Rahim Tabet | November 23, 2014 |
Biography
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Controversi
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Mistery
The American neurosurgeon Eben Alexander was six days in a coma. It was no possibility that he could have experienced something during this period. However he returned with memories of days long heavenly experiences. He now travels the world as a prophet to inform everyone of the spiritual insights he gained.
The Dutch translation of the book by Alexander appeared in March 2013 under the title after this life, with a foreword by Pim van Lommel. The American edition, with the pretentious title Proof of Heaven, was at that time already 18 weeks in the top of The New York Times Best Seller list. Nevertheless, Alexander must regard the sales probably lose out to Heaven is for Real (2010), a bestseller about the four year-old son of an evangelical pastor, who traveled to heaven during surgery. There he met, among other things, Jesus, John the Baptist and Samson. The book was seventeen months in the top ten, including thirty weeks in the first place.
The story of Eben Alexander (born 1953) may be given more value than the babble of a religious kindergarten. Although Dr. Alexander was promoted and was not a professor not, as alleged in the translation of his book, he was a renowned neurosurgeon. He had held for seven years as an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and worked in several teaching hospitals. In the 1990s he worked on more than a hundred articles in medical journals and books. One may expect that he knows what he has when he states that his neocortex no longer functioning because of a very serious bacterial meningitis.
The brains of Alexander were besieged by E. coli bacteria, which changed his cerebrospinal fluid in pus. He noted first that he was ill when he was on Monday November 10, 2008 at half past five in the morning woke up with intense pain in his back and head. At half past eight, he spoke a bit with his youngest son, but when his wife came more than two hours later to see how he was getting on, he was no longer conscious and he had a grand mal seizure. He was rushed to the hospital. There he called again, "God, help me!", But then they heard six days nothing more from him.
Spontaneous E. coli meningitis occurs in adults but very rarely. Every year, discovers no more than one event per ten million Americans. Three antibiotics were used to control the infection, but that did not initially succeed. Two days after he was admitted to the hospital, found that his brain fluid still contained an extraordinary amount of white blood cells (4300 per mm3 instead of 5), and that the glucose level was shockingly dropped (to 1 mg / dl instead of 60 or more).
Alexander mentions that he scored eight points on the Glasgow Coma Scale and he gives the impression that this score later dropped something. A normal (maximum) score is 15, whereas a score of 3 to 8 points means that the patient is in a coma. CT scans showed that his brain membrane was swollen and that the problem was not limited to a small portion of the cerebral cortex. According to Alexander had his entire cortex activity. You should expect that there EEG data are available. That could support his claim, but he says nothing about it and does not offer access to all medical data.
The biggest problem is that we can not detect when its special experiences occurred. Alexander is convinced that he days on a clear consciousness possessed while his brains were deeply comatose. It is not excluded that his experiences only occurred when he awoke from the coma gradually.
Hallucinations
According to the doctor was there six days, only three percent chance that Alexander would survive. The doctor told on Sunday November 16 that the number of white blood cells, although decreased in the cerebrospinal fluid and that they had greatly reduced the anesthetic, but it did not look favorably because the patient still had not come to knowledge. If his condition did not improve day, then it seemed wise to stretch the process no longer and put antibiotic treatment stop. Alexander would otherwise only be able to vegetate, because his brains were probably already damaged beyond repair.
Shortly after this ominous message Eben opened to everyone's surprise, suddenly his eyes. "Do not worry ... everything is good," he said, after he had pulled the breathing tube in his throat. In two previous interviews he moreover told that it is still a few hours (or at least a day) lasted before he could communicate. His brains were not functioning right away as ever. At first he could remember nothing of his normal life and he did not know where he was. He also knew the names of his family members and spoke no more difficult and confused. The first few days he had hallucinations complex and detailed dreams. He was among more convinced that he is the skydiver jumped out of airplanes, as he had often done in his student years. He also suffered from paranoid delusions, saw secret internet reports by Russian spies and believed his wife Holley him wanted to bring soap, "I was haunted by Holley, two police officers from South Florida and a few Asian ninja photographers, hanging from pulleys."
Fortunately, it gradually got better and he could remember his whole life story again. His medical knowledge came after a few weeks back. He now realized that the experiences he got after he woke up, could be attributed to a temporary psychosis. But he also knew that he at that time, when he was not conscious, had bright experiences, which were of a very different order. He remembered how he traveled in a wonderful world that was filled with unconditional love, though it is not clear when he first spoke.
On November 25, Alexander was allowed to return home. His sleeping pattern was a bit upset, because usually he was thirty at night awake. He then went to his study to write down everything he could remember of his stay in the other world. His eldest son Eben, who studied for neurosurgeon advised him to read anything about near-death experiences (NDEs) before he had written his own story. There he worked on. So he tried to prevent his memories were influenced by the stories of fellow sufferers. Only after everything was on paper, he threw himself into the NDE literature and unorthodox ideas about human consciousness.
Literary agent
Unfortunately, Eben Alexander its original BDE report not made public. He says that he does regularly tackled by his academic record experiences as soon as possible. In his own words he put in six weeks, 20,000 words on paper. That is an amazing number. But as long as we can not read what he wrote down all the time, we do not know how his story that has been subsequently changed. The short version mentioned in his book, but contains few details and many interpretations, which may have been added much later. Even when he speaks about his experiences orally, he merely tells what we can read in his book.
