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1. Introduction to Dr. Eben Alexander
For over twenty-five years, Eben Alexander III, M.D., FACS, (www.ebenalexander.com) has practiced as a neurosurgeon including fifteen years at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Duke University School of Medicine. He achieved the rank of associate professor by 1994. Dr. Alexander has also taught at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. He has helped promote the development of stereotactic radiosurgery, intraoperative MR imaging and MRI-guided focused ultrasound surgery in neurosurgery.
Dr. Alexander had heard of near-death experiences (NDEs) from patients which he dismissed as hallucinations. But in 2008, Dr. Alexander had his own NDE due to bacterial meningitis from E. coli and it changed his understanding of NDEs and consciousness in general. After spending a week in a deep coma, effectively brain dead without a functioning brain, his survival rate was put well below 10 percent with the understanding that, if he did somehow survive, he would spend the rest of his life in a nursing home. But Dr. Alexander made a miraculous recovery and described an incredibly profound NDE from when the neocortex of his brain was completely shut off. Since his NDE, Dr. Alexander has explored the “hard problem of consciousness” and has written on the subject. Dr. Alexander currently practices with a neurosurgical group in Lynchburg, VA., and makes presentations about his NDE revelations on the nature of consciousness. Dr. Alexander’s NDE is quite remarkable; especially because his NDE includes a veridical perception of his birth sister Betsy, who died before he discovered his birth family existed. After his NDE he received a photo of her and realized Betsy was the guardian angel who guided him through heaven.
Dr. Alexander is the author of Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Near-Death Experience and Journey into the Afterlife (2012), The Map of Heaven: How Science, Religion, and Ordinary People Are Proving the Afterlife (2014), Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Heart of Consciousness (2017), the Audio CD Proof of Heaven (1994), and the Audio CD Seeking Heaven: Sound Journeys into the Beyond (2013).
The following is a reprint by permission of Dr. Alexander’s paper, My Experience In Coma from his website.
2. My Experience In Coma
At 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 10, 2008, I suddenly became very ill with acute bacterial meningoencephalitis. Within four hours, I was deep in coma; I spent the next seven days comatose, on a ventilator. Bacterial meningitis with such a rapid decline in neurologic function conferred a 90 percent mortality rate, as assessed at the time of my initial ER evaluation, but my prospects for survival rapidly worsened. My physicians at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia were shocked to find that I had acquired spontaneous E. coli meningitis, which has less than a one in 10,000,000 annual incidence.[1] They were aided by experts at the University of Virginia, Duke, Massachusetts General Hospital and beyond in their efforts to find a cause and force a turnaround in what at first seemed to be an irreversible death-spiral as I failed to respond to triple antibiotics.
My medical history of recent travel to Israel (as part of my work coordinating global research in focused ultrasound surgery) raised great concern among my doctors. Around the time of my visit, physicians at The Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center had reported the world’s first well-documented case of spontaneous plasmid transfer of the Klebsiella Pneumonia carbapenemase (KPC) gene from a deadly gram-negative organism into a patient’s previously uninfected intestinal E. coli, conferring total antibiotic resistance on the latter. The terrifying implications for a disastrous pandemic if such an E. coli ever escaped the strict isolation of a hospital ICU were obvious, and my doctors considered that I might represent such a case.
My neurological examinations were consistent with diffuse cortical damage plus extraocular motor dysfunction (brainstem damage). My CT scans revealed global neocortical involvement, and, on the third day, my cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) protein was 1,340 mg/dl, my CSF white blood cell count 4,300 per mm3, and my CSF glucose level was down to 1 mg/dl (compared with the normal value of 60-80 mg/dl). I was extremely ill, with diminishing chances for survival and virtually no chance for recovery. My physicians never found a cause for my mysterious malady.
Fortunately, my E. coli finally started to respond. On the seventh day of my coma, to everyone’s surprise, I opened my eyes and started to come back. I was rapidly extubated by the shocked intensivist. A family friend who was there could not get over how my amazed expression looked more like the astonished gaze of an infant, not like what one would expect from an adult returning from an unconscious state.
A recent objective medical review of my records coordinated by Dr. Bruce Greyson came to the following conclusions:
“Three physicians not associated with Lynchburg General Hospital completed an independent review of the complete medical record of Dr. Alexander’s hospitalization, and spoke with the hospital’s two consulting neurologists to gather additional information. The records indicated that Dr. Alexander was brought to the emergency department unresponsive, with evidence of a bacterial infection, and he was assessed to have moderate brain injury, which rapidly progressed to severe brain injury over the next few hours. Brain scans showed that the membranes covering the brain as well as the grooves in his cerebral cortex were swollen with pus-filled liquid, compressing the cortical tissue. Laboratory examination showed evidence of a bacterial infection in his cerebrospinal fluid, due to an organism that very rarely causes meningitis in adults, and, when it does, is almost always fatal or resulting in permanent neurological deficits. Nevertheless, after a profound near-death experience, Dr. Alexander eventually awoke from his coma, and within a few months had made what his surprised neurologists called a ‘complete and remarkable recovery’ from an illness they agreed might well have been fatal, without any residual neurological deficit.”
