of myadult life I was unable to

believeinit.But Idobelievenow,and

thepagesthatfollowwilltellyouwhy.

I’maneurosurgeon.I graduated from the

University of North CarolinaatChapelHillin1976withamajor in chemistry andearned my M.D. at DukeUniversityMedicalSchool in

1980.Duringmyelevenyearsof medical school andresidency trainingatDukeaswell as MassachusettsGeneral Hospital andHarvard, I focused onneuroendocrinology, thestudy of the interactionsbetween the nervous systemand the endocrine system—the series of glands thatrelease the hormones thatdirect most of your body’sactivities. I also spent twoof

those eleven yearsinvestigating how bloodvessels in one area of thebrain react pathologicallywhenthereisbleedingintoitfrom an aneurysm—asyndrome known as cerebralvasospasm.

After completing afellowship in cerebrovascularneurosurgery in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UnitedKingdom, I spent fifteenyears on the faculty of

Harvard Medical School asan associate professor ofsurgery,witha specializationinneurosurgery.Duringthoseyears Ioperatedoncountlesspatients, many of them withsevere, life-threatening brainconditions.

Mostofmyresearchworkinvolved the development ofadvanced technicalprocedures like stereotacticradiosurgery,atechniquethatallows surgeons to precisely

guide beams of radiation tospecific targets deep in thebrain without affectingadjacent areas. I also helpeddevelop magnetic resonanceimage–guided neurosurgicalprocedures instrumental inrepairing hard-to-treat brainconditions like tumors andvascular disorders. DuringthoseyearsIalsoauthoredorcoauthored more than 150chaptersandpapers forpeer-reviewed medical journals

and presentedmy findings atmore than two hundredmedical conferences aroundtheworld.

In short, I devotedmyselftoscience.Usingthetoolsofmodernmedicine tohelpandto heal people, and to learnmore about the workings ofthe human body and brain,was my life’s calling. I feltimmeasurably lucky to havefound it. More important, Ihad a beautifulwife and two

lovely children, and while Iwasinmanywaysmarriedtomy work, I did not neglectmy family, which Iconsidered the other greatblessinginmylife.Onmanycounts I was a very luckyman,andIknewit.

On November 10, 2008,however,atagefifty-four,myluckseemedtorunout.Iwasstruck by a rare illness andthrownintoacomaforsevendays. During that time, my

entire neocortex—the outersurface of the brain, the partthat makes us human—wasshut down. Inoperative. Inessence,absent.

Whenyourbrainisabsent,you are absent, too. As aneurosurgeon,I’dheardmanystories over the years ofpeople who had strangeexperiences, usually aftersuffering cardiac arrest:stories of traveling tomysterious, wonderful

landscapes;oftalkingtodeadrelatives—even of meetingGodHimself.

Wonderful stuff, noquestion.But all of it, inmyopinion, was pure fantasy.Whatcausedtheotherworldlytypesofexperiencesthatsuchpeople so often report? Ididn’t claim to know, but Idid know that they werebrain-based. All ofconsciousnessis.Ifyoudon’thave a working brain, you

can’tbeconscious.Thisisbecausethebrainis

the machine that producesconsciousness in the firstplace. When the machinebreaks down, consciousnessstops. As vastly complicatedand mysterious as the actualmechanics of brain processesare,inessencethematterisassimple as that. Pull the plugand the TV goes dead. Theshow is over, nomatter howmuch you might have been

enjoyingit.Or so I would have told

you before my own braincrashed.

Duringmycomamybrainwasn’tworkingimproperly—it wasn’t working at all. Inow believe that this mighthave been what wasresponsible for thedepthandintensity of the near-deathexperience (NDE) that Imyself underwent during it.Many of the NDEs reported

happenwhenaperson’shearthasshutdownforawhile.Inthose cases, the neocortex istemporarily inactivated, butgenerally not too damaged,provided that the flow ofoxygenated blood is restoredthrough cardiopulmonaryresuscitation or reactivationof cardiac function withinfourminutesorso.Butinmycase,theneocortexwasoutofthe picture. I wasencountering the reality of a

world of consciousness thatexistedcompletely freeof thelimitations of my physicalbrain.

Minewas in somewaysaperfect storm of near-deathexperiences. As a practicingneurosurgeonwithdecadesofresearch and hands-on workin theoperating roombehindme, I was in a better-than-averageposition to judgenotonly the reality but also theimplications of what

happenedtome.Those implications are

tremendous beyonddescription. My experienceshowedme that the death ofthebodyandthebrainarenottheendofconsciousness,thathuman experience continuesbeyond the grave. Moreimportant, it continues underthegazeof aGodwho lovesand cares about each one ofus and about where theuniverse itself and all the

beingswithinitareultimatelygoing.

TheplaceIwentwasreal.Real inaway thatmakes thelifewe’relivinghereandnowcompletely dreamlike bycomparison. This doesn’tmean I don’t value the lifeI’m living now, however. Infact, I value it more than Iever did before. I do sobecauseInowseeitinitstruecontext.

Thislifeisn’tmeaningless.

But we can’t see that factfrom here—at least most ofthe time. What happened tomewhile Iwas in that comais hands-down the mostimportant story I will evertell.But it’s a tricky story totellbecauseitissoforeigntoordinary understanding. Ican’tsimplyshoutitfromtherooftops. At the same time,my conclusions are based ona medical analysis of myexperience, and on my

familiarity with the mostadvanced concepts in brainscience and consciousnessstudies. Once I realized thetruth behind my journey, IknewIhadtotellit.Doingsoproperlyhasbecomethechieftaskofmylife.

That’s not to say I’veabandonedmymedical workand my life as aneurosurgeon.Butnowthat Ihave been privileged tounderstand that our life does

notendwith thedeathof thebody or the brain, I see it asmy duty, my calling, to tellpeople about what I sawbeyond thebody andbeyondthis earth. I am especiallyeager to tell my story to thepeoplewhomighthaveheardstoriessimilartominebeforeand wanted to believe them,buthadnotbeenabletofullydoso.

It is to thesepeople,morethan any other, that I direct

this book, and the messagewithin it.What I have to tellyou is as important asanythinganyonewillevertellyou,andit’strue.

1.

ThePain

Lynchburg, Virginia—November10,2008

My eyes popped open. Inthedarknessofourbedroom,I focused on the red glowofthe bedside clock: 4:30 A.M.

—an hour before I’d usuallywake up for the seventy-minute drive from our houseinLynchburg,Virginia,totheFocused Ultrasound SurgeryFoundation in Charlottesvillewhere I worked. My wife,Holley, was still sleepingsoundlybesideme.

After spending almosttwenty years in academicneurosurgery in the greaterBoston area, I’dmovedwithHolley and the rest of our

family to the highlands ofVirginia two years earlier, in2006. Holley and I met inOctober1977,twoyearsafterboth of us had left college.Holley was working towardhermastersinfinearts,andIwas inmedicalschool.She’dbeen on a couple of dateswith my college roommate,Vic.Oneday,hebroughtherby to meet me—probably toshow her off. As they wereleaving,ItoldHolleytocome

backanytime,addingthatsheshouldn’t feel obliged tobringVic.

On our first true date, wedrove toaparty inCharlotte,North Carolina, two and ahalf hours each way by car.HolleyhadlaryngitissoIhadtodo99percentofthetalkingboth ways. It was easy. WeweremarriedinJune1980atSt Thomas’s EpiscopalChurch in Windsor, NorthCarolina, and soon after

moved into the Royal OaksapartmentsinDurham,whereIwasa resident insurgeryatDuke.Ourplacewasfarfromroyal, and I don’t recallspotting any oaks there,either. We had very littlemoney but we were both sobusy—and so happy to betogether—thatwedidn’tcare.Oneofourfirstvacationswasa springtimecamping tourofNorth Carolina’s beaches.Spring is no-see-um (the

biting midge) bug season inthe Carolinas, and our tentdidn’t offer much protectionfromthem.Wehadplentyoffun just thesame.Swimmingin the surf one afternoon atOcracoke,Idevisedawaytocatchtheblue-shellcrabsthatwere scuttling about at myfeet.Wetookabigbatchoverto the Pony Island Motel,where some friends werestaying, and cooked them uponagrill.Therewasplentyto

sharewith everyone.Despiteall our cutting corners, itwasn’t long till we foundourselvesdistressinglylowoncash. We were staying withourbestfriendsBillandPattyWilson, and, on a whim,decided to accompany themto a night of bingo. Bill hadbeengoingeveryThursdayofevery summer for ten yearsandhehadneverwon.ItwasHolley’s first time playingbingo.Callitbeginner’sluck,

ordivineintervention,butshewon two hundred dollars—which felt like five thousanddollars to us. The cashextendedourtripandmadeitmuchmorerelaxed.

IearnedmyM.D.in1980,just as Holley earned herdegree andbegana career asan artist and teacher. IperformedmyfirstsolobrainsurgeryatDukein1981.Ourfirstborn, Eben IV, was bornin1987at thePrincessMary

Maternity Hospital inNewcastle-Upon-Tyne innorthern England during mycerebrovascular fellowship,and our younger son, Bond,was born at the Brigham &Women’sHospital in Bostonin1998.

I loved my fifteen yearsworking at Harvard MedicalSchool and Brigham &Women’s Hospital. Ourfamily treasured those yearsin the Greater Boston area.

But, in 2005 Holley and Iagreed it was time to movebacktotheSouth.Wewantedto be closer to our families,andIsawitasanopportunitytohave abitmore autonomythanI’dhadatHarvard.Sointhespringof2006,westartedanew in Lynchburg, in thehighlands of Virginia. Itdidn’t take long for us tosettle back into the morerelaxed life we’d bothenjoyed growing up in the

South.

For a moment I just laythere, vaguely trying to zeroinonwhathadawakenedme.The previous day—a Sunday—hadbeen sunny,clear, andjustalittlecrisp—classiclateautumn Virginia weather.Holley,Bond(tenyearsoldatthetime),andIhadgonetoabarbecue at the home of a

neighbor. In the evening wehad spoken by phone to ourson Eben IV (then twenty),who was a junior at theUniversity of Delaware. TheonlyhitchinthedayhadbeenthemildrespiratoryvirusthatHolley,Bond, and Iwere allstilldraggingaroundfromthepreviousweek.My back hadstarted aching just beforebedtime,soI’dtakenaquickbath, which seemed to drivethe pain into submission. I

wondered if I had awakenedsoearlythismorningbecausethe virus was still lurking inmybody.

I shifted slightly in bedandawaveofpainshotdownmy spine—far more intensethanthenightbefore.Clearlythefluviruswasstillhangingon,andthensome.ThemoreI awoke, the worse the painbecame. Since I wasn’t ableto fall back to sleep and hadan hour to spend before my

workdaystarted,Idecidedonanotherwarmbath.Isatupinbed, swung my feet to thefloor,andstoodup.

Instantlythepainratchetedup another notch—a dull,punishing throb penetratingdeeply at the base of myspine.LeavingHolleyasleep,I padded gingerly down thehall to the main upstairsbathroom.

Iransomewaterandeasedmyself into the tub, pretty

certainthatthewarmthwouldinstantly do some good.Wrong. By the time the tubwashalf full, Iknew that I’dmadeamistake.Notonlywasthe pain gettingworse, but itwasalsosointensenowthatIfeared I might have to shoutforHolleytohelpmegetoutofthetub.

Thinking how ridiculousthe situation had become, Ireached up and grabbed atowel hanging from a rack

directly above me. I edgedthe towel over to the side ofthe rack so that the rackwouldbe less likely tobreakloose from the wall andgentlypulledmyselfup.

Another jolt of pain shotdown my back, so intensethat I gasped. This wasdefinitely not the flu. Butwhat else could it be? Afterstrugglingoutof the slipperytubandintomyscarlet terry-clothbathrobe,Islowlymade

mywaybacktoourbedroomandfloppeddownonourbed.My body was already dampagainfromcoldsweat.

Holley stirred and turnedover.

“What’s going on? Whattimeisit?”

“I don’t know,” I said.“My back. I am in seriouspain.”

Holley began rubbing myback.Tomysurpriseitmademe feel a little better.

Doctors, by and large, don’ttakekindlytobeingsick.I’mnoexception.ForamomentIwasconvinced thepain—andwhatever was causing it—would finally start to recede.But by 6:30 A.M., the time Iusually left for work, I wasstill in agony and virtuallyparalyzed.

Bond came into ourbedroom at 7:30, curious astowhyIwasstillathome.

“What’sgoingon?”

“Your father doesn’t feelwell,honey,”Holleysaid.

Iwasstilllyingonthebedwithmyheadproppedupona pillow. Bond came over,reached out, and began tomassagemytemplesgently.

His touch sent what feltlike a lightning bolt throughmyhead—theworstpainyet.I screamed. Surprised bymyreaction,Bondjumpedback.

“It’sokay,”HolleysaidtoBond, clearly thinking

otherwise. “It’s nothing youdid. Dad has a horribleheadache.” Then I heard hersay, more to herself than tome:“IwonderifIshouldcallanambulance.”

Ifthere’sonethingdoctorshate even more than beingsick, it’s being in theemergencyroomasapatient.Ipicturedthehousefillingupwith EMTs, the retinue ofstock questions, the ride tothe hospital, the

paperwork . . . I thought atsome point I would begin tofeel better and regret callingan ambulance in the firstplace.

“No, it’s okay,” I said.“It’s bad now but it’s boundtogetbettersoon.YoushouldprobablyhelpBondgetreadyforschool.”

“Eben,Ireallythink—”“I’llbefine,”Iinterrupted,

my face still buried in thepillow. I was still paralyzed

by the pain. “Seriously, donotcallnine-one-one.I’mnotthat sick. It’s just a musclespasminmylowerback,andaheadache.”

Reluctantly, Holley tookBonddownstairsandfedhimsome breakfast beforesendinghimupthestreettoafriend’shouse tocatcha ridetoschool.AsBondwasgoingoutthefrontdoor,thethoughtoccurred to me that if thiswas something serious and I

did end up in the hospital, Imight not see him afterschool that afternoon. Imustered all my energy andcroaked out, “Have a gooddayatschool,Bond.”

By the time Holley camebackupstairstocheckonme,I was slipping intounconsciousness. Thinking Iwas napping, she left me torest and went downstairs tocall some of my colleagues,hoping to get their opinions

onwhatmightbehappening.Two hours later, feeling

she’dletmerestlongenough,she came back to check onme. Pushing open ourbedroom door, she saw melying in bed just as before.But looking closer, she sawthat my body wasn’t relaxedas it had been, but rigid as aboard.Sheturnedonthelightand saw that I was jerkingviolently.My lower jawwasjutting forward unnaturally,

and my eyes were open androllingbackinmyhead.

“Eben, say something!”Holley screamed. When Ididn’t respond, she callednine-one-one. It took theEMTs less than ten minutesto arrive, and they quicklyloadedmeintoanambulancebound for the LynchburgGeneral Hospital emergencyroom.

Had I been conscious, Icould have told Holley

exactly what I wasundergoing there on the bedduring those terrifyingmoments she spent waitingfor the ambulance: a fullgrand mal seizure, broughton,nodoubt,bysomekindofextremelysevereshocktomybrain.

But of course, I was notabletodothat.

For thenext sevendays, Iwould be present to Holleyand the rest ofmy family in

body alone. I remembernothing of this world duringthat week and have had toglean fromothers thosepartsof this story that occurredduring the time I wasunconscious. My mind, myspirit—whatever you maychoose to call the central,humanpartofme—wasgone.

2.

TheHospital

The Lynchburg GeneralHospital emergency room isthe second-busiest ER in thestate of Virginia and istypicallyinfullswingby9:30on aweekdaymorning. ThatMonday was no exception.

Though I spent most of myworkdays in Charlottesville,I’dloggedplentyofoperatingtime at Lynchburg General,and I knew just abouteveryonethere.

Laura Potter, an ERphysician I’d known andworked with closely foralmost two years, receivedthe call from the ambulancethat a fifty-four-year-oldCaucasian male, in statusepilepticus, was about to

arrive in her ER. As sheheaded down to theambulance entrance, she ranover the list of possiblecauses for the incomingpatient’scondition.Itwasthesame list that I’d have comeup with if I had been in hershoes: alcohol withdrawal;drug overdose; hyponatremia(abnormallylowsodiumlevelin the blood); stroke;metastatic or primary braintumor; intraparenchymal

hemorrhage(bleedingintothesubstanceof thebrain);brainabscess...andmeningitis.

When the EMTs wheeledme into Major Bay 1 of theER, I was still convulsingviolently,whileintermittentlygroaning and flailing myarmsandlegs.

It was obvious to Dr.Potter from the way I wasraving and writhing aroundthat my brain was underheavyattack.Anursebrought

over a crash cart, anotherdrew blood, and a thirdreplacedthefirst,nowempty,intravenous bag that theEMTshadsetupatourhousebefore loading me into theambulance. As they went toworkonme,Iwassquirminglikeasix-foot fishpulledoutof thewater.Ispoutedburstsof garbled, nonsensicalsounds and animal-like cries.Just as troubling to Laura astheseizureswasthatIseemed

to showanasymmetry in themotor control of my body.Thatcouldmeanthatnotonlywasmybrainunderattackbutthat serious and possiblyirreversiblebraindamagewasalreadyunderway.

Thesightofanypatientinsuchastatetakesgettingusedto,butLaurahadseenitallinher many years in the ER.Shehadneverseenoneofherfellow physicians deliveredinto theER in thiscondition,

however, and looking closerat the contorted, shoutingpatient on the gurney, shesaid, almost to herself,“Eben.”

Then, more loudly,alertingtheotherdoctorsandnurses in the area: “This isEbenAlexander.”

Nearby staff who heardher gathered around mystretcher.Holley,who’dbeenfollowing the ambulance,joinedthecrowdwhileLaura

reeled off the obligatoryquestions about the mostobvious possible causes forsomeone in my condition.Was I withdrawing fromalcohol? Had I recentlyingested any stronghallucinogenic street drugs?Thenshewenttoworktryingtobringmyseizurestoahalt.

Inrecentmonths,EbenIVhad been puttingme througha vigorous conditioningprogramforaplannedfather-

son climb up Ecuador’s19,300-footMount Cotopaxi,which he had climbed theprevious February. Theprogram had increased mystrengthconsiderably,makingitthatmuchmoredifficultforthe orderlies trying to holdme down. Five minutes and15milligrams of intravenousdiazepam later, I was stilldelirious and still trying tofighteveryoneoff,but toDr.Potter’s relief I was at least

now fighting with both sidesof my body. Holley toldLaura about the severeheadache I’d been havingbefore I went into seizure,whichpromptedDr.Potter toperforma lumbarpuncture—aprocedure inwhicha smallamountofcerebrospinalfluidis extracted from the base ofthespine.

Cerebrospinal fluid is aclear, watery substance thatruns along the surface of the

spinal cord and coats thebrain, cushioning it fromimpacts. A normal, healthyhumanbodyproducesaboutapint of it a day, and anydiminishmentintheclarityofthe fluid indicates that aninfection or hemorrhage hasoccurred.

Suchaninfectioniscalledmeningitis: the swelling ofthemeninges,themembranesthat line the inside of thespineandskullandthatarein

direct contact with thecerebrospinal fluid. In fourcases out of five a viruscauses the disease. Viralmeningitiscanmakeapatientquiteill,butitisonlyfatalinapproximately 1 percent ofcases.Inonecaseoutoffive,however, bacteria causemeningitis. Bacteria, beingmore primitive than viruses,canbeamoredangerousfoe.Cases of bacterial meningitisare uniformly fatal if

untreated.Evenwhen treatedrapidly with the appropriateantibiotics, the mortality raterangesfrom15to40percent.

One of the least likelyculprits for bacterialmeningitis inadults isaveryold and very tough bacterianamed Escherichia coli—better known simply as E.coli. No one knows how oldE. coli is precisely, butestimateshoverbetweenthreeand four billion years. The

organismhasnonucleus andreproduces by the primitivebut extremely efficientprocess known as asexualbinaryfission(inotherwords,by splitting in two). Imaginea cell filled, essentially,withDNA, that can take innutrients (usually from othercells that it attacks andabsorbs) directly through itscellular wall. Then imaginethat it can simultaneouslycopyseveral strandsofDNA

and split into two daughtercellseverytwentyminutesorso. In an hour, you’ll have 8of them. In twelve hours, 69billion. By hour fifteen,you’ll have 35 trillion. Thisexplosive growth only slowswhen its food begins to runout.E. coli are also highly

promiscuous. They can tradegenes with other bacterialspecies through a processcalled bacterial conjugation,

whichallowsanE.colicelltorapidly pick up new traits(such as resistance to a newantibiotic)whenneeded.Thisbasic recipe for success haskept E. coli on the planetsince the earliest days ofunicellular life. We all haveE. coli bacteria residingwithin us—mostly in ourgastrointestinal tract. Undernormal conditions, this posesno threat to us. But whenvarieties ofE. coli that have

picked up DNA strands thatmake them especiallyaggressive invade thecerebrospinalfluidaroundthespinal cord and brain, theprimitive cells immediatelybegin devouring the glucoseinthefluid,andwhateverelseis available to consume,includingthebrainitself.

No one in the ER, at thatpoint, thought I had E. colimeningitis. They had noreason to suspect it. The

disease isastronomically rarein adults. Newborns are themost common victims, butcasesofbabiesanyolderthanthree months having it areexceedingly uncommon.Fewer thanone in10millionadults contract itspontaneouslyeachyear.

In cases of bacterialmeningitis,thebacteriaattacktheouterlayerofthebrain,orcortex,first.Thewordcortexderives from a Latin word

meaning “rind” or “bark.” Ifyoupictureanorange,itsrindisaprettygoodmodelfortheway the cortex surrounds themoreprimitivesectionsofthebrain. The cortex isresponsible for memory,language,emotion,visualandauditory awareness, andlogic. So when an organismlikeE.coli attacks the brain,the initial damage is to theareas that perform thefunctions most crucial to

maintaining our humanqualities. Many victims ofbacterialmeningitisdieinthefirst several days of theirillness.Ofthosewhoarriveinan emergency room with arapid downward spiral inneurologic function, as I did,only 10 percent are luckyenough to survive. However,their luckis limited,asmanyofthemwillspendtherestoftheir lives in a vegetativestate.

Though shedidn’t suspectE.colimeningitis, Dr. Potterthought I might have somekindofbraininfection,whichis why she decided on thelumbar puncture. Just as shewas telling one of the nursesto bring her a lumbarpuncturetrayandpreparemefor the procedure, my bodysurged up as if my gurneyhad been electrified. With afreshblastofenergy,Iletouta long, agonized groan,

arched my back, and flailedmy arms at the air. My facewas red,and theveins inmyneck bulged out crazily.Laura shouted formorehelp,and soon two, then four, andfinally six attendants werestruggling to hold me downfor the procedure. Theyforced my body into a fetalposition while Lauraadministered more sedatives.Finally, they were able tomakeme still enough for the

needle to penetrate the baseofmyspine.

When bacteria attack, thebody goes immediately intodefensemode, sending shocktroops of white blood cellsfrom their barracks in thespleen and bone marrow tofightofftheinvaders.They’rethe first casualties in themassive cellular war thathappens whenever a foreignbiological agent invades thebody, and Dr. Potter knew

thatanylackofclarity inmycerebrospinal fluid would becaused by my white bloodcells.

Dr. Potter bent over andfocused on the manometer,the transparent vertical tubeinto which the cerebrospinalfluid would emerge. Laura’sfirst surprise was that thefluid didn’t drip but gushedout—duetodangerouslyhighpressure.

Her second surprise was

the fluid’s appearance. Theslightest opacity would tellher I was in deep trouble.What shot out into themanometer was viscous andwhite, with a subtle tinge ofgreen.

Myspinalfluidwasfullofpus.

3.

OutofNowhere

Dr.PotterpagedDr.RobertBrennan, one of herassociates at LynchburgGeneral and a specialist ininfectiousdisease.Whiletheywaitedformoretestresultstocome from the adjacent labs,

they considered all of thediagnostic possibilities andtherapeuticoptions.

Minute by minute, as thetest results came back, Icontinued to groan andsquirm beneath the straps onmy gurney. An ever morebaffling picture wasemerging. The Gram’s stain(a chemical test, named aftera Danish physician whoinvented the method, thatallows doctors to classify an

invading bacteria as eithergram-negative or gram-positive) came backindicatinggram-negativerods—whichwashighlyunusual.

Meanwhileacomputerizedtomography(CT)scanofmyhead showed that themeningeal liningofmybrainwasdangerously swollenandinflamed. A breathing tubewas put into my trachea,allowing a ventilator to takeover the job of breathing for

me—twelvebreathsaminute,exactly—and a battery ofmonitors was set up aroundmy bed to record everymovement within my bodyandmynowall-but-destroyedbrain.

Of the very few adultswho contract spontaneous E.coli bacterialmeningitis (thatis, without brain surgery orpenetratingheadtrauma)eachyear, most do so because ofsome tangible cause, such as

a deficiency in their immunesystem(oftencausedbyHIVorAIDS).But I hadno suchfactor that would have mademesusceptibletothedisease.Other bacteria might causemeningitis by invading fromthe adjacent nasal sinuses ormiddle ear, but not E. coli.The cerebrospinal space istoo well sealed off from therest of the body for that tohappen. Unless the spine orskull is punctured (by a

contaminated deep brainstimulatororashuntinstalledby a neurosurgeon, forexample),bacterialikeE.colithat usually reside in the gutsimplyhavenoaccesstothatarea.Ihadinstalledhundredsof shunts and stimulators inthebrains of patientsmyself,andhadIbeenabletodiscussthe matter, I would haveagreed with my stumpeddoctors that, toput it simply,I had a disease that was

virtuallyimpossibleformetohave.

Still unable to completelyaccept the evidence beingpresented from the testresults, the two doctorsplaced calls to experts ininfectious disease at majoracademic medical centers.Everyone agreed that theresults pointed to only onepossiblediagnosis.

But contracting a case ofsevere E. coli bacterial

meningitisoutofthinairwasnot the only strange medicalfeatIperformedthatfirstdayin the hospital. In the finalmoments before leaving theemergency room, and aftertwostraighthoursofgutturalanimal wails and groaning, Ibecame quiet. Then, out ofnowhere, I shouted threewords. They were crystalclear, and heard by all thedoctorsandnursespresent,aswellasbyHolley,whostood

afewpacesaway,justontheothersideofthecurtain.“God,helpme!”Everyone rushed over to

thestretcher.Bythetimetheygot to me, I was completelyunresponsive.

I have no memory of mytime in the ER, includingthose three words I shoutedout. But they were the last Iwould speak for the nextsevendays.

4.

EbenIV

Once in Major Bay 1, Icontinued to decline. Thecerebrospinal fluid (CSF)glucose level of a normalhealthy person is around 80milligrams per deciliter. Anextremely sick person in

imminent danger of dyingfrombacterialmeningitis canhave a level as low as 20mg/dl.

I had aCSFglucose levelof 1. My Glasgow ComaScalewaseightoutoffifteen,indicative of a severe brainillness, and declined furtherover the next few days. MyAPACHE II score (AcutePhysiology and ChronicHealthEvaluation) in theERwas 18 out of a possible 71,

indicatingthat thechancesofmy dying during thathospitalizationwereabout30percent. More specifically,given my diagnosis of acutegram-negative bacterialmeningitis and rapidneurological decline at theoutset, I’d had, at best, onlyabout a10percent chanceofsurviving my illness when IwasadmittedtotheER.Iftheantibiotics didn’t kick in, therisk of mortality would rise

steadily over the next fewdays—till it hit anonnegotiable100percent.

The doctors loaded mybody with three powerfulintravenousantibioticsbeforesending me up to my newhome: a large private room,number 10, in the MedicalIntensiveCareUnit,onefloorabovetheER.

I’d been in these ICUsmany times as a surgeon.They are where the absolute

sickest patients, people justinchesfromdeath,areplaced,so that several medicalpersonnel can work on themsimultaneously. A team likethat, fighting in completecoordinationtokeepapatientalive when all the odds areagainst them, is an awesomesight. I had felt bothenormous pride and brutaldisappointment in thoserooms,dependingonwhetherthe patient we were

strugglingtosaveeithermadeitorslippedfromourfingers.

Dr.Brennanandtherestofthe doctors stayed as upbeatwith Holley as they could,giventhecircumstances.Thisdidn’tallowfortheirbeingatallupbeat.ThetruthwasthatI was at significant risk ofdying, very soon. Even if Ididn’t die, the bacteriaattacking my brain hadprobably already devouredenough of my cortex to

compromise anyhigher-brainactivity. The longer I stayedin coma, the more likely itbecame that I would spendtherestofmylifeinachronicvegetativestate.

Fortunately, not only thestaff of Lynchburg Generalbut other people, too, werealready gathering to help.Michael Sullivan, ourneighborandtherectorinourEpiscopal church, arrived atthe ER about an hour after

Holley. Just as Holley hadrunoutthedoortofollowtheambulance, her cell phonehad buzzed. It was herlongtimefriendSylviaWhite.Sylvia always had anuncannywayof reachingoutprecisely when importantthings were happening.Holley was convinced shewaspsychic.(Ihadoptedforthe safer and more sensibleexplanation that shewas justa very good guesser.)Holley

briefed Sylvia on what washappening,andbetweenthemthey made calls to myimmediate family: myyounger sister, Betsy, wholived nearby, my sisterPhyllis, at forty-eight theyoungest of us, who wasliving in Boston, and Jean,theoldest.

That Monday morningJean was driving souththrough Virginia from herhome in Delaware.

Fortuitously, she was on herway tohelpourmother,wholived in Winston-Salem.Jean’scellphonerang.Itwasherhusband,David.

“Have you gone throughRichmondyet?”heasked.

“No,” Jean said. “I’m justnorthofitonI-95.”

“Get onto route 60 West,then route 24 down toLynchburg. Holley justcalled. Eben’s in theemergency room there. He

had a seizure this morningandisn’tresponding.”

“Oh, my God! Do theyhaveanyideawhy?”

“They’re not sure, but itmightbemeningitis.”

Jeanmade the turn just intime and followed theundulating two-lane blacktopof 60 West through low,scudding clouds, towardRoute24andLynchburg.

ItwasPhylliswho,atthreeo’clockthatfirstafternoonof

the emergency, called EbenIV at his apartment at theUniversityofDelaware.Ebenwas outside on his porchdoing some sciencehomework (my own dad hadbeen a neurosurgeon, andEben was interested in thatcareernowaswell)whenhisphonerang.Phyllisgavehima quick rundown of thesituation and told him not toworry—that the doctors hadeverythingundercontrol.

“Do they have any ideawhat it might be?” Ebenasked.

“Well, they did mentiongram-negative bacteria andmeningitis.”

“I have two exams in thenext few days, so I’m goingtoleavesomequickmessageswithmyteachers,”saidEben.

Eben later told me that,initially, he was hesitant tobelievethatIwasinasgravedanger as Phyllis had

indicated, since she andHolley always “blew thingsout of proportion”—and Inever got sick. But whenMichael Sullivan called himonthephoneanhourlater,herealized that he needed tomake the drive down—immediately.

As Eben drove towardVirginia, an icy pelting rainstarted up. Phyllis had leftBostonat sixo’clock, andasEbenheadedtowardtheI-495

bridge over the PotomacRiver into Virginia, she waspassing through the cloudsoverhead. She landed atRichmond, rented a car, andgotontoRoute60herself.

When he was just a fewmiles outside Lynchburg,EbencalledHolley.

“How’sBond?”heasked.“Asleep,”Holleysaid.“I’m going to go straight

to the hospital then,” Ebensaid.

“You sure youdon’twanttocomehomefirst?”

“No,” Eben said. “I justwanttoseeDad.”

Eben pulled up at theMedical Intensive Care Unitat 11:15 P.M. The walkwayinto the hospitalwas startingto ice over, and when hecame into thebright lightsofthe reception area he sawonly a night reception nurse.SheledhimtomyICUbed.