It is not only unclear when his NDE report was finalized and when he first spoke about; We also do not know how he does everything himself expressed. In the acknowledgments back of the book are mentioned more than 150 people (including God), including some who helped him to tell his story. So he thanks a certain Ptolemy Tompkins' for his fantastic editorial and writing skills, which he used to weave my experience in this book. "Tompkins himself published two recent books about life after death, including a book in which he concludes that animals and humans have a soul that continues to exist. Tompkins reportedly worked as a ghostwriter join Alexanders book. Authors who only have scientific publications to their name, usually need a lot of help to reach the first place of the bestseller list.
Eben Alexander also thanked his God-sent literary agent, Gail Ross and her great partner Howard Yoon. A literary agent can ensure that an author can make a good deal with a publisher and that the book is being promoted optimally. It comes in the US not often that major publishers themselves discover a new author. Usually they make a choice from the range of literary agencies. Shortly before the book appeared, there was already a feature article in Newsweek, which Alexander described his experiences. In February 2013 it was announced that the book will also be filmed. Universal Pictures acquired the rights after a hard fight with other candidates.
Howard Yoon as literary agent specializing in narrative nonfiction. He also has experience as a ghostwriter and has a degree in English literature and religious studies. In his own words, he can make a script or an idea for a book to be transformed into a commercial product that is well adapted to the market. In an interview he said: "The trick is to ensure that an author has the right message to the right audience." According to Alexander, his original manuscript four times as thick as the book. It seems likely that Yoon brought him into contact with Tompkins, one of his clients.
Alexander originally wanted to write a scientific article about his case, but he dropped that plan because he thought it more important the public with better information. "I wanted to reach the millions because many scientists tell the audience has long been a story that's not quite true." They want us to believe that our consciousness is not without brains can exist, while Alexander believes his own experience this vision radically defeats. Especially the fact that he himself is a brain surgeon who NDE experiences in the past did not take seriously, for much of its persuasiveness.
Gloomy years
The book reads like a well written novel. Because the protagonist long time is not approachable, is described in several chapters how his family and friends are to bother him. Also displayed their thoughts and dialogues. Moreover, we come to know more about the life of the unfortunate doctor, who appears to be very relevant to the plot the story.
When he was four months old, was adopted by the neurosurgeon Eben Alexander II. His biological mother could not properly care for him because she was only 16 years old. The couple Alexander had previously adopted a daughter and later got himself two daughters. Eben knew at an early age that his mother had given him, but had never experienced a problem. This changed in 2000, when his son Eben IV for a school wanted to know more about his family history. Eben III tried to gather information from the organization that had arranged his adoption. To his dismay, he was told that his biological parents later were married to each other and that they had received three more children. Their youngest daughter, however, was deceased in 1998. This loss had they not been processed and therefore they did not even need to come up with their lost son in touch.
This rejection led according to Alexander that he was very gloomy and his career fell into the doldrums. He also lost his faith in a loving God. His CV shows that in 2005, after a sabbatical, only worked as a consultant for the Gerson Lehrman Group. This is a company that provides advice to investors and investors by putting them in contact with specialist doctors and others who are experts in a particular field. Such activities were then some controversial because sometimes doctors were possible that provided information about medical research whose results had not yet been made public. Meanwhile it has strict rules.
In 2006, Alexander and his family moved to Lynchburg, Virginia. He worked for a year in the hospital where he was later self contained. In 2008 he was Director of Research and Education at the Foundation which develops new medical equipment. Meanwhile, he had managed to come up with his biological parents and their children in touch. He met them for the first time in October 2007. His father was educated in the 1960s to astronaut and had then worked as a pilot. Eben thinks this may explain why he already at fourteen taught gliding. Told his mother what had happened in the past and how they always keep on loving him.
The meetings with his parents made according to Alexander ended his dismal years. But there was a wound that had not healed: the loss of his sister, deceased in 1998, Betsy. Although he had never known her, he heard many good things about her. She had worked in a shelter for sexually abused women and spent most of her free time at an animal shelter by. Sister Kathy Eben promised that she would send a photo of Betsy. The picture arrived only in 2009, four months after he left the hospital.
guardian
The face in the photo came Eben somewhat familiar. You would expect him once before had seen a picture of Betsy when he met his family, but we hear nothing about. The next day he read a spiritual book by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross about a girl who had come across a brother during her near-death experience. This surprised her because she had no brother. But when she and her father spoke, he had tears in his eyes and he told me that her brother three months before her birth was deceased.
Eben looked more closely at the picture of his deceased sister and knew when suddenly sure he had seen her in heaven. She sat next to him when he flew on the colorful wings of a butterfly above a landscape with flowers and waterfalls. Around him flew countless other butterflies, like a living river. Betsy wore simple clothes in warm colors, like those he saw beneath him. That seemed to farmers who made a round dance. There also were playing children and a dog ran around (Tompkins so was right).
During his NDE Eben had no awareness of his previous life on earth. He no longer thought in words and was himself unaware that he had a body. He was only a 'speckle' on the wing of the butterfly. The girl, he did not know, apparently could see him, because she looked at him with deep blue eyes and communicated wordlessly. Only later, when he put his story on paper, he tried to "translate" what they had said, "You are loved and cherished dearly and forever. You have nothing to fear. "
Eben was initially disappointed that he had seen no acquaintances in heaven. His adoptive father was deceased in 2004, but the former surgeon did not show himself. The presence of Betsy made up for this and was also very useful for the book, in which she became a guardian angel. Without Betsy the story about the Ebens adoption have been less relevant and would probably cost more effort to make the book an attractive screenplay.
