Eben Alexander

Paradise Proof

Man must see things as they are, not as he wants to see them.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

When I was little, I often flew in my dreams. It usually went like this. I dreamed that I was standing in our yard at night and looking at the stars, and then suddenly I separated from the ground and slowly climbed up. The first few inches of ascent into the air happened spontaneously, without any input on my part. But I soon noticed that the higher I climb, the more the flight depends on me, or rather, on my condition. If I exulted violently and got excited, then I suddenly fell down, hitting the ground hard. But if I perceived the flight calmly, as something natural, then I quickly flew higher and higher into the starry sky.

Perhaps partly because of these dream flights, I later developed a passionate love for airplanes and rockets - and in general for any aircraft that could again give me a feeling of vast expanse of air. When I happened to fly with my parents, no matter how long the flight was, it was impossible to tear me away from the window. In September 1968, at the age of fourteen, I gave all my lawn mowing money to a gliding class given by a guy named Goose Street on Strawberry Hill, a small grassy "flying field" not far from my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I still remember how excited my heart was pounding when I pulled the dark red round handle, which unhooked the cable connecting me to the towing aircraft, and my glider rolled onto the runway. For the first time in my life, I experienced an unforgettable feeling of complete independence and freedom. Most of my friends loved driving wildly for this, but in my opinion, nothing could compare to the thrill of flying at a thousand feet.

In the 1970s, while attending college at the University of North Carolina, I became involved in skydiving. Our team seemed to me something like a secret brotherhood - after all, we had special knowledge that was not available to everyone else. The first jumps were given to me with great difficulty, I was overcome by real fear. But by the twelfth jump, when I stepped through the door of the plane to free-fall more than a thousand feet before opening my parachute (it was my first skydive), I already felt confident. In college, I made 365 parachute jumps and flew more than three and a half hours in free fall, performing aerial acrobatic maneuvers with twenty-five comrades. Although I stopped jumping in 1976, I continued to have joyful and very vivid dreams about skydiving.

Most of all I liked to jump in the late afternoon, when the sun began to decline to the horizon. It is difficult to describe my feelings during such jumps: it seemed to me that I was getting closer and closer to that which was impossible to define, but which I passionately longed for. This mysterious "something" was not an ecstatic feeling of complete loneliness, because usually we jumped in groups of five, six, ten or twelve people, making various figures in free fall. And the more complex and difficult the figure was, the more delighted I was.

On a beautiful fall day in 1975, the guys from the University of North Carolina and a few friends from the Parachute Training Center gathered to practice group jumping with the construction of figures. On our penultimate jump from a D-18 Beechcraft light aircraft at 10,500 feet, we made a snowflake of ten people. We managed to assemble into this figure even before the 7,000 feet mark, that is, we enjoyed flying in this figure for eighteen seconds, falling into a gap between the huge masses of high clouds, after which, at an altitude of 3,500 feet, we unclenched our hands, deviated from each other and opened our parachutes.

By the time we landed, the sun was already very low, above the ground itself. But we quickly climbed into another plane and took off again, so that we managed to capture the last rays of the sun and make another jump before it was completely sunset. This time, two beginners took part in the jump, who for the first time had to try to join the figure, that is, fly up to it from the outside. Of course, it's easiest to be the main, basic skydiver, because he just needs to fly down, while the rest of the team has to maneuver in the air to get to him and grapple with him. Nevertheless, both beginners rejoiced at the difficult test, as did we, already experienced skydivers: after all, having trained young guys, later we could make jumps with even more complex figures together with them.

Of a group of six people who were to represent a star over the runway of a small airfield located near the town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, I had to be the last to jump. In front of me was a guy named Chuck. He had extensive experience in aerial group acrobatics. At 7,500 feet we were still in the sun, but the streetlights were already gleaming below. I've always loved twilight jumping and this one promised to be amazing.

I had to leave the plane about a second after Chuck, and in order to catch up with the others, my fall had to be very fast. I decided to dive into the air, as if into the sea, upside down and in this position fly for the first seven seconds. This would allow me to fall almost a hundred miles an hour faster than my comrades, and be level with them as soon as they began to build a star.

Usually during such jumps, having descended to a height of 3500 feet, all skydivers disengage their hands and disperse as far apart as possible. Then everyone waves their arms to signal that they are ready to deploy their parachute, looks up to make sure no one is above them, and only then pulls on the lanyard.

Three, two, one... March!

One by one, the four paratroopers left the plane, followed by Chuck and me. Flying upside down and picking up speed in free fall, I exulted that for the second time that day I saw the sunset. As I approached the team, I was about to brake hard in the air, throwing my arms out to the sides - we had suits with wings made of fabric from the wrists to the hips, which created a powerful resistance, fully opening at high speed.

But I didn't have to.

Falling vertically in the direction of the figure, I noticed that one of the guys was approaching it quite quickly. I don't know, maybe it was the rapid descent into the narrow gap between the clouds that frightened him, reminding him that he was rushing at a speed of two hundred feet per second towards a giant planet, hardly visible in the gathering darkness. Somehow, instead of slowly joining the group, he swooped down on her. And the five remaining paratroopers tumbled randomly in the air. Plus, they were too close to each other.