By that point, everyone

who had been there earlierhad finally gone home. Theonly sounds in the large,dimlylitroomwerethequietbeeps and hisses of themachines keeping my bodygoing.

Ebenfrozeinthedoorwaywhen he saw me. In histwentyyears,he’dneverseenme with more than a cold.Now, in spite of all themachines doing their best tomake it seem otherwise, he

waslookingatwhatheknewwas,essentially,acorpse.Myphysical body was there infront of him, but the dad heknewwasgone.

Or perhaps a better wordtouseis:elsewhere.

5.

Underworld

Darkness, but a visibledarkness—like beingsubmerged in mud yet alsobeing able to see through it.Or maybe dirty Jell-Odescribes it better.Transparent, but in a bleary,

blurry, claustrophobic,suffocatingkindofway.

Consciousness, butconsciousness withoutmemory or identity—like adream where you knowwhat’s going on around you,buthavenorealideaofwho,orwhat,youare.

Sound, too: a deep,rhythmic pounding, distantyet strong, so thateachpulseof it goes right through you.Likeaheartbeat?Alittle,but

darker, more mechanical—like the sound of metalagainst metal, as if a giant,subterranean blacksmith ispoundingananvilsomewhereoff in the distance: poundingit so hard that the soundvibrates through the earth, orthemud,orwhereveritisthatyouare.

I didn’t have a body—notone that I was aware ofanyway. I was simply . . .there,inthisplaceofpulsing,

pounding darkness. At thetime, I might have called it“primordial.”But at the timeitwasgoingon,Ididn’tknowthis word. In fact, I didn’tknow any words at all. Thewords used here registeredmuchlater,when,backintheworld, I was writing downmy recollections. Language,emotion,logic:thesewereallgone, as if I had regressedback to some state of beingfrom the very beginnings of

life, as far back, perhaps, asthe primitive bacteria that,unbeknownst to me, hadtakenovermybrainandshutitdown.

How long did I reside inthis world? I have no idea.When you go to a placewhere there’s no sense oftime as we experience it intheordinaryworld,accuratelydescribing theway it feels isnext to impossible. When itwas happening, when I was

there, I felt like I (whatever“I” was) had always beenthere and would alwayscontinuetobe.

Nor,initiallyatleast,didImindthis.WhywouldI,afterall, since this state of beingwas the only one I’d everknown? Having no memoryof anything better, I was notparticularly bothered bywhere I was. I do recallconceptualizing that I mightormight not survive, butmy

indifference as to whether Idid or not only gave me agreater feeling ofinvulnerability.Iwascluelessas to the rules that governedthisworldIwasin,butIwasin no hurry to learn them.Afterall,whybother?

Ican’tsayexactlywhenithappened, but at a certainpointIbecameawareofsomeobjectsaroundme.Theywerea little like roots, and a littlelike blood vessels in a vast,

muddy womb. Glowing adark, dirty red, they reacheddown from some place farabove to some other placeequally far below. Inretrospect, looking at themwas like being a mole orearthworm,burieddeepintheground yet somehow able tosee the tangled matrixes ofrootsandtreessurroundingit.

That’swhy, thinking backto this place later, I came tocall it the Realm of the

Earthworm’s-Eye View. Fora long time, I suspected itmighthavebeensomekindofmemoryofwhatmybrainfeltlike during the period whenthe bacteria were originallyoverrunningit.

But the more I thoughtabout this explanation (andagain, this was all much,much later), the less sense itmade. Because—hard as thisis to picture if you haven’tbeen to this place yourself—

my consciousness wasn’tfoggyordistortedwhenIwasthere.Itwasjust...limited.Iwasn’thumanwhile Iwas inthis place. I wasn’t evenanimal. I was somethingbefore, and below, all that. Iwas simply a lone point ofawareness in a timeless red-brownsea.

ThelongerIstayedinthisplace, the less comfortable Ibecame. At first I was sodeeply immersed in it that

there was no differencebetween “me” and the half-creepy, half-familiar elementthat surrounded me. Butgradually this sense of deep,timeless, and boundarylessimmersion gave way tosomethingelse:afeelinglikeI wasn’t really part of thissubterraneanworldatall,buttrappedinit.

Grotesque animal facesbubbled out of the muck,groaned or screeched, and

thenweregoneagain.Iheardan occasional dull roar.Sometimes these roarschanged to dim, rhythmicchants, chants thatwerebothterrifying and weirdlyfamiliar—as if at some pointI’d known and uttered themallmyself.

As I had no memory ofprior existence, my time inthisrealmstretchedway,wayout. Months? Years?Eternity? Regardless of the

answer, I eventually got to apoint where the creepy-crawly feeling totallyoutweighed the homey,familiar feeling. The more Ibegan to feel likeame—likesomething separate from thecoldandwetanddarkaroundme—the more the faces thatbubbled up out of thatdarkness became ugly andthreatening. The rhythmicpounding off in the distancesharpened and intensified as

well—became the work-beatfor some army of troll-likeunderground laborers,performing some endless,brutally monotonous task.The movement around mebecame less visual andmoretactile, as if reptilian,wormlike creatures werecrowding past, occasionallyrubbing up against me withtheirsmoothorspikyskins.

ThenIbecameawareofasmell: a little like feces, a

little like blood, and a littlelike vomit. A biologicalsmell, in otherwords, but ofbiological death, not ofbiological life. As myawareness sharpened moreandmore,Iedgedevercloserto panic. Whoever orwhatever I was, I did notbelong here. I needed to getout.

ButwherewouldIgo?Even as I asked that

question, something new

emerged from the darknessabove: something thatwasn’tcold,ordead,ordark,buttheexact opposite of all thosethings.IfItriedfortherestofmylife,Iwouldneverbeabletodojusticetothisentitythatnow approached me . . . tocome anywhere close todescribing how beautiful itwas.

ButI’mgoingtotry.

6.

AnAnchortoLife

Phyllis pulled into thehospitalparkinglotjustundertwohoursafterEbenIVhad,at around 1 A.M. When shegot to my ICU room shefoundEbenIVsittingnexttomy bed, clutching a hospital

pillowinfrontofhimtohelphimkeepawake.

“Mom’s home withBond,” Eben said, in a tonethat was tired, tense, andhappytoseeher,allatonce.

Phyllis told Eben heneededtogohome,thatifhestayed up all night afterdriving from Delaware he’dbe worthless to anyonetomorrow, his dad included.ShecalledHolleyandJeanatourhouseandtoldthemEben

IV would be back soon butthat she was staying in myroomforthenight.

“Go home to your momand your aunt and yourbrother,”shesaidtoEbenIVwhen she’d hung up. “Theyneedyou.YourdadandIwillbe right here when you getbacktomorrow.”

EbenIVlookedoveratmybody: at the clear plasticbreathing tube runningthroughmyrightnostrildown

to my trachea; at my thin,already chapping lips; at myclosed eyes and saggingfacialmuscles.

Phyllisreadhisthoughts.“Go home, Eben. Try not

to worry. Your dad’s stillwithus.AndI’mnotgoingtolethimgo.”

Shewalkedtomybedside,picked up my hand, andstarted to massage it. Withonly the machines and thenight nurse who came in to

checkmystatseveryhourforcompany, Phyllis sat throughthe rest of the night, holdingmy hand, keeping aconnection going that sheknew full well was vital if Iwasgoingtogetthroughthis.

It’s a cliché to talk aboutwhatabigemphasispeopleinthe South put on family, butlike a lot of clichés, it’s alsotrue.WhenIwenttoHarvardin1988,oneofthefirstthingsI noticed about northerners

wasthewaytheywerealittleshyeraboutexpressinga factthat many in the South takefor granted: Your family iswhoyouare.

Throughout my own life,my relationship with myfamily—withmyparents andsisters,andlaterwithHolley,Eben IV, and Bond—hadalwaysbeenavitalsourceofstrength and stability, butevenmoresoinrecentyears.Family was where I turned

forunquestioningsupportinaworldthat—NorthorSouth—can all too often be short ofthiscommodity.

I went to our Episcopalchurch with Holley and thekidsonoccasion.Butthefactwas that for years I’d onlybeen a step above a “C &E’er” (onewho only darkensthe door of a church atChristmas and Easter). Iencouraged our boys to saytheir prayers at night, but I

wasnospiritual leader inourhome. I’d never escaped myfeelings of doubt at how anyofitcouldreallybe.Asmuchas I’d grown up wanting tobelieve in God and Heavenand an afterlife, my decadesin the rigorous scientificworld of academicneurosurgery had profoundlycalledintoquestionhowsuchthings could exist. Modernneurosciencedictates that thebrain gives rise to

consciousness—to the mind,to the soul, to the spirit, towhatever you choose to callthat invisible, intangible partofusthattrulymakesuswhoweare—andIhadlittledoubtthatitwascorrect.

Like most health-careworkers who deal directlywith dying patients and theirfamilies, Ihadheardabout—and even seen—some prettyinexplicable events over theyears. I filed those

occurrences under“unknown” and let them be,figuring a commonsenseanswerofonekindoranotherlayattheheartofthemall.

Not that Iwas opposed tosupernatural beliefs. As adoctor who saw incrediblephysical and emotionalsuffering on a regular basis,the last thing I would havewanted to do was to denyanyone thecomfortandhopethat faith provided. In fact, I

would have loved to haveenjoyedsomeofitmyself.

The older I got, however,the less likely that seemed.Like an ocean wearing awaya beach, over the years myscientific worldview gentlybut steadily undermined myability to believe insomething larger. Scienceseemed to be providing asteady onslaught of evidencethat pushed our significancein theuniverseevercloser to

zero.Beliefwouldhavebeennice. But science is notconcerned with what wouldbe nice. It’s concerned withwhatis.

I’m a kinetic learner,which is just to say that Ilearnbydoing.IfIcan’tfeelsomethingortouchitmyself,it’s hard for me to takeinterest in it. That desire toreachoutandtouchwhateverI’mtryingtounderstandwas,along with the desire to be

likemyfather,whatdrewmeto neurosurgery. As abstractandmysteriousas thehumanbrain is, it’s also incrediblyconcrete. As a medicalstudent at Duke, I relishedlooking into a microscopeand actually seeing thedelicately elongated neuronalcells that spark the synapticconnections that give rise toconsciousness. I loved thecombination of abstractknowledge and total

physicality that brain surgerypresented. To access thebrain,onemustpullawaythelayers of skin and tissuecoveringtheskullandapplyahigh-speed pneumatic devicecalled aMidasRexdrill. It’sa very sophisticated piece ofequipment,costing thousandsof dollars.Yetwhen you getdowntoit,it’salsojust...adrill.

Likewise, surgicallyrepairing the brain, while an

extraordinarily complexundertaking, is actually nodifferentthanfixinganyotherhighly delicate, electricallycharged machine. That, Iknew full well, is what thebrainreallyis:amachinethatproduces the phenomenon ofconsciousness. Sure,scientists hadn’t discoveredexactly how the neurons ofthebrainmanagedtodothis,but it was only a matter oftimebefore theywould.This

was proven every day in theoperating room. A patientcomes inwithheadachesanddiminished consciousness.YouobtainanMRI(magneticresonanceimage)ofherbrainand discover a tumor. Youplace the patient undergeneral anesthesia, removethe tumor, and a few hourslater she’s waking up to theworld again. No moreheadaches. No more troublewith consciousness.

Seeminglyprettysimple.I adored that simplicity—

the absolute honesty andcleanness of science. Irespected that it leftno roomfor fantasy or for sloppythinking. If a fact could beestablished as tangible andtrustworthy, it was accepted.Ifnot,thenitwasrejected.

This approach left verylittle room for the soul andthe spirit, for the continuingexistence of a personality

after the brain that supportedit stopped functioning. It lefteven less room for thosewords I’d heard in churchagain and again: “lifeeverlasting.”

WhichiswhyIcountedonmy family—on Holley andourboysandmythreesistersand, of course,mymomanddad—somuch.Inaveryrealsense, I’d never have beenabletopracticemyprofession—toperform,dayinandday

out, the actions I performed,andtosee thethingsIsaw—without the bedrock supportof love and understandingtheyprovided.

And thatwaswhy Phyllis(after consulting our sisterBetsy on the phone) decidedthat night tomake a promisetomeonbehalfofourwholefamily.As she sat therewithmy limp,nearly lifelesshandin hers, she told me that nomatter what happened from

then on, someone wouldalwaysberightthere,holdingmyhand.

“Wearenotlettingyougo,Eben,” she said. “You needananchortokeepyouhere,inthis world, where we needyou.Andwe’llprovideit.”

Little did she know justhow important that anchorwas going to prove in thedaystocome.

7.

TheSpinningMelodyandtheGateway

Something had appeared inthedarkness.

Turningslowly,itradiatedfine filaments of white-goldlight, and as it did so thedarknessaroundmebegan to

splinterandbreakapart.ThenIheardanewsound:

a living sound, like therichest, most complex, mostbeautiful piece of musicyou’ve ever heard. Growingin volume as a pure whitelightdescended,itobliteratedthe monotonous mechanicalpounding that, seemingly foreons, had been my onlycompanyupuntilthen.

The light got closer andcloser, spinning around and

around and generating thosefilaments of pure white lightthat I now saw were tinged,here and there, with hints ofgold.

Then,attheverycenterofthe light, something elseappeared. I focused myawareness, hard, trying tofigureoutwhatitwas.

An opening. I was nolonger looking at the slowlyspinning light at all, butthroughit.

Themoment I understoodthis,Ibegantomoveup.Fast.There was a whooshingsound, and in a flash I wentthrough the opening andfoundmyself inacompletelynew world. The strangest,mostbeautifulworldI’deverseen.

Brilliant, vibrant, ecstatic,stunning . . . Icouldheapononeadjectiveafteranother todescribe what this worldlooked and felt like, but

they’dallfallshort.IfeltlikeIwasbeingborn.Notreborn,orbornagain.Just...born.

Below me there wascountryside. It was green,lush, and earthlike. It wasearth...butatthesametimeit wasn’t. It was like whenyourparentstakeyoubacktoaplacewhereyouspentsomeyears as a very young child.Youdon’tknowtheplace.Orat least you think you don’t.But as you look around,

something pulls at you, andyou realize that a part ofyourself—a part way, deepdown—does remember theplaceafterall,andisrejoicingatbeingbackthereagain.

Iwas flying, passing overtrees and fields, streams andwaterfalls,andhereandthere,people. There were children,too, laughing and playing.The people sang and dancedaround in circles, andsometimes I’d see a dog,

running and jumping amongthem, as full of joy as thepeople were. They woresimple yet beautiful clothes,and it seemed tome that thecolorsoftheseclotheshadthesame kind of living warmthas the trees and the flowersthat bloomed and blossomedin the countryside aroundthem.

A beautiful, incredibledreamworld...

Except it wasn’t a dream.

ThoughIdidn’tknowwhereIwasorevenwhatIwas,Iwasabsolutely sure of one thing:thisplaceI’dsuddenlyfoundmyself in was completelyreal.

The word real expressessomething abstract, and it’sfrustratingly ineffective atconveyingwhatI’mtryingtodescribe.Imaginebeingakidand going to a movie on asummer day. Maybe themovie was good, and you

were entertained as you satthroughit.Butthentheshowended, and you filed out ofthe theater and back into thedeep, vibrant, welcomingwarmth of the summerafternoon.Andastheairandthe sunlight hit you, youwonderedwhyonearthyou’dwasted this gorgeous daysittinginadarktheater.

Multiply that feeling athousand times, and you stillwon’t be anywhere close to

whatitfeltlikewhereIwas.I don’t know how long,

exactly, I flew along. (Timein this place was differentfrom the simple linear timeweexperienceonearthandisas hopelessly difficult todescribeaseveryotheraspectof it.) But at some point, IrealizedthatIwasn’taloneupthere.

Someonewas next tome:a beautiful girl with highcheekbones and deep blue

eyes. She was wearing thesame kind of peasant-likeclothes that thepeople in thevillage down below wore.Golden-brown tresses framedher lovely face. We wereriding along together on anintricately patterned surface,alive with indescribable andvivid colors—the wing of abutterfly. In fact, millions ofbutterflieswereallaroundus—vast fluttering waves ofthem, dipping down into the

greeneryandcomingbackuparoundusagain.Itwasn’tanysingle, discrete butterfly thatappeared, but all of themtogether, as if they were ariver of life and color,moving through the air. Weflew in lazy loopedformations past blossomingflowersandbudsontreesthatopenedasweflewnear.

The girl’s outfit wassimple, but its colors—powder blue, indigo, and

pastelorange-peach—had thesame overwhelming, super-vivid aliveness thateverything else in thesurroundingshad.Shelookedatmewithalookthat,ifyousaw it for a few moments,would make your whole lifeup to thatpointworth living,nomatterwhathadhappenedin it so far. It was not aromantic look. It was not alook of friendship. It was alook that was somehow

beyond all these . . . beyondall thedifferent typesof lovewehavedownhereon earth.It was something higher,holding all those other kindsof lovewithin itself while atthe same time being moregenuine and pure than all ofthem.

Without using any words,she spoke to me. Themessage went through melike a wind, and I instantlyunderstood that itwas true. I

knewsointhesamewaythatIknewthat theworldaroundus was real—was not somefantasy, passing andinsubstantial.

The message had threeparts,andifIhadtotranslatethem into earthly language,I’d say they ran somethinglikethis:

“You are loved andcherished,dearly,forever.”

“You have nothing tofear.”

“There is nothingyou candowrong.”

The message flooded mewith a vast and crazysensationofrelief.Itwaslikebeing handed the rules to agameI’dbeenplayingallmylife without ever fullyunderstandingit.

“Wewill show youmanythings here,” the girl said—again, without actually usingthese words but by drivingtheir conceptual essence

directly into me. “Buteventually,youwillgoback.”

To this, I had only onequestion.

Backwhere?Remember who’s talking

to you right now. I’m not asoft-headed sentimentalist. Iknowwhatdeathlookslike.Iknow what it feels like tohave a living person, whomyou spoke to and jokedwithin better days, become alifelessobjectonanoperating

table after you’ve struggledforhourstokeepthemachineoftheirbodyworking.Iknowwhatsufferinglookslike,andthe answerless grief on thefacesoflovedoneswhohavelost someone they neverdreamed they could lose. Iknowmy biology, andwhileI’m not a physicist, I’m noslouch at that, either. I knowthe difference betweenfantasy and reality, and Iknowthat theexperienceI’m

struggling to give you thevaguest, most completelyunsatisfactorypictureof,wasthe single most realexperienceofmylife.

In fact, the onlycompetition for it in thereality department was whatcamenext.

8.

Israel

By eight the nextmorning,Holleywasbackinmyroom.She spelled Phyllis, takingher place in the chair by thehead of my bed andsqueezing my stillunresponsive hand in hers.

Around 11 A.M., MichaelSullivan arrived, andeveryone formed a circlearound me, with BetsyholdingmyhandsothatIwasincluded, too. Michael led aprayer. They were justfinishing when one of thedoctors specializing ininfectious diseases came inwith a fresh report fromdownstairs. Despite theiradjusting my antibioticsovernight, my white blood

cellcountwasstillrising.Thebacteria were continuing,unimpeded, with the task ofeatingmybrain.

Fast running out ofoptions, the doctors oncemorewentoverthedetailsofmy activities in the past fewdays with Holley. Then theystretched their questions tocover the past few weeks.Was there anything—anything—in the details ofwhat I’d been doing that

could help them make senseofmycondition?

“Well,” said Holley, “hedidtakeaworktriptoIsraelafewmonthsago.”

Dr. Brennan looked upfromhisnotepad.E. coli bacterial cells can

swap DNA not only withother E. coli, but with othergram-negative bacterialorganisms as well. This hasenormous implications inourtime of global travel,

antibiotic bombardment, andfast-mutating new strains ofbacterial illnesses.IfsomeE.coli bacteria find themselvesin a harsh biologicalenvironmentwith someotherprimitive organisms that arebettersuitedthantheyare,theE.colicanpotentiallypickupsomeDNAfromthosebetter-suited bacteria andincorporateit.

In 1996, doctorsdiscovered a new bacterial

strain harboring DNA for agene coding for Klebsiellapneumoniae carbapenemase,or KPC, an enzyme thatconferredantibioticresistanceon its host bacterium. It wasfound in the stomach of apatient who died in a NorthCarolina hospital. The strainimmediatelygot the attentionof doctors all over theworldwhen it was discovered thatKPCcouldpotentially rendera bacteria that absorbed it

resistant not just to somecurrent antibiotics, but to allofthem.

If a toxic, antibiotic-proofstrain of bacteria (onewhosenontoxic cousin isubiquitousinourbodies)gotlooseinthegeneral population, it wouldhave a field day with thehuman race. There are nonew antibiotics in the ten-year pharmaceuticaldevelopment pipeline thatcouldcometotherescue.

Just a fewmonths earlier,Dr. Brennan knew, a patienthad checked into a hospitalwith a powerful bacterialinfection and was given arange of powerful antibioticsin an effort to control hisKlebsiella pneumoniaeinfection. But the man’scondition continued toworsen.Testsrevealedthathewas still suffering fromKlebsiella pneumoniae andthat the antibiotics hadn’t

donetheirwork.Furthertestsrevealed that the bacterialiving in the man’s largeintestine had acquired theKPC gene by direct plasmidtransfer from his resistantKlebsiella pneumoniaeinfection. In otherwords, hisbody had provided thelaboratory for the creation ofaspeciesofbacteriathat,ifitgot into the generalpopulation, might rival theBlack Death, a plague that

killed off half of Europe inthefourteenthcentury.

Thehospitalwhereallthisoccurred was the SouraskyMedical Center in Tel Aviv,Israel, and it had occurredjustafewmonthspreviously.As a matter of fact ithappened at about the timethatI’dbeenthere,aspartofmy work coordinating aglobal research initiative infocused ultrasound brainsurgery. I’d arrived in

Jerusalem at 3:15 A.M. andafter finding my hotel haddecidedonawhimtowalktotheoldcity.Iendeduptakinga lone predawn tour of theViaDolorosaandvisitingthealleged site of the LastSupper. The trip had beenstrangely moving, and onceback in the States I’d oftenbrought it up with Holley.But at the time I’d knownnothing of the patient at theSourasky Medical Center, or

thebacteriahecontractedthatpicked up the KPC gene.Bacteria that, it developed,wasitselfastrainofE.coli.

Could I have somehowpicked up an antibiotic-proofKPC-harboringbacteriawhileI was over in Israel? It wasunlikely.Butitwasapossibleexplanation for the apparentresistance of my infection,andmydoctorswenttoworkto determine if that wasindeed the bacteria that was

attacking my brain.My casewasabout tobecome, for thefirst of many reasons, a partofmedicalhistory.

9.

TheCore

Meanwhile, I was in aplaceofclouds.

Big, puffy, pink-whiteones that showed up sharplyagainst the deep blue-blacksky.

Higher than the clouds—

immeasurably higher—flocksof transparent orbs,shimmering beings arcedacross the sky, leaving long,streamer-like lines behindthem.

Birds? Angels? Thesewords registered when I waswriting down myrecollections. But neither ofthesewords do justice to thebeings themselves, whichwere quite simply differentfrom anything I have known

on this planet. They weremoreadvanced.Higher.

A sound, huge andbooming like a gloriouschant, came down fromabove, and Iwondered if thewinged beings wereproducing it. Again thinkingabout it later, it occurred tome that the joy of thesecreatures, as they soaredalong,wassuchthattheyhadtomakethisnoise—thatifthejoy didn’t come out of them

this way then they wouldsimply not otherwise be ableto contain it. The soundwaspalpableandalmostmaterial,like a rain that you can feelonyour skinbut that doesn’tgetyouwet.

Seeing and hearing werenot separate in this placewhere I now was. I couldhear the visual beauty of thesilvery bodies of thosescintillating beings above,and I could see the surging,

joyfulperfectionofwhattheysang. It seemed that youcould not look at or listen toanything in this worldwithoutbecomingapartof it—without joining with it insomemysteriousway.Again,frommypresent perspective,I would suggest that youcouldn’t look at anything inthatworldatall,forthewordat itself implies a separationthat did not exist there.Everything was distinct, yet

everythingwasalsoapartofeverything else, like the richandintermingleddesignsonaPersian carpet . . . or abutterfly’swing.

A warm wind blewthrough, like the kind thatspringuponthemostperfectsummer days, tossing theleaves of the trees andflowing past like heavenlywater. A divine breeze. Itchanged everything, shiftingtheworld aroundme into an

even higher octave, a highervibration.

Although I still had littlelanguage function, at least aswe think of it on earth, Ibegan wordlessly puttingquestions to this wind—andto the divine being that Isensed at work behind orwithinit.Whereisthisplace?WhoamI?WhyamIhere?Each time I silently posed

one of these questions, theanswer came instantly in anexplosionoflight,color,love,andbeauty thatblewthroughme like a crashing wave.What was important aboutthese bursts was that theydidn’t simply silence myquestions by overwhelmingthem. They answered them,but in a way that bypassedlanguage. Thoughts enteredme directly. But it wasn’tthoughtlikeweexperienceon

earth. It wasn’t vague,immaterial,orabstract.Thesethoughts were solid andimmediate—hotter than fireand wetter than water—andasIreceivedthemIwasableto instantly and effortlesslyunderstand concepts thatwouldhavetakenmeyearstofullygraspinmyearthlylife.

I continued movingforward and found myselfentering an immense void,completely dark, infinite in

size, yet also infinitelycomforting. Pitch black as itwas, it was also brimmingover with light: a light thatseemed to come from abrilliantorbthatInowsensednear me. An orb that waslivingandalmostsolid,asthesongsoftheangelbeingshadbeen.

My situation was,strangely enough, somethingakin to that of a fetus in awomb.Thefetusfloatsinthe

wombwith the silent partnerof the placenta, whichnourishes it and mediates itsrelationship to theeverywherepresentyetat thesame time invisible mother.Inthiscase,the“mother”wasGod, the Creator, the Sourcewho is responsible formakingtheuniverseandallinit. This Being was so closethat there seemed to be nodistance at all between Godand myself. Yet at the same

time, I could sense theinfinite vastness of theCreator, could see howcompletely minuscule I wasby comparison. I willoccasionally use Om as thepronoun for God because Ioriginally used that name inmy writings after my coma.“Om” was the sound Iremembered hearingassociated with thatomniscient, omnipotent, andunconditionally loving God,

butanydescriptivewordfallsshort.

The pure vastnessseparatingOmandmewas,Irealized,whyIhadtheOrbasmy companion. In somemannerIcouldn’tcompletelycomprehend but was sure ofnonetheless, the Orb was akindof “interpreter”betweenme and this extraordinarypresencesurroundingme.

It was as if I were beingborn into a largerworld, and

the universe itselfwas like agiant cosmic womb, and theOrb (who remained in somewayconnected to theGirlonthe Butterfly Wing, who infactwasshe)wasguidingmethroughthisprocess.

Later, when I was backhere in the world, I found aquotationby theseventeenth-centuryChristian poetHenryVaughan that came close todescribing this place—thisvast,inky-blackcorethatwas

thehomeoftheDivineitself.“There is, some say, in

God a deep but dazzlingdarkness...”

That was it, exactly: aninky darkness that was alsofulltobrimmingwithlight.

The questions, and theanswers, continued. Thoughthey still didn’t come in theformoflanguageasweknowit, the “voice” of this Beingwas warm and—odd as Iknow this may sound—

personal. It understoodhumans, and it possessed thequalities we possess, only ininfinitely greater measure. Itknew me deeply andoverflowedwithqualitiesthatall my life I’ve alwaysassociated with humanbeings, and human beingsalone: warmth, compassion,pathos . . . even irony andhumor.

ThroughtheOrb,Omtoldme that there is not one

universe but many—in fact,morethanIcouldconceive—butthatlovelayatthecenterof themall.Evilwas presentin all the other universes aswell, but only in the tiniesttrace amounts. Evil wasnecessary because without itfreewillwas impossible,andwithout free will there couldbe no growth—no forwardmovement, no chance for usto become what God longedforustobe.Horribleandall-

powerful as evil sometimesseemed to be in aworld likeours,inthelargerpicturelovewas overwhelminglydominant, and it wouldultimatelybetriumphant.

Isawtheabundanceoflifethroughout the countlessuniverses, including somewhose intelligence wasadvanced far beyond that ofhumanity.Isawthattherearecountless higher dimensions,butthattheonlywaytoknow

these dimensions is to enterandexperiencethemdirectly.They cannot be known, orunderstood, from lowerdimensionalspace.Causeandeffect exist in these higherrealms, but outside of ourearthly conception of them.Theworld of time and spacein which we move in thisterrestrialrealmistightlyandintricately meshed withinthese higherworlds. In otherwords, these worlds aren’t

totallyapartfromus,becauseall worlds are part of thesame overarching divineReality. From those higherworlds one could access anytimeorplaceinourworld.

Itwill takeme the rest ofmy life, and then some, tounpack what I learned upthere. The knowledge givenme was not “taught” in theway that a history lesson ormath theorem would be.Insights happened directly,

rather than needing to becoaxed and absorbed.Knowledge was storedwithout memorization,instantly and for good. Itdidn’t fade, like ordinaryinformation does, and to thisday I still possess all of it,much more clearly than IpossesstheinformationthatIgainedoverallofmyyearsinschool.

That’snottosaythatIcangettothisknowledgejustlike

that. Because now that I’mback here in the earthlyrealm, I have to process itthrough my limited physicalbodyandbrain.Butit’sthere.I feel it, laid into my verybeing. For a person like mewhohad spenthiswhole lifeworking hard to accumulateknowledgeandunderstandingthe old-fashioned way, thediscovery of this moreadvanced level of learningwas, alone, enough to give

me food for thought for agestocome...

Unfortunately, for myfamily and my doctors backon earth, the situation wasverydifferent.

10.

WhatCounts

Holley didn’t fail to noticehow interested the doctorsbecame when she mentionedmy trip to Israel. But ofcourse she didn’t understandwhy it was so important. Inretrospect, it was a blessing

that she didn’t. Coping withmypossibledeathwasburdenenough, without the addedpossibility that I was theindex case for the twenty-first-centuryequivalentoftheBlackPlague.

Meanwhile, more callswent out to friends andfamily.

Includingtomybiologicalfamily.

As a young boy, I’dworshipped my father, who

was chief of staff for twentyyears atWake Forest BaptistMedical Center in Winston-Salem. I chose academicneurosurgery as a career inorder to follow in hisfootstepsascloselyasIcould—despite knowing I’d nevercompletelyfillhisshoes.

My father was a deeplyspiritualman.Heservedasasurgeon in the Army AirForce in the jungles of NewGuinea and the Philippines

during World War II. Hewitnessed brutality andsuffering and sufferedhimself. He told me aboutnights spent operating onbattle casualties in tents thatbarely held up under theblankets of monsoon rainhitting them, the heat andhumidity so oppressive thatthesurgeonsstrippeddowntotheir underwear just to beabletoendureit.

Dad had married the love

of his life (and hiscommanding officer’sdaughter), Betty, in October1942, while training for hisstintinthePacificTheater.Atwar’s end hewas part of theinitial group of Allied forcesoccupying Japan after theUnitedStatesdroppedatomicbombs on Hiroshima andNagasaki. As the only U.S.military neurosurgeon inTokyo, he was officiallyindispensable. He was

qualified to perform ear,nose, and throat surgery toboot.

All of these qualificationsensured thathewouldnotbegoing anywhere for quitesome time. His newcommanding officer wouldnot allow him to go back tothe States until the situationwas “more stable.” Severalmonths after the Japaneseformally surrendered aboardthe battleship Missouri in

Tokyo Bay, Dad, at last,received general ordersreleasing him to go home.However, he knew that theon-siteCOwould have theseorders rescinded if he sawthem.SoDadwaiteduntiltheweekend, when that COwasoff base for R&R, andprocessed the orders throughthe stand-in CO. He wasfinally able to board a shipboundforhomeinDecember1945, long after most of his

fellow soldiers had returnedtotheirfamilies.