Unfortunately, we can not determine whether the butterfly girl really seemed so evident at Betsy and or Eben was able to pick herself her face after more than four months, her sharp mind. The temptation to identify her as Betsy was undoubtedly great. It is not unlikely that he unwittingly created a pseudo memory. It is also possible that he had previously seen a picture of Betsy. As a doctor, Alexander had been an eyewitness to a crime, he would court the firm does not have to convince the suspect that he had recognized a photo. He would have had to prove that he could identify the person in a series of photographs of similar people.
Time Determination
The near-death experience of Eben Alexander consists of a number of scenes. Initially, he is in a kind of dirty mud or jelly. He may look somewhat through it and see structures that look like roots or blood vessels. Far away he hears a knock heavy and rhythmic. He also sees grotesque animal heads that growl and sometimes sing monotonous. It is a depressing place where it smells unpleasant. He wanted to leave.
Salvation comes from above in the form of beautiful music and an approaching light that seems to revolve around. Through an opening in the butterfly paradise Eben unexpected visit. There was no tunnel, as other reported NDEers. Possibly, there was no opening, but is later added as a logical transition from one scene to another. Angelic girl tells him that many things will be shown, but that he must return afterwards. She spoke "without using those words but by actually bringing their abstract essence directly. The trip to the Butterfly wing does not have lasted as long as Eben suggests, perhaps only a few minutes, because he provided very few details.
A little later he is in the clouds, sometimes with butterfly. High above him he saw a swarm of glittering globes, like jet fighters leave traces. These were possible angels. He hears a beautiful song and feels a warm spring breeze, all these wind can not blow in his face, because after all, he has no body. He begins to wind questions about his situation and get perfect answer, "I was in my earthly life of years would have to understand them fully." Then he flies a heavy ink darkness within, that simultaneously landing light. In this 'core' anywhere he feels the presence of God, a Being of immeasurable human qualities, in infinitely large extent. The Being that he later called order (because of the noise that he associates with it), gives him a huge amount of knowledge. Communication takes place via an orb, which was actually Betsy.
After this mystical experience Eben returns via the butterfly world, which he Gate (Gateway) calls back to the muddy underworld, where his journey began. He does not tell where the butterfly picked him up again, but sees himself down the same villagers. It is not excluded that the trip actually was less orderly. Who recounting an experience, automatically tends to fill gaps. The underworld is now endure better because he's going to see this as part of the big picture. In addition, he manages a few times (he can not remember how many times) to return to the core, by remembering the notes of the wonderful music again. But in the end it does not work anymore because the gate of heaven is closed.
The story about the events on earth is in the book repeatedly interrupted by a brief chapter on Ebens experiences in heaven. As the ninth chapter begins with the sentence: "In the meantime, I was in the clouds." On earth is it dinsdag October 11th. In this way the impression that the main six days had conscious experiences. According to Dr. Alexander is a fact "that I had during the week when I was in a coma tarried with my full consciousness in another dimension." In interviews, he repeats this assertion constantly. It is his proof that our consciousness no brains need.
But he can not demonstrate that its really special experiences lasted six days. In the book we read many times that he had lost all sense of time. How can he rule out that his experiences are only occurred after they had greatly reduced the anesthesia and neocortex again on Sunday gradually began to function? If this question is asked, he relies on a few faces that he saw and which he regards as 'anchors' in time. The information he provided about, however, is far from convincing.
During the last phase of his NDE he first saw a lot of kneeling forms who were praying. He later recalled that two of them resembled Michael Sullivan and his wife Page. That could be right because Sullivan was his neighbor and also a priest of the Presbyterian Church where he was a member. Sullivan was immediately rushed to the hospital when Eben Alexander was recorded. He then came by several times (without his wife) together with other visitors and nurses to pray around the bed. It is sometimes argued that Alexander was an atheist, but was so far he has not touched removed from the church.
At the end of his NDE Eben saw some faces he himself in his own words remembered well when he regained consciousness. These were the people who were present on Sunday physical with him, except Susan Reintjes, a good friend of his wife Holley. Reintjes owns his own words psychic abilities which they can communicate with coma patients. In 2003 she published a book about her gifts and the end of 2012 a book about her contacts with fairies.
Holley had asked her friend to get in touch telepathically from her home in California with Eben. Susan told him later that they suggest it had done on Thursday and Friday by saying that she lowered a rope telepathically into a pit and along the rope deeply climbed down. A gentle tug on the rope, as if she had caught a fish, convinced her that Eben was not lost. He wanted to believe that he is her face already on Thursday or Friday had seen in the mud, and not for the first time on Sunday, but unfortunately could not remember clearly.
Even if you believe that he came to know that Susan Reintjes contacted him psychically, then that's no reason to assume that this happened when he was in a coma. If he only later got his experiences when his brains were active again, this explains how he could remember.
Unconditional love
"In this story, there is one word that repeatedly comes to the fore," writes Eben Alexander. That's the word 'real'. He emphasizes ten times that he is sure that his experience was not a dream or chimera. "I know the difference between fantasy and reality," he asserts. But he did not attempt to explore the world he stood well.