This guy left behind a powerful turbulent trail. This air current is very dangerous. As soon as another skydiver hits him, his fall speed will increase rapidly, and he will crash into the one who is under him. This, in turn, will give a strong acceleration to both skydivers and hurl them at the one who is even lower. In short, a terrible tragedy will happen.

Crouching, I ducked away from the tumultuously falling group and maneuvered until I was directly over the "point," the magical point on the ground over which we were to open our parachutes and begin a slow two-minute descent.

I turned my head and was relieved to see that the other jumpers were already moving away from each other. Among them was Chuck. But, to my surprise, he moved in my direction and soon hovered right under me. Apparently, during the erratic fall, the group went through 2,000 feet faster than Chuck expected. Or maybe he considered himself lucky, who may not follow the established rules.

"He must not see me!" No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than a colored pilot chute was yanked up behind Chuck. The parachute caught the one hundred and twenty miles an hour wind around Chuck and carried it toward me while retracting the main chute.

From the moment the pilot chute opened over Chuck, I had only a fraction of a second to react. In less than a second, I should have crashed into his main parachute and, most likely, into himself. If at such a speed I run into his arm or leg, then I will simply tear it off and at the same time I myself will receive a fatal blow. If we collide with bodies, we will inevitably break.

They say that in situations like this it seems like everything is happening much more slowly, and rightly so. My brain recorded what was happening, which took only a few microseconds, but perceived it as a movie in slow motion.

As the pilot chute swooped over Chuck, my arms pressed to my sides of their own accord, and I rolled over, head down, slightly arched.

The curve of the body allowed for a little speed gain. In the next moment, I made a sharp horizontal thrust, which turned my body into a powerful wing, which allowed the bullet to fly past Chuck just before his main parachute opened.

I rushed past him at over a hundred and fifty miles an hour, or two hundred and twenty feet per second. He hardly had time to notice the expression on my face. Otherwise, he would have seen incredible astonishment in him. By some miracle, I managed in a matter of seconds to react to a situation that, if I had time to think it over, would have seemed simply unsolvable!

And yet ... And yet I managed it, and as a result, Chuck and I landed safely. I got the impression that, faced with an extreme situation, my brain worked like some kind of super-powerful calculator.

How did it happen? In my more than twenty years as a neurosurgeon—when I studied the brain, observed it at work, and performed operations on it—I often asked myself this question. And in the end I came to the conclusion that the brain is such a phenomenal organ that we don’t even know about its incredible abilities.

Now I already understand that the real answer to this question is much more complex and fundamentally different. But in order to realize this, I had to go through events that completely changed my life and worldview. This book is dedicated to these events. They proved to me that, no matter how wonderful the human brain was, it was not he who saved me on that fateful day. What interfered with the action the second Chuck's main parachute began to open was another, deeply hidden side of my personality. It was she who managed to work so instantly, because, unlike my brain and body, she exists outside of time.

It was she who made me, the boy, so rush into the sky. This is not only the most developed and wise side of our personality, but also the deepest, innermost. However, for most of my adult life, I did not believe in this.

However, now I believe, and from the further story you will understand why.

//__ * * * __//

My profession is a neurosurgeon.

I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976 with a degree in chemistry and in 1980 received my doctorate from the School of Medicine.

Protected by the legislation of the Russian Federation on the protection of intellectual rights. Reproduction of the entire book or any part of it is prohibited without the written permission of the publisher. Any attempt to break the law will be prosecuted.

Prologue

Man must see things as they are, not as he wants to see them.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

When I was little, I often flew in my dreams. It usually went like this. I dreamed that I was standing in our yard at night and looking at the stars, and then suddenly I separated from the ground and slowly climbed up. The first few inches of ascent into the air happened spontaneously, without any input on my part. But I soon noticed that the higher I climb, the more the flight depends on me, or rather, on my condition. If I exulted violently and got excited, then I suddenly fell down, hitting the ground hard. But if I perceived the flight calmly, as something natural, then I quickly flew higher and higher into the starry sky.

Perhaps partly as a result of these dream flights, I later developed a passionate love for airplanes and rockets—or any flying machine in general that could give me a sense of the vast expanse of air again. When I happened to fly with my parents, no matter how long the flight was, it was impossible to tear me away from the window. In September 1968, at the age of fourteen, I gave all my lawn mowing money to a gliding class given by a guy named Goose Street on Strawberry Hill, a small grassy "flying field" not far from my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I still remember how excited my heart was pounding when I pulled the dark red round handle, which unhooked the cable connecting me to the towing aircraft, and my glider rolled onto the runway. For the first time in my life, I experienced an unforgettable feeling of complete independence and freedom. Most of my friends loved driving wildly for this, but in my opinion, nothing could compare to the thrill of flying at a thousand feet.

In the 1970s, while attending college at the University of North Carolina, I became involved in skydiving. Our team seemed to me something like a secret brotherhood - after all, we had special knowledge that was not available to everyone else. The first jumps were given to me with great difficulty, I was overcome by real fear. But by the twelfth jump, when I stepped through the door of the plane to free-fall more than a thousand feet before opening my parachute (it was my first skydive), I already felt confident. In college, I made 365 parachute jumps and flew more than three and a half hours in free fall, performing aerial acrobatic maneuvers with twenty-five comrades. Although I stopped jumping in 1976, I continued to have joyful and very vivid dreams about skydiving.