After coming back to theStates in early 1946, Dadwent on to finish hisneurosurgical training withhis friend and HarvardMedical School classmate,Donald Matson, who hadserved in the EuropeanTheater. They trained at thePeter Bent Brigham and theChildren’s Hospitals inBoston (flagship hospitals of

Harvard Medical School)underDr.FrancD.Ingraham,whohadbeenoneof the lastresidents trained by Dr.Harvey Cushing, globallyregarded as the father ofmodern neurosurgery. In the1950s and 1960s, the entirecadre of “3131C”neurosurgeons (as they wereofficially classified by theArmy Air Force), who hadhoned their craft on thebattlefieldsofEuropeandthe

Pacific,wentontosetthebarfor the next half century ofneurosurgeons, includingthoseinmyowngeneration.

Myparentsgrewupduringthe Depression and werehardwiredforwork.Dad justabout always made it homefor family dinner at 7 P.M.,usually in a suit and tie, butoccasionallywearingsurgicalscrubs. Then he’d return tothehospital,often takingoneof us kids along to do our

homeworkinhisoffice,whilehe made rounds on hispatients. For Dad, life andwork were essentiallysynonymous,andheraisedusaccordingly.Heusuallymademy sisters and me do yardwork on Sundays. Ifwe toldhim we wanted to go to themovies, he’d reply: “If yougo to the movies, thensomeone else has to work.”He was also fiercelycompetitive. On the squash

court, he considered everygame a “battle to the death,”andevenintohiseightieswasalways in search of freshopponents, often decadesyounger.

He was a demandingparent, but also a wonderfulone. He treated everyone hemetwithrespectandcarriedascrewdriver in the pocket ofhis lab coat to tighten anyloose screws he mightencounter during his rounds

of the hospital. His patients,his fellow physicians, thenurses,andtheentirehospitalstaff loved him. Whether itwas operating on patients,helping to advance research,training neurosurgeons (asingular passsion), or editingthe journal SurgicalNeurology(whichhedidforanumber of years), Dad sawhispathinlifeclearlymarkedout for him. Even after hefinally aged out of the

operating room at seventy-one,he continued tokeepupwith the latest developmentsinthefield.Afterhisdeathin2004, his long-time partnerDr.DavidL.Kelly,Jr.,wrote,“Dr. Alexander will alwaysbe remembered for hisenthusiasmandproficiencies,his perseverance, andattentiontodetail,hisspiritofcompassion, honesty, andexcellenceinallthathedid.”No great surprise that I, like

so many others, worshippedhim.

Veryearlyon,sofarbackI don’t even rememberwhenit was, Mom and Dad hadtoldmethatIwasadopted(or“chosen,” as they put it,because, they assured me,they’d known I was theirchild from the moment theysaw me). They were not mybiological birth parents, butthey lovedme dearly, as if Iwere their own flesh and

blood. I grew up knowingthatI’dbeenadoptedinApril1954, at the age of fourmonths, and that mybiological mother had beensixteen years old—asophomore in high school—unwedwhenshegavebirthtome in1953.Herboyfriend,asenior with no immediateprospects for being able tosupportachild,hadagreedtogive me up as well, thoughneither had wanted to. The

knowledgeofallthiscamesoearlythatitwassimplyapartofwhoIwas,asacceptedandunquestioned as the jet blackcolorofmyhair and the factthat I liked hamburgers anddisliked cauliflower. I lovedmy adoptive parents just asmuchasIwouldhaveiftheyhadbeentruebloodrelations,andtheyclearlyfeltthesameaboutme.

My older sister, Jean, hadalso been adopted, but five

months after they adoptedme, my mother was able toconceive herself. Shedelivered a baby girl—mysister Betsy—and five yearslater, Phyllis, our youngestsister,wasborn.Wewerefullsiblings for all intents andpurposes. I knew thatwherever I had come from, Iwas their brother and theyweremysisters.Igrewupina family that not only lovedme but also believed in me

and supported my dreams.Including the dream thatseizedme inhighschoolandnever letgotill Iachievedit:tobeaneurosurgeonlikemyfather.

I didn’t think about myadoption during my collegeandmedicalschoolyears—atleastnotonthesurface.Ididreach out to the Children’sHome Society of NorthCarolina several times,inquiring whether or not my

mother had any interest inreuniting.ButNorthCarolinahad some of the nation’sstrictest laws to protect theanonymity of adoptees andtheir birth parents, even ifthey desperately wanted toreconnect. After my latetwenties, I thought about thematter less and less. Andonce I met Holley and westarted our own family, thequestion drifted ever furtheraway.

Oreverdeeperinside.In 1999, when he was

twelve and we were stilllivinginMassachusetts,EbenIV got involved in a familyheritageprojectattheCharlesRiverSchoolwherehewasasixth grader. He knew I’dbeen adopted, and thus thathehaddirect relativeson theplanetwhom he didn’t knowpersonally, or even by name.The project sparkedsomething in him—a deep

curiositythathehadn’t,uptothatpoint,knownhehad.

He asked me if we couldseek out my birth parents. Itold him that over the yearsI’d occasionally looked intothemattermyself, contactingtheChildren’sHome SocietyofNorthCarolinaandaskingif they had any news. If mybiological mom or daddesired contact, the societywouldknow.ButIhadneverheardanythingback.

Not that it bothered me.“It’s perfectly natural in acircumstance like this,” I’dtold Eben. “It doesn’t meanmy birth mom doesn’t loveme,orthatshewouldn’tloveyou if she ever set eyes onyou.Butshedoesn’twantto,most likelybecause she feelslike you and I have our ownfamily and she doesn’t wanttogetinthewayofthat.”

Eben wouldn’t let it go,though, so finally I thought

I’d humor him and wrote asocialworkernamedBettyatthe Children’s Home who’dhelped me with my requestsbefore.Afewweekslater,ona snowy Friday afternoon inFebruary2000,EbenIVandIweredriving fromBostonupto Maine for a weekend ofskiing when I remembered IwasduetogiveBettyacalltocheck on her progress. Icalled her onmy cell phone,andsheanswered.

“Well,infact,”shesaid,“Idohavesomenews.Areyousittingdown?”

Iwas in factsittingdown,so I said as much, omittingthatIwasalsodrivingmycarthroughablizzard.

“It turns out, Dr.Alexander, that your birthparentsactuallygotmarried.”

Myhearthammeredinmychest,andtheroadinfrontofme suddenly turned unrealand far away. Though I’d

known that my parents weresweethearts, I’d alwaysassumed that once they’dgiven me up, their lives hadtaken separate directions.Instantly a picture appearedinmy head.A picture ofmybirth parents, and of a homethat they’dmadesomewhere.A home I had never known.A home where—I didn’tbelong.

Betty interrupted mythoughts.“Dr.Alexander?”

“Yes,” I said slowly, “I’mhere.”

“There’smore.”To Eben’s puzzlement, I

pulledthecarovertothesideoftheroadandtoldhertogoahead.

“Your parents had threemore children: Two sistersand a brother. I’ve been intouch with the older sister,andshetoldmeyouryoungersister died two years ago.Yourparentsarestillgrieving

theirloss.”“So that means . . . ?” I

askedaftera longpause,stillnumb,takingitallinwithoutreally being able to processanyofit.

“I’msorry,Dr.Alexander,but yes—it means she isrefusing your request forcontact.”

Eben shifted in the seatbehindme,clearlyawarethatsomething of importance hadjusthappenedbutstumpedas

towhatitwas.“What is it, Dad?” he

askedafterI’dhungup.“Nothing,” I said. “The

agency still doesn’t knowmuch,butthey’reworkingonit. Maybe some time later.Maybe...”

But my voice trailed off.Outside, thestormwasreallypicking up. I could only seeabout a hundred yards intothe low white woodsspreadingoutallaroundus.I

put the car in gear, squintedcarefully into the rearviewmirror, and pulled back ontotheroad.

In an instant, my view ofmyself had been totallychanged.AfterthatphonecallI was, of course, stilleverything I’d been before:still a scientist, still adoctor,still a father, still a husband.But I also felt, for the firsttime ever, like an orphan.Someonewhohadbeengiven

away. Someone less thanfully,100percentwanted.

I had never, before thatphone call, really thought ofmyselfthatway—assomeonecut off from my source. I’dnever defined myself in thecontext of something I hadlost and could never regain.But suddenly itwas the onlything about myself I couldsee.

Over thenext fewmonthsan ocean of sadness opened

upwithinme: a sadness thatthreatened to swamp, andsink,everythinginmylifeI’dworked so hard to create uptothatpoint.

Thiswasonlymadeworsebymy inability to get to thebottom of what was causingthe situation. I’d run intoproblems in myself before—shortcomings, as I’d seenthem—and I’d correctedthem. In med school and inmy early days as a surgeon,

for example, I’dbeenpart ofa culture where heavydrinking, under the rightcircumstances, was smiledupon.But in1991Ibegan tonotice that I was lookingforward to my day off, andthe drinks that went alongwith it, just a little tooeagerly. I decided that itwastime for me to stop drinkingalcohol altogether. This wasnot easy by any stretch—I’dcome to rely on the release

provided by those off hoursmore than I’d known—and Ionly made it through thoseearly days of sobriety withmy family’s support.Soherewas another problem, clearlywithonlymetoblameforit.Ihad help to deal with it if Ichose to ask.Whycouldn’t Inipitinthebud?Itjustdidn’tseem right that a piece ofknowledge aboutmy past—apiece I had no control overwhatsoever—should be able

to so completely derail meboth emotionally andprofessionally.

So I struggled. And Iwatched in disbelief as myroles as doctor, father, andhusband became ever moredifficult tofulfill.SeeingthatIwasnotmybestself,Holleyset us up for a course ofcouples counseling. Thoughshe only partially understoodwhat was causing it, sheforgave me for falling into

this ditch of despair and didwhatevershecouldtopullmeup out of it. My depressionhadramificationsinmywork.My parents were, of course,aware of this change, andthough I knew they tooforgave it, it killed me thatmy career in academicneurosurgerywasslumping—and all they could do waswatch from the sidelines.Withoutmyparticipation,myfamilywaspowerless tohelp

me.And finally, I watched as

this new sadness exposed,then swept away, somethingelse: my last, half-acknowledgedhopethattherewassomepersonalelementinthe universe—some forcebeyondthescientificonesI’dspent years studying. In lessclinical terms, it swept awaymylastbeliefthattheremightbe aBeing of some kind outthere who truly loved and

caredaboutme—andthatmyprayers might be heard, andeven answered. After thatphone call during theblizzard, the notion of aloving, personal God—mybirthright, tosomedegree,asa churchgoing member of aculture that took that Godwith genuine seriousness—vanishedcompletely.

Was there a force orintelligence watching out forall of us? Who cared about

humans in a truly lovingway?Itwasasurprisetohaveto finally admit that in spiteofallmymedicaltrainingandexperience, Iwasclearlystillkeenly, if secretly, interestedin this question, just as I’dbeenmuchmoreinterestedinthe question of my birthparentsthanI’deverrealized.

Unfortunately, the answerto the question of whetherthere was such a Being wasthesameastheanswertothe

questionofwhethermybirthparents would once againopen their lives and theirheartstome.

Thatanswerwasno.

11.

AnEndtotheDownwardSpiral

Formuchof thenext sevenyears my career, and myfamily life, continued tosuffer. For a long time thepeople around me—eventhose closest tome—weren’t

sure what was causing theproblem. But gradually—through remarks I’d makealmost in passing—Holleyandmy sistersput thepiecestogether.

Finally, on an earlymorning walk on a SouthCarolina beach during afamilyvacation inJuly2007,BetsyandPhyllisbroughtupthe topic. “Haveyou thoughtaboutwritinganotherlettertoyour birth family?” Phyllis

asked.“Yes,”Betsysaid.“Things

might have changed by now,you never know.” Betsy hadrecently told us she wasthinking of adopting a childherself, so I wasn’t totallysurprised that the topic hadcome up. But all the same,my immediate response—mental rather than verbal—was: Oh no, not again! Iremembered the immensechasm that had cracked open

beneathmeaftertherejectionI’d faced seven years earlier.But I knew Betsy andPhyllis’s hearts were in therightplace.TheyknewIwassuffering, they’d finallyfigured out why, and theywanted—rightly—for me tostep up and try to fix theproblem. They assured methat they would travel thisroad with me—that Iwouldn’t be taking thisjourney alone, as I had done

before.Wewereateam.SoinearlyAugust2007,I

wroteananonymous letter tomybirth sister, thekeeperofthe gate on the matter, andsent it to Betty at theChildren’s Home Society ofNorth Carolina to forwardalong:

DearSister,Iaminterestedin

communicatingwithyou,ourbrotherand

ourparents.Afteralongtalkwithmyadoptivefamilysistersandmotheraboutthis,theirsupportandinterestrekindledmywantingtoknowmoreaboutmybiologicalfamily.Mytwosons,ages9

and19,areinterestedintheirheritage.Thethreeofusandmywifewouldbegratefulto

youforanybackgroundinformationthatyoufeelcomfortablesharing.Forme,questionscometomindaboutmybirthparentsregardingtheirlivesintheiryoungeryearsuntilnow.Whatinterestsandpersonalitiesdoyouallhave?Inthatweareall

growingolder,my

hopesaretomeetthemsoon.Ourarrangementscanbeinmutualagreement.PleaseknowthatIfeelmostrespectfulofthedegreeofprivacythattheywishtomaintain.Ihavehadawonderfuladoptivefamilyandappreciatemybiologicalparents’decisionintheiryouth.Myinterestisgenuine

andreceptivetoanyboundariestheyfeelarenecessary.Yourconsideration

inthismatterisdeeplyappreciated.Mostsincerelyyours,YourolderBrother

A few weeks later Ireceived a letter from theChildren’s Home Society. Itwasfrommybirthsister.

“Yes, we would love to

meet you,” she wrote. NorthCarolinastatelawforbadeherfrom revealing anyidentifying information tome,butworkingaroundthoseparameters, she gave me myfirstrealsetofcluesaboutthebiological family Ihadnevermet.

Whenshereportedthatmybirth father had been a navalaviator in Vietnam, it justblew me away: no wonder Ihadalwayslovedtojumpout

of airplanes and flysailplanes.My birth dadwasalso,Iwasfurtherstunnedtolearn, an astronaut traineewith NASA during theApollo missions in the mid-1960s (I myself hadconsidered training as amission specialist on thespace shuttle in 1983). Mybirth dad later worked as anairline pilot for Pan Am andDelta.

In October 2007, I finally

met my biological parents,Ann and Richard, and mybiologicalsiblings,KathyandDavid. Ann told me the fullstory of how, in 1953, shespent three months at theFlorenceCrittendenHomeforUnwedMothers,locatednextto Charlotte MemorialHospital.Allofthegirlstherehadcodenames,andbecauseshe loved American history,my mother chose VirginiaDare—the name of the first

baby born to English settlersin the New World. Most ofthegirls justcalledherDare.At sixteen, she was theyoungestgirlthere.

Shetoldmethatherdaddyhad been willing to doanythingtohelpherwhenhelearnedofher“predicament.”Hewaswillingtopickupandmove the whole family ifnecessary. He had beenunemployed for awhile, andbringinganewbaby into the

home would be a greatfinancial stress, not tomention all the otherproblems.

A close friend of his hadeven mentioned a doctor heknew of down in Dillon,South Carolina, who could“fix things.” But her motherwouldn’thearofthat.

Ann toldmehow she hadlooked up at the starstwinklingwildly in the gustywindsofanewlyarrivedcold

frontonthatfrigidDecembernight in 1953—how she hadwalked across the emptystreets under scattered low,racing clouds. She hadwanted this time tobe alone,with just the moon and starsandhersoon-to-be-bornchild—me.

“The crescent moon hunglow in the west. BrilliantJupiter was just rising, towatch over us all night.Richard loved science and

astronomy, and he later toldme that Jupiter was atopposition that night, andwould not be as bright againfor almost nine years. Overthat time, much wouldhappeninourlives,includingthe births of two morechildren.

“But at the time I justthought how beautiful andbright the King of Planetsappeared, watching over usfromabove.”

Assheenteredthehospitalfoyer, a magical thoughtstruck her. Girls generallystayed in the CrittendenHome for two weeks afterthey delivered their babies,thenthey’dgohomeandpickup their lives where they’dleftoff.Ifshereallydeliveredthatnight,sheandImightbehome for Christmas—if theyactually set her free at twoweeks. What a perfectmiracle that would be: to

bringmehomebyChristmasDay.

“Dr. Crawford was freshfromanotherdelivery,andhelooked awfully tired,” Anntold me. He laid an ether-soakedgauzeoverherfacetoeasethepain,soshewasonlysemiconscious when finally,at 2:42 A.M., with one lastgreat push, she gave birth toherfirstchild.

Ann told me that shewanted so much to hold and

caressme,andthatshewouldneverforgethearingmycriesuntil fatigue and thatanestheticfinallywonout.

Over the next four hours,first Mars, then Saturn, thenMercury, and finally brilliantVenusroseintheeasternskyto greet me into this world.Meanwhile, Ann slept moredeeply than she had inmonths.

The nurse awakened herbeforesunrise.

“I have someone I wantyou to meet,” she saidcheerfully,andpresentedme,swaddled in a sky-blueblanket,forhertoadmire.

“Thenursesallagreedthatyou were the most beautifulbaby in the whole nursery. Iwasburstingwithpride.”

AsmuchasAnnwantedtokeepme, thecoldreality thatshe couldn’t soon sank in.Richardhaddreamsofgoingto college, but those dreams

would not keep me fed.Perhaps I felt Ann’s pain,because I stopped eating. Ateleven days, I washospitalized with thediagnosis that I was “failingto thrive,” and my firstChristmas and the followingnine days were spent in thehospitalinCharlotte.

AfterIwasadmittedtothehospital, Ann took the two-hour bus ride north to hersmall hometown. She spent

that Christmas with herparents, sisters, and friends,whom she had not seen inthreemonths.Allwithoutme.

By the time I was eatingagain, my separate life wasunder way. Ann sensed thatshe was losing control andthat they weren’t going toallow her to keepme.Whenshe called the hospital justafter New Year’s, she wastoldthatIhadbeensenttotheChildren’s Home Society in

Greensboro.“Sent with a volunteer?

Howunfair!”shesaid.I spent the next three

monthslivinginababydormwith several other infantswhose mothers could notkeep them. My crib was onthe second floor of a bluishgrayVictorianhomethathadbeen donated to the society.“Itwasamostpleasantplaceforyourfirsthome,”Anntoldme with a laugh, “even

though it wasmainly a babydorm.” Ann took the three-hour bus ride to visit half adozentimesoverthenextfewmonths, trying desperately tocome up with a plan thatwouldsucceedinkeepingmewithher.Onceshecamewithher mother and another timewith Richard (although thenurses made him view methrough the window—theywouldnotlethiminthesameroom, and certainly not let

himholdme).ButbylateMarch1954,it

was clear that thingsweren’tgoing to go her way. Shewould have to give me up.She and hermother took thebus to Greensboro one lasttime.

“I had to hold you andlook in your eyes and try toexplain it all to you,” Anntold me. “I knew you wouldjust giggle and coo, blowbaby bubbles, and make

pleasing sounds no matterwhat I said,but I felt Iowedyou an explanation. I heldyou closely one last time,kissed your ears, chest, andface,andcaressedyougently.I remember inhaling deeply,loving that wonderful aromaoffreshlybathedbaby,asifitwereyesterday.

“Icalledyoubyyourbirthnameandsaid,‘Iloveyousomuch, so much you’ll neverknow. And I’ll love you

forever,untilthedayIdie.’“I said, ‘God, please let

him know how much he isloved. That I love him, andalways will.’ But I had nowayofknowingifmyprayerwouldbeanswered.Adoptionarrangements in the 1950swerefinalandverysecret.Noturningback,noexplanations.Sometimes birth dates werechangedintherecordsjusttohamper anyone’s efforts touncover the truth about a

baby’sorigins.Leavenothingto trace. Agreements wereprotectedbyharshstatelaws.Therulewastoforgetiteverhappenedandgoonwith therest of your life. And,hopefully,learnfromit.

“Ikissedyouonelasttime,then laid you gently in yourcrib. I wrapped you in yourlittle blue blanket, took onelast look intoyourblueeyes,then kissed my finger andtouchedittoyourforehead.

“‘Goodbye, RichardMichael. I love you,’ weremylastwordstoyou,atleastforhalfacenturyorso.”

Ann went on to tell methat after she and Richardwere married and the rest oftheirchildrencamealong,shebecamemoreandmoretakenupwithfindingoutwhathadbecomeofme. Inaddition tobeing a naval aviator and anairline pilot, Richard was anattorney,andAnnfiguredthat

gave him license to uncovermy adoptive identity. ButRichard was too much of agentleman to go back on theadoption agreement made in1954, and he kept out of thematter. In the early 1970s,with thewar inVietnamstillraging, Ann couldn’t get thedate of my birth out of herhead.IwouldturnnineteeninDecember 1972.Would I goover? If so, what wouldbecome of me there? Early

on, my plan was to enlist inthemarinestofly.Myvisionwas 20/100, and the AirForce required 20/20withoutcorrection.Wordonthestreetwas that the marines wouldtake even those of us with20/100visionandteachustofly. However, they thenstarted winding down theVietnam war effort, so Ineverenlisted.Iheadedofftomed school instead.ButAnnknew none of this. In the

springof1973, theywatchedas surviving POWs from the“Hanoi Hilton” disembarkedfrom the planes returningfrom North Vietnam. Theywere heartbroken whenmissing pilots they knew,more than half of Richard’snavy class, failed to emergefromtheplanes,andAnngotit in her head that I mighthave been killed over theremyself.

Once in her mind the

imagerefusedtofade,andforyears shewasconvinced thatI’d died a grisly death in therice paddies ofVietnam.Shecertainly would have beensurprisedtoknowthatat thattime I was just a few milesawayfromherinChapelHill!

In the summer of 2008, Imet up with my biologicalfather, his brother Bob, andhis brother-in-law, alsonamed Bob, at LitchfieldBeach, South Carolina.

BrotherBobwasadecoratedhero in the navy during theKoreanWarandatestpilotatChina Lake (the navy’sweapons test center in theCalifornia desert, where heperfected the Sidewindermissile system and flew F-104 Starfighters). MeanwhileRichard’s brother-in-lawBobset a speed record duringOperationSunRunin1957,acircumglobal relay record inF-101 Voodoo jet fighters

“outflying the sun” bycircling the earth at anaverage speed of over 1,000milesperhour.

It felt like Old HomeWeekforme.

Those meetings with mybirthparentsheraldedtheendofwhatI’vecometothinkofasmyYearsofNotKnowing.Years that, I came at last tolearn, had been characterizedby the same terrible pain formy birthparents as they had

beenforme.Therewasonlyonewound

that wouldn’t heal: the loss,ten years earlier in 1998, ofmy biological sister Betsy(yes,thesamenameasoneofthe sisters in my adoptivefamily,andtheybothmarriedRobs, but that’s anotherstory).She’dhadabigheart,everyone toldme, and,whennotworkingat therapecrisiscenter where she spent mostofhertime,shecouldusually

be found feeding and caringforamenagerieofstraydogsandcats.“Arealangel,”Anncalledher.Kathypromisedtosend me a picture of her.Betsy had struggled withalcohol just as I had, andlearningofherloss,fueledinpartby thosestruggles,mademe realize once again howfortunate I had been inresolvingmyownproblem. Ilonged to meet Betsy, tocomfort her—to tell her that

wounds could heal, and thatallwouldbeokay.

Because, strangelyenough, meeting my birthfamily was the first time inmy life that I felt that thingsreallywere, somehow, okay.Family mattered, and I’dgottenmine—mostofmine—back. This was my first realeducation in how profoundlyknowledge of one’s originscan heal a person’s life inunexpected ways. Knowing

where I came from, mybiological origins, allowedme to see, and to accept,thingsinmyselfthatI’dneverdreamed I’d have been ableto. Through meeting them, Iwas allowed to throw away,at last, the nagging suspicionthat I’d carried aroundwithout even being aware ofit: a suspicion that,whereverIhadcomefrom,biologicallyspeaking, I had not beenloved or cared about.

Subconsciously, I hadbelieved that Ididn’tdeserveto be loved, or even to exist.Discovering that I had beenloved, since the verybeginning, began to heal mein the most profound wayimaginable.IfeltawholenessIhadneverknownbefore.

It was not, however, theonly discovery in this areathatIwouldmake.Theotherquestion that I thought hadbeenansweredinthecarwith

Eben that day—the questionof whether there really is aloving God out there—stillheld, and the answer in mymindwasstillno.

It wasn’t until I spentseven days in coma that Irevisited that question. Idiscovered an entirelyunexpected answer there aswell...

12.

TheCore

Somethingpulledatme.Notlike someone grabbing myarm, but something subtler,less physical. It was a littlelikewhenthesundipsbehinda cloud and you feel yourmood change instantly in

response.I was going back, away

fromtheCore.Itsinky-brightdarknessfadedintothegreenlandscape of the Gateway,with all of its dazzlinglandscape. Looking down, Isaw the villagers again, thetrees and sparkling streamsand thewaterfalls, aswell asthe arcing angel-beingsabove.

My companion was there,too. She had been there the

whole time, of course, allthrough my journey into theCore, in the form of thatorblikeballoflight.Butnowshe was, once again, inhuman form. She wore thesame beautiful dress, andseeing her again made mefeellikeachildlostinahugeand alien city who suddenlycomes upon a familiar face.What a gift she was! “Wewill show you many things,but youwill be going back.”

That message, deliveredwordlessly to me at theentrance to the tracklessdarkness of the Core, cameback to me now. I also nowunderstood where “back”was.

The Realm of theEarthworm’s-Eye Viewwhere I had started thisodyssey.

But it was different thistime. Moving down into thedarkness with the full

knowledgeofwhatlayaboveit,Inolongerexperiencedthetrepidation that I hadwhen Iwas originally there. As theglorious music of theGateway faded out and thepulse-like pounding of thelowerrealmreturned, Iheardand saw these things as anadultseesaplacewhereheorshehadoncebeenfrightenedbut is no longer afraid. Themurk anddarkness, the facesthat bubbled up and faded

away, the artery-like rootsthat came down from above,held no terror for me now,because I understood—in thewordless way I understoodeverything then—that I wasno longer of this place, butonlyvisitingit.

Butwhy was I visiting itagain?

Theanswercametomeinthe same instantaneous,nonverbal way that theanswersinthebrilliantworld

above had been delivered.This whole adventure, itbegan to occur to me, wassome kind of tour—somekindofgrandoverviewoftheinvisible, spiritual side ofexistence. And like all goodtours, it included all floorsandalllevels.

Once I was back in thelower realm, the vagaries oftime in these worlds beyondwhat I knew of this earthcontinued to hold. To get a

little—if only a very little—idea of what this feels like,ponder how time lays itselfout in dreams. In a dream,“before” and “after” becometricky designations. You canbe in one part of the dreamand know what’s coming,even if you haven’texperiencedityet.My“time”out beyond was somethinglike that—though I shouldalso underline that whathappened tome had none of

the murky confusion of ourearthbounddreams, except attheveryearlieststages,whenIwasstillintheunderworld.

How longwas I there thistime? Again I have no realidea—nowaytogaugeit.ButIdoknowthatafterreturningto the lower realm, it took along time to discover that Iactually had some controlover my course—that I wasno longer trapped in thislower world. With concerted

effort, I couldmove back upto the higher planes. At acertain point in the murkydepths, I found myselfwishing for the SpinningMelody to return. After aninitial struggle to recall thenotes, the gorgeous music,and the spinningballof lightemittingitblossomedintomyawareness. They cut, onceagain, through the jelliedmuck,andIbegantorise.

In the worlds above, I

slowly discovered, to knowand be able to think ofsomething isalloneneeds inorder to move toward it. TothinkoftheSpinningMelodywastomakeitappear,andtolong for the higher worldswas to bring myself there.The more familiar I becamewith the world above, theeasier it was to return to it.During my time out of mybody, I accomplished thisback-and-forth movement

from the muddy darkness ofthe Realm of theEarthworm’s-EyeViewtothegreen brilliance of theGateway and into the blackbutholydarknessoftheCoreany number of times. Howmany I can’t say exactly—again because time as it wasthere just doesn’t translate toour conception of time hereon earth. But each time Ireached the Core, I wentdeeper than before, and was

taughtmore, in thewordless,more-than-verbalwaythatallthings are communicated intheworldsabovethisone.

That doesn’t mean that Isaw anything like the wholeuniverse,eitherinmyoriginaljourney from theEarthworm’s-EyeViewup tothe Core, or in the ones thatcame afterward. In fact, oneof the truths driven home tome in the Core each time Ireturned to it was how

impossible it would be tounderstand all that exists—eitheritsphysical/visiblesideor its (much, much larger)spiritual/invisible side, not tomention the countless otheruniverses that exist or haveeverexisted.

Butnoneof thatmattered,because I had already beentaught the one thing—theonly thing—that, in the lastanalysis, truly matters. I hadinitiallyreceivedthispieceof

knowledge from my lovelycompanion on the butterflywing upon my first entranceinto theGateway. It came inthree parts, and to take onemore shot at putting it intowords (because of course itwas initially deliveredwordlessly), it would runsomethinglikethis:You are loved and

cherished.Youhavenothingtofear.There is nothing you can

dowrong.If I had to boil this entire

message down to onesentence, it would run thisway:Youareloved.And if I had to boil it

down further, to just oneword,itwould(ofcourse)be,simply:Love.Love is, without a doubt,

the basis of everything. Notsomeabstract,hard-to-fathom

kind of love but the day-to-daykindthateveryoneknows—the kind of love we feelwhen we look at our spouseandourchildren,orevenouranimals. In its purest andmostpowerfulform,thisloveis not jealous or selfish, butunconditional. This is thereality of realities, theincomprehensibly glorioustruth of truths that lives andbreathes at the core ofeverything that exists or that

ever will exist, and noremotely accurateunderstanding of who andwhatweare canbe achievedby anyone who does notknowit,andembodyit inalloftheiractions.

Not much of a scientificinsight?Well,Ibegtodiffer.I’mbackfromthatplace,andnothing could convince methatthisisnotonlythesinglemost important emotionaltruthintheuniverse,butalso

the single most importantscientifictruthaswell.

I’vebeentalkingaboutmyexperience, as well asmeeting other people whostudy or have undergonenear-death experiences, forseveral years now. I knowthat the term unconditionallovegetsbandiedaroundalotinthosecircles.Howmanyofus can grasp what that trulymeans?

Iknow,ofcourse,whythe

termcomesup asmuch as itdoes. It’s because many,manyotherpeoplehave seenand experienced what I did.But like me, when thesepeople come back to theearthly level, they’re stuckwithwords,andwordsalone,to convey experiences andinsights that lie completelybeyond the power of words.It’s like trying to write anovel with only half thealphabet.

The primary hurdle thatmost NDE subjects mustjump is not how toreacclimate to the limitationsof the earthlyworld—thoughthis can certainly be achallenge—but how toconvey what the love theyexperiencedoutthereactuallyfeelslike.

Deep down, we alreadyknow.JustasDorothyinTheWizardofOz alwayshad thecapabilitytoreturnhome,we

havetheabilitytorecoverourconnection with that idyllicrealm.Wejustforgetthatwedo,becauseduring thebrain-based,physicalportionofourexistence, our brain blocksout, or veils, that largercosmic background, just asthesun’slightblocksthestarsfrom view each morning.Imagine how limited ourviewoftheuniversewouldbeif we never saw the star-spanglednighttimesky.

Wecanonlyseewhatourbrain’s filter allows through.The brain—in particular itsleft-side linguistic/logicalpart,thatwhichgeneratesoursense of rationality and thefeeling of being a sharplydefined ego or self—is abarrier to our higherknowledgeandexperience.