In his memory, he flew on the wings of a butterfly, while he looked at the landscape below him. That does not sound so real, for real butterflies flapping their wings, what the trip would have taken much less pleasant. You may also wonder why he needed a vehicle and whether he could look through the wing to the ground. And what was with the peasants he saw? Who constantly danced around? (In Dutch edition he is incidentally not a wing, but he flies over a surface that resembles a butterfly wing. Maybe the translator wanted the story to make plausible.)
Alexander had no OBE or lucid dream, because during such an experience you know that your physical body is not at the place from which you apparently do observations. Alexander did not know that he lived on earth. So clearly he was not. This led, according to him that his NDE was deeper than the NDEs of peers, and that he could travel further. He claims that he gained much more knowledge than other NDEers because he days was taught by God himself. He considers it possible that as a neurosurgeon critical for this purpose was chosen. That's why he got such a rare disease, which are higher brain functions completely paralyzed, so he healed miraculously.
In the higher world it was very easy to learn. Once a question occurred to him, the answer was already fully given. The knowledge was' immediately and stored forever. Alexander is sure that he is to this day still holds all the knowledge obtained, "much brighter than the information I gathered during my school years." It's just what a pity that he can not easily pull up the knowledge. "But the information is there, I can feel it." He feels all knowledge still down, but probably not in his physical brains, because he assumes that brains block and conceal the truth. They act as a kind of filter, that is not all-pass. Even the notes of the great musical tune that led him to higher spheres, he can no longer humming.
Alexander writes that it will cost him many years to understand everything with his limited brains what he understood immediately and effortlessly without brains. He has read already many visionary books about the upper world, the special abilities of our consciousness, quantum physics and the like. There appears to be much in that he can recognize based on his experiences as truth. In his book he reveals some truths that he now can put into words. The two most important are that everything comes from consciousness, and that love is the basis of everything. Although there is also evil in our world, but that is nothing compared to "the goodness, abundance, hope and unconditional love which the universe is literally immersed.
Evil is no more than a single grain of black on a vast golden beach. God let Alexander know that there are many universes exist and that any necessary universe contains a little angry. If it had been otherwise, there would be no free will exist. Our free will and the way we deal with trouble, enables us to grow to a higher spiritual level by making the right moral choices, though it inevitably also lead to bad deeds.
This seems to be no truth which God had to call a brain surgeon with him, for many theologians have argued earlier the same. The explanation is not satisfactory because of major natural disasters, deadly diseases, dangerous animals and unforeseen consequences to little or nothing to do with human intentions. Although it is possible to develop good qualities by overcoming problems or to help others, but there were also millions of people who suffered so many problems that they were not better off but only to deaths. Alexander told in an interview that people will have to pay cause suffering there in a next life. Who are experiencing much suffering, so may have previously done something wrong.
In February 2011 (twenty months before his book) followed Eben Alexander the Six Day Gateway Voyage program at the Monroe Institute in Virginia. It costs $ 2,000 and uses binaural tones to induce OBEs and higher states of consciousness (see Koppenaal & Nanninga, 2010). A few months later he enrolled in the six-day Lifeline Program of the Institute. On this course you will learn how deceased souls can point the way to the Reception Center in the other world. In this shelter the souls may meet deceased relatives. Moreover, there are spiritual counselors ready for them that can tell exactly what options they have to develop.
The Monroe Institute also offers a course to remember past lives. There is some imagination, but it lacks the Eben Alexander probably not. He has become research director of the institute and makes in his book advertising. The audio technology Hemi-Sync to synchronize your brainwaves possible according to him, so that your consciousness can come out. Alexander believes he can return through binaural beats to the realm that he visited during his coma. The Monroe Institute is to him the vanguard of a global transformation of consciousness. The institute has advanced techniques to awaken the consciousness and to liberate mankind from its cocoon.
Give me five minutes with a neuroscientist and I guarantee you that I put it there probably will be able to convince that the brains are not primary, Alexander boasted in a lecture. He wants as soon as possible to ensure that the medical community is correctly informed. That will open the floodgates for the millions who believe it already. Eben Alexander wants to put humanity back on the right track. In the future, everyone will be able to explore higher dimensions, and we will have telepathic abilities that span the entire cosmos.
"In a hundred years, all these things are a fact. The whole world will know that it's real, "said Alexander, who holds new books for us. Would megalomaniac ideas indicate that he is not totally recovered well? Or the former neurosurgeon gives only demonstrate a good business instinct?
Postscript 2014
From an article by Luke Dittrich in the magazine Esquire (2013) it is clear that as a neurosurgeon Eben Alexander was stopped after he had made serious mistakes in various hospitals in five patients, who he sometimes concealed. For this he had to pay a hefty compensation.
The journalist also spoke with Dr. Potter, who had treated Alexanders meningitis. She said that Alexander was in a very agitated, manic state which he could not be handled properly. For their own safety they had brought him into deep sleep. Every time the anesthesia was reduced, he began to thrash about and he wanted to scream. Therefore they had kept him in an artificial coma. This does not mean that Alexander without conscious sedation would have come. The moves he made when one does not artificially kept him under sail, probably unconsciously took place (Mays, 2013).