Most of all I liked to jump in the late afternoon, when the sun began to decline to the horizon. It is difficult to describe my feelings during such jumps: it seemed to me that I was getting closer and closer to that which was impossible to define, but which I passionately longed for. This mysterious "something" was not an ecstatic feeling of complete loneliness, because usually we jumped in groups of five, six, ten or twelve people, making various figures in free fall. And the more complex and difficult the figure was, the more delighted I was.

On a beautiful fall day in 1975, the guys from the University of North Carolina and a few friends from the Parachute Training Center gathered to practice group jumping with the construction of figures. On our penultimate jump from a D-18 Beechcraft light aircraft at 10,500 feet, we made a snowflake of ten people. We managed to assemble into this figure even before the 7,000 feet mark, that is, we enjoyed flying in this figure for eighteen seconds, falling into a gap between the huge masses of high clouds, after which, at an altitude of 3,500 feet, we unclenched our hands, deviated from each other and opened our parachutes.

By the time we landed, the sun was already very low, above the ground itself. But we quickly climbed into another plane and took off again, so that we managed to capture the last rays of the sun and make another jump before it was completely sunset. This time, two beginners took part in the jump, who for the first time had to try to join the figure, that is, fly up to it from the outside. Of course, it's easiest to be the main, basic skydiver, because he just needs to fly down, while the rest of the team has to maneuver in the air to get to him and grapple with him. Nevertheless, both beginners rejoiced at the difficult test, as did we, already experienced skydivers: after all, having trained young guys, later we could make jumps with even more complex figures together with them.

Of a group of six people who were to represent a star over the runway of a small airfield located near the town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, I had to be the last to jump. In front of me was a guy named Chuck. He had extensive experience in aerial group acrobatics. At 7,500 feet we were still in the sun, but the streetlights were already gleaming below. I've always loved twilight jumping and this one promised to be amazing.

I had to leave the plane about a second after Chuck, and in order to catch up with the others, my fall had to be very fast. I decided to dive into the air, as if into the sea, upside down and in this position fly for the first seven seconds. This would allow me to fall almost a hundred miles an hour faster than my comrades, and be level with them as soon as they began to build a star.

Usually during such jumps, having descended to a height of 3500 feet, all skydivers disengage their hands and disperse as far apart as possible. Then everyone waves their arms to signal that they are ready to deploy their parachute, looks up to make sure no one is above them, and only then pulls on the lanyard.

“Three, two, one… March!”

One by one, the four paratroopers left the plane, followed by Chuck and me. Flying upside down and picking up speed in free fall, I exulted that for the second time that day I saw the sunset. As I approached the team, I was about to slow down hard in the air, throwing my arms out to the sides - we had suits with wings made of fabric from the wrists to the hips, which created a powerful resistance, fully opening at high speed.

But I didn't have to.

As I plummeted towards the figure, I noticed that one of the guys was approaching it too fast. I don't know, maybe it was the rapid descent into the narrow gap between the clouds that frightened him, reminding him that he was rushing at a speed of two hundred feet per second towards a giant planet, hardly visible in the gathering darkness. Somehow, instead of slowly joining the group, he swooped down on her. And the five remaining paratroopers tumbled randomly in the air. Plus, they were too close to each other.

This guy left behind a powerful turbulent trail. This air current is very dangerous. As soon as another skydiver hits him, his fall speed will increase rapidly, and he will crash into the one who is under him. This, in turn, will give a strong acceleration to both skydivers and hurl them at the one who is even lower. In short, a terrible tragedy will happen.

Crouching, I ducked away from the tumultuously falling group and maneuvered until I was directly over the "point," the magical point on the ground over which we were to open our parachutes and begin a slow two-minute descent.

I turned my head and was relieved to see that the other jumpers were already moving away from each other. Among them was Chuck. But, to my surprise, he moved in my direction and soon hovered right under me. Apparently, during the erratic fall, the group went through 2,000 feet faster than Chuck expected. Or maybe he considered himself lucky, who may not follow the established rules.

"He must not see me!" No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than a colored pilot chute was yanked up behind Chuck. The parachute caught the one hundred and twenty miles an hour wind around Chuck and carried it toward me while retracting the main chute.

From the moment the pilot chute opened over Chuck, I had only a fraction of a second to react. In less than a second, I should have crashed into his main parachute and, most likely, into himself. If at such a speed I run into his arm or leg, then I will simply tear it off and at the same time I myself will receive a fatal blow. If we collide with bodies, we will inevitably break.

They say that in situations like this it seems like everything is happening much more slowly, and rightly so. My brain recorded what was happening, which took only a few microseconds, but perceived it as a movie in slow motion.

As the pilot chute swooped over Chuck, my arms pressed to my sides of their own accord, and I rolled over, head down, slightly arched. The curve of the body allowed for a little speed gain. In the next moment, I made a sharp horizontal thrust, which turned my body into a powerful wing, which allowed the bullet to fly past Chuck just before his main parachute opened.

I rushed past him at over a hundred and fifty miles an hour, or two hundred and twenty feet per second. He hardly had time to notice the expression on my face. Otherwise, he would have seen incredible astonishment in him. By some miracle, I managed in a matter of seconds to react to a situation that, if I had time to think it over, would have seemed simply unsolvable!

And yet ... And yet I managed it, and as a result, Chuck and I landed safely. I got the impression that, faced with an extreme situation, my brain worked like some kind of super-powerful calculator.

