5 STARS
Pros: A matter of fact portrayal of one man's Near Death Experience, and how, his job as a Neurosurgeon has taught him to believe that such things are impossible, but after experiencing one, his view is completely changed.
Cons: At the end it got very scientific and a lot of medical jargon, but that's to be expected.
Full Review:
Eben Alexander was raised in the south, became a Neurosurgeon, just like his Father, completed his residency training at Brigham and Women's Hospital and then moved back to North Carolina to focus on his own family and his medical career. He had his struggles, his ups and downs, his life was not perfect but he made the most of it and is now living an ordinary life, when something horrific and unexpected happens.
While fighting off, what he thinks is the common flu, he wakes up to feel the lingering effects, back ache, headache. But as the symptoms worsen, he adamantly insists that he is fine. His wife leaves him to nap and when she goes to check on him, two hours later, she finds him in the midst of a Grand Mal Seizure. He's rushed to the ER, where they promptly do a lumbar puncture. Cerebrospinal fluid, the fluid that coats our brain, when healthy, is clear. His fluid was opaque and green, essentially, his brain was surrounded in pus.
He is placed on a ventilator, put on several courses of aggressive antibiotics, but for all the doctors do, nothing seems to work. The neocortex (the tissue that protects the deeper layers of the brain) is being eaten by E. Coli Meningitis and his chances of recovering are dwindling by the second. As the days pass, he shows no improvement and his family starts preparing for the worst.
During all of this, Eben finds himself in a dark, murky void. He hears rhythmic chanting, sees strange shapes moving about but eventually, he manages to rise up from the darkness and is brought into a visually stunning, beautiful, idyllic landscape. He is led by a beautiful girl up to a place and being of pure light. She promises him that he is loved, that he can do no wrong and that he will go back.
He sees the being of light and is filled with the understanding that he is loved. That the girls words are true. That he is loved, that we are all loved, that we are all connected and brought together by love. Yes there is evil in the world, but the good far outweighs the bad. He is shown a vast, unfathomable space, worlds upon worlds, far more than the human mind can possibly imagine.
Through all of this, he is not aware of the fact that he has left his body behind. He has no active consciousness, nothing that tethers him to Earth, no memory of his family or friends. But as the days pass and his chances of survival worsen, he begins to sink back into the darkness and sees faces begin to emerge from the void, his wife, his sons, his sisters, all anchors in the world. And the one face that solidifies and makes him realize that he has to go back, is that of his youngest son, Bond.
He awakens from his seven day Coma, alert, responsive and the first words out of his mouth are, "All is well." It's a miracle, there is no other way to describe it. Yes, he has awhile there where he struggles with post coma psychosis, as his body and brain reconnect and everything starts to work normally again. But to have been in such a deep comatose state and come out of it with no lingering effects, no brain damage, no loss of motor function, it's baffling and astounding and he, as a physician, knows it's impossible. So once he heals and is released from the hospital, he writes everything down, everything that he can remember, everything from that dark void to that being of pure light and then, he starts reading about other peoples Near Death Experiences.
Many of them are similar but none of them are exactly the same. And in his own experience, he realizes that he experienced many of the same situations. Before his coma, he passed off Near Death Experiences as impossible. He's a Neurosurgeon, he's made it his life's work to study how the brain works and he knows there is no medical explanation for "traveling through a tunnel of light, meeting with loved ones lost" there's just no logical explanation for what people have described. But now that he's experienced it himself, he's a believer and he's taken it upon himself to try and convince others in the medical professional that Near Death Experiences are very real.
For me, this book was so very comforting. To know and hope and possibly believe that our consciousnesses live on after we die, that there is more to this life than what we are able to hear, smell, see, taste, touch, right now, to understand that this isn't it, that there is more, that is extremely reassuring. Death, is one of, if not, my biggest fear. To think of life ending and there being nothing else, just...blackness, for all eternity? It's terrifying. But after reading this and having my own beliefs, that we do go on, that perhaps our consciousnesses do survive, that we do get to reunite with our loved ones that have passed before, it meant more than I can possibly say.
I read this book in one night and for anyone who has ever wondered what may happen once this life ends, I'd suggest taking a look at this book and seeing how it affects you.
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