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Near-death experiences have gotten a lot of attention lately. The 2014 movie "Heaven Is for Real", about a young boy who told his parents he had visited heaven while he was having emergency surgery, grossed a respectable $91 million in the United States. The book it was based on, published in 2010, has sold some 10 million copies and spent 206 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Two recent books by doctors—Proof of Heaven, by Eben Alexander, who writes about a near-death experience he had while in a week-long coma brought on by meningitis, and To Heaven and...

Does life after death really exist? The answer to this question has fundamental implications for every man, woman and child on the entire planet, and yet most people don’t spend very much time thinking about it. If this life is not the end, so much of the petty stuff that we spend so much time obsessing over in this life really doesn’t matter, and instead we should be focusing on the things that actually do matter for the life to come. However, if this life truly is the end, we might as well eat, drink, party and enjoy this life...

Support is coming in from around the world for a student who was paralyzed in a car accident on his way to Godwin High School in Virginia. Ryan Estrada, 16, says he lost control of his vehicle while trying to avoid a bicyclist on Gayton Road in Henrico County on Nov. 8, according to WTVR. “I remember swerving past the biker and there was another car coming in the lane so I had to swerve back into my lane,” recalls Estrada. “I remember losing control of the wheel, hitting the mailbox and then hitting the tree.” Estrada said two motorists,...

Michael Hathaway, author of 10 books on psychic development, past lives, regression, hypnosis and spirituality, and a board certified Past Life Regression Therapist is one of the most respected hypnotists in the country. He published a book entitled, “It’s Time to Simplify Your Soul’s Code”, an easy how-to guide for discovering our unique special purpose and to enrich our life experience by delving into the aspects of higher self and soul contracts. In this book, Mr. Hathaway emphasizes the source energy of the loving universe as a means to connect to our divine purpose as incarnated souls. He brilliantly describes...

Last Friday night (March 22), March Madness was in its televised glory. And Taylor Swift was singing and strumming at Time Warner Cable Arena. Despite such competition, Christ Episcopal Church managed to draw 1,100 people. The attraction: A doctor describing his time in heaven. Not just any doctor. Sitting on stage, answering questions from the Rev. Chip Edens, the church’s rector, was Dr. Eben Alexander. He’s a Charlotte native who wrote “Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife.” His book is such a mega-seller that he has talked to Oprah – and Universal Pictures won a bidding war...

As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon. I followed my father’s path and became an academic neurosurgeon, teaching at Harvard Medical School and other universities. I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death. ... In the fall of 2008, however, after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my brain, the neocortex,...

Dr Eben Alexander, a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon, fell into a coma for seven days in 2008 after contracting meningitis. During his illness Dr Alexander says that the part of his brain which controls human thought and emotion "shut down" and that he then experienced "something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death." In an essay for American magazine Newsweek, which he wrote to promote his book Proof of Heaven, Dr Alexander says he was met by a beautiful blue-eyed woman in a "place of clouds, big fluffy pink-white ones" and "shimmering beings". He...

World's Largest-ever Study Of Near-Death Experiences ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — The University of Southampton is launching the world's largest-ever study of near-death experiences this week. The AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study is to be launched by the Human Consciousness Project of the University of Southampton - an international collaboration of scientists and physicians who have joined forces to study the human brain, consciousness and clinical death. The study is led by Dr Sam Parnia, an expert in the field of consciousness during clinical death, together with Dr Peter Fenwick and Professors Stephen Holgate and Robert Peveler of the University...

Bruce Greyson thinks that research has only scratched the surface of the near-death experience phenomenon, and that there is a great prospect for future studies. (Stephanie Lam/The Epoch Times) DURHAM, N.C.—Grandma was just resuscitated. She wakes up and tells you a bizarre story of coming out of her body and going to heaven. Has she developed psychosis? Was her brain damaged from the lack of oxygen? After over 30 years of research, scientists have concluded that this is not the case. Instead, they think that this phenomenon is something today’s science is yet to understand, and that it is an...

DURHAM, N.C.—Eben Alexander was your typical neurosurgeon. A firm believer of scientific reductionism, he thought that all thoughts originate from the brain. But this changed in 2008 when he encountered a case of near-death experience (NDE). As much as it was the complete opposite of his previous views, he couldn’t dismiss or avoid the case—it was none other than his own experience, and he had to face it and search for an explanation. Having contracted acute bacterial meningitis, which damages the neocortex—the part of the brain that is thought to involve complex cognitive functions like conscious thought—Alexander went into a...