How did it happen? During my more than twenty years as a neurosurgeon—when I studied the brain, observed it at work, and performed operations on it—I often asked myself this question. And in the end I came to the conclusion that the brain is such a phenomenal organ that we don’t even know about its incredible abilities.

Now I already understand that the real answer to this question is much more complex and fundamentally different. But in order to realize this, I had to go through events that completely changed my life and worldview. This book is dedicated to these events. They proved to me that, no matter how wonderful the human brain was, it was not he who saved me on that fateful day. What interfered with the action the second Chuck's main parachute began to open was another, deeply hidden side of my personality. It was she who managed to work so instantly, because, unlike my brain and body, she exists outside of time.

It was she who made me, the boy, so rush into the sky. This is not only the most developed and wise side of our personality, but also the deepest, innermost. However, for most of my adult life, I did not believe in this.

However, now I believe, and from the further story you will understand why.

* * *

My profession is a neurosurgeon.

I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976 with a degree in chemistry and in 1980 received my doctorate from Duke University School of Medicine. Eleven years, including attending Medical School, then a residency at Duke, as well as work at the Massachusetts General Hospital and at Harvard Medical School, I specialized in neuroendocrinology, studying the interaction between the nervous system and the endocrine system, which consists of glands that produce various hormones and regulate activity. organism. For two years of those eleven years, I studied the abnormal reaction of blood vessels in certain areas of the brain when an aneurysm ruptured, a syndrome known as cerebral vasospasm.

After completing my postgraduate studies in cerebrovascular neurosurgery in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, I taught for fifteen years at Harvard Medical School as an Associate Professor of Neurology. Over the years, I have operated on a huge number of patients, many of whom came with extremely severe and life-threatening brain diseases.

I paid a lot of attention to the study of advanced methods of treatment, in particular stereotactic radiosurgery, which allows the surgeon to locally influence a certain point in the brain with radiation beams without affecting the surrounding tissues. I took part in the development and use of magnetic resonance imaging, which is one of the modern methods for studying brain tumors and various disorders of its vascular system. During these years I have written, alone or in co-authorship with other scientists, more than one hundred and fifty articles for major medical journals and presented more than two hundred times on my work at medical scientific conferences around the world.

In short, I devoted myself entirely to science. I consider it a great life success that I managed to find my vocation - by learning the mechanism of the functioning of the human body, especially its brain, to heal people using the achievements of modern medicine. But just as important, I married a wonderful woman who gave me two beautiful sons, and although the work took up quite a lot of my time, I never forgot about the family, which I always considered another blessed gift of fate. In a word, my life developed very successfully and happily.

However, on November 10, 2008, when I was fifty-four, my luck seemed to change. As a result of a very rare disease, I plunged into a coma for seven whole days. All this time, my neocortex - the new cortex, that is, the upper layer of the cerebral hemispheres, which, in essence, makes us human - was turned off, did not work, practically did not exist.

When a person's brain is turned off, he also ceases to exist. In my specialty, I have heard many stories of people who have experienced unusual experiences, usually after cardiac arrest: they allegedly found themselves in some mysterious and beautiful place, talked with dead relatives, and even saw the Lord God himself.

All these stories, of course, were very interesting, but, in my opinion, they were fantasies, pure fiction. What causes these “otherworldly” experiences that near-death survivors talk about? I did not state anything, but deep down I was sure that they were associated with some kind of disturbance in the brain. All our experiences and ideas originate in consciousness. If the brain is paralyzed, disabled, you cannot be conscious.

Because the brain is a mechanism that primarily produces consciousness. The destruction of this mechanism means the death of consciousness. For all the incredibly complex and mysterious functioning of the brain, it's as simple as two and two. Unplug the power cord and the TV will stop working. And the show ends, however you like it. That's pretty much what I would have said before my own brain shut down.

During the coma, my brain didn't work wrong, it didn't work at all. I now think that it was the completely non-functioning brain that brought about the depth and intensity of the near-death experience (ACD) I had during my coma. Most stories about ACS come from people who have experienced temporary cardiac arrest. In these cases, the neocortex also temporarily shuts down, but does not undergo permanent damage - if no later than four minutes later, the supply of oxygenated blood to the brain is restored using cardiopulmonary resuscitation or due to spontaneous restoration of cardiac activity. But in my case, the neocortex showed no signs of life! I faced the reality of the world of consciousness that existed completely independent of my dormant brain.

Personal experience of clinical death was a real explosion for me, a shock. As a neurosurgeon with a long history of scientific and practical work, I was better than others not only able to correctly assess the reality of what I had experienced, but also draw appropriate conclusions.

These findings are incredibly important. My experience has shown me that the death of the body and the brain does not mean the death of consciousness, that human life continues after the burial of his material body. But most importantly, it continues under the gaze of God, who loves us all and cares for each of us and for the world where the universe itself and everything in it ultimately goes.

The world I found myself in was real—so real that compared to this world, the life we ​​lead here and now is completely ghostly. However, this does not mean that I do not value my current life. On the contrary, I appreciate it even more than before. Because now I understand its true meaning.

Life is not something meaningless. But from here we are not able to understand it, in any case, not always. The story of what happened to me during my stay in a coma is filled with the deepest meaning. But it is rather difficult to talk about it, since it is too alien to our usual ideas. I can't shout about it to the whole world. However, my conclusions are based on medical analysis and knowledge of the most advanced concepts in the science of the brain and consciousness. Realizing the truth behind my journey, I realized that I simply had to tell about it. To do this in the most dignified manner has become my main task.