It ismybelief thatwearenow facing a crucial time inour existence. We need torecover more of that larger

knowledgewhile living hereon earth, while our brains(including its left-sideanalytical parts) are fullyfunctioning. Science—thesciencetowhichI’vedevotedsomuch ofmy life—doesn’tcontradict what I learned upthere. But far, far too manypeople believe it does,because certain members ofthe scientific community,who are pledged to thematerialist worldview, have

insisted again and again thatscience and spiritualitycannotcoexist.

They are mistaken.Making this ancient butultimately basic fact morewidely known iswhy I havewritten this book, and itrenders all the other aspectsof my story—the mystery ofhow I contracted my illness,of how I managed to beconscious in anotherdimensionfortheweekofmy

coma, and how I somehowrecovered so completely—entirelysecondary.

The unconditional loveand acceptance that Iexperiencedonmyjourneyisthe single most importantdiscovery I have ever made,orwillevermake,andashardas I know it’s going to be tounpack the other lessons Ilearned while there, I alsoknowinmyheartthatsharingthisverybasicmessage—one

so simple that most childrenreadilyacceptit—isthemostimportanttaskIhave.

13.

Wednesday

Fortwodays,“Wednesday”had been the buzzword—thedayonmydoctors’lipswhenit came to describing mychances.As in: “We hope tosee some improvement byWednesday.” And now here

Wednesday was, without somuchasaglimmerofchangeinmycondition.

“WhencanIseeDad?”Thisquestion—thenatural

one for a ten-year-oldwhosefather is in thehospital—hadbeen coming from Bondregularly since I had goneinto a coma on Monday.Holleyhadbeenfendingitoffsuccessfullyfortwodays,buton Wednesday morning, shedecideditwastimetoaddress

it.When Holley had told

Bond, onMondaynight, thatI wasn’t home from thehospital yet because I was“sick,”heconjuredwhat thatword had always meant tohim,uptothispointinhistenyears of life: a cough, a sorethroat—maybe a headache.Granted, his appreciation ofjust how much a headachecan actually hurt had beengreatly expanded by what

he’d seen on Mondaymorning. But when Holleyfinally brought him to thehospital that Wednesdayafternoon,hewasstillhopingto be greeted by somethingvery different from what hesawinmyhospitalbed.

Bond saw a body thatalready bore only a distantresemblancetowhatheknewas his father.When someoneis sleeping, you can look atthem and tell there’s still a

person inhabiting the body.There’sapresence.Butmostdoctors will tell you it’sdifferentwhen a person is inacoma(eveniftheycan’ttellyou exactly why). The bodyisthere,butthere’sastrange,almostphysicalsensationthatthe person is missing. Thattheir essence, inexplicably, issomewhereelse.

Eben IV and Bond hadalways been very close, eversince Eben ran into the

deliverysuitewhenBondwasonly minutes old to hug hisbrandnewbrother.EbenmetBondatthehospitalthatthirddayofmycomaanddidwhathe could to frame thesituation positively for hisyounger brother. And, beinghardly more than a boyhimself, he came up with ascenario he thought Bondwouldbeabletoappreciate:abattle.

“Let’s make a picture of

what’s going on soDadwillseeitwhenhegetsbetter,”hesaidtoBond.

So on a table in thehospitaldiningarea,theylaidout a big sheet of orangepaper and drew arepresentation of what washappening inside mycomatose body. They drewmywhitebloodcells,wearingcapesandarmedwithswords,defending the besiegedterritory of my brain. And,

armedwith theirownswordsand slightly differentuniforms, they drew theinvading E. coli. There washand-to-handcombat,andthebodies of the slain on bothsideswerescatteredabout.

Itwas an accurate enoughrepresentation, in its way.The only thing about it thatwas inaccurate, taking intoaccount the simplification ofthe obviously more complexevent going on inside my

body,was theway the battlewas going. In Eben andBond’s rendition, the battlewas pitched and at a whiteheat, with both sidesstruggling and the outcomeuncertain—though,ofcourse,the white blood cells wouldeventuallywin.But ashe satwith Bond, colored markersspreadoutonthetable,tryingto share in thisnaïveversionof events, Eben knew that intruth,thebattlewasnolonger

pitched,orsouncertain.And he knew which side

waswinning.

14.

ASpecialKindofNDE

Thetruevalueofahumanbeingisdeterminedprimarilybythemeasureandthesenseinwhichhehasattainedliberationfromtheself.

—ALBERTEINSTEIN(1879–1955)

WhenIwas initially in theRealm of the Earthworm’s-Eye View, I had no realcenter of consciousness. Ididn’t know who or what Iwas, or even if I was. I wassimply . . . there, a singularawareness in the midst of asoupy, dark, muddynothingness that had no

beginningand,seemingly,noend.

Now, however, I knew. Iunderstood that Iwaspart oftheDivineandthatnothing—absolutely nothing—couldever take that away. The(false) suspicion that we cansomehow be separated fromGodistherootofeveryformof anxiety in the universe,and the cure for it—which Ireceived partially within theGateway and completely

within the Core—was theknowledge that nothing cantear us fromGod, ever. Thisknowledge—and it remainsthe single most importantthing I’ve ever learned—robbed the Realm of theEarthworm’s-EyeViewof itsterror and allowedme to seeitforwhatitreallywas:anotentirely pleasant, but nodoubt necessary, part of thecosmos.

Manypeoplehavetraveled

to the realms I did, but,strangely enough, mostremembered their earthlyidentities while away fromtheir earthly forms. Theyknew that they were JohnSmith or George Johnson orSarahBrown.Theyneverlostsight of the fact that theylived on earth. They wereaware that their livingrelatives were still there,waiting and hoping theywouldcomeback.Theyalso,

in many cases, met friendsand relatives who had diedbefore them, and in thesecases, too, they recognizedthosepeopleinstantly.

Many NDE subjects havereported engaging in lifereviews, in which they sawtheirinteractionswithvariouspeople and their goodorbadactions during the course oftheirlives.

I experienced none ofthese events, and taken all

togethertheydemonstratethesinglemostunusualaspectofmy NDE. I was completelyfreeofmybodilyidentityforall of it, so that any classicNDE occurrence that mighthave involved myremembering who I was onearthwasrigorouslymissing.

TosaythatatthatpointintheproceedingsIstillhadnoideawho Iwas orwhere I’dcome from sounds somewhatperplexing, Iknow.Afterall,

how could I be learning allthesestunninglycomplexandbeautiful things, how could Isee the girl next to me, andthe blossoming trees andwaterfalls and villagers, andstill not know that it was I,EbenAlexander,whowastheoneexperiencing them?Howcould I understand all that Idid, yet not realize that onearthIwasadoctor,husband,and father? A person whowas not seeing trees and

riversandcloudsfor thefirsttime when I entered theGateway, but one who hadseen more than his share ofthemasachildgrowingupintheveryconcreteandearthlylocale of Winston-Salem,NorthCarolina?

Mybestshotatanansweris to suggest that I was in aposition similar to that ofsomeone with partial butbeneficialamnesia.That is,aperson who has forgotten

somekeyaspectabouthimorherself, but who benefitsthrough having forgotten it,evenifforonlyashortwhile.

How did I gain from notrememberingmyearthlyself?Itallowedmetogodeepintorealms beyond the worldlywithout having to worryabout what I was leavingbehind.Throughoutmyentiretime in thoseworlds, Iwasasoulwithnothingtolose.Noplaces to miss, no people to

mourn. I had come fromnowhere and had no history,so I fully accepted mycircumstances—even theinitial murk and mess of theRealm of the Earthworm’s-EyeView—withequanimity.

And because I socompletely forgot my mortalidentity, I was granted fullaccess to the true cosmicbeing I reallyam(andweallare). Once again, in someways my experience was

analogous to a dream, inwhich you remember somethings about yourself whileforgetting other thingscompletely. But again this isonly a partially usefulanalogy, because, as I keepstressing, the Gateway andthe Core were not remotelydreamlike but ultra-real—asfar from illusory as one canbe.Tousethewordremovedmakes it sound as if theabsence of my earthly

memorieswhileintheRealmof the Earthworm’s-EyeView, the Gateway, and theCore was in some mannerintentional.Inowsuspectthatthiswas thecase.At the riskof oversimplifying, I wasallowed to die harder, andtravel deeper, than almost allNDEsubjectsbeforeme.

As arrogant as that mightsound,my intentionsarenot.The rich literature on NDEshas proved crucial to

understanding my ownjourneyincoma.Ican’tclaimto know why I had theexperience I had, but I doknownow(threeyearslater),from reading other NDEliterature,thatthepenetrationof thehigherworlds tends tobe a gradual process andrequires that the individualreleasehisorherattachmentstowhateverlevelheorsheison before going higher ordeeper.

Thatwasnotaproblemforme, because throughout myexperience I had no earthlymemories whatsoever, andtheonlypainandheartacheIfeltwaswhenIhad to returntoearth,whereI’dbegun.

15.

TheGiftofForgetting

Wemustbelieveinfreewill.Wehavenochoice.

—ISAACB.SINGER(1902–1991)

The view of humanconsciousness held by mostscientists today is that it is

composed of digitalinformation—data, that is, ofessentially the same kindused by computers. Thoughsomebitsofthisdata—seeinga spectacular sunset, hearinga beautiful symphony for thefirsttime,evenfallinginlove—mayfeelmoreprofoundorspecial to us than thecountless other bits ofinformation created andstored in our brains, this isreallyjustanillusion.Allbits

are, in fact, qualitatively thesame. Our brains modeloutside reality by taking theinformation that comes inthrough our senses andtransforming it into a richdigital tapestry. But ourperceptions are just a model—not reality itself. Anillusion.

This was, of course, theview I held as well. I canremember being in medicalschool and occasionally

hearing arguments thatconsciousness is nothingmore than a very complexcomputer program. Thesearguments suggested that theten billion or so neuronsfiring constantly within ourbrains are capable ofproducing a lifetime ofconsciousnessandmemory.

To understand how thebrain might actually blockour access to knowledge ofthehigherworlds,weneedto

accept—at leasthypothetically and for themoment—that thebrain itselfdoesn’t produceconsciousness. That it is,instead, a kind of reducingvalve or filter, shifting thelarger, nonphysicalconsciousnessthatwepossessin the nonphysical worldsdown into a more limitedcapacity for the duration ofour mortal lives. There is,from the earthly perspective,

a very definite advantage tothis. Just as our brains workhard every moment of ourwaking lives to filter out thebarrage of sensoryinformation coming at usfrom our physicalsurroundings, selecting thematerial we actually need inorder to survive, so it is thatforgetting our trans-earthlyidentitiesalsoallowsustobe“here and now” far moreeffectively. Just as most of

ordinary life holds too muchinformation for us to take inatonceandstillgetanythingdone, being excessivelyconscious of the worldsbeyond the here and nowwould slow down ourprogress even more. If weknew too much of thespiritual realm now, thennavigating our lives on earthwould be an even greaterchallenge than it already is.(That’s not to say we

shouldn’tbeconsciousoftheworlds beyond now—onlythatifweareextra-consciousof their grandeur andimmensity, they can preventaction while still here onearth.)Fromamorepurpose-focused perspective (and Inow believe the universe isnothing if not purposeful),making the right decisionsthrough our free will in theface of the evil and injusticeonearthwouldmean far less

if we remembered, whilehere, the full beauty andbrillianceofwhatawaitsus.

Why am I so sure of allthis? For two reasons. ThefirstisthatIwasshownit(bythe beings who taught mewhen I was in the GatewayandtheCore),andthesecondis because I actuallyexperienced it.Whilebeyondmy body, I receivedknowledge about the natureand structure of the universe

that was vastly beyond mycomprehension. But Ireceived it anyhow, in largepart because, with myworldlypreoccupationsoutoftheway,Ihadroomtodoso.Now that I’m back on earthand remember my bodilyidentity, the seed of thattrans-earthly knowledge hasonce again been coveredover.Andyetit’sstillthere.Ican feel it, at everymoment.It will take years, in this

earthlyenvironment, tocometofruition.Thatis,itwilltakemeyearstounderstand,usingmy mortal, material brain,whatIunderstoodsoinstantlyand easily in the brain-freerealms of the world beyond.Yet I’m confident that withhardwork onmy part,muchof that knowledge willcontinuetounfold.

To say that there is still achasm between our currentscientific understanding of

theuniverseandthetruthasIsaw it is a considerableunderstatement. I still lovephysics and cosmology, stilllove studying our vast andwonderful universe. Only Inow have a greatly enlargedconception of what “vast”and“wonderful”reallymean.The physical side of theuniverseisasaspeckofdustcomparedtotheinvisibleandspiritual part. In my pastview,spiritualwasn’taword

that I would have employedduring a scientificconversation.NowIbelieveitis a word that we cannotaffordtoleaveout.

From the Core, myunderstandingofwhatwecall“dark energy” and “darkmatter” seemed to have clearexplanations, as did farmoreadvanced components of themakeup of our universe thathumans won’t address forages.

This doesn’t mean,however, that I can explainthem to you. That’s because—paradoxically—Iamstillinthe process of understandingthemmyself.PerhapsthebestwayofconveyingthatpartoftheexperienceistosaythatIhad a foretaste of another,largerkindofknowledge:oneI believe human beings willbe able to access in everlarger numbers in the future.But conveying that

knowledgenow is rather likebeing a chimpanzee,becoming a human for asingledaytoexperienceallofthe wonders of humanknowledge, and thenreturning to one’s chimpfriendsandtryingtotellthemwhat it was like knowingseveral different Romancelanguages, the calculus, andthe immense scale of theuniverse.

Upthere,aquestionwould

arise in my mind, and theanswer would arise at thesame time, like a flowercoming up right next to it. Itwas almost as if, just as nophysical particle in theuniverse is really separatefrom another, so in the sameway therewas no such thingas a question without anaccompanying answer. Theseanswers were not simple“yes” or “no” fare, either.They were vast conceptual

edifices,staggeringstructuresof living thought, as intricateas cities. Ideas so vast theywould have taken melifetimes to find my wayaroundifIhadbeenconfinedto earthly thought. But Iwasn’t. I had sloughed offthat earthly style of thoughtlikeabutterflybreakingfromachrysalis.

I saw the earth as a paleblue dot in the immenseblacknessofphysicalspace.I

could see that earth was aplace where good and evilmixed, and that thisconstituted one of its uniquefeatures. Even on earth thereismuchmoregoodthanevil,butearthisaplacewhereevilisallowedtogaininfluenceinaway thatwould be entirelyimpossibleathigherlevelsofexistence. That evil couldoccasionally have the upperhandwasknownandallowedbytheCreatorasanecessary

consequence of giving thegiftoffreewilltobeingslikeus.

Small particles of evilwerescatteredthroughouttheuniverse,butthesumtotalofall thatevilwasasagrainofsand on a vast beachcompared to the goodness,abundance, hope, andunconditional love in whichthe universe was literallyawash.Theveryfabricofthealternate dimension is love

andacceptance,andanythingthat does not have thesequalitiesappearsimmediatelyand obviously out of placethere.

But freewill comes at thecostofa lossor falling-awayfrom this love andacceptance. We are free; butwe are free beings hemmedallaroundbyanenvironmentconspiring to make us feelthatwearenotfree.Freewillis of central importance for

our function in the earthlyrealm:afunctionthat,wewillall one day discover, servesthe much higher role ofallowing our ascendance inthe timeless alternatedimension. Our life downhere may seem insignificant,for it isminute in relation tothe other lives and otherworlds that also crowd theinvisible and visibleuniverses. But it is alsohugelyimportant,forourrole

here is to grow toward theDivine, and that growth iscloselywatchedbythebeingsin the worlds above—thesouls and lucent orbs (thosebeings I saw originally farabove me in the Gateway,and which I believe are theorigin of our culture’sconceptofangels).

We—the spiritual beingscurrently inhabiting ourevolutionarily developedmortal brains andbodies, the

product of the earth and theexigencies of the earth—make the real choices. Truethought is not the brain’saffair. But we have—in partby the brain itself—been sotrainedtoassociateourbrainswithwhatwe think andwhowe are that we have lost theabilitytorealizethatweareatall timesmuchmorethanthephysical brains and bodiesthat do—or should do—ourbidding.

True thought is pre-physical.Thisisthethinking-behind-the-thinkingresponsible for all thegenuinely consequentialchoices we make in theworld.A thinking that is notdependent on lineardeduction,butthatmovesfastas lightning, makingconnections on differentlevels, bringing themtogether. In the face of thisfree, inner intelligence, our

ordinarythoughtishopelesslyslow and fumbling. It’s thisthinking that catches thefootball in the end zone, thatcomes up with the inspiredscientificinsightorwritestheinspiredsong.Thesubliminalthinking that is always there,when we really need it, butthatwehavealltoooftenlosttheabilityboth toaccessandtobelievein.Needlesstosay,it’s the thinking that sprangintoactiontheeveningofthat

skydive when Chuck’s chuteopened up suddenly beneathme.

To experience thinkingoutsidethebrain is toenteraworld of instantaneousconnections that makeordinary thinking (i.e., thoseaspects limited by thephysical brain and the speedof light) seem like somehopelessly sleepy andplodding event. Our truest,deepest self is completely

free. It is not crippled orcompromised by past actionsorconcernedwith identityorstatus. It comprehends that ithasnoneedtofeartheearthlyworld,andtherefore,ithasnoneedtobuilditselfupthroughfameorwealthorconquest.

This is the true spiritualselfthatallofusaredestinedsomedaytorecover.Butuntilthat day comes, I feel, weshould do everything in ourpower to get in touch with

this miraculous aspect ofourselves—tocultivate it andbring it to light. This is thebeing living within all of usrightnowand that is, in fact,the being that God trulyintendsustobe.

How do we get closer tothisgenuinespiritualself?Bymanifesting love andcompassion. Why? Becauselove and compassion are farmore than the abstractionsmany of us believe them to

be. They are real. They areconcrete. And they make uptheveryfabricofthespiritualrealm.

In order to return to thatrealm, we must once againbecome like that realm, evenwhile we are stuck in, andploddingthrough,thisone.

One of the biggestmistakes people make whenthey think about God is toimagine God as impersonal.Yes, God is behind the

numbers,theperfectionoftheuniverse that sciencemeasures and struggles tounderstand. But—again,paradoxically—Om is“human”aswell—evenmorehuman than you and I are.Om understands andsympathizes with our humansituation more profoundlyand personally than we caneven imagine because Omknows what we haveforgotten, and understands

theterribleburdenitistolivewith amnesia of the Divineforevenamoment.

16.

TheWell

Holley first met our friendSylvia in the 1980s, whenboth were teaching at theRavenscroft School inRaleigh, North Carolina.While there,Holleywas alsoa close friend of Susan

Reintjes.Susanisanintuitive—afact thatnevergot in thewayofmyfeelingsabouther.Shewas, tomymind, averyspecial person, even if whatshedidwas, to say the least,outside my straight-and-narrow neurosurgical view.She was also a channel andhad written a book calledThird Eye Open, whichHolleywasabigfanof.Oneof the spiritual healingactivities Susan regularly

performed involved helpingcoma patients to heal bycontacting them psychically.On Thursday,my fourth dayin coma, Sylvia had the ideathat Susan should try tocontactme.

Sylvia called her at homeinChapelHill and explainedwhatwashappeningwithme.Would it be possible for herto “tune in” to me? Susansaid yes and asked for a fewdetails about my illness.

Sylviagaveherthebasics:I’dbeen inacomafor fourdaysand I was in criticalcondition.

“That’s all I need toknow,”Susansaid.“I’lltrytocontacthimtonight.”

According to Susan’sview, a coma patient was akind of in-between being.Neither completely here (theearthlyrealm)norcompletelythere (the spiritual realm),these patients often have a

singularly mysteriousatmosphere to them. Thiswas, as I’ve mentioned, aphenomenon I’d noticedmyselfmanytimes,thoughofcourse I’d never given it thesupernatural credence thatSusanhad.

InSusan’sexperience,oneof thequalities that set comapatients apart was theirreceptivity to telepathiccommunication. She wasconfident thatonce she’dput

herselfintoameditativestate,she’d soon establish contactwithme.

“Communicating with acoma patient,” she later toldme,“isalittlelikethrowingaropedownadeepwell.Howdeep the rope needs to godepends on the depth of thecomatose state.When I triedtocontactyou, the first thingthat surprised me was howdeep the rope went. Thefarther down, the more

frightened I became that youwere too far away—that Iwouldn’tbeabletoreachyoubecause you weren’t comingback.”

After five full minutes ofmentally descending via thetelepathic “rope,” she felt aslightshift,likeafishinglinedeep down in the watergetting a small but definitetug.

“I was sure it was you,”she toldme later,“and I told

Holley asmuch. I told her itwasn’tyourtimeyet,andthatyour bodywould knowwhattodo.IsuggestedthatHolleykeep those two thoughts inmind,andrepeatthemtoyouatyourbedside.”

17.

Nof1

It was Thursday when mydoctors determined that myparticular strain of E. colididn’tmatchtheultraresistantstrain that, unaccountably,hadshownupinIsraeljustatthe time I’d been there. But

the fact that it didn’t matchonly made my case moreconfounding. While it wascertainly good news that Iwasnotharboringa strainofbacteriathatcouldwipeoutathirdof the country, in termsof my own, individualrecovery, it just underscoredwhatmydoctorswerealreadysuspectingalltooclearly:thatmy case was essentiallywithoutprecedent.

Itwasalsoquicklymoving

from desperate to hopeless.The doctors simply didn’thave an answer for how Icould have contracted myillness, or how I could bebroughtback frommycoma.They were sure of only onething: they did not know ofanyone making a fullrecovery from bacterialmeningitis after beingcomatoseformorethanafewdays.Wewere now into dayfour.

The stress took its toll oneveryone. Phyllis and Betsyhad decided on Tuesday thatany talk of the possibility ofmydyingwouldbeforbiddenin my presence, under theassumption that some part ofme might be aware of thediscussion. Early Thursdaymorning, Jean asked one ofthe nurses in the ICU roomaboutmychancesofsurvival.Betsy,ontheothersideofmybed, heard her and said:

“Please don’t have thatconversationinthisroom.”

Jean and I had alwaysbeen extremely close. Wewere part of the family justlike our “homegrown”siblings, but the fact that wewere “chosen” by mom anddad,as theyput it, inevitablygave us a special bond. Shehad always watched out forme,andherfrustrationatherpowerlessness over thecurrent situation brought her

closetoabreakingpoint.TearscametoJean’seyes.

“I need to go home for awhile,”shesaid.

After determining thattherewereplentyofpeopletocontinuemybedsidevigil,allagreed that the nursing staffwould probably be delightedtohaveonelesspersoninmyroom.

Jean went back to ourhome, packed her bags, anddrovehome toDelaware that

afternoon. By leaving, shegave the first real outwardexpression to an emotion thewhole family was starting tofeel:powerlessness.Therearefew experiences morefrustrating than seeing alovedoneinacomatosestate.You want to help, but youcan’t.Youwantthepersontoopenhisorhereyes,buttheydon’t. Families of comapatients often resort toopening the patient’s eyes

themselves. It’s a way offorcingtheissue—oforderingthe patient to wake up. Ofcourseitdoesn’twork,anditcan also further damagemorale.Patientsindeepcomalose the coordination of theireyesandpupils.Openthelidsof a deep coma patient, andyou’re likely to find one eyepointing in onedirection, theother in the opposite. It’s anunnerving sight, and it addedfurther to Holley’s pain

severaltimesthatweekwhenshe pried my eyelids openand saw, in essence, theaskeweyeballsofacorpse.

With Jean gone, thingsreally started to fray. Phyllisnow began to exhibit abehavior I’d also seencountless times amongpatients’ family members inmyownpractice.She startedtobecomefrustratedwithmydoctors.

“Whyaren’ttheygivingus

moreinformation?”sheaskedBetsy, outraged. “I swear, ifEbenwerehere,hewouldtelluswhat’sreallygoingon.”

The fact was that mydoctorsweredoingabsolutelyeverything they could do forme. Phyllis, of course, knewthis. But the pain andfrustration of the situationweresimplywearingawayatmylovedones.

On Tuesday, Holley hadcalled Dr. Jay Loeffler, my

former partner in developingthe stereotactic radiosurgeryprogram at the Brigham &Women’sHospitalinBoston.Jaywasthenthechairmanofradiation oncology atMassachusetts GeneralHospital, and Holley figuredhe’dbe inasgoodapositionas anyone to give her someanswers.

As Holley described mysituation, Jay assumed shemust have been getting the

details of my case wrong.What she was describing tohimwas,heknew,essentiallyimpossible. But once Holleyfinally had him convincedthat I really was in a comacaused by a rare case of E.coli bacterial meningitis thatno one could explain theorigins of, he got startedcalling infectious diseaseexperts around the country.Noonehespoketohadheardof a case like mine. Going

over the medical literaturebackto1991,hecouldn’tfinda single case of E. colimeningitis in an adult whohadn’t recently been throughaneurosurgicalprocedure.

From Tuesday on, Jaycalled at least once a day togetanupdatefromPhyllisorHolley and give themfeedback on what hisinvestigations had revealed.Steve Tatter, another goodfriend and neurosurgeon,

likewise provided daily callsoffering advice and comfort.But day after day, the onlyrevelation was that mysituation was the first of itskind in medical history.SpontaneousE. coli bacterialmeningitis is rare in adults.Less than 1 in 10 million ofthe world’s populationcontracts it annually. And,like all varieties of gram-negative bacterialmeningitis,it’s highly aggressive. So

aggressive that of the peopleit does attack, more than 90percentofthosewhoinitiallysufferfromarapidneurologicdecline,asIdid,die.AndthatwasthemortalityratewhenIfirst entered the ER. Thatdismal 90 percent crepttoward 100 percent as theweek wore on and my bodyfailed to respond to theantibiotics. The few whosurvive a case as severe asminegenerallyrequireround-

the-clock care for the rest oftheir lives. Officially, mystatus was “N of 1,” a termthat refers tomedical studiesin which a single patientstands for the entire trial.Thereissimplynooneelsetowhom the doctors couldcomparemycase.

Beginning onWednesday,HolleybroughtBondinforavisit every afternoon afterschool.ButbyFridayshewasstarting to wonder if these

visits were doingmore harmthan good.At times, early intheweek, Iwouldmove.Mybody would thrash aroundwildly.Anursewouldrubmyhead and give me moresedation, and eventually I’dbecomequietagain.Thiswasconfusingandpainful formyten-year-old son to watch. Itwas bad enough that he waslooking at a body that nolonger resembled his father,but also seeing that body

makemechanicalmovementsthat he didn’t recognize asmine was particularlychallenging. Day by day, Ibecame less the person he’dknown, and more anunrecognizablebodyinabed:a cruel and alien twin of thefatherheonceknew.

By the end of the weekthese occasional bursts ofmotor activity had all butceased. I needed no moresedation, because movement

—even the dead, automatickind initiated by the mostprimitive reflex loops of mylower brainstem and spinalcord—had dwindled almosttonil.

Morefamilymembersandfriendswerecalling,askingifthey should come. ByThursday,ithadbeendecidedthat they shouldn’t. Therewas already too muchcommotion inmyICUroom.Thenursessuggestedstrongly

that my brain needed rest—thequieter,thebetter.

There was also anoticeablechange in the toneofthesephonecalls.Theytoowere shifting subtly from thehopeful to the hopeless. Attimes,lookingaround,Holleyfelt like she had lost mealready.

On Thursday afternoon,MichaelSullivangotaknockon his door. It was hissecretary at St. John’s

EpiscopalChurch.“The hospital is on the

line,” she said. “One of thenurses taking care of Ebenneedstospeakwithyou.Shesaysit’surgent.”

Michael picked up thephone.

“Michael,” the nurse toldhim,“youneedtocomerightaway.Ebenisdying.”

As a pastor, Michael hadbeen in this situation before.Pastors see death and the

wreckage it leaves behindalmostasoftenasdoctorsdo.Still,Michaelwasshockedtohear the actualword “dying”said in reference to me. Hecalled his wife, Page, andasked her to pray: both forme, and for the strength onhis part to rise to theoccasion. Then he drovethrough the cold steady rainto the hospital, struggling tosee through the tears fillinghiseyes.

When he got to my roomthescenewasmuchthesameasithadbeenthelasttimehehad visited. Phyllis wassittingbymyside,takinghershift in the vigil of holdingmyhand thathadbeengoingonwithout a break since herarrivalonMondaynight.Mychest rose and fell twelvetimes a minute with theventilator, and the ICUnursewent quietly about herroutine, orbiting among the

machines thatsurroundedmybedandnotingtheirreadouts.

Another nurse came in,and Michael asked if she’dbeen the one who called hisassistant.

“No,” she replied. “I’vebeen here all morning, andhisconditionhasnotchangedmuch from lastnight. Idon’tknowwhocalledyou.”

By eleven, Holley, Mom,Phyllis,andBetsywereallinmy room.Michael suggested

aprayer.Everyone,includingthe two nurses, joined handsaround the bed, andMichaelmadeonemoreheartfeltpleaformyreturntohealth.

“Lord,bringEbenback tous. I know it’s in yourpower.”

Still, no one knew whohad called Michael. Butwhoever it was, it’s a goodthing they did. Because theprayers coming to me fromthe world below—the world

I’d started out from—werefinallystartingtogetthrough.

18.

ToForget,andtoRemember

My awareness was largernow. So large, it seemed totake in the entire universe.Have you ever listened to asong on a static-filled radiostation? You get used to it.

Then someone adjusts thedial and you hear the samesong in its full clarity. Howcould you have failed tonotice how dim, how faraway, how entirely untrue totheoriginalitwasbefore?

Of course, that’s how themind works. Humans arebuilt to adapt. I’d explainedto my patients many timesthat this or that discomfortwouldlessen,oratleastseemto lessen, as their bodies and

brains adapted to the newsituation. Something goes onlong enough, and your brainlearns to ignore it, or workaroundit,orjusttotreatitasnormal.

But our limited earthlyconsciousness is far fromsimply normal, and I wasgettingmyfirstillustrationofthisasItraveledeverdeeper,to theveryheartof theCore.Istillrememberednothingofmyearthlypast,andyetIwas

not the less for this. Eventhough I’d forgotten my lifedownhere,IhadrememberedwhoIreallyandtrulywasoutthere. I was a citizen of auniverse staggering in itsvastness andcomplexity, andruledentirelybylove.

Inanalmosteerieway,mydiscoveries beyond the bodyechoed the lessons I hadlearned just a year earlierthroughreconnectingwithmybirthfamily.Ultimately,none

ofusareorphans.Weareallin the position I was, in thatwehaveother family: beingswho are watching andlooking out for us—beingswe have momentarilyforgotten, but who, if weopen ourselves to theirpresence, arewaiting to helpus navigate our time here onearth. None of us are everunloved.Each and everyoneof us is deeply known andcared for by a Creator who

cherishes us beyond anyability we have tocomprehend.Thatknowledgemust no longer remain asecret.

19.

NowheretoHide

By Friday, my body hadbeen on triple intravenousantibiotics for four full daysbut still wasn’t responding.Familyandfriendshadcomefromall over, and thosewhohadn’t come had initiated

prayer groups at theirchurches. My sister-in-lawPeggy and Holley’s closefriend Sylvia arrived thatafternoon. Holley greetedthemwith as cheerful a faceas she could muster. Betsyand Phyllis continued tochampion the he’s-going-to-be-fine view: to remainpositiveatallcosts.Buteachday it got harder to believe.Even Betsy herself began towonderifhernonegativityin

the room order really meantsomething more like norealityintheroom.

“DoyouthinkEbenwoulddo this for us, if the roleswerereversed?”PhyllisaskedBetsy that morning, afteranother largely sleeplessnight.

“What do you mean?”askedBetsy.

“Imeandoyouthinkhe’dbe spending every minutewith us, camping out in the

ICU?”Betsy had the most

beautiful, simple answer,delivered as a question: “Isthere anywhere else in theworldwhereyoucanimaginebeing?”