If one had asked me before my coma how much a patient would remember after such severe meningitis, I would have answered “nothing” and been thinking in the back of my mind that no one would recover from such an illness, at least not to the point of being able to discuss their memories. Thus, you can imagine my surprise at remembering an elaborate and rich odyssey from deep within coma that comprised more than 20,000 words by the time I had written it all down during the six weeks following my return from the hospital. My older son, Eben Alexander IV, who was majoring in neuroscience at the University of Delaware at the time, advised me to record everything I could remember before I read anything about near-death experiences (NDEs), physics or cosmology. I dutifully did so, in spite of an intense yearning to read everything I could about those subjects, based on the stunning character of my coma experience.
My meningoencephalitis had been so severe that my original memories from within coma did not include any recollections whatsoever from my life before coma, including language and any knowledge of humans or this universe. That “scorched earth” intensity was the setting for a profound spiritual experience that took me beyond space and time to what seemed like the origin of all existence.
Those memories began in a primitive, coarse, unresponsive realm (the “Earthworm’s Eye View” or EEV) from which I was rescued by a slowly spinning clear white light associated with a musical melody, that served as a portal up into rich and ultrareal realms. The Gateway Valley was filled with many earth-like and spiritual features: vibrant and dynamic plant life, with flowers and buds blossoming richly and no signs of death or decay, waterfalls into sparkling crystal pools, thousands of beings dancing below with great joy and festivity, all fueled by swooping golden orbs in the sky above, angelic choirs emanating chants and anthems that thundered through my awareness, and a lovely girl on a butterfly wing who proved months later to be central to my understanding of the reality of the experience (as reported in detail towards the end of my book Proof of Heaven). The chants and hymns thundering down from those angelic choirs provided yet another portal to higher realms, eventually ushering my awareness into the Core, an unending inky blackness filled to overflowing with the infinite healing power of the all-loving deity at the source, whom many might label as God (or Allah, Vishnu, Jehovah, Yahweh – the names get in the way, and the conflicting details of orthodox religions obscure the reality of such an infinitely loving and creative source).
While writing it all up weeks later, God seemed too puny a little human word with much baggage, clearly failing to describe the power, majesty and awe I had witnessed. I originally referred to that deity as Om, the sound that I recalled from that realm as the resonance within infinity and eternity. Many lessons were taught in that core realm, with all of the higher dimensional multiverse collapsed down into a complex “oversphere” that served as a tool in advancing some of the deeper lessons. All of my understanding of space, time, mass, energy, information, soul journeys, causality, the afterlife, reincarnation, meaning and purpose took on extraordinary relationships that I am even now just beginning to unravel. I cycled through those spiritual realms from the lowest EEV all the way back to the Core multiple times, offering a rich spiritual odyssey that completely defies any conventional scientific understanding, given the duration and severity of my meningoencephalitis. Given those medical facts, my brain was incapable of providing any hallucination, dream or psychic drug effect, due to the global damage of my neocortex so apparent from my neurologic exams, scans and laboratory values.
My coma taught me many things. First and foremost, near-death experiences, and related mystical states of awareness, reveal crucial truths about the nature of existence. Simply dismissing them as hallucinations is convenient for many in the conventional scientific community, but only continues to lead them away from the deeper truth these experiences are revealing to us. The conventional reductive materialist (physicalist) model embraced by many in the scientific community, including its assumption that the physical brain creates consciousness and that our human existence is birth-to-death and nothing more, is fundamentally flawed. At its core, that physicalist model intentionally ignores what I believe is the fundament of all existence — consciousness itself.
NDEs such as mine then represent the tip of the spear in a rapidly progressing enlightenment of the scientific community around the mind-brain relationship, and our understanding of the very nature of reality. The world will never be the same.
3. References
[1] Clinical features and prognostic factors in adults with bacterial meningitis. van de Beek D, et al. in New Engl J Med. 2004 Oct 28; 351(18):1849-59.