This does not mean that I left the scientific and practical activities of a neurosurgeon. It’s just that now, when I have the honor to understand that our life does not end with the death of the body and brain, I consider it my duty, my calling to tell people about what I saw outside my body and this world. It seems to me especially important to do this for those who have heard stories about cases like mine and would like to believe them, but something prevents these people from fully accepting them on faith.

My book and the spiritual message contained in it is addressed primarily to them. My story is incredibly important and completely true.

Eben Alexander

Paradise Proof. Real experience of a neurosurgeon

Protected by the legislation of the Russian Federation on the protection of intellectual rights. Reproduction of the entire book or any part of it is prohibited without the written permission of the publisher. Any attempt to break the law will be prosecuted.

Man must see things as they are, not as he wants to see them.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

When I was little, I often flew in my dreams. It usually went like this. I dreamed that I was standing in our yard at night and looking at the stars, and then suddenly I separated from the ground and slowly climbed up. The first few inches of ascent into the air happened spontaneously, without any input on my part. But I soon noticed that the higher I climb, the more the flight depends on me, or rather, on my condition. If I exulted violently and got excited, then I suddenly fell down, hitting the ground hard. But if I perceived the flight calmly, as something natural, then I quickly flew higher and higher into the starry sky.

Perhaps partly as a result of these dream flights, I later developed a passionate love for airplanes and rockets—or any flying machine in general that could give me a sense of the vast expanse of air again. When I happened to fly with my parents, no matter how long the flight was, it was impossible to tear me away from the window. In September 1968, at the age of fourteen, I gave all my lawn mowing money to a gliding class given by a guy named Goose Street on Strawberry Hill, a small grassy "flying field" not far from my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I still remember how excited my heart was pounding when I pulled the dark red round handle, which unhooked the cable connecting me to the towing aircraft, and my glider rolled onto the runway. For the first time in my life, I experienced an unforgettable feeling of complete independence and freedom. Most of my friends loved driving wildly for this, but in my opinion, nothing could compare to the thrill of flying at a thousand feet.

In the 1970s, while attending college at the University of North Carolina, I became involved in skydiving. Our team seemed to me something like a secret brotherhood - after all, we had special knowledge that was not available to everyone else. The first jumps were given to me with great difficulty, I was overcome by real fear. But by the twelfth jump, when I stepped through the door of the plane to free-fall more than a thousand feet before opening my parachute (it was my first skydive), I already felt confident. In college, I made 365 parachute jumps and flew more than three and a half hours in free fall, performing aerial acrobatic maneuvers with twenty-five comrades. Although I stopped jumping in 1976, I continued to have joyful and very vivid dreams about skydiving.

Most of all I liked to jump in the late afternoon, when the sun began to decline to the horizon. It is difficult to describe my feelings during such jumps: it seemed to me that I was getting closer and closer to that which was impossible to define, but which I passionately longed for. This mysterious "something" was not an ecstatic feeling of complete loneliness, because usually we jumped in groups of five, six, ten or twelve people, making various figures in free fall. And the more complex and difficult the figure was, the more delighted I was.

On a beautiful fall day in 1975, the guys from the University of North Carolina and a few friends from the Parachute Training Center gathered to practice group jumping with the construction of figures. On our penultimate jump from a D-18 Beechcraft light aircraft at 10,500 feet, we made a snowflake of ten people. We managed to assemble into this figure even before the 7,000 feet mark, that is, we enjoyed flying in this figure for eighteen seconds, falling into a gap between the huge masses of high clouds, after which, at an altitude of 3,500 feet, we unclenched our hands, deviated from each other and opened our parachutes.

By the time we landed, the sun was already very low, above the ground itself. But we quickly climbed into another plane and took off again, so that we managed to capture the last rays of the sun and make another jump before it was completely sunset. This time, two beginners took part in the jump, who for the first time had to try to join the figure, that is, fly up to it from the outside. Of course, it's easiest to be the main, basic skydiver, because he just needs to fly down, while the rest of the team has to maneuver in the air to get to him and grapple with him. Nevertheless, both beginners rejoiced at the difficult test, as did we, already experienced skydivers: after all, having trained young guys, later we could make jumps with even more complex figures together with them.

Of a group of six people who were to represent a star over the runway of a small airfield located near the town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, I had to be the last to jump. In front of me was a guy named Chuck. He had extensive experience in aerial group acrobatics. At 7,500 feet we were still in the sun, but the streetlights were already gleaming below. I've always loved twilight jumping and this one promised to be amazing.

I had to leave the plane about a second after Chuck, and in order to catch up with the others, my fall had to be very fast. I decided to dive into the air, as if into the sea, upside down and in this position fly for the first seven seconds. This would allow me to fall almost a hundred miles an hour faster than my comrades, and be level with them as soon as they began to build a star.

Usually during such jumps, having descended to a height of 3500 feet, all skydivers disengage their hands and disperse as far apart as possible. Then everyone waves their arms to signal that they are ready to deploy their parachute, looks up to make sure no one is above them, and only then pulls on the lanyard.

“Three, two, one… March!”