The doctor himself had not read the book of Alexander. Eben had her well in advance a passage with the question whether they could agree. According to her, patted it all, but Alexander took it as literary freedom.
Luke Dittrich discovered several other possible fibs in the stories of Eben Alexander, but they are less relevant. Alexander initially considered not his own experiences as proof that he had been in heaven. Only gradually he showed himself more and more convinced.
The Dutch translation of the book by Alexander appeared in March 2013 under the title after this life, with a foreword by Pim van Lommel. The American edition, with the pretentious title Proof of Heaven, was at that time already 18 weeks in the top of The New York Times Best Seller list. Nevertheless, Alexander must regard the sales probably lose out to Heaven is for Real (2010), a bestseller about the four year-old son of an evangelical pastor, who traveled to heaven during surgery. There he met, among other things, Jesus, John the Baptist and Samson. The book was seventeen months in the top ten, including thirty weeks in the first place.
The story of Eben Alexander (born 1953) may be given more value than the babble of a religious kindergarten. Although Dr. Alexander was promoted and was not a professor not, as alleged in the translation of his book, he was a renowned neurosurgeon. He had held for seven years as an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and worked in several teaching hospitals. In the 1990s he worked on more than a hundred articles in medical journals and books. One may expect that he knows what he has when he states that his neocortex no longer functioning because of a very serious bacterial meningitis.
The brains of Alexander were besieged by E. coli bacteria, which changed his cerebrospinal fluid in pus. He noted first that he was ill when he was on Monday November 10, 2008 at half past five in the morning woke up with intense pain in his back and head. At half past eight, he spoke a bit with his youngest son, but when his wife came more than two hours later to see how he was getting on, he was no longer conscious and he had a grand mal seizure. He was rushed to the hospital. There he called again, "God, help me!", But then they heard six days nothing more from him.
Spontaneous E. coli meningitis occurs in adults but very rarely. Every year, discovers no more than one event per ten million Americans. Three antibiotics were used to control the infection, but that did not initially succeed. Two days after he was admitted to the hospital, found that his brain fluid still contained an extraordinary amount of white blood cells (4300 per mm3 instead of 5), and that the glucose level was shockingly dropped (to 1 mg / dl instead of 60 or more).
Alexander mentions that he scored eight points on the Glasgow Coma Scale and he gives the impression that this score later dropped something. A normal (maximum) score is 15, whereas a score of 3 to 8 points means that the patient is in a coma. CT scans showed that his brain membrane was swollen and that the problem was not limited to a small portion of the cerebral cortex. According to Alexander had his entire cortex activity. You should expect that there EEG data are available. That could support his claim, but he says nothing about it and does not offer access to all medical data.
The biggest problem is that we can not detect when its special experiences occurred. Alexander is convinced that he days on a clear consciousness possessed while his brains were deeply comatose. It is not excluded that his experiences only occurred when he awoke from the coma gradually.
Hallucinations
According to the doctor was there six days, only three percent chance that Alexander would survive. The doctor told on Sunday November 16 that the number of white blood cells, although decreased in the cerebrospinal fluid and that they had greatly reduced the anesthetic, but it did not look favorably because the patient still had not come to knowledge. If his condition did not improve day, then it seemed wise to stretch the process no longer and put antibiotic treatment stop. Alexander would otherwise only be able to vegetate, because his brains were probably already damaged beyond repair.
Shortly after this ominous message Eben opened to everyone's surprise, suddenly his eyes. "Do not worry ... everything is good," he said, after he had pulled the breathing tube in his throat. In two previous interviews he moreover told that it is still a few hours (or at least a day) lasted before he could communicate. His brains were not functioning right away as ever. At first he could remember nothing of his normal life and he did not know where he was. He also knew the names of his family members and spoke no more difficult and confused. The first few days he had hallucinations complex and detailed dreams. He was among more convinced that he is the skydiver jumped out of airplanes, as he had often done in his student years. He also suffered from paranoid delusions, saw secret internet reports by Russian spies and believed his wife Holley him wanted to bring soap, "I was haunted by Holley, two police officers from South Florida and a few Asian ninja photographers, hanging from pulleys."
Fortunately, it gradually got better and he could remember his whole life story again. His medical knowledge came after a few weeks back. He now realized that the experiences he got after he woke up, could be attributed to a temporary psychosis. But he also knew that he at that time, when he was not conscious, had bright experiences, which were of a very different order. He remembered how he traveled in a wonderful world that was filled with unconditional love, though it is not clear when he first spoke.
On November 25, Alexander was allowed to return home. His sleeping pattern was a bit upset, because usually he was thirty at night awake. He then went to his study to write down everything he could remember of his stay in the other world. His eldest son Eben, who studied for neurosurgeon advised him to read anything about near-death experiences (NDEs) before he had written his own story. There he worked on. So he tried to prevent his memories were influenced by the stories of fellow sufferers. Only after everything was on paper, he threw himself into the NDE literature and unorthodox ideas about human consciousness.
Literary agent
Unfortunately, Eben Alexander its original BDE report not made public. He says that he does regularly tackled by his academic record experiences as soon as possible. In his own words he put in six weeks, 20,000 words on paper. That is an amazing number. But as long as we can not read what he wrote down all the time, we do not know how his story that has been subsequently changed. The short version mentioned in his book, but contains few details and many interpretations, which may have been added much later. Even when he speaks about his experiences orally, he merely tells what we can read in his book.