Both agreed that thoughI’d have been there in asecondifneeded,itwasvery,veryhard to imagineme justsitting inoneplace forhourson end. “It never felt like achore or something that had

tobedone—itwaswherewebelonged,” Phyllis told melater.

WhatwasupsettingSylviathemostweremyhands andfeet,whichwerebeginningtocurlup,likeleavesonaplantwithoutwater.Thisisnormalwith victims of stroke andcoma, as the dominantmuscles in the extremitiesstart to contract. But it’snever easy for family andlovedonestosee.Lookingat

me,Sylviakepttellingherselfto stay with her original gutfeeling. But even for her, itwasgettingvery,veryhard.

Holley had taken toblaming herself more andmore(ifonlyshehadwalkedup the stairs sooner, if onlythis, if only that . . .) andeveryone worked especiallyhard to keep her away fromthesubject.

By now, everyone knewthat even if I did make a

recovery, recovery wasn’tmuch of a word for what itwouldamount to. I’dneedatleast three months ofintensive rehabilitation,would have chronic speechproblems (if I had enoughbrain capacity to be able tospeak at all), and I’d requirechronic nursing care for therest ofmy life. Thiswas thebest-casescenario,andaslowand grim as that sounds, itwas essentially in the realm

of fantasy anyhow.Theoddsthat I’d even be in that goodof a shapewere shrinking tononexistent.

Bond had been kept fromhearing thefulldetailsofmycondition. But on Friday, atthe hospital after school, heoverheard one ofmy doctorsoutlining to Holley what shealreadyknew.

It was time to face thefacts. There was little roomforhope.

Thatevening,whenitwastime for him to go home,Bond refused to leave myroom.Theregulardrillwastoallowonly twopeople inmyroom at a time so that thedoctors and nurses couldwork. Around six o’clock,Holley gently suggested thatitwastimetogohomefortheevening. But Bond wouldn’tget up from his chair, justbeneath his drawing of thebattle between the white

blood cell soldiers and theinvadingE.colitroops.

“He doesn’t know I’mhereanyway,”Bondsaid,inatone half bitter and halfpleading. “Why can’t I juststay?”

So for the rest of theevening everyone took turnscoming in one at a time soBond could stay where hewas.

But the next morning—Saturday—Bond reversed his

position. For the first timethatweek,whenHolleystuckher head into his room torouse him, he told her hedidn’t want to go to thehospital.

“Whynot?”Holleyasked.“Because,” Bond said,

“I’mscared.”It was an admission that

spokeforeveryone.Holleywentbackdownto

thekitchenforafewminutes.Then she tried again, asking

him if hewas sure he didn’twanttogoseehisdaddy.

Therewasalongpauseashestaredather.

“Okay,”heagreed,finally.Saturday passed with the

ongoingvigil aroundmybedandthehopefulconversationsbetween family and doctors.It all seemed like a half-hearted attempt to keep hopealive. Everyone’s reservesweremoreemptythanthey’dbeenthedaybefore.

On Saturday night, aftertaking our mother, Betty,back to her hotel room,Phyllisstoppedbyourhouse.Itwas pitch dark,with not alightinawindow,andassheslogged through the soakingmud it was hard for her tokeep to the flagstones. Bynow it had been raining forfive days straight, ever sincethe afternoon ofmy entranceinto the ICU. Relentless rainlikethiswasveryunusualfor

the highlands of Virginia,where in November it isusually crisp, clear, andsunny, like the previousSunday, the last day beforemy attack. Now that dayseemed so long ago, and itfelt like the sky had alwaysbeen spewing rain. Whenwoulditeverstop?

Phyllis unlocked the doorand switched on the lights.Since the beginning of theweek, people had been

coming by and dropping offfood, and though the foodwas still coming in, the half-hopeful/half-worriedatmosphere of rallying for atemporary emergency hadturned darker and moredesperate. Our friends, likeour family, knew that thetimeofanyhopeformeatallwasnearingitsend.

For a second, Phyllisthoughtof lightingafire,butright on the heels of that

thought came another,unwelcomeone.Whybother?She suddenly felt moreexhaustedanddepressedthanshe could ever rememberfeeling. She lay downon thecouch in the wood-paneledstudy and fell into a deepsleep.

Half an hour later, SylviaandPeggyreturned,tiptoeingby the study when they sawPhyllis collapsed there.Sylvia went down to the

basement and found thatsomeone had left the freezerdoor open. Water wasformingapuddleonthefloor,and the food was starting tothaw, including several nicesteaks.

When Sylvia reported thebasement flood situation toPeggy, they decided tomakethe most of it. They madecalls to the restof the familyand a few friends and got towork. Peggy went out and

picked up some more sidedishes, and they whipped upan impromptu feast. SoonBetsy,herdaughterKate,andher husband, Robbie, joinedthem,alongwithBond.Therewas a lot of nervous chatter,and a lot of dancing aroundthe subject on everyone’smind:thatI—theabsentguestof honor—wouldmost likelynever return to this houseagain.

Holleyhadreturned to the

hospital to continue theendless vigil. She sat by mybed, holding my hand, andkept repeating the mantrassuggested by SusanReintjes,forcing herself to stay withthe meaning of the words asshe said them and to believein her heart that they weretrue.

“Receivetheprayers.“You have healed others.

Now is your time to behealed.

“Youarelovedbymany.“Yourbodyknowswhatto

do. It is not yet your time todie.”

20.

TheClosing

Each time I found myselfstuck again in the coarseEarthworm’s-Eye View, Iwas able to remember thebrilliant Spinning Melody,whichopenedtheportalbacktotheGatewayandtheCore.

Ispentgreatstretchesoftime—which paradoxically feltlike no time at all—in thepresence of my guardianangel on the butterfly’swingand an eternity learninglessons from theCreator andthe Orb of light deep in theCore.

At some point, I came upto the edge of the Gatewayand found that I could notreenter it. The SpinningMelody—up to then my

ticket into those higherregions—would no longertake me there. The gates ofHeavenwereclosed.

Once again, describingwhat this felt like ischallenging in the extreme,thanks to the bottleneck oflinear language that we haveto force everything throughhereonearth,andthegeneralflattening of experience thathappens when we’re in thebody. Think of every time

you’ve ever experienceddisappointment. There is asense in which all the lossesthatweundergohereonearthare in truth variations of oneabsolutely central loss: theloss of Heaven. On the daythatthedoorsofHeavenwereclosedtome,Ifeltasenseofsadness unlike any I’d everknown. Emotions aredifferent up there. All thehuman emotions are present,but they’re deeper, more

spacious—they’re not justinside but outside as well.Imagine that every timeyourmood changedhere on earth,theweatherchangedinstantlyalongwithit.Thatyourtearswould bring on a torrentialdownpour and your joywould make the cloudsinstantly disappear. Thatgives a hint of how muchmore vast and consequentialchangesofmoodfeel likeupthere, how strangely and

powerfully what we think ofas “inside” and “outside”don’treallyexistatall.

So it was that I,heartbroken, now sank into aworld of ever-increasingsorrow, a gloom that was atthe same time an actualsinking.

I moved down throughgreat walls of clouds. Therewas murmuring all aroundme,butIcouldn’tunderstandthe words. Then I realized

that countless beings weresurrounding me, kneeling inarcs that spread into thedistance. Looking back on itnow, I realize what thesehalf-seen, half-sensedhierarchies of beings,stretching out into the darkaboveandbelow,weredoing.

Theywereprayingforme.Two of the faces I

remembered later were thoseof Michael Sullivan and hiswife, Page. I recall seeing

them in profile only, but Iclearly identified them aftermy return when languagecame back. Michael hadphysically been in the ICUroom leading prayersnumerous times, but Pagewas never physically there(although she had saidprayersformetoo).

These prayers gave meenergy.That’sprobablywhy,profoundly sad as I was,somethinginmefeltastrange

confidence that everythingwould be all right. Thesebeings knew I wasundergoing a transition, andthey were singing andpraying to help me keep myspirits up. I was headed intothe unknown, but by thatpointIhadcompletefaithandtrust that I would be takencareof, asmycompaniononthe butterfly wing and theinfinitely loving Deity hadpromised—that wherever I

went, Heaven would comewithme.Itwouldcomeintheform of the Creator, of Om,and it would come in theformof theangel—myangel—the Girl on the ButterflyWing.

Iwasonthewayback,butIwasnotalone—and IknewI’dneverfeelaloneagain.

21.

TheRainbow

Thinking about it later,Phyllissaidthattheonethingshe remembered above allelse about thatweekwas therain. A cold, driving rainfromlow-hangingcloudsthatneverletupandneverletthe

sun peek through. But then,that Sunday morning as shepulled her car into thehospital parking lot,something strange happened.Phyllis had just read a textmessage from one of theprayer groups in Bostonsaying, “Expect a miracle.”As she pondered just howmuchofamiraclesheshouldexpect, shehelpedMomstepoutoftheircar,andtheybothcommented that the rain had

stopped. To the east, the sunwasshootingitsraysthrougha chink in the cloud cover,lightingupthelovelyancientmountainstothewestandthelayerof cloudabove aswell,giving the gray clouds agoldentinge.

Then, looking toward thedistant peaks, opposite towherethemid-Novembersunwasstartingitsascent,thereitwas.

Aperfectrainbow.

Sylvia drove to thehospital with Holley andBond for a prearrangedmeetingwithmymaindoctor,Scott Wade. Dr. Wade wasalso a friend and a neighborand had been wrestling withthe worst decision thatdoctors dealing with life-threatening illnesses everface. The longer I stayed incoma, the more likely itbecame that I would spendthe rest of my life in a

“persistent vegetative state.”GiventhehighlikelihoodthatI might still succumb to themeningitis if they simplystopped the antibiotics, itmight be more sensible tocease using them—ratherthan to continue treatment inthe face of almost certainlifelongcoma.Giventhatmymeningitishadnot respondedat all well to treatment, theywere running the risk thatthey might finally eradicate

mymeningitis,onlytoenablemetoliveformonthsoryearsas a once-vital, now-unresponsivebody,withzeroqualityoflife.

“Have a seat,” Dr. Wadetold Sylvia and Holley in atone that was kind but alsounmistakablygrim.

“Dr. Brennan and I haveeach had conference callswith experts at Duke, theUniversity of Virginia, andBowman Gray medical

schools,andIhavetotellyouthateveryonetoapersonisinagreement that things do notlook good. If Eben doesn’tshowsomereal improvementwithin thenext twelvehours,wewillprobably recommenddiscussing termination ofantibiotics. A week in comawith severe bacterialmeningitis is already beyondthe limits of any reasonableexpectation of recovery.Given those prospects, it

might be better to let naturetakeitscourse.”

“But, I saw his eyelidsmove yesterday,” Holleyprotested. “Really, theymoved. Almost like he wastryingtoopenthem.IamsureofwhatIsaw.”

“I don’t doubt you did,”said Dr. Wade. “His whiteblood cell count has comedownaswell.That’sallgoodnews,andIdon’tforaminutewant to suggest that it isn’t.

But you need to see thesituation in context. We’velightened Eben’s sedationconsiderably, and by thispoint his neurologicexamination should beshowing more neurologicalactivity than it is. His lowerbrain is partially functioning,but it’s his higher-levelfunctions that we need, andthey’re all still completelyabsent. A certain amount ofimprovement in apparent

alertnessoccursinmostcomapatients over time. Theirbodies do things that canmake it appear that they’recomingback.Butthey’renot.It’s simply the brainstemmoving into a state calledcomavigile,akindofholdingpattern that they can stay infor months, or years. That’swhat the fluttering eyelidsare, most likely. And I haveto tell you again that sevendays is an enormously long

time to be in coma withbacterialmeningitis.”

Dr.Wadewas using a lotof words in an attempt tosoften theblowof apieceofnews that could have beenspokeninasinglesentence.

Itwastimetoletmybodydie.

22.

SixFaces

As Idescended,morefacesbubbledoutofthemuck,justas they always did when Iwas moving down into theRealm of the Earthworm’s-Eye View. But there wassomethingdifferentabout the

faces this time. They werehumannow,notanimal.

Andtheywereveryclearlysayingthings.

Not that I couldmake outwhattheyweresaying.Itwasa bit like the old CharlieBrown cartoons, when theadultsspeakandallyouhearare indecipherable sounds.Later, upon looking back onit, I realized I could actuallyidentifysixofthefacesthatIsaw. Therewas Sylvia, there

was Holley, and her sisterPeggy. There was ScottWade, and there was SusanReintjes. Of these, the onlyone who was not actuallyphysically present at mybedside in those final hourswas Susan. But in her way,she had, of course, been bymybedside,too,becausethatnight,asthenightbefore,shehad sat down inher home inChapelHillandwilledherselfintomypresence.

Later,learningaboutthis,Iwas puzzled that my motherBettyandmysisters,whohadbeen there all week, holdingmyhand lovinglyforendlesshours, were absent from thisarrayof faces I’d seen.Momhad been suffering from astress fracture in her foot,using a walker to ambulate,but she had faithfully takenher turn in the vigil. Phyllis,Betsy, and Jean had all beenthere.ThenIlearnedthatthey

hadnotbeenpresentthatfinalnight. The faces Iremembered were those whowere physically there theseventhmorningofmycoma,ortheeveningbefore.

Again,though,atthetime,as I made the descent, I hadno names or identities toattachtoanyofthesefaces.Ionly knew, or sensed, thattheywere important tome insomeway.

One more in particular

drew me toward it withspecialpower.Itbegantotugatme.Withajoltthatseemedto echo up and down thewholevastwellofcloudsandpraying angelic beingsthrough which I wasdescending, I suddenlyrealizedthatthebeingsoftheGateway and the Core—beings I had known andloved, seemingly, forever—were not the only beings Iknew. I knew, and loved,

beingsdownbelowme,too—down in the realm Iwas fastapproaching. Beings I had,until now, completelyforgotten.

This knowledge focusedon all six faces, but inparticularon the sixthone. Itwas so familiar. I realizedwith a feeling of shockbordering on absolute fearthat whoever it was, it wasthe face of someone whoneeded me. Someone who

wouldnever recover if I left.If I abandoned it, the losswould be unbearable—likethe feeling I’d gotten whenthe gates to Heaven hadclosed.ItwouldbeabetrayalIsimplycouldn’tcommit.

Up to that point, I hadbeen free. I had journeyedthrough worlds in the waythat adventurers mosteffectively can: without anyreal concern about their fate.The outcome didn’t

ultimately matter, becauseevenwhenIwasintheCore,therewasneveranyworryorguilt about letting anyonedown. That had, of course,been one of the first thingsthat I’d learned when I waswiththeGirlontheButterflyWing and she’d told me:“Thereisnothingyoucandothatiswrong.”

But now it was different.Sodifferent that, for the firsttime in my entire voyage, I

felt remarkable terror. It wasaterrornotformyself,butforthese faces—in particular forthat sixth face. A face that Istillcouldn’tidentify,butthatI knew was cruciallyimportanttome.

This face took on evergreater detail, until at last Isaw that it—that he—wasactually pleading for me toreturn: to risk the terribledescent into theworld belowto be with him again. I still

could not understand hiswords, but somehow theyconveyedthatIhadastakeinthisworldbelow—thatIhad,as they say, “skin in thegame.”

ItmatteredthatIreturned.Ihadtieshere—tiesthatIhadtohonor.Theclearerthefacebecame, the more I realizedthis.AndthecloserIcametorecognizingtheface.

Thefaceofayoungboy.

23.

FinalNight,FirstMorning

Before sitting down withDr. Wade, Holley told Bondto wait outside the doorbecause she hadn’t wantedhim to hear what she fearedwas very bad news. But

sensing this, Bond hadlingeredoutside thedoorandcaught some of Dr. Wade’swords. Enough of them tounderstand the real situation.To understand that his fatherwasnot,infact,comingback.Ever.

Bond ran into the roomand up to my bed. Sobbing,he kissed my forehead andrubbed my shoulders. Thenhe pulled upmy eyelids andsaid, directly intomy empty,

unfocused eyes, “You’regoing to be okay, Daddy.You’regoingtobeokay.”Hekept on repeating it, againand again, believing, in hischild’sway, that if he said itenough times, surely hewouldmakeittrue.

Meanwhile, in a roomdown the hall, Holley staredinto space, absorbing Dr.Wade’s words as best shecould.

Finally, she said, “I guess

thatmeansIshouldcallEbenatcollegeandhavehimcomeback.”

Dr.Wadedidn’tdeliberateonthequestion.

“Yes,Ithinkthatwouldbetherightthingtodo.”

Holleywalkedover to theconference room’s largepicture window, whichlooked out on the storm-soaked but brighteningVirginia mountains, took outher cell phone, and dialed

Eben’snumber.Asshedidso,Sylviastood

upfromherchair.“Holley, wait a minute,”

she said. “Let me just go inthereonemoretime.”

Sylvia went into the ICUroom and stood by the bednext to Bond, as he satsilently rubbing my hand.Sylvia put her hand on myarmandstrokeditgently.Asithadbeenallweek,myheadwas turned slightly to one

side. For a week, everyonehadbeenlookingatmyface,rather than into it. The onlytime my eyes opened waswhenthedoctorscheckedforpupil dilation in reaction tolight (oneof the simplestbutmosteffectiveways tocheckfor brainstem function), orwhenHolleyorBond,againstthe doctors’ repeatedinstructions, had insisted ondoingsoandencounteredtwoeyes staring dead and

unmoored, askew like thoseofabrokendoll.

But now, as Sylvia andBond stared into my slackface, resolutely refusing toaccept what they had justheard from the doctor,somethinghappened.

Myeyesopened.Sylvia shrieked. She

would later tell me that thenextbiggestshock,almostasshockingasmyeyesopening,was the way they

immediately began to lookaround. Up, down, here,there . . .They remindedhernotofanadultemergingfroma seven-day coma, but of aninfant—someone newly bornto the world, looking aroundat it, taking it in for the firsttime.

Inaway,shewasright.Sylvia recovered fromher

initial flat-out shock andrealizedthatIwasagitatedbysomething.Sheranoutofthe

room to where Holley wasstill standing at the bigpicture window, talking toEbenIV.

“Holley . . . Holley!”Sylviashouted.“He’sawake.Awake!Tell Eben his dad iscomingback.”

Holley stared at Sylvia.“Eben,” she said into thephone, “I have to call youback.He’s . . .your father iscomingback...tolife.”

Holley walked, then ran

into the ICU,withDr.Waderight behind her. Sureenough, I was thrashingaround on the bed. Notmechanically, but because Iwas conscious, andsomething was clearlybothering me. Dr. Wadeimmediatelyunderstoodwhatitwas:thebreathingtubethatwas still in my throat. Thetube I no longer needed,becausemybrain,alongwiththe restofmybody,had just

kicked back to life. Hereachedover,cutthesecuringtape, and carefully extractedit.

I choked a little, gaspeddown my first fully unaidedlungful of air in seven days,and spoke the firstwords I’dspokeninaweekaswell:

“Thankyou.”Phyllis was still thinking

about the rainbow she’d justseen when she exited theelevator. She was pushing

Mom in a wheelchair. Theywalked into the room, andPhyllis almost fell overbackward in disbelief. I wassittingupinmybed,meetingtheir gaze with my own.Betsy was jumping up anddown. She hugged Phyllis.They were both in tears.Phyllis came closer andlookeddeepintomyeyes.

I looked back at her, thenaroundateveryoneelse.

As my loving family and

caregivers gathered aroundmy bed, still dumbstruck bythe inexplicable transition, Ihadapeaceful,joyoussmile.

“All is well,” I said,radiating that blissfulmessageasmuchasspeakingthewords.Ilookedateachofthem, deeply, acknowledgingthedivinemiracleofourveryexistence.

“Don’t worry . . . all iswell,” I repeated, to assuageany doubt. Phyllis told me

later that it was as if I wereimparting a crucial messagefrom the beyond, that theworld is as it should be, thatwehave nothing to fear. Shesaid she often recalls thatmomentwhensheisvexedbysome earthly concern—tofind comfort in knowing thatweareneveralone.

As I took stock of theentourage, I seemed to bereturning to my earthlyexistence.

“What,”Iaskedthosewhowere assembled, “are youdoinghere?”

To which Phyllis replied,“Whatareyoudoinghere?”

24.

TheReturn

Bond had envisioned hissameolddadwouldwakeup,take a look around, and justneed a little catching up onwhat had happened beforeresuming my role as thefatherhe’dalwaysknown.

He soon discovered,however, that itwasn’tgoingto be quite that easy. Dr.Wade cautioned Bond abouttwothings:First,heshouldn’tcount on my rememberinganything I was saying as Iemerged from the coma. Heexplained that the process ofmemory takes enormousbrain power, and that mybrain wasn’t sufficientlyrecoveredtobeperformingatthat sophisticated level.

Second, he shouldn’t worrymuch about what I saidduring these early days,becausea lotof itwasgoingtosoundprettycrazy.

He proved right on bothcounts.

That first morning back,Bondproudlyshowedmethedrawinghe andEben IVhadmadeofmywhitebloodcellsattackingtheE.colibacteria.

“Wow,wonderful,”Isaid.Bond glowed with pride

andexcitement.Then I continued: “What

are the conditions likeoutside? What does thecomputer readout say? Youneed to move, I’m gettingreadytojump!”

Bond’s face fell.Needlessto say, this was not the fullreturn he had been hopingfor.

I was having wilddelusions, reliving some ofthemostexcitingtimesofmy

life,inthemostvividfashion.Inmymind,Iwasonjump

run,readytoskydiveoutofaDC3 three miles above theearth . . .goingtobethelastman out, my favoriteposition. It was the maximalflyingofmybody.

Bursting into brilliantsunshine outside the airplanedoor, I immediately assumeda head dive with my armstucked behind me (in mymind), feeling the familiar

buffetingasIfellbeneaththeprop blast, watching fromupside down as the belly ofthe enormous silvery planestarted to shoot skyward, itshuge propellers whirling inslowmotion,earthandcloudsbelow mirrored on itsunderbelly. I was musingover the odd sight of flapsand wheels down (as iflanding) while still milesabovetheground(alltoslowdown and minimize wind

shocktotheexitingjumpers).I tuckedmy arms in extra

tight in a head-down dive toacceleratebrisklytoover220milesperhour,nothingmorethanmyspeckledbluehelmetand shoulders against thinupper air to resist the tug ofthe huge planet below,movingmore than the lengthof a football field everysecond, the wind roaring byfuriously at thrice hurricanespeed,louderthananything—

ever.Passing between the tops

of twoenormouspuffywhiteclouds, I rocketed into theclear chasm between them,green earth and sparklingdeep blue sea far below, inmywild, thrilling rush downtojoinmyfriends,justbarelyvisible, in the colorfulsnowflake formation,growing larger every secondas other jumpers joined in,far,farbelow...

I was flipping back andforth between being presentthere in the ICU and beingout of my mind in theadrenaline-soaked delusionsofagorgeousskydive.

Iwas between nutty—andgettingit.

For two days I blabberedabout skydiving, airplanes,and the Internet to all whowould listen.Asmyphysicalbrain gradually recovered itsbearings, I entered a strange

and exhausting paranoiduniverse. I became obsessedwith an ugly background of“Internet messages” thatwould show up whenever Iclosed my eyes, and thatsometimes appeared on theceilingwhentheywereopen.WhenIshutmyeyesIheardgrinding, monotonous, anti-melodious chanting soundsthatusuallywentawaywhenI opened them again. I keptputting my finger in the air,

pointing just like ET, tryingto guide the Internet tickerflowing past me, in Russian,Chinese.

In short, I was a littlecrazy.

It was all a little like theRealm of the Earthworm’s-Eye View, only morenightmarish, because what Iheardandsawwaslacedwiththe trappings of my humanpast (I recognizedmy familymembers, even when, as in

Holley’s case, I didn’tremembertheirnames).

But at the same time itcompletely lacked theastonishing clarity andvibrant richness—the ultra-reality—of the Gateway andthe Core. I was mostdefinitelybackinmybrain.

Despite that initialmoment of seemingly fulllucidity when my eyes firstopened, I soon once againhadnomemoryofmyhuman

life before coma. My onlymemory was of where I hadjust been: the rough, uglyRealm of the Earthworm’s-Eye View, the idyllicGateway, and the awesomeheavenly Core. My mind—my real self—was squeezingits way back into the all tootight and limiting suit ofphysical existence, with itsspatiotemporal bounds, itslinear thought, and itslimitation to verbal

communication. Things thatup until a week ago I’dthought were the only modeof existence around, butwhich now showedthemselves as extraordinarilycumbersomelimitations.

Physical life ischaracterized bydefensiveness, whereasspiritual life is just theopposite. This is the onlyexplanation I could come upwith to explain why my

reentry had such a strongparanoid aspect to it. For astretch of time I becameconvincedthatHolley(whosename I still didn’t know butwhomIsomehowrecognizedas my wife) and myphysicianswere trying tokillme. Ihad furtherdreamsandfantasies about flight andskydiving—some of themextremely longand involved.In the longest, most intense,and almost ridiculously

detailed of these, I foundmyself in a South Floridacancer clinic featuringoutdoor escalators where Iwas pursued by Holley, twoSouthFloridapoliceofficers,and a pair of Asian ninjaphotographers on cablepulleys.

Iwasinfactgoingthroughsomething called “ICUpsychosis.” It’s normal, evenexpected, for patients whosebrainsarecomingbackonline

afterbeinginactiveforalongperiod. I’d seen it many atime, but never from theinside.Andfromtheinsideitwas very, very differentindeed.

Themost interesting thingabout this session ofnightmares and paranoidfantasies,inretrospect,isthatall of it was indeed that: afantasy. Portions of it—inparticular theextendedSouthFlorida ninja nightmare—

were extremely intense, andevenoutright terrifyingwhilehappening. But in retrospect—indeed,almostimmediatelyafterthisperiodended—itallbecame clearly recognizableas what it was: somethingcooked up by my verybeleaguered brain as it wastryingtorecoveritsbearings.Some of the dreams I hadduring this period werestunningly and frighteninglyvivid. But in the end they

servedonly tounderlinehowvery, very dissimilar mydream state had beencompared with the ultra-realitydeepincoma.

As for the rockets,airplanes, and skydivingthemes that I imagined soconsistently,theywere,Ilaterrealized, quite accurate froma symbolic point of view.Because the fact was that Iwas making a dangerousreentryfromaplacefaraway,

to the abandoned but nowonce again functional spacestation of my brain. Onecould hardly ask for a betterearthly analogy for whathappened to me during myweek out of body than arocketlaunch.

25.

NotThereYet

Bond wasn’t the only onehaving difficulty acceptingthedecidedlykookyperson Iwas during those first daysback. The day after Irecovered consciousness—Monday—PhylliscalledEben

IV on his computer usingSkype.

“Eben, here’s your dad,”she said, turning the videocameratowardme.

“Hi, Dad! How’s itgoing?”hesaidcheerfully.

ForaminuteIjustgrinnedand stared at the computerscreen.WhenIfinallyspoke,Eben was crushed. I waspainfully slow inmy speech,and the words themselvesmade little sense. Eben later

toldme,“Yousoundedlikeazombie—like someone on abadacid trip.”Unfortunately,he had not been forewarnedabout the possibility of anICUpsychosis.

Gradually my paranoiaabated, and my thinking andconversation became morelucid. Two days after myawakening, I was transferredto the Neuroscience Step-down Unit. The nurses theregave Phyllis and Betsy cots

so that they could sleep nexttome.Itrustednoonebutthetwo of them—theymademefeel safe, tethered tomynewreality.

TheonlyproblemwasthatIdidn’tsleep.Ikeptthemupall night, going on about theInternet, space stations,Russian double agents, andall manner of relatednonsense. Phyllis tried toconvincethenursesthatIhadacough,hopingalittlecough

syrupwouldbringonanhourorsoofuninterruptedsleep.Iwas like a newborn who didnot adhere to a sleepschedule.

In my quieter moments,PhyllisandBetsyhelpedpullme slowly back to earth.They recalled all kinds ofstories from our childhood,and though by and large Ilistened as if I were hearingthemfor the first time, Iwasfascinated all the same. The

more they talked, the moresomethingimportantbegantoglimmer inside me—therealization that Ihad, in fact,been there for these eventsmyself.

Very quickly, both sisterstoldmelater,thebrothertheyhad known became visibleagain, through the thick fogofparanoidchatter.

“It was amazing,” Betsylater toldme.“Youwerejustcoming out of coma, you

weren’t at all fully aware ofwhereyouwereorwhatwasgoingon,youtalkedaboutallkinds of crazy stuff half thetime, and yet your sense ofhumor was just fine. It wasobviously you. You wereback!”

“One of the first thingsyou did was crack a jokeabout feeding yourself,”Phyllis later confided. “Wewere prepared to have fedyouspoonfulbyspoonful for

as long as it took.But you’dhave none of it. You weredeterminedtoget thatorangeJell-O into your mouth onyourown.”

Asthetemporarilystunnedengines of my brain kickedback in ever further, Iwouldwatchmyselfsayordothingsand marvel: where did thatcome from? Early on, aLynchburg friend namedJackie came by to visit.Holley and I had known

Jackieandherhusband,Ron,well, having bought ourhousefromthem.Withoutmywilling them to do so, mydeeply ingrained southernsocial graces kicked in.Seeing Jackie, I immediatelyasked,“How’sRon?”

After a few more days, Istarted having occasionalgenuinelylucidconversationswithmyvisitors,andagainitwas fascinating to see howmuch of these connections

were automatic and did notrequire much effort on mypart. Like a jet on autopilot,mybrainsomehownegotiatedthese increasingly familiarlandscapes of humanexperience. I was getting afirsthand demonstration of atruththatI’dknownverywellas a neurosurgeon: the brainis a truly marvelousmechanism.

Of course, the unspokenquestion on everybody’s

mind (including mine in mymore lucid moments) was:HowwellwouldIget?WasIreallyreturninginfull,orhadtheE.colidoneatleastsomeof thedamageall thedoctorshad been sure it would do?This daily waiting tore ateveryone, especially Holley,who feared that all of asudden the miraculousprogresswould stop, and shewould be left with only aportion of the “me” she had

known.Yetdaybyday,evermore

of that “me” returned.Language. Memories.Recognition. A certainmischievous streak I’vealways been known forreturned as well. And whilethey were pleased to see mysenseofhumorback,mytwosistersweren’talwaysthrilledwith how I chose to use it.Monday afternoon, Phyllistouched my forehead and I

recoiled.“Ouch,”Iscreamed.“That

hurts!”Then, after enjoying

everybody’s horrifiedexpressions, I said, “Justkidding.”

Everyonewassurprisedbythe speed of my recovery—exceptforme.I—asofyet—hadnorealcluehowclosetodeathIhadactuallybeen.As,one by one, friends andfamily headed back to their

lives,Iwishedthemwellandremained blissfully ignorantof the tragedy that had beensonarrowlyaverted.Iwassoebullient that one of theneurologists who evaluatedme for rehab placementinsisted that I was “tooeuphoric,” and that I wasprobablysufferingfrombraindamage.Thisdoctor,likeme,wasaregularbow-tiewearer,andIreturnedthefavorofhisdiagnosis by telling my

sisters, after he had left, thathe was “strangely flat ofaffect for a bow-tieaficionado.”

Even then, I knewsomething that more andmoreofthepeoplearoundmewouldcometoacceptaswell.Doctors’viewsornodoctors’views,Iwasn’tsick,orbrain-damaged. I was completelywell.

In fact—though at thispointonlyIknewthis—Iwas

completely and truly “well”forthefirsttimeinmyentirelife.

26.

SpreadingtheNews

“Trulywell”—evenifIdidstillhavesomeworktodoasfar as the hardware side ofthingswent.Afewdaysaftermoving tooutpatient rehab, IcalledEben IVat school.Hementioned that he was

workingonapaper inoneofhis neuroscience courses. Ivolunteered to help but soonregretted doing so. It wasmuch harder forme to focuson the subject than I hadexpected, and terminology Ithought I had fully backsuddenly refused to come tomy mind. I realized with ashock justhow far I still hadtogo.