One by one, the four paratroopers left the plane, followed by Chuck and me. Flying upside down and picking up speed in free fall, I exulted that for the second time that day I saw the sunset. As I approached the team, I was about to slow down hard in the air, throwing my arms out to the sides - we had suits with wings made of fabric from the wrists to the hips, which created a powerful resistance, fully opening at high speed.

But I didn't have to.

As I plummeted towards the figure, I noticed that one of the guys was approaching it too fast. I don't know, maybe it was the rapid descent into the narrow gap between the clouds that frightened him, reminding him that he was rushing at a speed of two hundred feet per second towards a giant planet, hardly visible in the gathering darkness. Somehow, instead of slowly joining the group, he swooped down on her. And the five remaining paratroopers tumbled randomly in the air. Plus, they were too close to each other.

This guy left behind a powerful turbulent trail. This air current is very dangerous. As soon as another skydiver hits him, his fall speed will increase rapidly, and he will crash into the one who is under him. This, in turn, will give a strong acceleration to both skydivers and hurl them at the one who is even lower. In short, a terrible tragedy will happen.

Crouching, I ducked away from the tumultuously falling group and maneuvered until I was directly over the "point," the magical point on the ground over which we were to open our parachutes and begin a slow two-minute descent.

I turned my head and was relieved to see that the other jumpers were already moving away from each other. Among them was Chuck. But, to my surprise, he moved in my direction and soon hovered right under me. Apparently, during the erratic fall, the group went through 2,000 feet faster than Chuck expected. Or maybe he considered himself lucky, who may not follow the established rules.

"He must not see me!" No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than a colored pilot chute was yanked up behind Chuck. The parachute caught the one hundred and twenty miles an hour wind around Chuck and carried it toward me while retracting the main chute.

From the moment the pilot chute opened over Chuck, I had only a fraction of a second to react. In less than a second, I should have crashed into his main parachute and, most likely, into himself. If at such a speed I run into his arm or leg, then I will simply tear it off and at the same time I myself will receive a fatal blow. If we collide with bodies, we will inevitably break.

They say that in situations like this it seems like everything is happening much more slowly, and rightly so. My brain recorded what was happening, which took only a few microseconds, but perceived it as a movie in slow motion.

As the pilot chute swooped over Chuck, my arms pressed to my sides of their own accord, and I rolled over, head down, slightly arched. The curve of the body allowed for a little speed gain. In the next moment, I made a sharp horizontal thrust, which turned my body into a powerful wing, which allowed the bullet to fly past Chuck just before his main parachute opened.

I rushed past him at over a hundred and fifty miles an hour, or two hundred and twenty feet per second. He hardly had time to notice the expression on my face. Otherwise, he would have seen incredible astonishment in him. By some miracle, I managed in a matter of seconds to react to a situation that, if I had time to think it over, would have seemed simply unsolvable!

And yet ... And yet I managed it, and as a result, Chuck and I landed safely. I got the impression that, faced with an extreme situation, my brain worked like some kind of super-powerful calculator.

How did it happen? During my more than twenty years as a neurosurgeon—when I studied the brain, observed it at work, and performed operations on it—I often asked myself this question. And in the end I came to the conclusion that the brain is such a phenomenal organ that we don’t even know about its incredible abilities.

Now I already understand that the real answer to this question is much more complex and fundamentally different. But in order to realize this, I had to go through events that completely changed my life and worldview. This book is dedicated to these events. They proved to me that, no matter how wonderful the human brain was, it was not he who saved me on that fateful day. What interfered with the action the second Chuck's main parachute began to open was another, deeply hidden side of my personality. It was she who managed to work so instantly, because, unlike my brain and body, she exists outside of time.

However, now I believe, and from the further story you will understand why.

* * *

My profession is a neurosurgeon.

I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976 with a degree in chemistry and in 1980 received my doctorate from Duke University School of Medicine. Eleven years, including attending Medical School, then a residency at Duke, as well as work at the Massachusetts General Hospital and at Harvard Medical School, I specialized in neuroendocrinology, studying the interaction between the nervous system and the endocrine system, which consists of glands that produce various hormones and regulate activity. organism. For two years of those eleven years, I studied the abnormal reaction of blood vessels in certain areas of the brain when an aneurysm ruptured, a syndrome known as cerebral vasospasm.

After completing my postgraduate studies in cerebrovascular neurosurgery in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, I taught for fifteen years at Harvard Medical School as an Associate Professor of Neurology. Over the years, I have operated on a huge number of patients, many of whom came with extremely severe and life-threatening brain diseases.

I paid a lot of attention to the study of advanced methods of treatment, in particular stereotactic radiosurgery, which allows the surgeon to locally influence a certain point in the brain with radiation beams without affecting the surrounding tissues. I took part in the development and use of magnetic resonance imaging, which is one of the modern methods for studying brain tumors and various disorders of its vascular system. During these years I have written, alone or in co-authorship with other scientists, more than one hundred and fifty articles for major medical journals and presented more than two hundred times on my work at medical scientific conferences around the world.

In short, I devoted myself entirely to science. I consider it a great life success that I managed to find my vocation - by learning the mechanism of the functioning of the human body, especially its brain, to heal people using the achievements of modern medicine. But just as important, I married a wonderful woman who gave me two beautiful sons, and although the work took up quite a lot of my time, I never forgot about the family, which I always considered another blessed gift of fate. In a word, my life developed very successfully and happily.

