eading neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander was sceptical when anyone said they had experienced the afterlife. But then he had a similar experience after going into a coma. In our final extract from his book, The Map Of Heaven, Dr Alexander — who has worked at Harvard Medical School — explains that there is one thing that endures after we die: love.
Science cannot explain the afterlife. For many people who use scientific evidence as the sole basis of their belief system, this must mean the afterlife doesn’t exist.
According to them, death is the end and heaven is a convenient lie we tell to ourselves and our children.
My 25-year career as an academic neuroscientist, studying the workings of the brain, led me to the conclusion that life after death was a brain-based illusion — until I experienced a journey into the hereafter during a coma after developing meningitis.
Now I hold a very different view: the afterlife is real. If science doesn’t recognise this fact, then it is doing two things wrong.