But bit by bit that partcame back, too. I’d wake up

one day and find myself inpossession of wholecontinents of scientific andmedical knowledge that theday before I had beenwithout. It was one of thestrangest aspects of myexperience: openingmy eyesin the morning with evenmoreof thenutsandboltsofawholelifetimeofeducationandexperienceatworkagain.

While my neuroscientist’sknowledge crept back slowly

and timidly,mymemoriesofwhat had happened duringthat week out of my bodyloomed in my memory withastonishing boldness andclarity. What had happenedoutside theearthly realmhadeverythingtodowiththewildhappinessI’dawakenedwith,andtheblissthatcontinuedtostick with me. I wasdeliriously happy because Iwas back with the people Iloved. But I was also happy

because—to state the matteras plainly as I can—Iunderstood for the first timewho I really was, and whatkindofaworldweinhabit.

Iwaswildly—andnaïvely—eager to share theseexperiences, especially withmy fellow doctors. After all,what I’d undergone alteredmy long-held beliefs ofwhatthe brain is, whatconsciousness is, even whatlifeitselfmeans—anddoesn’t

mean. Who wouldn’t beanxious to hear of mydiscoveries?

Quite a few people, as itturned out. Most especially,peoplewithmedicaldegrees.

Make no mistake, mydoctors were very happy forme. “That’s wonderful,Eben,” they would say,echoing my response tocountlesspatientsofmyownwho, in thepast, had tried totell me about otherworldly

experiencesthey’dundergoneduring surgery. “You werevery sick. Your brain wassoaking in pus. We can’tbelieve you’re even here totalk about it. You knowyourself what the brain cancome up with when it’s thatfargone.”

In short, they couldn’twraptheirmindsaroundwhatIwassodesperatelytryingtoshare.

But then, how could I

blame them? After all, Icertainly wouldn’t haveunderstooditeither—before.

27.

Homecoming

I came home on November25, 2008, two days beforeThanksgiving, to a home fullof gratitude. Eben IV droveovernight to surprise me thefollowing morning. The lasttime he’d been with me I’d

beeninfullcoma,andhewasstillprocessing thefact that Iwas alive at all. He was soexcitedthathegotaspeedingticketcomingthroughNelsonCounty just north ofLynchburg.

I’d been up for hours,sittinginmyeasychairbythefireinourcozywood-paneledstudy, just thinking abouteverything I’d been through.Eben walked through thedoor just after 6A.M. I stood

upandgavehima longhug.Hewasstunned.Thelasttimehe’dseenmeonSkypeinthehospital, I’dbeenbarelyableto form a sentence. Now—other than still being on thethin side and having an IVline in my arm—I hadreturnedtomyfavoriteroleinlife—beingEben andBond’sdad.

Well, almost the same.Ebenwasawareofsomethingelse that was different about

me, too. Later, Eben wouldsaythatwhenhefirstsawmethatday,hewas immediatelytaken with how “present” Iwas.

“You were so clear, sofocused,” he said. “It was asif there was a kind of lightshiningwithinyou.”

Iwastednotimeinsharingmythoughts.

“IamsoeagertoreadallIcanaboutthis,”Itoldhim.“Itwas all so real,Eben, almost

too real to be real, if thatmakes any sense. I want towrite about it for otherneuroscientists.AndIwanttoread up on NDEs and whatother people haveexperienced. I can’tbelieve Inevertookanyofitseriously,never listened to what myown patients told me. I wasnevercuriousenoughtoevenlook into any of theliterature.”

Eben didn’t say anything,

at first, but it was clear hewas thinking about how tobest advise his dad. He satdownacrossfromme,andheurgedme to seewhat shouldhavebeenobvious.

“I believe you, Dad,” hesaid. “But think about it. Ifyouwant this to be of valueto others, the last thing youshould do is readwhat otherpeoplehavesaid.”

“So what should I do?” Iasked.

“Writeitdown.Writeitalldown—allyourmemories,asaccurately as you canremember them. But don’tread any books or articlesabout other peoples’ near-deathexperiences,orphysics,or cosmology. Not untilyou’ve written down whathappened to you. Don’t talktoMomoranyoneelseaboutwhat happened while youwereincoma,either—atleastto the degree that you can

steer clear of it. You can dothatallyouwant later, right?Think how you always usedto tell me that observationcomes first, theninterpretation. If you wantwhat happened to you to bescientifically valuable, youneed to record it as purelyand accurately as you canbefore you start making anycomparisons with what hashappenedtoothers.”

It was, perhaps, the most

sage advice anyone’s evergivenme—and I followed it.Ebenwasalsoquiterightthatwhat I deeply wanted, morethananythingelse,wastousemyexperiencesto,hopefully,help others. The more myscientific mind returned, themore clearly I saw howradically what I’d learned indecades of schooling andmedical practice conflictedwith what I’d experienced,themoreIunderstoodthatthe

mind and the personality (assome would call it, our soulor spirit) continue to existbeyondthebody.Ihadtotellmystorytotheworld.

For the next six weeks orso,mostdayswent thesame.I’dwakeuparound2or2:30A.M., feeling so ecstatic andenergized by simply beingalive that I would bound outof bed. I’d light a fire in theden, sit down in my oldleather chair, and write. I

tried to recall every detail ofmyjourneysinandoutoftheCore,andwhatIhadfeltasIlearned its many life-changinglessons.

Though tried isn’t reallythe right word. Crisp andclear, the memories wereright there, rightwhere I hadleftthem.

28.

TheUltra-Real

Therearetwowaystobefooled.Oneistobelievewhatisn’ttrue;theotheristo

refusetobelievewhatistrue.

—SØRENKIERKEGAARD(1813–1855)

Inall thiswriting, oneword

seemedtocomeupagainandagain.Real.Never, before my coma,

had I realized just howdeceptiveawordcanbe.Theway I had been taught tothinkaboutit,bothinmedicalschool and in that school ofcommon sense called life, isthat something is either real(a car accident, a footballgame,asandwichonthetableinfrontofyou)orit’snot.In

my years as a neurosurgeon,I’d seen plenty of peopleundergo hallucinations. Ithought I knew just howterrifying unreal phenomenacould be to thoseexperiencing them. Andduring my few days of ICUpsychosis,I’dhadachancetosample some impressivelyrealistic nightmares as well.But once they passed, Iquickly recognized thosenightmares for the delusions

they were: neuronalphantasmagoria stirred up bybrain circuitry struggling togetrunningagain.

But while I was in comamy brain hadn’t beenworkingimproperly.Ithadn’tbeenworkingatall.Thepartof my brain that years ofmedicalschoolhadtaughtmewas responsible for creatingtheworld I lived andmovedinandfortakingtherawdatathat came in through my

sensesandfashioningitintoameaningfuluniverse:thatpartof my brain was down, andout. And yet despite all ofthis, I had been alive, andaware, truly aware, in auniverse characterized aboveall by love, consciousness,and reality. (There was thatword again.) There was, forme, simply no arguing thisfact. I knew it so completelythatIached.

What I’d experiencedwas

morerealthanthehouseIsatin, more real than the logsburning in the fireplace. Yetthere was no room for thatreality in the medicallytrained scientific worldviewthatI’dspentyearsacquiring.

HowwasIgoingtocreateroom for both of theserealitiestocoexist?

29.

ACommonExperience

FinallythedaycamewhenIhad written down everythingIcould,everylastmemoryofthe Realm of theEarthworm’s-Eye View, theGateway,andtheCore.

Thenitwastimetoread.Iplunged into the ocean ofNDE literature—an oceanintowhichI’dneversomuchas dipped a toe before. Itdidn’ttakemelongtorealizethat countless other peoplehad experienced the things Ihad,both in recentyears andcenturies past. NDEs are notall the same, each one isunique—but the sameelements show up again andagain,andmanyIrecognized

from my own experience.Narrativesofpassingthroughadark tunnelorvalley intoabright and vivid landscape—ultra-real—were as old asancient Greece and Egypt.Angelic beings—sometimeswinged, sometimes not—went back, at least, to theancientNearEast—asdidthebelief that such beings wereguardians who watched theactivities of people on earthand greeted those people

when they left itbehind.Thesense of being able to see inall directions simultaneously;the sensation of being abovelinear time—of being aboveeverything, essentially, that Ihad previously thought of asdefining the landscape ofhuman life; the hearing ofanthem-like music, whichentered through one’s wholebeing rather than simplyone’s ears; the direct andinstantaneous reception of

conceptsthatnormallywouldhave taken a very long timeand a great deal of study tocomprehend, without anystruggle whatsoever . . .feeling the intensity ofunconditionallove.

Over and over, in themodernNDEaccountsandinspiritualwritingsfromearliertimes, I’d feel the narratorstrugglingwiththelimitationsofearthly language, trying toget the entirety of the fish

theyhadhookedonboardtheboat of human language andideas . . . and always, toonedegreeoranother,failing.

Andyet,witheachattemptthat fell frustratingly shortofitsgoal,eachpersonstrainingat language and ideas to getthis enormity across to thereader,I’dunderstandtheaimof the storyteller and whatthey’dhopedtoconveyinallof its boundaryless majesty,butsimplycouldn’t.

Yes, yes, yes! I’d say tomyself as I read. Iunderstand.

Thesebooks,thismaterial,hadall,ofcourse,been therebeforemyexperience.ButI’dneverlookedatit.Notjustinterms of reading, but inanother way as well. Quitesimply,I’dneverheldmyselfopen to the idea that theremightbeanythinggenuinetothe idea that somethingofussurvives the death of the

body.Iwasthequintessentialgood-natured, albeitskeptical, doctor. And assuch,Icantellyouthatmostskepticsaren’t reallyskepticsat all. To be truly skeptical,one must actually examinesomething, and take itseriously. And I, like manydoctors, had never taken thetime to explore NDEs. I hadsimply “known” they wereimpossible.

I also went through the

medicalrecordsofmytimeincoma—a time that wasmeticulously recorded,practically from the verystart. Reviewing my scansjust as I would have for apatientofmyown,itbecameclear to me at last just howfantasticallysickIhadbeen.

Bacterial meningitis isuniqueamongdiseasesinthemannerinwhichitattackstheouter surface of the brainwhile leaving its deeper

structuresintact.Thebacteriaefficiently wreck the humanpart of our brain first, andfinally prove fatal byattacking the deeper“housekeeping” structurescommon to other animals,deepbeneaththehumanpart.Theotherconditions thatcandamage the neocortex andcauseunconsciousness—headtrauma, stroke, brainhemorrhages or brain tumors—are not nearly as efficient

at completely damaging theentire surface of theneocortex. These tend toinvolve only part of theneocortex,leavingotherpartsunscathed and able tofunction. Not only that, butinstead of taking theneocortexaloneout,theytendtoalsodamagethedeeperandmore primitive parts of thebrain as well. Given all ofthis, bacterial meningitis isarguably thebestdiseaseone

could find if one wereseeking to mimic humandeath without actuallybringing itabout. (Thoughofcourse, it usually does. Thesad truth is that virtuallyeveryone as sick as I wasfrom bacterial meningitisnever returns to tell the tale.)(SeeAppendixA.)

Though the experience isas old as history, “the near-death experience” (regardlessof whether it was seen as

something real or a baselessfantasy) only became ahousehold term fairlyrecently. In the 1960s, newtechniques were developedthat allowed doctors toresuscitate patients who hadsuffered a cardiac arrest.Patientswho in former timessimplywouldhavediedwerenowpulledbackintothelandoftheliving.Unbeknownsttothem, these physicians were,through their rescue efforts,

producing a breed of trans-earthlyvoyagers:peoplewhohadglimpsedbeyondtheveiland returned to tell about it.Today they number in themillions. Then, in 1975, amedical student namedRaymondMoodypublishedabookcalledLifeAfterLife,inwhich he described theexperience of a man namedGeorge Ritchie. Ritchie had“died” as a result of cardiacarrest as a complication of

pneumonia and been out ofhisbodyfornineminutes.Hetraveled down a tunnel,visited heavenly and hellishregions, met a being of lightthat he identified as Jesus,and experienced feelings ofpeace and well-being thatwere so intense he haddifficulty putting them intowords.Theeraofthemodernnear-death experience wasborn.

I couldn’t claim complete

ignorance of Moody’s book,butIhadcertainlyneverreadit. Ididn’tneed to,because Iknew,firstofall,thattheideathatcardiacarrestrepresentedsome kind of close-to-deathcondition was nonsense.Much of the literature aboutnear-death experiencesconcerns patients whosehearts stopped for a fewminutes—usually after anaccident or on the operatingtable. The idea that cardiac

arrest constitutes death isoutdatedbyaboutfiftyyears.Many laypeople still believethat if someone comes backfromcardiacarrest, thentheyhave “died” and returned tolife, but the medicalcommunity long ago revisedits definitions of death tocenter on the brain, not theheart (ever since brain deathcriteria,whichrelyoncrucialfindings of the patient’sneurological examination,

were established in 1968).Cardiac arrest is relevant todeath only in terms of itseffect on the brain. Withinseconds of cardiac arrest,cessationofbloodflowtothebrain leads to widespreaddisruption of cooperativeneural activity and loss ofconsciousness.

For half a century,surgeons have routinelystopped theheart forminutesto hours in cardiac surgery

and occasionallyneurosurgery, usingcardiopulmonary bypasspumps, and sometimescooling the brain to enhanceits viability under suchstresses. No brain deathoccurs.Even a personwhoseheartstopsonthestreetmightbe spared brain damage,provided that someone startsperforming cardiopulmonaryresuscitation within fourminutes and the heart can

eventually be restarted. Aslong as oxygenated bloodtravels to thebrain, thebrain—and therefore the person—will stay alive, albeittransientlyunconscious.

This piece of knowledgewas all I needed to discountMoody’s book without everopening it. But now I didopen it, and reading thestories Moody reported withthereferenceofwhatImyselfhad gone through made me

completely shift myperspective. Ihad littledoubtthat at least some of thepeople in these stories hadgenuinely left their physicalbodies. The similarities withwhat I myself hadexperiencedbeyond thebodywere simply toooverwhelming.

The more primitive partsof my brain—thehousekeeping parts—functioned for all ormost of

mytimeincoma.Butwhenitcame to thepart ofmybrainthat every single brainscientist will tell you isresponsible for the humansideofme:well,thatpartwasgone. I could see it on thescans, in the labnumbers,onmy neurological exams—inall the data from my veryclosely recorded week inhospital. I quickly began torealize that mine was atechnically near-impeccable

near-death experience,perhaps one of the mostconvincing such cases inmodern history. What reallymattered about my case wasnot what happened to mepersonally,butthesheer,flat-out impossibility of arguing,from a medical standpoint,thatitwasallfantasy.

Describing what an NDEis is challenging, at best, butdoing so in the face of amedical profession that

refusestobelieveit’spossibleat all makes it even harder.Due to my career inneuroscience and my ownNDE, I now had the uniqueopportunity to make it morepalatable.

30.

BackfromtheDead

AndthedrawingnearofDeath,whichalikelevelsall,alikeimpressesallwithalastrevelation,whichonlyanauthorfromthedeadcouldadequatelytell.

—HERMANMELVILLE(1819–1891)

Everywhere Iwent in thosefirst few weeks, peoplelookedatme like Ihad risenfromthegrave.Iranintoonedoctorwho had been presentat the hospital the day I’dcome in. He hadn’t beendirectly involved inmy care,buthe’dgottenagoodeyefulwhenIwasrolledintotheER

thatfirstmorning.“How can you even be

here?”heasked,summarizingthe medical community’sbasicquestionaboutme.“Areyou Eben’s twin brother, orwhat?”

I smiled, reached out, andshook his hand firmly, to lethimknowitwasreallyI.

Though he was of coursejokingaboutwhether I hadatwin brother, this doctorwasactuallymakingan important

point. For all intents andpurposes I still was twopeople,and if Iwasgoing todo what I’d told Eben IV Iwanted to do—use myexperience to help others—Iwould have to reconcile myNDE with my scientificunderstanding and knit thosetwopeopletogether.

Mymemorywent back toaphonecall I’d receivedonemorningseveralyearsbefore,from the mother of a patient

who’d called as I wasexaminingadigitalmapof atumor I was to remove laterthat day. I’ll call the womanSusanna. Susanna’s latehusband, whom I will callGeorge,hadbeenapatientofmine with a brain tumor. Inspiteofeverythingwedid,hediedwithinayear andahalfof diagnosis.Now Susanna’sdaughterwas ill with severalbrain metastases from breastcancer. Her prospects of

survivalbeyondafewmonthswereremote.Itwasn’tagoodtimetotakeacall—mymindwas completely absorbed inthe digital image in front ofme, and with mapping outexactlywhatmystrategywasgoing to be to go in andremove it without doingdamage to the brain tissuearoundit.ButIstayedontheline with Susanna because Iknew that she was trying tothinkofsomething—anything

—toallowhertocope.I’d always believed that

whenyou’reundertheburdenof a potentially fatal illness,softeningthetruthisfine.Toprevent a terminal patientfrom trying to grab on to alittle fantasy to help themdeal with the possibility ofdeath is like withholdingpain-killing medication. Itwas an extraordinarily heavyload to carry, and I owedSusanna every second of

attentionsheasked.“Dr. A,” Susanna said,

“my daughter had the mostincredible dream. Her fathercametoherinit.Hetoldhereverythingwasgoingtobeallright, that she didn’t need toworryaboutdying.”

ItwasthekindofthingI’dheard frompatients countlesstimes—the mind doing whatit can to soothe itself in anunbearablypainfulsituation.Itold her it sounded like a

wonderfuldream.“But the most incredible

thing,Dr.A, iswhat hewaswearing.Ayellowshirt—andafedora!”

“Well, Susanna,” I saidgood-naturedly, “I guessthere are no dress codes inHeaven.”

“No,” Susanna said.“That’snotit.Earlyoninourrelationship, when we werefirst dating, I gave George ayellowshirt.Helikedtowear

it with a fedora that I alsogave him. But the shirt andhat were lost when ourluggage failed to arrive onour honeymoon. He alreadyknewbythat timehowmuchI loved him in that shirt andhat, but we never replacedthem.”

“I’m sure Christina hadheard lots of wonderfulstories about that shirt andhat, Susanna,” I said. “Andabout your early times

together...”“No,”shelaughed.“That’s

what’s so wonderful. Thatwas our little secret. Weknewhowridiculousitwouldsound to someone else. Wenever talked about that shirtand fedora after they werelost. Christina never heardonepeepfromusaboutthem.Christina was so afraid ofdying, and now she knowsshe has nothing to fear,nothingatall.

What Susanna was tellingme, I discovered in myreading, was a variety ofdream confirmation thathappens quite often. But Ihadn’thadmyNDEwhenI’dgotten that call, and at thetime I knew perfectly wellthatwhatSusannawastellingme was a grief-inducedfantasy. Over the course ofmycareer,Ihadtreatedmanypatients who had undergoneunusual experiences while in

coma or during surgery.Whenever one of thesepeople narrated an unusualexperience like Susanna’s, Iwas always completelysympathetic.AndIwasquitesure these experiences hadindeed happened—in theirminds. The brain is themostsophisticated—andtemperamental—organ wepossess. Tinker around withit, lessen the degree ofoxygenitgetsbyafewtorr(a

unit of pressure), and theowner of that brain is goingtoexperienceanalteration intheir reality. Or, moreprecisely, their personalexperience of reality. Throwinallthephysicaltraumaandall the medications thatsomeonewithabrainmaladyis likely to be on, and youhave a virtual guarantee that,should a patient have anymemories when they comebackaround, thosememories

are going to be prettyunusual.Withabrainaffectedby a deadly bacterialinfection and mind-alteringmedications, anything couldhappen. Anything, that is—except the ultra-realexperienceIhadincoma.

Susanna, I realized withthe kind of jolt that comeswhenyousee something thatshould have been obvious,wasn’t calling to becomforted by me that day.

She really and truly wastrying to comfort me. But Ihadn’t been able to see that.I’d thought I was doingSusanna a kindness bypretending, in my wan,distractedway,tobelieveherstory. But I wasn’t. Andlooking back on thatconversation and dozens ofothers like it, I realized justwhat a long road I had infrontofme if Iwasgoing toconvince my fellow doctors

that what I’d been throughwasreal.

31.

ThreeCamps

Imaintainthatthehumanmysteryisincrediblydemeanedbyscientificreductionism,withitsclaiminpromissorymaterialismtoaccounteventuallyforallofthespiritualworldintermsof

patternsofneuronalactivity.Thisbeliefmustbeclassedasasuperstition....wehavetorecognizethatwearespiritualbeingswithsoulsexistinginaspiritualworldaswellasmaterialbeingswithbodiesandbrainsexistinginamaterialworld.

—SIRJOHNC.ECCLES(1903–1997)

When it came to NDEs,therewerethreebasiccamps.There were the believers:either people who hadundergone an NDEthemselves or who simplyfound such experiences easyto accept. Then, of course,there were the staunchunbelievers(liketheoldme).Thesepeopledidn’tgenerallyclassify themselves as

unbelievers, however. Theysimply “knew” that the braingenerated consciousness andwouldn’t hold still for crazyideas of mind beyond thebody(unlesstheyweregood-naturedly comfortingsomeone,asIhadthoughtI’dbeendoingwithSusannathatday).

Thentherewasthemiddlegroup. In here therewere allkinds of people who hadheard about NDEs, either by

reading about them or—because they’reextraordinarily common—byhaving a friend or relativewho had undergone one.These people in the middleweretheonesmystorycouldreally help. The news thatNDEs bring is life-transforming. But when aperson who is potentiallyopen to hearing about anNDE asks a doctor or ascientist—in our society the

official gatekeepers on thematter of what’s real andwhat isn’t—they are all toooften told, gently but firmly,that NDEs are fantasies:productsofabrainstrugglingtoholdontolife,andnothingmore.

As a doctor who’dundergonewhatIhad,Icouldtelladifferentstory.Andthemore I thought about it, themoreIfeltIhadadutytodojustthat.

One by one, I ran downthe suggestions that I knewmy colleagues, and I myselfin the old days, would haveoffered to “explain” whathappened to me. (For moredetails, see my summary ofneuroscientific hypotheses,AppendixB.)

Was my experience aprimitive brainstem programthat evolved to ease terminalpain and suffering—possiblya remnant of “feigned-death”

strategies used by lowermammals? I discounted thatone right out of the gate.There was, quite simply, noway that my experiences,with their intenselysophisticatedvisualandaurallevels, and their high degreeof perceived meaning, werethe product of the reptilianportionofmybrain.

Wasitadistortedrecallofmemories from deeper partsofmylimbicsystem,thepart

of the brain that fuelsemotionalperception?Again,no—without a functioningneocortex the limbic systemcould not produce visionswith the clarity and logic Iexperienced.

Couldmyexperiencehavebeen a kind of psychedelicvision produced by some ofthe (many) drugs I was on?Again, all these drugs workwith receptors in theneocortex. And with no

neocortex functioning, therewasnocanvasforthesedrugstoworkon.

How about REMintrusion?Thisisthenameofasyndrome(relatedto“rapideye movement” or REMsleep, the phase in whichdreams occur) in whichnatural neurotransmitterssuch as serotonin interactwith receptors in theneocortex.Sorryagain.REMintrusion needs a functioning

neocortex to happen, and Ididn’thaveone.

Then there was thehypothetical phenomenonknownasa“DMTdump.”Inthis situation, the pinealgland,reactingtothestressofa perceived threat to thebrain, produces a substancecalled DMT (or N,N-dimethyltryptamine).DMTisstructurally similar toserotoninandcanbringonanextremelyintensepsychedelic

state. I’d had no personalexperience with DMT—andstill haven’t—but I have noargumentwiththosewhosayit can produce a verypowerful psychedelicexperience; maybe one withgenuine implications for ourunderstanding of whatconsciousness, and reality,actuallyare.

However,itremainsafactthat the portion of the brainthat DMT affects (the

neocortex) was, in my case,nottheretobeaffected.Sointerms of “explaining” whathappened to me, the DMT-dump hypothesis came up asradically short as the otherchief candidates forexplanations of myexperience, and for the samekey reason. Hallucinogensaffect the neocortex, andmyneocortexwasn’t available tobeaffected.

The final hypothesis I

looked at was that of the“reboot phenomenon.” Thiswouldexplainmyexperienceas an assembly of essentiallydisjointed memories andthoughtsleftoverfrombeforemy cortex went completelydown. Like a computerrestarting and saving what itcould after a system-widefailure,my brainwould havepieced together myexperience from theseleftover bits as best it could.

This might occur onrestarting the cortex intoconsciousness after aprolonged system-widefailure, as in my diffusemeningitis. But this seemsmost unlikely given theintricaciesandinteractivityofmy elaborate recollections.Because I experienced thenonlinear nature of time inthe spiritual world sointensely, I can nowunderstand why so much

writing on the spiritualdimensioncanseemdistortedor simply nonsensical fromourearthlyperspective.Intheworlds above this one, timesimply doesn’t behave as itdoeshere.It’snotnecessarilyone-thing-after-another inthoseworlds.Amoment canseem like a lifetime, andoneor several lifetimescan seemlike a moment. But thoughtime doesn’t behaveordinarily (in our terms) in

the worlds beyond, thatdoesn’t mean it’s jumbled,and my own recollectionsfrom my time in coma wereanything but. My most this-worldly anchors in myexperience, temporallyspeaking, were myinteractions with SusanReintjes when she contactedme on my fourth and fifthnights, and the appearance,toward the end of myjourney, of those six faces.

Any other appearance oftemporal simultaneitybetween events on earth andmyjourneybeyonditare,youmightsay,purelyconjectural!

Themore I learned ofmycondition, and the more Isought, using the currentscientificliterature,toexplainwhathadhappened,themoreIcameupspectacularlyshort.Everything—the uncannyclarity of my vision, theclearness of my thoughts as

pure conceptual flow—suggested higher, not lower,brain functioning. But myhigher brain had not beenaroundtodothatwork.

The more I read of the“scientific” explanations ofwhat NDEs are, the more Iwas shocked by theirtransparent flimsiness. Andyet I also knewwith chagrinthat they were exactly theonesthat theold“me”wouldhave pointed to vaguely if

someone had asked me to“explain”whatanNDEis.

But people who weren’tdoctors couldn’t be expectedto know this. If what I’dundergone had happened tosomeone—anyone—else, itwould have been remarkableenough. But that it hadhappened to me . . . Well,saying that it had happened“for a reason” made me alittle uneasy. There wasenough of the old doctor in

me to know how outlandish—how grandiose, in fact—that sounded. But when Iadded up the sheerunlikelihoodofall thedetails—and especially when Iconsidered how preciselyperfect a disease E. colimeningitiswasfortakingmycortex down, and my rapidand complete recovery fromalmost certain destruction—Isimply had to take seriouslythe possibility that it really

and trulyhad happened for areason.

That onlymademe feel agreatersenseofresponsibilitytotellmystoryright.

I had always made it apoint of pride to keep up onthelatestmedicalliteratureinmyfield,andtocontributeaswellwhenIhadsomethingofvaluetoadd.ThatIhadbeenrocketedoutofthisworldandintoanotheronewasnews—genuine medical news—and

now that I was back, I wasnot going to sell it short.Medically speaking, that Ihad recovered completelywasaflat-outimpossibility,amedicalmiracle.But the realstorylayinwhereIhadbeen,andIhadadutynotjustasascientist and a profoundrespecter of the scientificmethod, but also as a healerto tell that story. A story—atruestory—canhealasmuchasmedicinecan.Susannahad

known that when she calledmethatdayinmyoffice.AndI’d experienced as muchmyself when I’d heard backfrom my birth family. Whathad happened to me washealingnews,too.Whatkindof a healer would I be if Ididn’tshareit?

A little over two yearsafter returning from coma, Ivisited a close friend andcolleague who chairs one ofthe foremost academic

neuroscience departments inthe world. I’ve known John(not his real name) fordecades and consider him awonderfulhumanbeingandafirst-ratescientist.

I told John some of thestory ofmy spiritual journeydeep in coma, and he lookedquite amazed.Not amazed athowcrazy Inowwas,but asif he was finally makingsense of something that hadmystifiedhimforalongtime.

It turned out that about ayearearlier,John’sfatherwasnearingtheendofafive-yearillness.Hewas incapacitated,demented, in pain, andwantedtodie.

“Please,” his father hadbegged John from hisdeathbed. “Give me somepills,orsomething.Ican’tgoonlikethis.”

Then suddenly his fatherbecamemore cogent than hehad been in two years, as he

discussed some deepobservations about his lifeand about their family. Hethen shifted his gaze andbegantalkingtotheairatthefoot of his bed. Listening,John realized that his fatherwas talking to his deceasedmother, who had died sixty-five years before, whenJohn’s father was just ateenager. He had barelymentioned her during John’slife but now was having a

joyous and animateddiscussion with her. Johncould not see her but wasabsolutelyconvinced thatherspirit was there, welcominghisfather’sspirithome.

After a few minutes ofthis,John’sfatherturnedbacktohim,acompletelydifferentlook in his eye. He wassmiling, and clearly verymuch at peace, more thanJohn could ever rememberseeinginhimbefore.

“Go to sleep, Dad,” Johnfound himself saying. “Justletgo.It’sokay.”

His father did just that.Closing his eyes, he driftedoff with a look of completepeace on his face. Shortlythereafter,hepassedon.

John felt the encounterbetween his father and hisdeparted grandmother wasvery real, but he had notknown what to do with itbecause,asadoctor,heknew

such things were“impossible.” Many othershave seen that astonishingclarity of mind that oftencomes to demented elderlypeople just before they passon, just as John had seen inhis father (a phenomenonknown as “terminallucidity”). There was noneuroscientific explanationfor that. Hearing my storyseemed togivehima licensehe had been longing for

someone to give him: thelicensetobelievewhathehadseen with his own eyes—toknow that deep andcomforting truth: that oureternal spiritual self is morereal than anything weperceive in this physicalrealm, and has a divineconnectiontotheinfiniteloveoftheCreator.

32.

AVisittoChurch

Thereareonlytwowaystoliveyourlife.Oneisas

thoughnothingisamiracle.Theotherisasifeverything

is.

—ALBERTEINSTEIN(1879–1955)

I didn’t make it back tochurch untilDecember 2008,when Holley coaxed me outto services for the secondSundayofAdvent.Iwasstillweak, still a bit off balance,still underweight.Holley andIsatinthefrontrow.MichaelSullivan was presiding overthe service that day, and hecame up and asked if I feltlike lighting the second

candleontheAdventwreath.I didn’t want to, butsomething told me to do itanyhow. I stood up, put myhand on the brass pole, andstrode to the front of thechurchwithunexpectedease.

My memory of my timeout of the body was stillnaked and raw, andeverywhere I turned in thisplace thathadfailed tomoveme much before, I saw artandheardmusic thatbrought

it all right back. The pulsingbass note of a hymn echoedthe rough misery of theRealm of the Earthworm’s-Eye View. The stained glasswindows with their cloudsand angels brought to mindthe celestial beauty of theGateway.ApaintingofJesusbreaking bread with hisdisciples evoked thecommunion of the Core. Ishuddered as I recalled theblissof infiniteunconditional

loveIhadknownthere.At last, I understoodwhat

religion was really all about.Or at least was supposed tobeabout.Ididn’tjustbelievein God; I knew God. As Ihobbled to the altar to takeCommunion, tears streameddownmycheeks.

33.

TheEnigmaofConsciousness

Ifyouwouldbearealseekeraftertruth,itisnecessarythatatleastonceinyourlifeyoudoubt,asfaraspossible,all

things.