However, on November 10, 2008, when I was fifty-four, my luck seemed to change. As a result of a very rare disease, I plunged into a coma for seven whole days. All this time, my neocortex - the new cortex, that is, the upper layer of the cerebral hemispheres, which, in essence, makes us human - was turned off, did not work, practically did not exist.

When a person's brain is turned off, he also ceases to exist. In my specialty, I have heard many stories of people who have experienced unusual experiences, usually after cardiac arrest: they allegedly found themselves in some mysterious and beautiful place, talked with dead relatives, and even saw the Lord God himself.

All these stories, of course, were very interesting, but, in my opinion, they were fantasies, pure fiction. What causes these “otherworldly” experiences that near-death survivors talk about? I did not state anything, but deep down I was sure that they were associated with some kind of disturbance in the brain. All our experiences and ideas originate in consciousness. If the brain is paralyzed, disabled, you cannot be conscious.

Because the brain is a mechanism that primarily produces consciousness. The destruction of this mechanism means the death of consciousness. For all the incredibly complex and mysterious functioning of the brain, it's as simple as two and two. Unplug the power cord and the TV will stop working. And the show ends, however you like it. That's pretty much what I would have said before my own brain shut down.

During the coma, my brain didn't work wrong, it didn't work at all. I now think that it was the completely non-functioning brain that brought about the depth and intensity of the near-death experience (ACD) I had during my coma. Most stories about ACS come from people who have experienced temporary cardiac arrest. In these cases, the neocortex also temporarily shuts down, but does not undergo permanent damage - if no later than four minutes later, the supply of oxygenated blood to the brain is restored using cardiopulmonary resuscitation or due to spontaneous restoration of cardiac activity. But in my case, the neocortex showed no signs of life! I faced the reality of the world of consciousness that existed completely independent of my dormant brain.

Personal experience of clinical death was a real explosion for me, a shock. As a neurosurgeon with a long history of scientific and practical work, I was better than others not only able to correctly assess the reality of what I had experienced, but also draw appropriate conclusions.

These findings are incredibly important. My experience has shown me that the death of the body and the brain does not mean the death of consciousness, that human life continues after the burial of his material body. But most importantly, it continues under the gaze of God, who loves us all and cares for each of us and for the world where the universe itself and everything in it ultimately goes.

The world I found myself in was real—so real that compared to this world, the life we ​​lead here and now is completely ghostly. However, this does not mean that I do not value my current life. On the contrary, I appreciate it even more than before. Because now I understand its true meaning.

Life is not something meaningless. But from here we are not able to understand it, in any case, not always. The story of what happened to me during my stay in a coma is filled with the deepest meaning. But it is rather difficult to talk about it, since it is too alien to our usual ideas. I can't shout about it to the whole world. However, my conclusions are based on medical analysis and knowledge of the most advanced concepts in the science of the brain and consciousness. Realizing the truth behind my journey, I realized that I simply had to tell about it. To do this in the most dignified manner has become my main task.

This does not mean that I left the scientific and practical activities of a neurosurgeon. It’s just that now, when I have the honor to understand that our life does not end with the death of the body and brain, I consider it my duty, my calling to tell people about what I saw outside my body and this world. It seems to me especially important to do this for those who have heard stories about cases like mine and would like to believe them, but something prevents these people from fully accepting them on faith.

My book and the spiritual message contained in it is addressed primarily to them. My story is incredibly important and completely true.

Lynchburg, Virginia

I woke up and opened my eyes. In the darkness of the bedroom, I peered at the red digits of the digital clock - 4:30 in the morning - which is an hour earlier than I usually get up, given that I have a ten hour drive from our home in Lynchburg to my place of work - the Specialized Foundation for Ultrasound Surgery in Charlottesville. Holly's wife continued to sleep soundly.

For about twenty years I worked as a neurosurgeon in the big city of Boston, but in 2006 I moved with the whole family to the mountainous part of Virginia. Holly and I met in October 1977, two years after we graduated from college at the same time. She was preparing for a master's degree in fine arts, I was in medical school. She dated my former roommate Vic a couple of times. Once he brought her to introduce us, probably wanted to show off. As they were leaving, I invited Holly to come in anytime, adding that it didn't have to be with Vic.

On our first real date, we drove to a party in Charlotte, North Carolina, a two and a half hour drive there and back. Holly had laryngitis, so I did most of the talking during the journey. We married in June 1980 at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Windsor, North Carolina, and shortly thereafter moved to Durham, where we rented an apartment in the Royal Oaks house, since I was a surgical fellow at Duke University.

Our house was far from royal, and I didn’t notice anything about oaks either. We had very little money, but we were so busy—and so happy—that we didn't care. On one of our first vacations, which fell in the spring, we loaded a tent into the car and set off on a drive along the Atlantic coast of North Carolina. In the spring, in those places, any biting midges are apparently invisible, and the tent was not a very reliable refuge from its formidable hordes. But we still had fun and interesting. One day, while sailing off Ocracoke Island, I devised a way to catch blue crabs that were running away in a hurry, frightened of my feet. We took a big bag of crabs to the Pony Island Motel where our friends were staying and grilled them. There was enough food for everyone. Despite austerity, we soon found that the money was running out. During this time we were visiting our close friends Bill and Patty Wilson and they invited us to play bingo. Bill went to the club on Thursdays every summer for ten years, but he never won. And Holly played for the first time. Call it rookie luck or providence, but she won two hundred dollars, which to us was the equivalent of two thousand. This money allowed us to continue the journey.