4. Eben Alexander Links
The Official Website of Eben Alexander, MD. (ebenalexander.com)
My Experience In Coma, by Eben Alexander, MD. (ebenalexander.com)
Full Neurological Recovery From Escherichia coli Meningitis Associated With Near-Death Experience, by Bruce Greyson et al. 2018. (med.virginia.edu)
Proof of Heaven. Audio CD. 2012. (amazon.com)
The Map of Heaven. Audio CD. 2014. (amazon.com)
Living in a Mindful Universe. Audiobook. 2017. (amazon.com)
Seeking Heaven: Sound Journeys into the Beyond. Audio CD. 2013. (amazon.com)
Dr. Eben Alexander’s Official Facebook Page. (facebook.com)
Dr. Eben Alexander’s Official Twitter Page. (twitter.com)
Readers Join Doctor’s Journey to the Afterworld’s Gates, by Leslie Kaufman, 2012. (nytimes.com)
Dr. Eben Alexander on His Near-Death Experience — and What He’s Learned About Consciousness. (goop.com)
Dr. Eben Alexander’s NDE Story. (ndestories.org)
Eternea: The Convergence of Science & Spirituality For Personal and Global Transformation. (eternea.org)
5. An Analysis of Dr. Eben Alexander’s NDE
Dr. Eben Alexander’s NDE is one of the most influential NDEs of the 21st century because it combines a highly detailed mystical experience with an extraordinary medical history. As a Harvard-trained neurosurgeon, Alexander had long regarded NDEs as hallucinations generated by a dying brain. His own experience fundamentally overturned this assumption and led him to conclude that consciousness can exist independently of the physical brain.
Alexander’s NDE is especially significant because it occurred while he suffered from an exceptionally severe case of E. coli bacterial meningoencephalitis. According to his medical records, his neocortex was profoundly impaired, and his physicians believed he had little chance of survival and virtually no chance of recovering without severe neurological damage. Yet after seven days in a deep coma, he unexpectedly regained consciousness and eventually made what his neurologists described as a complete recovery.
One of the most compelling aspects of Alexander’s account is his insistence that his experience could not have been produced by normal brain function. Prior to his illness, he believed consciousness was generated entirely by neural activity. Afterward, he concluded that the brain acts more like a filter or receiver of consciousness than its creator. This dramatic reversal is noteworthy because it came from a neurosurgeon intimately familiar with the anatomy and physiology of the brain. His transformation illustrates a recurring pattern found among many NDErs: direct experience often changes previously held materialistic assumptions about the nature of consciousness.
Alexander’s NDE also contains many of the classic elements reported in thousands of NDEs worldwide. He described beginning in a dark, primitive realm before being lifted by a brilliant white light into an extraordinarily beautiful landscape filled with vibrant colors, waterfalls, flowers, joyous beings, angelic music, and overwhelming love. He was guided by a beautiful young woman who later proved to resemble his deceased birth sister, Betsy, whom he had never consciously known because he was adopted and had not yet discovered his biological family. After his recovery, receiving a photograph of Betsy convinced him that she had been the heavenly guide during his experience. This apparent veridical perception has become one of the most discussed features of his NDE.
His journey progressed beyond this heavenly landscape into what he called the “Core” – an infinite realm of pure consciousness, love, and divine presence. Rather than identifying this source exclusively with one religious tradition, Alexander described it as the universal creative intelligence behind all existence. This universalistic interpretation parallels many contemporary NDE accounts in which experiencers report encountering a divine presence that transcends traditional religious boundaries while embracing the essence of all spiritual traditions.
Another important aspect of Alexander’s NDE is the profound knowledge he believed was communicated directly to him. Like many experiencers, he reported receiving intuitive understanding about consciousness, the afterlife, reincarnation, time, purpose, and the interconnectedness of all reality. Such experiences are frequently described as “downloads of knowledge” that transcend ordinary verbal communication and often leave experiencers struggling to express what they learned in human language.
Alexander’s NDE also highlights one of the central themes of NDE research: transformation. Following his recovery, he devoted much of his career to exploring consciousness, spirituality, and the scientific implications of NDEs. Rather than returning to his previous materialistic worldview, he became an advocate for investigating consciousness as a fundamental feature of reality. His subsequent writings and lectures have encouraged dialogue between neuroscience, quantum physics, philosophy, and spirituality regarding the relationship between mind and brain.
Alexander’s NDE continues to occupy an important place in NDE research because of the extensive medical documentation surrounding his illness and his unique qualifications as a neurosurgeon. His NDE has stimulated renewed scientific and philosophical discussion about the “hard problem of consciousness” and whether consciousness can exist independently of brain function.
Ultimately, Alexander’s NDE exemplifies many of the most consistent characteristics found across the NDE literature: transcendence of the physical body, encounters with overwhelming love, communication with deceased individuals, access to expanded knowledge, and profound lifelong transformation. His experience remains one of the most thoroughly discussed modern NDEs and continues to challenge conventional assumptions about the relationship between the brain, consciousness, and the possibility of life beyond death.