—RENÉDESCARTES(1596–1650)

Ittookabouttwomonthsformy full battery ofneurosurgical knowledge tocome back to me. Leavingaside for the moment theessentially miraculous factthat it did come back (therecontinues to be no medicalprecedent for my case, inwhich a brain under long-term attack of such a severedegree by gram-negative

bacteria likeE. coli recoversanythinglikeitsfullabilities),once it had, I continued towrestle with the fact thateverything I had learned infour decades of study andwork about the human brain,abouttheuniverse,andaboutwhat constitutes realityconflicted with what I’dexperienced during thoseseven days in coma.When Ifell into my coma, I was aseculardoctorwhohadspent

his entire career in some ofthemost prestigious researchinstitutions in the world,trying to understand theconnections between thehuman brain andconsciousness.Itwasn’tthatIdidn’t believe inconsciousness. I was simplymoreawarethanmostpeopleof the staggering mechanicalunlikelihood that it existedindependently—atall!

In the1920s, thephysicist

Werner Heisenberg (andother founders of the scienceofquantummechanics)madeadiscoverysostrangethattheworld has yet to completelycome to termswith it.Whenobserving subatomicphenomena, it is impossibleto completely separate theobserver (that is, thescientistmaking theexperiment) fromwhat is being observed. Inour day-to-day world, it iseasytomissthisfact.Wesee

theuniverseasaplacefullofseparate objects (tables andchairs, people and planets)thatoccasionallyinteractwitheach other, but thatnonetheless remainessentially separate. On thesubatomic level, however,this universe of separateobjects turns out to be acomplete illusion. In therealm of the super-super-small, every object in thephysical universe is

intimately connected withevery other object. In fact,there are really no “objects”in the world at all, onlyvibrations of energy, andrelationships.

What that meant shouldhave been obvious, though itwasn’t to many. It wasimpossibletopursuethecorerealityoftheuniversewithoutusing consciousness. Farfrom being an unimportantby-product of physical

processes (as I had thoughtbefore my experience),consciousness is not onlyvery real—it’s actuallymorereal than the rest of physicalexistence,andmostlikelythebasis of it all. But neither ofthese insights has yet beentruly incorporated intoscience’s picture of reality.Many scientists are trying todoso,butasofyetthereisnounified “theory ofeverything” thatcancombine

the laws of quantummechanics with those ofrelativitytheoryinawaythatbegins to incorporateconsciousness.

All the objects in thephysical universe are madeup of atoms. Atoms, in turn,are made up of protons,electrons, and neutrons.These, in turn, are (asphysicists also discovered inthe early years of thetwentieth century) all

particles. And particles aremade up of . . . Well, quitefrankly, physicists don’treally know. But one thingwedoknowaboutparticlesisthateachone isconnected toevery other one in theuniverse. They are all, at thedeepestlevel,interconnected.

Beforemy experience outbeyond, I was generallyaware of all these modernscientificideas,buttheyweredistant and remote. In the

worldIlivedandmovedin—theworld of cars and housesand operating tables andpatients who did well or notdepending partially onwhether I operated on themsuccessfully—these facts ofsubatomic physics wererarefied and removed. Theymightbetrue,buttheydidn’tconcernmydailyreality.

But when I left myphysical body behind, Iexperienced these facts

directly. In fact, I feelconfident in saying that,while Ididn’tevenknow thetermat the time,while in theGateway and in the Core, Iwasactually“doingscience.”Science that relied on thetruest andmost sophisticatedtool for scientific researchthatwepossess:

Consciousnessitself.ThefurtherIdug,themore

convinced I became that mydiscovery wasn’t just

interestingordramatic.Itwasscientific. Depending onwhom you talk to,consciousness is either thegreatest mystery facingscientific enquiry, or a totalnonproblem. What’ssurprising is just how manymore scientists think it’s thelatter. For many—maybemost—scientists,consciousness isn’t reallyworth worrying aboutbecauseitisjustaby-product

of physical processes. Manyscientists go further, sayingthatnotonlyisconsciousnessasecondaryphenomenon,butthat in addition, it’s not evenreal.

Many leaders in theneuroscience ofconsciousness and thephilosophyofmind,however,wouldbegtodiffer.Overthelast few decades, they havecome to recognize the “hardproblem of consciousness.”

Although the idea had beencoalescingfordecades,itwasDavidChalmerswhodefinedit in his brilliant 1996 book,The Conscious Mind. Thehard problem concerns thevery existence of consciousexperience and can bedistilledintothesequestions:

How does consciousnessariseoutofthefunctioningofthehumanbrain?

How is it related to thebehaviorthatitaccompanies?

How does the perceivedworldrelatetotherealworld?

The hard problem is sohard to resolve that somethinkershavesaidtheanswerlies outside of “science”altogether. But that it liesoutside theboundsofcurrentscienceinnowaybelittlesthephenomenon ofconsciousness—infact,itisaclue as to its unfathomablyprofoundroleintheuniverse.

The ascendance of the

scientificmethodbasedsolelyinthephysicalrealmoverthepast four hundred yearspresentsamajorproblem:wehavelosttouchwiththedeepmystery at the center ofexistence—ourconsciousness. It was (underdifferent names andexpressed through differentworld-views) somethingknownwellandheldclosebypre-modern religions, but itwas lost to our secular

Western culture as webecame increasinglyenamored with the power ofmodern science andtechnology.

Forallof thesuccessesofWestern civilization, theworldhaspaidadearpriceinterms of the most crucialcomponent of existence—ourhuman spirit. The shadowside of high technology—modern warfare andthoughtless homicide and

suicide, urban blight,ecological mayhem,cataclysmic climate change,polarization of economicresources—is bad enough.Much worse, our focus onexponential progress inscience and technology hasleft many of us relativelybereft in the realm ofmeaning and joy, and ofknowing how our lives fitinto the grand scheme ofexistenceforalleternity.

Questions concerning thesoul and afterlife,reincarnation, God, andHeaven proved difficult toanswer through conventionalscientific means, whichimplied that they might notexist. Likewise, extendedconsciousness phenomena,such as remote viewing,extrasensory perception,psychokinesis, clairvoyance,telepathy, and precognition,have seemed stubbornly

resistant to comprehendthrough “standard” scientificinvestigations. Before mycoma, I doubted theirveracity, mainly because Ihad never experienced themat a deep level, and becausethey could not be readilyexplained by my simplisticscientificviewoftheworld.

Likemanyother scientificskeptics, I refused to evenreviewthedatarelevanttothequestions concerning these

phenomena. I prejudged thedata, and those providing it,because my limitedperspective failed to providethe foggiest notion of howsuch things might actuallyhappen.Thosewhoassertthatthere is no evidence forphenomena indicative ofextended consciousness, inspite of overwhelmingevidence to the contrary, arewillfully ignorant. Theybelieve they know the truth

withoutneedingtolookatthefacts.

For thosestill stuck in thetrapofscientificskepticism,Irecommend the bookIrreducible Mind: Toward aPsychology for the 21stCentury, published in 2007.Theevidenceforout-of-bodyconsciousness is wellpresented in this rigorousscientific analysis.Irreducible Mind is alandmarkopus fromahighly

reputablegroup, theDivisionof Perceptual Studies, basedat theUniversity ofVirginia.The authors provide anexhaustive review of therelevant data, and theconclusion is inescapable:thesephenomenaarereal,andwe must try to understandtheir nature if we want tocomprehendtherealityofourexistence.

We have been seducedinto thinking that the

scientific world view is fastapproaching a Theory ofEverything (or TOE), whichwould not seem to leavemuch room for our soul, orspirit, or for Heaven, andGod. My journey deep intocoma, outside of this lowlyphysical realm and into theloftiest dwelling place of thealmighty Creator, revealedthe indescribably immensechasm between our humanknowledge and the awe-

inspiringrealmofGod.Each one of us is more

familiar with consciousnessthan we are with anythingelse, and yet we understandfarmoreabouttherestoftheuniversethanwedoaboutthemechanism of consciousness.Itissoclosetohomethatitisalmost forever beyond ourgrasp.There isnothingaboutthe physics of the materialworld (quarks, electrons,photons, atoms, etc.), and

specifically the intricatestructure of the brain, thatgives the slightest clue as tothe mechanism ofconsciousness.

Infact,thegreatestcluetothe reality of the spiritualrealm is this profoundmystery of our consciousexistence. This is a farmoremysterious revelation thanphysicists or neuroscientistshave shown themselvescapable of dealing with, and

their failure to do so has leftthe intimate relationshipbetween consciousness andquantum mechanics—andthus physical reality—obscured.

Totrulystudytheuniverseon a deep level, we mustacknowledgethefundamentalrole of consciousness inpainting reality. Experimentsin quantum mechanicsshockedthosebrilliantfathersof the field, many of whom

(Werner Heisenberg,Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr,ErwinSchrödinger,SirJamesJeans, to name a few) turnedto the mystical worldviewseeking answers. Theyrealized it was impossible toseparate the experimenterfrom the experiment, and toexplain reality withoutconsciousness. What Idiscovered out beyond is theindescribable immensity andcomplexity of the universe,

and that consciousness is thebasis of all that exists. Iwasso totallyconnected to it thatthere was often no realdifferentiation between “me”and the world I was movingthrough. If I had tosummarize all this, I wouldsay first, that the universe ismuchlargerthanitappearstobe if we only look at itsimmediately visible parts.(This isn’t much of arevolutionaryinsightactually,

as conventional scienceacknowledgesthat96percentoftheuniverseismadeupof“dark matter and energy.”Whatarethesedarkentities?1No one yet knows.Butwhatmademy experience unusualwas the jolting immediacywithwhich I experienced thebasic role of consciousness,or spirit. It wasn’t theorywhen I learned this up there,buta fact,overwhelmingandimmediateasablastofarctic

air in the face.) Second:We—eachofus—areintricately,irremovably connected to thelarger universe. It is our truehome, and thinking that thisphysical world is all thatmatters is like shuttingoneself up in a small closetand imagining that there isnothing else out beyond it.And third: the crucial powerofbeliefinfacilitating“mind-over-matter.” I was oftenbemusedasamedicalstudent

over the confounding powerof the placebo effect—thatmedical studies had toovercomethe30percentorsobenefit that was attributed toa patient’s believing that hewas receiving medicine thatwould help him, even if itwas simply an inertsubstance. Instead of seeingthe underlying power ofbelief, and how it influencedour health, the medicalprofession saw the glass as

“half-empty”—that theplacebo effect was anobstacle to thedemonstrationofatreatment.

Attheheartoftheenigmaof quantum mechanics liesthefalsehoodofournotionoflocality in space and time.Therestoftheuniverse—thatis, the vast majority of it—isn’t actually distant from usin space.Yes,physical spaceseemsreal,butitislimitedaswell. The entire length and

height of the physicaluniverse is as nothing to thespiritual realm fromwhich ithas risen—the realm ofconsciousness (which somemight refer to as “the lifeforce”).

This other, vastly granderuniverse isn’t “far away” atall. In fact, it’s right here—rightherewhereIam,typingthis sentence, and right therewhereyouare,readingit.It’snot far away physically, but

simply exists on a differentfrequency. It’s right here,rightnow,butwe’reunawareof it because we are for themost part closed to thosefrequencies on which itmanifests. We live in thedimensions of familiar spaceand time, hemmed in by thepeculiar limitations of oursensory organs and by ourperceptual scaling within thespectrum from subatomicquantum up through the

entire universe. Thosedimensions, while they havemany things going for them,also shut us out from theotherdimensionsthatexistaswell.

The ancient Greeksdiscovered all of this longago, and I was onlydiscovering for myself whatthey’dalreadyhitupon:Likeunderstands like. Theuniverseissoconstructedthatto truly understand any part

of its many dimensions andlevels,youhave to becomeapart of that dimension. Or,statedalittlemoreaccurately,youhave to open yourself toan identity with that part ofthe universe that you alreadypossess, but which you maynothavebeenconsciousof.

The universe has nobeginningorend,andGodisentirely present within everyparticle of it.Much—in fact,most—of what people have

hadtosayaboutGodandthehigher spiritual worlds hasinvolvedbringingthemdownto our level, rather thanelevating our perceptions upto theirs. We taint, with ourinsufficientdescriptions,theirtrulyawesomenature.

But though it never beganand will never end, theuniverse does havepunctuation marks, thepurpose of which is to bringbeings into existence and

allow them to participate inthe glory of God. The BigBang that created ouruniverse was one of thesecreative“punctuationmarks.”Om’sviewwasfromoutside,encompassing all of Om’sCreationandbeyondevenmyhigher-dimensional field ofview. Here, to see was toknow. There was nodistinction betweenexperiencing something andmyunderstandingit.

“I was blind, but now Isee,” now took on a newmeaning as I understood justhowblindtothefullnatureofthe spiritual universe we areon earth—especially peoplelike I had been, who hadbelieved that matter was thecore reality, and that all else—thought, consciousness,ideas, emotions, spirit—weresimplyproductionsofit.

This revelation inspiredme greatly, because it

allowed me to see thestaggering heights ofcommunion andunderstanding that lie aheadfor us all, when each of usleaves the limitations of ourphysical body and brainbehind.

Humor. Irony. Pathos. Ihad always thought thesewere qualities we humansdeveloped to cope with thisso often painful and unfairworld. And they are. But in

addition to beingconsolations, these qualitiesare recognitions—brief,flashing, but all-important—of the fact that whatever ourstrugglesandsufferingsinthepresent world are, they can’ttruly touch the larger, eternalbeings we in truth are.Laughter and irony are atheart reminders that we arenot prisoners in this world,butvoyagersthroughit.

Anotheraspectofthegood

newsisthatyoudon’thavetoalmostdie to glimpse behindtheveil—butyoumustdothework. Learning about thatrealm from books andpresentations is a start—butattheendoftheday,weeachhavetogodeepintoourownconsciousness,throughprayerormeditation, toaccessthesetruths.

Meditationcomesinmanydifferent forms. The mostuseful formesincemycoma

has been that developed byRobertA.Monroe,founderoftheMonroeInstituteinFaber,Virginia.Their freedomfromany dogmatic philosophyoffers a distinct advantage.The only dogma associatedwith Monroe’s system ofmeditative exercises is: I ammore thanmy physical body.This simple acknowledgmenthasprofoundimplications.

Robert Monroe was asuccessful radio program

producerinthe1950sinNewYork. In the process ofinvestigatingtheuseofaudiorecordingsasasleep-learningtechnique, he began to haveout-of-body experiences. Hisdetailed research over morethanfourdecadeshasresultedin a powerful system toenhance deep consciousexplorationbasedonanaudiotechnology he developedknownas“Hemi-Sync.”

Hemi-Sync can heighten

selective awareness andperformance throughcreationofarelaxedstate.Hemi-Syncoffers much more than this,however—enhanced states ofconsciousnessallowaccesstoalternate perceptual modes,including deep meditationand mystical states. Hemi-Sync involves the physics ofresonantentrainmentofbrainwaves, their relationship totheperceptualandbehavioralpsychologyofconsciousness,

and to the fundamentalphysiology of the brain-mindandconsciousness.

Hemi-Sync uses specificpatterns of stereo soundwaves (of slightly differentfrequencies in each ear) toinduce synchronized brainwave activity. These“binauralbeats”aregeneratedat a frequency that is thearithmeticdifferencebetweenthe two signal frequencies.By using an ancient but

highlyaccuratetimingsysteminthebrainstemthatnormallyenables localization of soundsources in the horizontalplane around the head, thesebinauralbeatscanentraintheadjacent Reticular ActivatingSystem, which providessteady timing signals to thethalamusandcortexenablingconsciousness. These signalsgenerate brain wavesynchronyintherangeof1to25 hertz (Hz, or cycles per

second),includingthecrucialregion below the normalthreshold for human hearing(20Hz).This lowestrangeisassociated with brain wavesinthedelta(<4Hz,normallyfound in deep dreamlesssleep), theta (4 to7Hz, seenin deep meditation andrelaxation, and in non-REMsleep),andalpharanges(7to13Hz,characteristicofREMordreamsleep,drowsinessatthe borders of sleep, and

awakenedrelaxation).In my journey of

understandingaftermycoma,Hemi-Sync potentiallyoffered a means ofinactivating the filteringfunctionofthephysicalbrainbygloballysynchronizingmyneocortical electrical activity,just as my meningitis mighthavedone,toliberatemyout-of-body consciousness. Ibelieve Hemi-Sync hasenabled me to return to a

realm similar to thatwhich Ivisited deep in coma, butwithout having to be deathlyill. But just as inmy dreamsof flying as a child, this isvery much a process ofallowing the journey tounfold—ifItrytoforceit, toover-think it, or embrace theprocess too much, it doesn’twork.

To use the word all-knowing feels inappropriate,because theaweandcreative

power I witnessed wasbeyond naming. I realizedthattheproscriptionsofsomereligionsagainstnamingGodor depicting divine prophetsdid indeed have an intuitivecorrectness to them, becauseGod’s reality is in truth socompletelybeyondanyofourhuman attempts at capturingGod in words or pictureswhilehereonearth.

Just asmy awarenesswasboth individual yet at the

sametimecompletelyunifiedwiththeuniverse,soalsodidthe boundaries of what Iexperienced as my “self” attimes contract, and at othertimes expand to include allthat exists throughouteternity. The blurring of theboundary between myawareness and the realmaround me went so far attimesthatIbecametheentireuniverse. Another way ofputting this would be to say

that I momentarily saw anidentity with the universe,which had been there all thetime,but that Ihad justbeenblindtouptillthen.

An analogy I often use todemonstrate myconsciousness at that deepestlevel is that of a hen’s egg.WhileintheCore,evenwhenIbecameonewiththeOrboflight and the entire higher-dimensional universethroughout all eternity, and

wasintimatelyonewithGod,I sensed strongly that thecreative, primordial (primemover)aspectofGodwastheshell around the egg’scontents, intimatelyassociated throughout (asourconsciousness is a directextension of the Divine), yetforeverbeyond thecapabilityofabsoluteidentificationwiththe consciousness of thecreated. Even as myconsciousness became

identicalwithallandeternity,I sensed that I could notbecomeentirelyonewith thecreative,originatingdriverofall that is.At theheartof themost infinite oneness, therewas still that duality. It ispossible that such apparentdualityissimplytheresultoftrying to bring suchawareness back into thisrealm.

I never heard Om’s voicedirectly, nor saw Om’s face.

Itwas as ifOm spoke tomethrough thoughts that werelike wave-walls rollingthrough me, rockingeverything around me andshowingthatthereisadeeperfabric of existence—a fabricthat all of us are always partof,butwhichwe’regenerallynotconsciousof.

So I was communicatingdirectly with God?Absolutely. Expressed thatway,itsoundsgrandiose.But

when it was happening, itdidn’tfeelthatway.Instead,Ifelt like I was doing whateverysoulisabletodowhenthey leave their bodies, andwhatwecanalldorightnowthrough various methods ofprayer or deep meditation.Communicating with God isthe most extraordinaryexperience imaginable,yet atthe same time it’s the mostnatural one of all, becauseGod is present in us at all

times. Omniscient,omnipotent, personal—andloving uswithout conditions.We are connected as Onethrough our divine link withGod.

34.

AFinalDilemma

ImustbewillingtogiveupwhatIaminordertobecome

whatIwillbe.

—ALBERTEINSTEIN(1879–1955)

Einstein was one of myearly scientific idols and the

abovequoteofhishadalwaysbeenoneofmyfavorites.ButI nowunderstoodwhat thosewords actually meant. Crazyas I knew it sounded everytimeItoldmystorytooneofmyscientificcolleagues—asIcould see in their glazed orperturbed expressions—Iknew I was telling themsomething that had genuinescientificvalidity.Andthat itopened the door to a wholenew world—a whole new

universe—of scientificcomprehension. Observationthat honored consciousnessitself as the single greatestentityinallofexistence.

But one common event inNDEshadnothappenedwithme. Or, more accurately,there was a small group ofexperiences I had notundergone, and all of theseclusteredaroundonefact:

While out, I had notremembered my earthly

identity.Though no twoNDEs are

exactly alike, I’d discoveredearly on in my reading thatthere is a very consistent listof typical features that manycontain. One of these is ameeting with one or moredeceasedpeoplethattheNDEsubject had known in life. IhadmetnooneI’dknowninlife. But that part didn’tbother me so much, as I’dalready discovered that my

forgetting of my earthlyidentity had allowed me tomove further “in” thanmanyNDE subjects do. There wascertainlynothing tocomplainaboutinthat.Whatdidbotherme was that there was oneperson I would have deeplyloved to have met. My dadhad died four years before Ientered coma. Given that heknew how I felt I had failedtomeasureuptohisstandardsduring those lost years of

mine, why had he not beenthere to tellme itwas okay?For comfort was, indeed,what the NDE subject’sfriendsorfamilywhogreetedthem were most often intenton conveying. I longed forthatcomfort.AndyetIhadn’treceivedit.

It wasn’t that I hadn’treceived any words ofcomfort at all, of course. Ihad, from the Girl on theButterfly Wing. But

wonderfulandangelicasthisgirl was, she was no one Iknew.Having seen her everytime I entered that idyllicvalley on the wing of abutterfly, I remembered herface perfectly—so much sothat I knew I had never metherinmylife,atleastmylifeonearth.AndinNDEsitwasoften the meeting with aknown earthly friend orrelation that sealed the dealfor the people who had

undergonetheseexperiences.TryasIdidtobrushitoff,

this fact introduced anelement of doubt into mythoughtsonwhatitallmeant.Itwasn’t that Idoubtedwhathad happened to me. Thatwas impossible, and I’dhavejust as soon doubted mymarriage to Holley or myloveformykids.Butthefactthat I had traveled to thebeyond without meeting myfather, and met my beautiful

companion on the butterflywing, whom I didn’t know,still troubled me. Given theintensely emotional nature ofmyrelationshiptomyfamily,my feelings of lack ofworthbecause I had been givenaway, why hadn’t that all-important message—that Iwasloved,thatIwouldneverbe thrown away—beendelivered by someone Iknew?Someone like . . .mydad?

Forinfact,“thrownaway”was, on a deep level, how Ihadindeedfeltallthroughmylife—in spite of all the bestefforts of my family to healthat feeling through theirlove.MyDad had often toldme not to be overlyconcerned about whateverhadhappenedtomebeforeheandMom had picked me upat the children’s home. “Youwouldn’t remember anythingthat happened to you that

early anyhow,” he’d said.Andinthathe’dbeenwrong.My NDE had convinced methat there is a secret part ofourselves that is recordingevery last aspect of ourearthly lives, and that thisrecordingprocesscommencesat the very, very beginning.So on a precognitive,preverballevel,I’dknownallthroughmy life that I’dbeengiven away, and on a deeplevel Iwas still struggling to

forgivethatfact.As long as this question

remained open, there wouldremain a dismissive voice.One that told me, insistentlyand even deviously, that forall theperfectionandwonderof my NDE, something hadbeenmissing,hadbeen“off”aboutit.

In essence, a part of mestill doubted the authenticityof my astonishingly realdeep-coma experience, and

thus of the true existence ofthatentirerealm.Tothatpartof me, it continued to “notmakesense”fromascientificstandpoint.Andthatsmallbutinsistentvoiceofdoubtbeganto threaten the whole newworldview I was slowlybuilding.

35.

ThePhotograph

Gratitudeisnotonlythegreatestofvirtues,buttheparentofallothers.

—CICERO(106–43BCE)

Four months after mydeparture from the hospital,

my birth family sister Kathyfinally got around to sendingmeaphotoofmybirthsisterBetsy. I was up in ourbedroom, where my odysseyall began,when I opened theoversized envelope andpulled out a framed glossycolorphotoofthesisterIhadnever known. She wasstanding, I would later findout, near the docking pier ofthe Balboa Island Ferry nearher home in Southern

California, a beautiful WestCoast sunset in thebackground. She had longbrown hair and deep blueeyes,andhersmile,radiatingloveandkindness,seemed togo right throughme,makingmyheartbothswellandacheatthesametime.

Kathyhad affixed a poemoverthephoto.Itwaswrittenby David M. Romano in1993, andwas called “WhenTomorrow Starts Without

Me.”

Whentomorrowstartswithoutme,

AndI’mnottheretosee,Ifthesunshouldriseandfindyoureyes

Allfilledwithtearsforme;

Iwishsomuchyouwouldn’tcry

Thewayyoudidtoday,Whilethinkingofthemanythings,

Wedidn’tgettosay.Iknowhowmuchyouloveme,

AsmuchasIloveyou,Andeachtimeyouthinkofme,

Iknowyou’llmissmetoo;Butwhentomorrowstartswithoutme,

Pleasetrytounderstand,Thatanangelcameandcalledmyname,

Andtookmebythehand,Andsaidmyplacewas

ready,InheavenfaraboveAndthatI’dhavetoleavebehind

AllthoseIdearlylove.ButasIturnedtowalkaway,

AtearfellfrommyeyeForallmylife,I’dalwaysthought,

Ididn’twanttodie.Ihadsomuchtolivefor,Somuchleftyettodo,Itseemedalmost

impossible,ThatIwasleavingyou.

Ithoughtofalltheyesterdays,

Thegoodonesandthebad,

Thethoughtofalltheloveweshared,

Andallthefunwehad.IfIcouldreliveyesterdayJustevenforawhile,I’dsaygood-byeandkissyou

Andmaybeseeyousmile.ButthenIfullyrealizedThatthiscouldneverbe,Foremptinessandmemories,

Wouldtaketheplaceofme.

AndwhenIthoughtofworldlythings

Imightmisscometomorrow,

Ithoughtofyou,andwhenIdid

Myheartwasfilledwith

sorrow.ButwhenIwalkedthroughheaven’sgates

IfeltsomuchathomeWhenGodlookeddownandsmiledatme,

FromHisgreatgoldenthrone,

Hesaid,“Thisiseternity,AndallI’vepromisedyou.Todayyourlifeonearthispast

Buthereitstartsanew.Ipromisenotomorrow,

Buttodaywillalwayslast,Andsinceeachday’sthesameway,

There’snolongingforthepast.

Youhavebeensofaithful,Sotrustingandsotrue.ThoughthereweretimesYoudidsomethingsYouknewyoushouldn’tdo.

Butyouhavebeenforgiven

Andnowatlastyou’re

free.Sowon’tyoucomeandtakemyhand

Andsharemylifewithme?”

Sowhentomorrowstartswithoutme,

Don’tthinkwe’refarapart,

Foreverytimeyouthinkofme,

I’mrighthere,inyourheart.

MyeyesweremistingasIputthepicturecarefullyuponthe dresser and continued tostare at it. She looked sostrangely, hauntinglyfamiliar. But of course, shewould look that way. Wewere blood relations and hadshared more DNA than anyother people on the planetwith the exception of myother two biological siblings.Whether we’d ever met ornot,Betsy and Iwere deeply

connected.Thenextmorning,Iwasin

ourbedroomreadingmoreofthe Elisabeth Kübler-Rossbook On Life After DeathwhenIcametoastoryabouta twelve-year-old girl whounderwent an NDE and atfirst didn’t tell her parentsabout it. Finally, however,shecouldnolongerkeepittoherself and confided in herfather. She told him abouttraveling to an incredible

landscape full of love andbeauty,andhowshemetandwascomfortedbyherbrother.

“The only problem,” thegirl told her father, “is that Idon’thaveabrother.”

Tears filled her father’seyes. He told the girl aboutthe brother she did indeedhave, but who had died justthree months before she wasborn.

I stopped reading. For amomentIwentintoastrange,

dazed space, not reallythinking or not thinking,just...absorbingsomething.Some thought that was righton the edge of myconsciousness but hadn’tquitebrokenthrough.

Then my eyes traveledover to the bureau, and thephotothatKathyhadsentme.The photo of the sister I hadnever known.Whom I knewonly through the stories thatmybirthfamilyhadrelatedof

what a hugely kind,wonderfully caring personshehadbeen.Aperson, theyhad often said, who was sokind she was practically anangel.

Without the powder blueand indigodress,without theheavenlylightoftheGatewayaround her as she sat on thebeautiful butterfly wing, shewasn’t easy to recognize atfirst. But that was onlynatural. I had seen her

heavenly self—the one thatlived above and beyond thisearthly realm, with all itstragediesandcares.

But now there was nomistaking her, no mistakingthe loving smile, theconfident and infinitelycomforting look, thesparklingblueeyes.

Itwasshe.For an instant, the worlds

met.Myworldhereonearth,where I was a doctor and

father and a husband. Andthatworldoutthere—aworldsovast thatasyou journeyedinityoucouldloseyourverysenseofyourearthlyselfandbecome a pure part of thecosmos, the God-soaked andlove-filleddarkness.

Inthatonemoment,inthebedroom of our house, on arainy Tuesday morning, thehigher and the lower worldsmet. Seeing that photomademefeelalittleliketheboyin

the fairy tale who travels tothe other world and thenreturns, only to find that itwas all a dream—until helooks inhispocket and findsa scintillating handful ofmagicalearthfromtherealmsbeyond.

As much as I’d tried todenyit,forweeksnowafighthadbeengoingoninsideme.A fight between the part ofmy mind that had been outthere beyond the body, and

the doctor—the healer whohad pledged himself toscience.Ilookedintothefaceofmysister,myangel, and Iknew—knew completely—thatthetwopeopleIhadbeenin the last fewmonths, sincecoming back, were indeedone. I needed to completelyembracemyroleas a doctor,as a scientist and healer, andas the subject of a veryunlikely, very real, veryimportant journey into the

Divineitself.Itwasimportantnot because of me, butbecause of the fantastically,deal-breakingly convincingdetails behind it. My NDEhad healed my fragmentedsoul.IthadletmeknowthatIhadalwaysbeenloved,anditalso showed me thatabsolutely everyone else inthe universe is loved, too.And it had done so whileplacing my physical bodyinto a state that, by medical

science’s current terms,should have made itimpossible for me to haveexperiencedanything.

I know there will bepeople who will seek toinvalidate my experienceanyhow, and many who willdiscount it out of court,becauseofarefusaltobelievethat what I underwent couldpossibly be “scientific”—could possibly by anythingmore than a crazy, feverish

dream.But I know better. And

both for the sake of thosehereonearthandthoseImetbeyond this realm, I see it asmy duty—both as a scientistand hence a seeker of truth,and as a doctor devoted tohelping people—to make itknowntoasmanypeopleasIcan that what I underwent istrue,andreal,andofstunningimportance. Not just to me,buttoallofus.

Not only was my journeyabout love, but it was alsoabout who we are and howconnected we all are—theverymeaningofallexistence.IlearnedwhoIwasupthere,and when I came back, Irealized that the last brokenstrands of who I am downhereweresewnup.You are loved. Those

words are what I needed tohear as an orphan, as a childwho’d been given away. But

it’salsowhateveryoneofusinthismaterialisticageneedsto hear as well, because interms of who we really are,where we really came from,andwherewe’rereallygoing,we all feel (wrongly) likeorphans. Without recoveringthat memory of our largerconnectedness, and of theunconditional love of ourCreator, we will always feellosthereonearth.

So here I am. I’m still a

scientist, I’m still a doctor,and as such I have twoessential duties: to honortruth and to help heal. Thatmeans telling my story. AstorythatastimepassesIfeelcertainhappenedforareason.Not because I’m anyonespecial.It’sjustthatwithme,twoeventsoccurredinunisonandconcurrence,andtogethertheybreakthebackofthelasteffortsofreductivesciencetotelltheworldthatthematerial

realm is all that exists, andthatconsciousness,orspirit—yours and mine—is not thegreat and central mystery oftheuniverse.

I’mlivingproof.

Eternea

My near-death experienceinspiredme tohelpmake theworld a better place for all,and Eternea is the vehicle toenable that fundamentalchange.Eterneaisanonprofitpublicly supported charity Icofounded with my friendand colleague, John R.Audette.Eternea represents apassionate effort to serve the

greater good by helping tocreatethebestpossiblefutureforearthanditsinhabitants.

Eternea’s mission is toadvance research, education,and applied programsconcerning spirituallytransformative experiences,as well as the physics ofconsciousness and theinteractive relationshipbetween consciousness andphysical reality (e.g., matterand energy). It is an

organized effort to apply inpractical ways not only theinsights gained from near-deathexperiences,butalsotoserve as a repository for allmanner of spirituallytransformativeexperiences.