In 1980, I got my MD and Holly got her degree and went on to work as an artist and teach. In 1981, I performed my first solo brain surgery at Duke. Our first child, Eben IV, was born in 1987 at the Princess Mary's Maternity Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne in Northern England, where I did postgraduate studies in cerebrovascular disease. And the youngest son Bond - in 1988 at the Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston.

I fondly remember the fifteen years I worked at Harvard Medical School and at Brigham Women's Hospital. Our family generally appreciates the time we lived in the Greater Boston area. But in 2005, Holly and I decided it was time to move back south. We wanted to live closer to our parents, and I also saw the move as an opportunity to become more independent than I had at Harvard. And so, in the spring of 2006, we started a new life in Lynchburg, located in the highlands of Virginia. It was a calm and measured life, to which both I and Holly were accustomed from childhood.

* * *

I lay quietly for a while, trying to figure out what had woken me up. The day before, on Sunday, the weather was typical of a Virginian autumn - sunny, clear and cool. Holly and I and ten-year-old Bond went to the neighbors' barbecues. In the evening we talked on the phone with Eben (he was already twenty), who was a freshman at the University of Delaware. The only small annoyance of the day was that all of us had not yet recovered from a mild respiratory infection that we picked up somewhere last week. By evening, my back hurt, and I warmed up a little in a warm bath, after which the pain seemed to subside. I wondered if I could not wake up so early from the fact that this unfortunate infection still roams in me.

I moved slightly, and pain shot through my back, much more severe than the night before. Definitely, the virus made itself felt. The more I came to my senses from sleep, the more the pain became. I could not sleep again, and there was still an hour before I left for work, so I decided to take another warm bath. I sat down, put my feet on the floor and stood up.

And immediately the pain dealt me ​​another blow - I felt a dull painful pulsation at the base of the spine. Deciding not to wake Holly, I walked slowly down the hallway to the bathroom, confident that the warmth would immediately make me feel better. But I was wrong. The tub was only half full, and I already knew I had made a mistake. The pain got so bad that I wondered if I should call Holly to help me get out of the tub.

How ridiculous! I reached out and grabbed a towel that was hanging on a hanger right above me. Sliding it closer to the wall so as not to tear off the hanger, I began to carefully pull myself up.

And again I was pierced by such severe pain that I suffocated. It certainly wasn't the flu. But then what? Somehow getting out of the slippery bath, I put on a terry bathrobe, barely dragged myself to the bedroom and fell on the bed. My whole body was wet with cold sweat.

Even more than getting sick, doctors do not like to be in the role of a patient. I immediately imagined a house full of emergency doctors, standard questions, being sent to the hospital, paperwork… I thought that I would soon get better and regret that we called an ambulance.

"Don't worry, it's okay," I said. I'm in pain right now, but it should get better soon. You better help Bond get ready for school.

“Eben, I still think…”

"It'll be all right," I interrupted her, hiding my face in the pillow. I still couldn't move because of the pain. Seriously, don't call. I'm not that sick. Just a muscle spasm in my lower back and a headache.

Holly reluctantly left me, went downstairs with Bond, fed him breakfast, and then sent me to the bus stop where the boys were picked up by the school bus. When Bond was leaving the house, I suddenly thought that if I have something serious and I still end up in the hospital, I won’t see him today. I gathered all my strength and shouted:

“Bond, good luck with your school!”

When my wife went up to the bedroom to see how I was feeling, I lay unconscious. Thinking that I had fallen asleep, she left me to rest, went downstairs and called one of my colleagues, hoping to find out from him what could have happened to me.

After two hours, Holly thought I had had enough rest and came up to me again. Opening the bedroom door, she saw that I was lying in the same position, but, coming closer, she noticed that my body was not relaxed, as usual in a dream, but tensely stretched. She turned on the light and saw that I was shaking with a severe cramp, my lower jaw was unnaturally protruding, and my eyes were rolled open so that only whites were visible.

"Eben, say something!" she screamed.

I didn't answer and she called 911. The ambulance was there in ten minutes. I was quickly transferred to a car and driven to Lynchburg General Hospital.

If I had been conscious, I would have explained to Holly exactly what I suffered during those terrible minutes while she was waiting for an ambulance. It was an epileptic seizure, no doubt caused by some incredibly powerful effect on the brain. But, obviously, I couldn't do it.

For the next seven days, my wife and other relatives saw only my motionless body. What happened around me, I have to reconstruct from the stories of others. During the coma, my soul, my spirit—call it what you will, that part of my personality that makes me human—was dead.

In this book, Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon with 25 years of experience, a professor who taught at Harvard Medical School and other major American universities, shares with the reader his impressions of his journey to the next world.

His case is unique. Struck by a sudden and inexplicable form of bacterial meningitis, he miraculously recovered from a seven-day coma. A highly educated physician with vast practical experience, who before not only did not believe in an afterlife, but also did not allow the thought of it, experienced the transfer of his "I" to the higher worlds and encountered there such amazing phenomena and revelations that, returning to earthly life , considered it his duty as a scientist and healer to tell the whole world about them.

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