It is not only unclear when his NDE report was finalized and when he first spoke about; We also do not know how he does everything himself expressed. In the acknowledgments back of the book are mentioned more than 150 people (including God), including some who helped him to tell his story. So he thanks a certain Ptolemy Tompkins' for his fantastic editorial and writing skills, which he used to weave my experience in this book. "Tompkins himself published two recent books about life after death, including a book in which he concludes that animals and humans have a soul that continues to exist. Tompkins reportedly worked as a ghostwriter join Alexanders book. Authors who only have scientific publications to their name, usually need a lot of help to reach the first place of the bestseller list.
Eben Alexander also thanked his God-sent literary agent, Gail Ross and her great partner Howard Yoon. A literary agent can ensure that an author can make a good deal with a publisher and that the book is being promoted optimally. It comes in the US not often that major publishers themselves discover a new author. Usually they make a choice from the range of literary agencies. Shortly before the book appeared, there was already a feature article in Newsweek, which Alexander described his experiences. In February 2013 it was announced that the book will also be filmed. Universal Pictures acquired the rights after a hard fight with other candidates.
Howard Yoon as literary agent specializing in narrative nonfiction. He also has experience as a ghostwriter and has a degree in English literature and religious studies. In his own words, he can make a script or an idea for a book to be transformed into a commercial product that is well adapted to the market. In an interview he said: "The trick is to ensure that an author has the right message to the right audience." According to Alexander, his original manuscript four times as thick as the book. It seems likely that Yoon brought him into contact with Tompkins, one of his clients.
Alexander originally wanted to write a scientific article about his case, but he dropped that plan because he thought it more important the public with better information. "I wanted to reach the millions because many scientists tell the audience has long been a story that's not quite true." They want us to believe that our consciousness is not without brains can exist, while Alexander believes his own experience this vision radically defeats. Especially the fact that he himself is a brain surgeon who NDE experiences in the past did not take seriously, for much of its persuasiveness.
Gloomy years
The book reads like a well written novel. Because the protagonist long time is not approachable, is described in several chapters how his family and friends are to bother him. Also displayed their thoughts and dialogues. Moreover, we come to know more about the life of the unfortunate doctor, who appears to be very relevant to the plot the story.
When he was four months old, was adopted by the neurosurgeon Eben Alexander II. His biological mother could not properly care for him because she was only 16 years old. The couple Alexander had previously adopted a daughter and later got himself two daughters. Eben knew at an early age that his mother had given him, but had never experienced a problem. This changed in 2000, when his son Eben IV for a school wanted to know more about his family history. Eben III tried to gather information from the organization that had arranged his adoption. To his dismay, he was told that his biological parents later were married to each other and that they had received three more children. Their youngest daughter, however, was deceased in 1998. This loss had they not been processed and therefore they did not even need to come up with their lost son in touch.
This rejection led according to Alexander that he was very gloomy and his career fell into the doldrums. He also lost his faith in a loving God. His CV shows that in 2005, after a sabbatical, only worked as a consultant for the Gerson Lehrman Group. This is a company that provides advice to investors and investors by putting them in contact with specialist doctors and others who are experts in a particular field. Such activities were then some controversial because sometimes doctors were possible that provided information about medical research whose results had not yet been made public. Meanwhile it has strict rules.
In 2006, Alexander and his family moved to Lynchburg, Virginia. He worked for a year in the hospital where he was later self contained. In 2008 he was Director of Research and Education at the Foundation which develops new medical equipment. Meanwhile, he had managed to come up with his biological parents and their children in touch. He met them for the first time in October 2007. His father was educated in the 1960s to astronaut and had then worked as a pilot. Eben thinks this may explain why he already at fourteen taught gliding. Told his mother what had happened in the past and how they always keep on loving him.
The meetings with his parents made according to Alexander ended his dismal years. But there was a wound that had not healed: the loss of his sister, deceased in 1998, Betsy. Although he had never known her, he heard many good things about her. She had worked in a shelter for sexually abused women and spent most of her free time at an animal shelter by. Sister Kathy Eben promised that she would send a photo of Betsy. The picture arrived only in 2009, four months after he left the hospital.
guardian
The face in the photo came Eben somewhat familiar. You would expect him once before had seen a picture of Betsy when he met his family, but we hear nothing about. The next day he read a spiritual book by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross about a girl who had come across a brother during her near-death experience. This surprised her because she had no brother. But when she and her father spoke, he had tears in his eyes and he told me that her brother three months before her birth was deceased.
During his NDE Eben had no awareness of his previous life on earth. He no longer thought in words and was himself unaware that he had a body. He was only a 'speckle' on the wing of the butterfly. The girl, he did not know, apparently could see him, because she looked at him with deep blue eyes and communicated wordlessly. Only later, when he put his story on paper, he tried to "translate" what they had said, "You are loved and cherished dearly and forever. You have nothing to fear. "
Eben was initially disappointed that he had seen no acquaintances in heaven. His adoptive father was deceased in 2004, but the former surgeon did not show himself. The presence of Betsy made up for this and was also very useful for the book, in which she became a guardian angel. Without Betsy the story about the Ebens adoption have been less relevant and would probably cost more effort to make the book an attractive screenplay.