Please visitwww.Eternea.org to furtheryourownspiritualawakeningortoshareyourownpersonalstory about a spirituallytransformative experienceyoumayhavehad (or if you

aregrievingfromthelossofalovedone,orifyouarefacinga terminal illness or a lovedone is). Eternea will alsoprovide a valuable resourcefor scientists, academicians,researchers, theologians, andmembers of the clergy whoare interested in this field ofstudy.

EbenAlexander,M.D.Lynchburg,Virginia

July10,2012

Acknowledgments

I wish to especiallyacknowledgemy dear familyfor suffering through thehardest part of thisexperience, while I was incoma.ToHolley,mywifeofthirty-one years, and ourwonderfulsons,EbenIVandBond,who all played centralroles in bringing me back,and in helping me

comprehend my experience.Additional dear family andfriends to thank include mybeloved parents Betty andEbenAlexander, Jr., andmysisters Jean, Betsy, andPhyllis, who all participatedinapact(withHolley,Bond,and Eben IV) to hold myhand 24/7 while I was incoma, assuring that I alwaysfelt the touch of their love.Betsy and Phyllis didyeoman’s work in spending

nights with me during myfull-blown ICU psychosis(when I couldn’t sleep at all,ever) and in those first verytenuousdaysandnightsafterI went to the NeuroscienceStep-down Unit. Peggy Daly(Holley’s sister) and SylviaWhite (Holley’s friend ofthirtyyears)werealsopartoftheconstantvigilinmyroomon the ICU. I never couldhave returned without theirindividual loving efforts to

bringme back to this world.To Dayton and Jack Slye,whodidwithouttheirmother,Phyllis, while she was withme. Holley, Eben IV, Mom,and Phyllis also helped inediting and critiquing mystory.

My heaven-sent birthfamily, and especially mydeparted sister, also namedBetsy, whom I never met inthisworld.

My blessed and capable

doctorsatLynchburgGeneralHospital (LGH), especiallyDrs. Scott Wade, RobertBrennan, Laura Potter,Michael Milam, CharlieJoseph, Sarah and TimHellewell,andmanymore.

The extraordinary nursesand staff at LGH: RhaeNewbill, Lisa Flowers, DanaAndrews,MarthaVesterlund,Deanna Tomlin, ValerieWalters, Janice Sonowski,Molly Mannis, Diane

Newman, Joanne Robinson,Janet Phillips, ChristinaCostello,LarryBowen,RobinPrice, Amanda Decoursey,Brooke Reynolds, and EricaStalkner. Iwascomatoseandhad to get names from myfamily, so forgive me if youwerethereandIhaveomittedyourname.

Critical tomy returnwereMichael Sullivan and SusanReintjes.

John Audette, Raymond

Moody, Bill Guggenheim,andKenRing,pioneersinthenear-deathcommunity,whoseinfluence on me has beenimmeasurable(nottomentionBill’s excellent editorialassistance).

Other thought leaders ofthe “VirginiaConsciousness”movement, including Drs.Bruce Greyson, Ed Kelly,Emily Williams Kelly, JimTucker, Ross Dunseath, andBobVandeCastle.

My God-sent literaryagent, Gail Ross, and herwonderfulassociates,HowardYoon and others at the RossYoonAgency.

PtolemyTompkins for hisscholarly contributions fromunparalleled insight intoseveralmillenniaof literatureon the afterlife, and for hissuperb editorial and writingskills, used to weave myexperience into this book,truly doing it the justice it

deserved.Priscilla Painton, vice

president and executiveeditor, and Jonathan Karp,executive vice president andpublisher at Simon &Schuster, for theirextraordinary vision andpassion tomake thisworld afarbetterplace.

Marvin and TerreHamlisch, wonderful friendswhose enthusiasm andpassionateinterestcarriedme

throughatacriticaltime.Terri Beavers and

Margaretta McIlvaine fortheir brilliant bridging ofhealingandspirituality.

Karen Newell for sharingexplorations into deepconscious states and teachinghowto“Be the love thatyouare,”andtotheothermiracleworkers at the MonroeInstitute in Faber, Virginia,especiallyRobertMonroeforpursuingwhatis,andnotjust

whatshouldbe;CarolSabickde la Herran and KarenMalik, who sought me out;and Paul Rademacher andSkipAtwater,whowelcomedme into that lovingcommunity in the etherealhigh mountain meadows incentral Virginia. Also, toKevin Kossi, Patty Avalon,Penny Holmes, Joe andNancy “Scooter”McMoneagle, Scott Taylor,CindyJohnston,AmyHardie,

Loris Adams, and all of myfellow Gateway Voyagers atthe Monroe Institute inFebruary 2011, myfacilitators(CharleeneNicely,Rob Sandstrom, and AndreaBerger) and fellow Lifelineparticipants (and facilitatorsFranceen King and JoeGallenberger)inJuly2011.

My good friends andcritics,JayGainsboro,JudsonNewbern, Dr. AllanHamilton, and Kitch Carter,

who read early versions ofthis manuscript and sensedmyfrustrationinsynthesizingmy spiritual experience withneuroscience. Judson andAllanwerecritical inhelpingmeappreciate the truepowerof my experience from theviewpoint of thescientist/skeptic, and Jay thesame from the standpoint ofthescientist/mystic.

Fellow explorers of deepconsciousness and the

Oneness, including ElkeSiller Macartney and JimMacartney.

My fellow near-deathexperiencers AndreaCurewitz, for her excellenteditorial advice, andCarolynTyler, for her soulfulguidance in myunderstanding.

Blitz and Heidi James,Susan Carrington, MaryHorner, Mimi Sykes, andNancy Clark, whose courage

and faith in the face ofunfathomable loss helpedmetoappreciatemygift.

Janet Sussman, MarthaHarbison, Shobhan (Rick)and Danna Faulds, SandraGlickman, and SharifAbdullah, fellow travelerswhomIfirstmeton11/11/11,gatheredtogethertoshareourseven optimistic visions of abrilliant conscious future forallofhumanity.

Numerous additional

people to thank include themany friends whose actsduring that most difficulttime, and whose thoughtfulcomments and observationshave helped my family andguided the telling of mystory: Judy and DickieStowers, Susan Carrington,JackieandDr.RonHill,Drs.Mac McCrary and GeorgeHurt, Joanna and Dr. WalterBeverly, Catherine andWesley Robinson, Bill and

PattyWilson,DeWittandJeffKierstead, Toby Beavers,MikeandLindaMilam,HeidiBaldwin, Mary Brockman,Karen and George Lupton,Norm and Paige Darden,Geisel and Kevin Nye, JoeandBettyMullen,BusterandLynn Walker, SusanWhitehead, Jeff Horsley,Clara Bell, Courtney andJohnny Alford, Gilson andDodge Lincoln, Liz Smith,Sophia Cody, Lone Jensen,

Suzanne and Steve Johnson,Copey Hanes, Bob andStephanie Sullivan, DianeandToddVie,ColbyProffitt,the Taylor, Reams, Tatom,Heppner, Sullivan, andMoorefamilies,andsomanyothers.

My gratitude, mostespecially to God, isunbounded.

Endnote

1 Seventy percent is “darkenergy,”thatmostmysteriousforce discovered byastronomersinthemid-1990sastheyfoundincontrovertibleproof based on Type Iasupernovas that for the lastfivebillionyearstheuniversehas been fallingup—that theexpansion of all of space isaccelerating. Another 26

percent is “dark matter,” theanomalous “excess” gravityrevealed over the last fewdecades in the rotation ofgalaxiesandgalacticclusters.Explanations will be made,butthemysteriesbeyondwillneverend.

APPENDIXAStatementbyScottWade,

M.D.

As an infectious diseasesspecialist I was asked to seeDr.EbenAlexanderwhenhepresented to the hospital onNovember10,2008,andwasfound to have bacterialmeningitis. Dr. Alexanderhad become ill quickly with

flu-likesymptoms,backpain,and a headache. He waspromptly transported to theEmergency Room, where hehadaCTscanofhisheadandthen a lumbar puncture withspinal fluid suggesting agram-negativemeningitis.Hewas immediately begun onintravenous antibioticstargetingthatandplacedonaventilatormachinebecauseofhis critical condition andcoma. Within twenty-four

hours the gram-negativebacteria in the spinal fluidwas confirmed as E.coli. Aninfection more common ininfants, E. coli meningitis isvery rare in adults (less thanone in 10 million annualincidence in the UnitedStates), especially in theabsence of any head trauma,neurosurgery, or othermedical conditions such asdiabetes. Dr. Alexander wasveryhealthyatthetimeofhis

diagnosis and no underlyingcauseforhismeningitiscouldbeidentified.

The mortality rate forgram-negative meningitis inchildren and adults rangesfrom 40 to 80 percent. Dr.Alexander presented to thehospital with seizures and amarkedly altered mentalstatus,bothofwhichare riskfactors for neurologicalcomplications or death(mortality over 90 percent).

Despite prompt andaggressive antibiotictreatment for his E.colimeningitis as well ascontinuedcareinthemedicalintensive care unit, heremained in a coma six daysandhopeforaquickrecoveryfaded (mortality over 97percent). Then, on theseventh day, the miraculoushappened—he opened hiseyes, became alert, and wasquickly weaned from the

ventilator. The fact that hewent on to have a fullrecovery from this illnessafter being in a coma fornearly a week is trulyremarkable.

—ScottWade,M.D.

APPENDIXBNeuroscientificHypothesesIConsideredtoExplainMy

Experience

Inreviewingmyrecollectionswith several otherneurosurgeons and scientists,I entertained severalhypothesesthatmightexplainmy memories. Cutting righttothechase,theyallfailedto

explain the rich, robust,intricate interactivity of theGateway and Coreexperiences (the “ultra-reality”).Theseincluded:

1. A primitive brainstemprogram to ease terminalpain and suffering(“evolutionaryargument”—possibly as aremnant of “feigned-death” strategies fromlower mammals?). This

didnotexplaintherobust,richlyinteractivenatureoftherecollections.

2. The distorted recall ofmemories from deeperpartsof the limbic system(for example, the lateralamygdala) that haveenough overlying brain tobe relatively protectedfrom the meningiticinflammation, whichoccurs mainly at the

brain’s surface. This didnot explain the robust,richlyinteractivenatureoftherecollections.

3. Endogenous glutamateblockade withexcitotoxicity, mimickingthe hallucinatoryanesthetic, ketamine(occasionally used toexplainNDEs ingeneral).I occasionally saw theeffects of ketamine used

asananestheticduringtheearlier part of myneurosurgical career atHarvard Medical School.The hallucinatory state itinduced wasmost chaoticand unpleasant, and boreno resemblancewhatsoever to myexperienceincoma.

4. N,N-dimethyltryptamine(DMT) “dump” (from thepineal,orelsewhereinthe

brain). DMT, a naturallyoccurring serotoninagonist(specificallyatthe5-HT1A, 5-HT2A and 5-HT2C receptors), causesvivid hallucinations and adreamlike state. I ampersonally familiar withdrugexperiencesrelatedtoserotoninagonist/antagonists (thatis, LSD, mescaline) frommyteenyears in theearly1970s. I have had no

personal experience withDMT but have seenpatients under itsinfluence. The rich ultra-reality would still requirefairly intact auditory andvisual neocortex as targetregions in which togenerate such a richaudiovisual experience asI had in coma. Prolongedcoma due to bacterialmeningitis had badlydamaged my neocortex,

which iswhere all of thatserotonin from the raphenucleiinthebrainstem(orDMT,aserotoninagonist)wouldhavehadeffectsonvisual/auditoryexperience.Butmycortexwas off, and the DMTwould have had no placein the brain to act. TheDMThypothesisfailedonthe basis of the ultra-reality of the audiovisualexperience, and lack of

cortexonwhichtoact.

5. Isolated preservation ofcortical regions mighthave explained some ofmy experience, but weremost unlikely, given theseverity of my meningitisand its refractoriness totherapy for a week:peripheralwhitebloodcell(WBC)countover27,000permm3,31percentbandswith toxic granulations,

CSF WBC count over4,300 per mm3, CSFglucose down to 1.0mg/dl, CSF protein 1,340mg/dl, diffuse meningealinvolvement withassociated brainabnormalities revealed onmyenhancedCTscan,andneurological examsshowingseverealterationsin cortical function anddysfunctionof extraocularmotility, indicative of

brainstemdamage.

6. Inaneffort toexplain the“ultra-reality” of theexperience, I examinedthis hypothesis: Was itpossible that networks ofinhibitory neurons mighthave been predominantlyaffected, allowing forunusually high levels ofactivity among theexcitatory neuronalnetworks to generate the

apparent “ultra-reality” ofmy experience? Onewould expect meningitisto preferentially disturbthe superficial cortex,possibly leaving deeperlayers partially functional.Thecomputingunitoftheneocortex is the six-layered “functionalcolumn,” each with alateraldiameterof0.2–0.3mm. There is significantinterwiring laterally to

immediately adjacentcolumns in response tomodulatorycontrolsignalsthatoriginatelargelyfromsubcortical regions (thethalamus, basal ganglia,and brainstem). Eachfunctional column has acomponent at the surface(layers 1–3), so thatmeningitis effectivelydisrupts the function ofeach column just bydamaging the surface

layers of the cortex. Theanatomical distribution ofinhibitory and excitatorycells, which have a fairlybalanced distributionwithinthesixlayers,doesnot support thishypothesis. Diffusemeningitisoverthebrain’ssurface effectivelydisables the entireneocortex due to thiscolumnar architecture.Full-thickness destruction

is unnecessary for totalfunctional disruption.Given the prolongedcourse of my poorneurological function(seven days) and theseverityofmyinfection,itis unlikely that evendeeperlayersofthecortexwerestillfunctioning.

7. The thalamus, basalganglia,andbrainstemaredeeper brain structures

(“subcortical regions”)that some colleaguespostulated might havecontributed to theprocessing of suchhyperreal experiences. Infact, none of thosestructures could play anysuch role without havingat least some regions ofthe neocortex still intact.All agreed in the end thatsuchsubcorticalstructuresalone could not have

handled the intenseneuralcalculations required forsuch a richly interactiveexperientialtapestry.

8. A “rebootphenomenon”—a randomdumpofbizarredisjointedmemories due to oldmemories in the damagedneocortex, which mightoccur on restarting thecortex into consciousnessafter a prolonged system-

wide failure, as in mydiffuse meningitis.Especially given theintricaciesofmyelaboraterecollections, this seemsmostunlikely.

9. Unusual memorygeneration through anarchaic visual pathwaythrough the midbrain,prominently used in birdsbutonlyrarelyidentifiablein humans. It can be

demonstrated in humanswho are cortically blind,due to damaged occipitalcortex.Itprovidednoclueas to the ultra-reality Iwitnessed, and failed toexplaintheauditory-visualinterleaving.

EBEN ALEXANDER,M.D., has been anacademicneurosurgeonforthelast25years,including15yearsattheBrigham&Women’s and theChildren’s Hospitals andHarvardMedicalSchoolinBoston.

Visit him atwww.lifebeyonddeath.net.

MEETTHEAUTHORS,WATCHVIDEOSANDMORE

AT

SimonandSchuster.com

JACKETDESIGNBYCHRISTOPHERLIN

BUTTERFLYPHOTOGRAPHBYOLIVERBURSTON/IKONIMAGES/GETTYIMAGES

AUTHORPHOTOGRAPHBYDEBORAHFEINGOLD

COPYRIGHT©2012SIMON&SCHUSTER

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Overview of the NewPhysics. New York:WilliamMorrow,1979.

Index

adaptability,human,95afterlife,152–53airplanes, author’s love of,1–2,61,159

Alexander, Betsy (sister),100 and author’s birth

family,59andauthor’sreturn,108,

113,120–21birthof,53

at the hospital, 42,89,91,94,97,120–21

andonsetofcoma,26Alexander, Betty (mother),50,94,99,105,108,113

Alexander, Bond (son), 34,105birthof,12 E.colidrawingby,75,

98–99,115andfather’sillness,14–

15, 74, 75, 92, 98–100

andfather’sreturn,110,

111–12,115Alexander,EbenJr.(father),50–52,163

Alexander,EbenIII:adoptionof,52–58,64–

65,163–64,170–71andalcoholuse,56–57 biological family of,

55–56, 58, 59–67,95, 144, 165, 168–69; see also underWebster

birthof,62incoma,seecoma

anddepression,57–58 fantasies anddelusions

of,115–19,185–86aslivingproof,135,171medicaltrainingof,7–8,

12,50,65,130asNof1(uniquecase),

89–92 and paranoia, 117–18,

120 recovery of, 120–23,

124andreligion,34,147–48returntoearth,79,108–

10, 111–14, 115–19,120–21

skydiving adventures,2–6, 61, 85, 116,118–19

telling his story, 10,124–25, 126–28,135, 136, 144, 162,170–71

uniqueNDEof,9,77–79,89–92,135,149

and Years of NotKnowing,66

Alexander, Eben IV (son),

34birthof,12andE.colidrawing,75,

115 family heritage project

of,54andfather’sillness,27–

28,33,75andfather’sreturn,111,

112, 120, 124, 126–27,136

and physicalconditioning,18

Alexander,Holley(wife):

asartistandteacher,12atchurch,147andfamily,34,59 at the hospital, 18,26,

42, 88, 90–94, 97–101,105

and husband’s return,108, 111–12, 117,118,122

marriage of Eben and,11–12,54

andonsetofcoma,14–16

Alexander, Jean (sister), see

Sullivan,JeanAlexanderAlexander,Phyllis(sister): and author’s birth

family,59andauthor’sreturn,108,

113–14,120–21,122birthof,53athome,99–100 at the hospital, 33–34,

36–37, 42, 53, 89,90–91, 93, 94, 97,120–21

andonsetofcoma,26,27

rainbow’s appearanceto,105,113

Alexander-Heyward,Katharine Dayton (Kate),100

amnesia,78,86angels,84,104,169asfamiliarNDEvision,

131guardianangels,95–96,

102,131 see also Girl on

ButterflyWingAPACHEIIscore,25

atoms,150awareness, 130, 158; seealsoconsciousness

bacteria: E. coli, see E. coli

bacteriagram-negativetype,25,

27,42,92,149,183 Gram’s stain

classificationof,23 resistant to antibiotics,

43

bacterialattack,21–22bacterialconjugation,20basalganglia,187,188belief,powerof,155BigBang,157binauralbeats,159BlackDeath,43,50bliss,124Bohr,Niels,154brain: absence of, 8, 129–30,

135accessto,35adaptabilityof,95

attackon,17–19,20–21,42,132–33,149

asbarrier,72,80andcardiacarrest,134andcerebrospinalfluid,

19,20incomavigilestate,107concretenessof,35andconsciousness,8–9,

34,80–81,130, 140,149,152

CTscanof,23,183andfantasy,118,141asfilter,81

freedom fromlimitationsof,9,85

andgrandmal seizure,16,183

andICUpsychosis,118,120

andmemory,115,117,141,185,188

MRIof,36 and neuroscientific

hypothesesofNDEs,141–44,185–88

oxygenated blood to,134

realitymodeledby,80,138

andrebootphenomenon,142–43,188

reentryof,119sophisticationof,138subcorticalregions,188superpowered,6surgicalrepairof,36 thinking outside the

brain,85andtruethought,84–85

brain death, reviseddefinitionsof,9,134

brainstemdamage,187,188brainwaves,158–59Brennan, Robert, 23, 26,42–43,106

cardiacarrest,133–34cardiopulmonary bypasspumps,134

cardiopulmonaryresuscitation,134

cerebrospinal fluid (CSF),19,21–22E.coliinvasionof,20

glucoselevel,25 and lumbar puncture,

21–22Chalmers, David, TheConsciousMind,151–52

Children’sHomeSocietyofNorth Carolina, 53–54,59,63–64

choice,conscious,84–85Chuck (skydiving buddy),3–6,85

Cicero,165clairvoyance,153coma:

and arrival at thehospital,17–19,183

authorasNof1in,89–92

author’s APACHE IIscore,25

author’s consciousnessin,29,30–31,76–78,95,155,160,162

author’s CSF glucoselevel,25

author’sGlasgowComaScale,25

and feeling of

powerlessness,90andICUpsychosis,118,

120imagesgatheredin,38–

41, 45–49, 68–73,103, 108–10, 141,143, 147, 154, 159–61

implicationsof,9 asin-betweenstate,87,

106–7 language bypassed in,

46 medical recordsof,25,

132,135 messages to author in,

40–41neocortexshutdownin,

8, 9, 133, 141–42,144,186,188

onset of, 13–16, 24,149,183

and patient’s family,33–34,90,105–7

patient’shandsandfeetin,98

patient’s physicalappearancein,74–75

realityof,9–10,39,78,129–30,185

recoveryfrom,98,144,184

and risk of dying, 26,106,183

soundsheardbyauthorin,29,38–39,45,70,102,131,147

telepathiccommunication withpatientsin,88

and termination ofantibiotics,105–7

underworldexistencein,29–32

andvegetativestate,26,105–6

comavigilestate,107compassion,85Conscious Mind, The(Chalmers),151–52

consciousness: in author’s coma

experience, 29, 30–31, 76–78, 95, 155,160,162

asbasisofallexistence,

154–55,162 behavioral psychology

of,158 and thebrain, 8–9,34,

80–81, 130, 140,149,152

deeptruthsin,158enhancedstateof,158extendedphenomenaof,

153 and free will, 48, 81,

83–84lifeforcein,156 loss of, in brain death,

134 out-of-body, 153, 158,

159,161physiologyof,158–59 profound mystery of,

154andquantummechanics,

154andreality,150,154recoveryof,120–23 and science, 151–52,

171Core: author’sarrival in,45–

49 lessons learned in, 81,

82,95,102,109 memoriesof,107,131,

151messagereceivedin,71 movingback and forth

in,68,70Orbin,47,48,102,160SpinningMelodyin,70,

102ultra-realityof,78,117,

185cortex,20,159,187

Creator,seeGodCSFglucoselevel,25CT (computerizedtomography) scan, 23,183

Cushing,Harvey,51

Daly,Peggy,97,100,108darkenergy/darkmatter,82,155

death:andafterlife,152–53 author’s return from,

121,136 feigned by lower

animals,141,185reviseddefinitionsof,9,

134Descartes,René,149disappointment,102DMTdump,142,186dreamconfirmation,137–39

Eccles,SirJohnC.,140E.colibacteria,19–21 in bacterialmeningitis,

23–24, 91–92, 144,183

brain attacked by, 20–21,122,144

DNAswapsof,20,42–43

as gram-negativebacteria,42,149

inIsrael,43–44,89reproductionof,19–20

egg,analogyof,160Einstein,Albert, 1,76, 147,162

electrons,150

emotions, spaciousness of,102–3

endogenous glutamateblockade,185

euphoria,122,124,128everything, theory of, 150,153–54

evil,presenceof,48,83excitotoxicity,185,187extrasensory perception(ESP),153

faith, comfort and hope

from,35family:asanchortolife,36–37ofcomapatients,33–34,

90,105–7 copingwith diagnosis,

137–39hospitalvigilof,97–101messagesfrom,37,101,

137 and one’s identity, 34,

66–67other(angels),95–96relianceon,36

as source of stability,34,53

fantasies: in author’s return to

earth, 115–19, 135,185–86

grief-induced,138inICUpsychosis,118 NDEs thought to be,

141realityvs.,41,138

flying: in author’s coma

experience,39–40

author’s dreams of, 1,159

insailplanes,1–2,61andskydiving,2–6,61,

85,116,118–19freewill,48,81,83–84

Gateway,70 images in, 38, 71, 84,

102,109lessonslearnedin,81 memories of, 68, 131,

147,151

ultra-realityof,78,117,185

GirlonButterflyWing,40–41 as author’s biological

sister,169asguide/guardianangel,

47,68,102,104,163 message from, 41, 71,

109GlasgowComaScale,25God:all-knowing,159–61beliefin,34,57–58,67,

148 caring and loving, 96,

146,161,171 communicating with,

48,161 connection to,76,104,

148,160–61dazzlingdarknessof,48gloryof,157growingtoward,84 impersonal nature of,

85–86 learning lessons from,

192

asOm,47,48,86,104,148,156–57,159–61

questions about, 153,154

separationfrom,76,154universal,156–57

goodandevil,83Gram’sstain,23GreatDepression,51–52guardianangels,95–96,102,131

Heaven:

beliefin,34lossof,102presenceof,104proofof,135,171 questions about, 153,

154Heisenberg, Werner, 149–50,154

Hemi-Sync,158–59hen’segg,analogyof,160Heyward,Robert,100humanspirit,152humor,157

ICUpsychosis,118,120illusion,80Ingraham,FrancD.,51insight,49interconnectedness, 150–51,154–55,171

irony,157Irreducible Mind (Divisionof Perceptual Studies),153

Israel: author’s trip to,42,44,

50,89E.coliin,43–44,89

Sourasky MedicalCenterin,43–44

Jeans,SirJames,154John(pseud.),145–46

Kelly,DavidL.,Jr.,52ketamine,185–86Kierkegaard,Søren,129kineticlearning,35knowledge:acquisitionof,49spiritual,82–83

KPC (Klebsiellapneumoniaecarbapenemase),43–44

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth, OnLifeAfterDeath,168

language,limitationsof,132lateralamygdala,185laughter,157lettinggo,145–46life,ourrolein,84,85Life After Life (Moody),133–34,135

lifeeverlasting,beliefin,36lifeforce,156limbicsystem,141,185locality,156Loeffler,Jay,91love: as center of universe,

48,130,170andcompassion,85 as message to author,

41,71 unconditional, 71–72,

73,83–84,131, 148,161,170–71

LSD,186lumbarpuncture,19,21–22,183

Matson,Donald,51meditation,158,161Melville,Herman,136memory: and brain, 115, 117,

141,185,188 andNDE experiences,

139,141,185,188 need to share, 124–25,

126–28andrebootphenomenon,

142–43,188recoveryof,122,124

meningitis:author’suniquecaseof,

23–24, 89–92, 132,186–87

bacterial,19–21,23–24,89,91,132–33, 144,183

causesof,23–24andcerebrospinalfluid,

19

gram-negativebacterialtype,25,27,92

mortalityratein,21,25,92,183

spontaneous E. colibacterial type, 23,91–92,183

and superficial cortexdamage,187

mescaline,186MidasRexdrill,35mindovermatter,155miracle:expectationof,105

medical,184tellingthestoryof,144

Monroe,RobertA.,158Moody,Raymond,LifeAfterLife,133–34,135

MRI (magnetic resonanceimage),36

mysticalstates,158mysticalworldview,154

NDE (near-deathexperience): author’s experienceof,

9, 77–79, 89–92,135, 141–44, 149,161, 162–64, 170–71,188

believersof,140andcardiacarrest,133–

34 classic occurrences of,

77 difficultyof conveying

to others, 10, 72,125, 135, 136, 144,162

earthly identity

forgottenin,162–64 literature of, 78–79,

126–27, 131–32,134,162

andmemory,139,141,185,188

movingtowardthelightin,38–39

neuroscientifichypotheses of, 141–44,185–88

openness tounderstanding of,140–41,146

other people’sexperiences of, 76–77,131–32,162,168

unbelieversof,140,141 uniqueness of each

experience of, 131,162

writtenaccountof,127–28

neocortex: electrical activity of,

159 functional column of,

187

andrebootphenomenon,188

shutdownincoma,8,9,133, 141–42, 144,186,188

neurotransmitters,142neutrons,150Nof1,89–92

Om(God):all-knowing,159–60 communicating with,

48,160–61

connectionto,104,148empathyof,86 as God, 47; see also

God impersonal nature of,

85–86universal,156–57On Life After Death(Kübler-Ross),168

openness,140–41,146,156Orb,47,48,102,160out-of-body experiences,153,158,159,161

parachute jumps, author’sexperienceswith,2–6,85

particles,150pathos,157Pauli,Wolfgang,154pinealgland,142placebo effect, power of,155

Potter,Laura,17–19,21–22,23

prayer, 24, 94, 103, 108,158,161

precognition,153protons,150

psychokinesis,153punctuationmarks,157

quantum mechanics, 149–50,154–56

rainbow,appearanceof,105reality: in author’s coma

experience,9–10,39,78,129–30,185

brainmodelof,80,138andconsciousness,150,

154fantasyvs.,41,138asillusion,80andquantummechanics,

154 ultra-reality, 78, 117,

185,186,187,188 of unconditional love,

71–72universeaspartof,49

Realm of the Earthworm’s-EyeView: consciousness in, 30–

31,76

leaving,32,70memoriesof,131,147primordialworldof,29–

32, 69, 76, 78, 108,117

returning to, 68–70,102,108

reboot phenomenon, 142–43,188

recognitions,157reincarnation,152–53Reintjes,Susan:andauthor’sreturn,108 andcomapatients,87–

88,101 spiritual healing

activitiesof,87 telepathic

communicationfrom,88,143

ThirdEyeOpen,87relationships,150–51religion,147–48REMintrusion,142remoteviewing,153REMsleep,142ReticularActivatingSystem,159

Ritchie,George,133–34Romano, DavidM., “WhenTomorrowStartsWithoutMe,”165–68

sailplane, author’sexperiencein,1–2,61

Schrödinger,Erwin,154science:andconsciousness,151–

52,171 honesty and cleanness

of,36

knowledge sought by,86

limitationsof,153 neuroscientific

hypothesesofNDEs,141–44,185–88

reductionism of, 140,171

andspirituality,72–73,128,130,140

andunconditionallove,71–72

scientificmethod,152–53self,experienceof,160

separationanxiety,76serotonin,142,186Singer,IsaacB.,80skepticism,132,153skydiving, author’sexperiences of, 2–6, 61,85,116,118–19

soul:conceptof,36,152–53healingof,170leavingthebody,161

space and time, locality in,156

Spinning Melody, 38–39,

70,102spirit: concept of, 36,84, 85,

132,154human,152

spirituality,andscience,72–73,128,130,140

spiritualrealm: knowledge of, 81–83,

158andprofoundmysteryof

conscious existence,154

Street,Gus,1

subatomic phenomena, 150,156

Sullivan,David,26–27Sullivan, Jean Alexander(sister),26–27,53closenessofauthorand,

89–90atthehospital,108

Sullivan,Michael: conducting a church

service,147 at the hospital, 26,42,

93–94 andonsetofcoma,26,

27prayersof,42,94,103

Sullivan,Page,93,103supernaturalbeliefs,35superstition,140SurgicalNeurology,52Susanna (patient), 137–39,144

Tatter,Steve,91telepathic communication,88,143,153

terminallucidity,146

thalamus,159,187theoryofeverything(TOE),150,153–54

Third Eye Open (Reintjes),87

time and space, locality in,156

trans-earthlyvoyagers,133–34

truethought,84–85

ultra-reality, 78, 117, 185,186,187,188

unconditional love, 71–72,73,83–84,131,148,161,170–71

universe:onadifferentfrequency,

156becoming,160 dark matter/energy in,

82,155God’spresencein,156–

57 higher dimensions of,

48–49 interconnectedness in,

151 love as center of, 48,

130,170nobeginningorendto,

156–57perfectionof,85 punctuation marks in,

157purposefulnatureof,81spaceandtimein,156

Vaughan,Henry,48viewing,remote,153

Wade, Scott, 105–7, 108,111,112–13,115statementby,183–84

Wake Forest BaptistMedicalCenter,Winston-Salem,50

Webster, Ann (birthmother),61–65,66

Webster, Betsy (biologicalsister),66,165,168–69

Webster, Bob (biologicaluncle),65–66

Webster, David (biologicalbrother),61

Webster, Kathy (biologicalsister),61,66,165,168

Webster,Richard(biologicalfather),61,62,63,65–66

“When Tomorrow StartsWithout Me” (Romano),165–68

White, Sylvia, 26, 87, 97,100,105,108,111–12

Wilson,BillandPatty,12WizardofOz,The(film),72