Unfortunately, we can not determine whether the butterfly girl really seemed so evident at Betsy and or Eben was able to pick herself her face after more than four months, her sharp mind. The temptation to identify her as Betsy was undoubtedly great. It is not unlikely that he unwittingly created a pseudo memory. It is also possible that he had previously seen a picture of Betsy. As a doctor, Alexander had been an eyewitness to a crime, he would court the firm does not have to convince the suspect that he had recognized a photo. He would have had to prove that he could identify the person in a series of photographs of similar people.
Time Determination
The near-death experience of Eben Alexander consists of a number of scenes. Initially, he is in a kind of dirty mud or jelly. He may look somewhat through it and see structures that look like roots or blood vessels. Far away he hears a knock heavy and rhythmic. He also sees grotesque animal heads that growl and sometimes sing monotonous. It is a depressing place where it smells unpleasant. He wanted to leave.
Salvation comes from above in the form of beautiful music and an approaching light that seems to revolve around. Through an opening in the butterfly paradise Eben unexpected visit. There was no tunnel, as other reported NDEers. Possibly, there was no opening, but is later added as a logical transition from one scene to another. Angelic girl tells him that many things will be shown, but that he must return afterwards. She spoke "without using those words but by actually bringing their abstract essence directly. The trip to the Butterfly wing does not have lasted as long as Eben suggests, perhaps only a few minutes, because he provided very few details.
A little later he is in the clouds, sometimes with butterfly. High above him he saw a swarm of glittering globes, like jet fighters leave traces. These were possible angels. He hears a beautiful song and feels a warm spring breeze, all these wind can not blow in his face, because after all, he has no body. He begins to wind questions about his situation and get perfect answer, "I was in my earthly life of years would have to understand them fully." Then he flies a heavy ink darkness within, that simultaneously landing light. In this 'core' anywhere he feels the presence of God, a Being of immeasurable human qualities, in infinitely large extent. The Being that he later called order (because of the noise that he associates with it), gives him a huge amount of knowledge. Communication takes place via an orb, which was actually Betsy.
After this mystical experience Eben returns via the butterfly world, which he Gate (Gateway) calls back to the muddy underworld, where his journey began. He does not tell where the butterfly picked him up again, but sees himself down the same villagers. It is not excluded that the trip actually was less orderly. Who recounting an experience, automatically tends to fill gaps. The underworld is now endure better because he's going to see this as part of the big picture. In addition, he manages a few times (he can not remember how many times) to return to the core, by remembering the notes of the wonderful music again. But in the end it does not work anymore because the gate of heaven is closed.
The story about the events on earth is in the book repeatedly interrupted by a brief chapter on Ebens experiences in heaven. As the ninth chapter begins with the sentence: "In the meantime, I was in the clouds." On earth is it dinsdag October 11th. In this way the impression that the main six days had conscious experiences. According to Dr. Alexander is a fact "that I had during the week when I was in a coma tarried with my full consciousness in another dimension." In interviews, he repeats this assertion constantly. It is his proof that our consciousness no brains need.
But he can not demonstrate that its really special experiences lasted six days. In the book we read many times that he had lost all sense of time. How can he rule out that his experiences are only occurred after they had greatly reduced the anesthesia and neocortex again on Sunday gradually began to function? If this question is asked, he relies on a few faces that he saw and which he regards as 'anchors' in time. The information he provided about, however, is far from convincing.
During the last phase of his NDE he first saw a lot of kneeling forms who were praying. He later recalled that two of them resembled Michael Sullivan and his wife Page. That could be right because Sullivan was his neighbor and also a priest of the Presbyterian Church where he was a member. Sullivan was immediately rushed to the hospital when Eben Alexander was recorded. He then came by several times (without his wife) together with other visitors and nurses to pray around the bed. It is sometimes argued that Alexander was an atheist, but was so far he has not touched removed from the church.
At the end of his NDE Eben saw some faces he himself in his own words remembered well when he regained consciousness. These were the people who were present on Sunday physical with him, except Susan Reintjes, a good friend of his wife Holley. Reintjes owns his own words psychic abilities which they can communicate with coma patients. In 2003 she published a book about her gifts and the end of 2012 a book about her contacts with fairies.
Holley had asked her friend to get in touch telepathically from her home in California with Eben. Susan told him later that they suggest it had done on Thursday and Friday by saying that she lowered a rope telepathically into a pit and along the rope deeply climbed down. A gentle tug on the rope, as if she had caught a fish, convinced her that Eben was not lost. He wanted to believe that he is her face already on Thursday or Friday had seen in the mud, and not for the first time on Sunday, but unfortunately could not remember clearly.
Even if you believe that he came to know that Susan Reintjes contacted him psychically, then that's no reason to assume that this happened when he was in a coma. If he only later got his experiences when his brains were active again, this explains how he could remember.
Unconditional love
"In this story, there is one word that repeatedly comes to the fore," writes Eben Alexander. That's the word 'real'. He emphasizes ten times that he is sure that his experience was not a dream or chimera. "I know the difference between fantasy and reality," he asserts. But he did not attempt to explore the world he stood well.
In his memory, he flew on the wings of a butterfly, while he looked at the landscape below him. That does not sound so real, for real butterflies flapping their wings, what the trip would have taken much less pleasant. You may also wonder why he needed a vehicle and whether he could look through the wing to the ground. And what was with the peasants he saw? Who constantly danced around? (In Dutch edition he is incidentally not a wing, but he flies over a surface that resembles a butterfly wing. Maybe the translator wanted the story to make plausible.)
Alexander had no OBE or lucid dream, because during such an experience you know that your physical body is not at the place from which you apparently do observations. Alexander did not know that he lived on earth. So clearly he was not. This led, according to him that his NDE was deeper than the NDEs of peers, and that he could travel further. He claims that he gained much more knowledge than other NDEers because he days was taught by God himself. He considers it possible that as a neurosurgeon critical for this purpose was chosen. That's why he got such a rare disease, which are higher brain functions completely paralyzed, so he healed miraculously.
In the higher world it was very easy to learn. Once a question occurred to him, the answer was already fully given. The knowledge was' immediately and stored forever. Alexander is sure that he is to this day still holds all the knowledge obtained, "much brighter than the information I gathered during my school years." It's just what a pity that he can not easily pull up the knowledge. "But the information is there, I can feel it." He feels all knowledge still down, but probably not in his physical brains, because he assumes that brains block and conceal the truth. They act as a kind of filter, that is not all-pass. Even the notes of the great musical tune that led him to higher spheres, he can no longer humming.
Alexander writes that it will cost him many years to understand everything with his limited brains what he understood immediately and effortlessly without brains. He has read already many visionary books about the upper world, the special abilities of our consciousness, quantum physics and the like. There appears to be much in that he can recognize based on his experiences as truth. In his book he reveals some truths that he now can put into words. The two most important are that everything comes from consciousness, and that love is the basis of everything. Although there is also evil in our world, but that is nothing compared to "the goodness, abundance, hope and unconditional love which the universe is literally immersed.
Evil is no more than a single grain of black on a vast golden beach. God let Alexander know that there are many universes exist and that any necessary universe contains a little angry. If it had been otherwise, there would be no free will exist. Our free will and the way we deal with trouble, enables us to grow to a higher spiritual level by making the right moral choices, though it inevitably also lead to bad deeds.
This seems to be no truth which God had to call a brain surgeon with him, for many theologians have argued earlier the same. The explanation is not satisfactory because of major natural disasters, deadly diseases, dangerous animals and unforeseen consequences to little or nothing to do with human intentions. Although it is possible to develop good qualities by overcoming problems or to help others, but there were also millions of people who suffered so many problems that they were not better off but only to deaths. Alexander told in an interview that people will have to pay cause suffering there in a next life. Who are experiencing much suffering, so may have previously done something wrong.
In February 2011 (twenty months before his book) followed Eben Alexander the Six Day Gateway Voyage program at the Monroe Institute in Virginia. It costs $ 2,000 and uses binaural tones to induce OBEs and higher states of consciousness (see Koppenaal & Nanninga, 2010). A few months later he enrolled in the six-day Lifeline Program of the Institute. On this course you will learn how deceased souls can point the way to the Reception Center in the other world. In this shelter the souls may meet deceased relatives. Moreover, there are spiritual counselors ready for them that can tell exactly what options they have to develop.
The Monroe Institute also offers a course to remember past lives. There is some imagination, but it lacks the Eben Alexander probably not. He has become research director of the institute and makes in his book advertising. The audio technology Hemi-Sync to synchronize your brainwaves possible according to him, so that your consciousness can come out. Alexander believes he can return through binaural beats to the realm that he visited during his coma. The Monroe Institute is to him the vanguard of a global transformation of consciousness. The institute has advanced techniques to awaken the consciousness and to liberate mankind from its cocoon.
Give me five minutes with a neuroscientist and I guarantee you that I put it there probably will be able to convince that the brains are not primary, Alexander boasted in a lecture. He wants as soon as possible to ensure that the medical community is correctly informed. That will open the floodgates for the millions who believe it already. Eben Alexander wants to put humanity back on the right track. In the future, everyone will be able to explore higher dimensions, and we will have telepathic abilities that span the entire cosmos.
"In a hundred years, all these things are a fact. The whole world will know that it's real, "said Alexander, who holds new books for us. Would megalomaniac ideas indicate that he is not totally recovered well? Or the former neurosurgeon gives only demonstrate a good business instinct?
Postscript 2014
From an article by Luke Dittrich in the magazine Esquire (2013) it is clear that as a neurosurgeon Eben Alexander was stopped after he had made serious mistakes in various hospitals in five patients, who he sometimes concealed. For this he had to pay a hefty compensation.
The journalist also spoke with Dr. Potter, who had treated Alexanders meningitis. She said that Alexander was in a very agitated, manic state which he could not be handled properly. For their own safety they had brought him into deep sleep. Every time the anesthesia was reduced, he began to thrash about and he wanted to scream. Therefore they had kept him in an artificial coma. This does not mean that Alexander without conscious sedation would have come. The moves he made when one does not artificially kept him under sail, probably unconsciously took place (Mays, 2013).
The doctor himself had not read the book of Alexander. Eben had her well in advance a passage with the question whether they could agree. According to her, patted it all, but Alexander took it as literary freedom.
Luke Dittrich discovered several other possible fibs in the stories of Eben Alexander, but they are less relevant. Alexander initially considered not his own experiences as proof that he had been in heaven. Only gradually he showed himself more and more convinced.
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