"Master, I Want to See"

While listening to Mark's gospel about how Jesus gave Bartimaeus his sight back, I was a little surprised by the question that Jesus posed to the poor blind man, "What do you want me to do for you?" (Mark 10:51). Though I have heard and read this passage many times in the past, never before it struck me as an odd question. As a blind man begging for alms, his disability and his need couldn't be anymore obvious - the man wants his sight back. He has already shown enough humility and trust in Jesus by his persistence, even when the crowd was annoyed at him for disturbing Jesus. Why would Jesus want to hear from the man the obvious?

Finding Forgiveness - By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

There is a wonderful detail in the story of the Prodigal Son. When the runaway boy is lying in the frozen mud of the pigpen with only slop to eat, the King James Version of the Bible says he 'came to himself.' 

What a profound psychological insight! At the heart of finding forgiveness is the gift to see ourselves as we really are and then turn to ask for help. Reality--true honesty about ourselves and other people must be at the heart of all forgiveness.

Forgiveness, by it's very definition, involves a truthful relationship. To be forgiven we must see ourselves as we really are. To forgive others we must see them as they really are. This is difficult because all of us mask our true selves with the person we wish we were or the person we would like others to believe us to be. When we 'come to ourselves' we are able, perhaps for the first time to find forgiveness. 

The next step for the prodigal son was to decide to get up, dust himself off and head home to the father. This step requires courage. When seeking forgiveness in a relationship with another person it is easy to skirt the issue, avoid the person and hope that the problem will take care of itself. Did they say 'time heals all wounds'? They were lying. Time, on its own, doesn't heal anything. Forgiveness doesn't happen by itself. We need to take action. We need to get up out of the mud and head on home where we will find reconciliation and peace.

This is  true in our relationships with one another, but it is also true in our relationship with God. We have to first see ourselves as we really are, then we need to see God as he really is. Here's the great part! God looks on us with pity not with blame. He is the loving father waiting to welcome us home. 

If you want to find true forgiveness ask God for the gift to see yourself as you really are--both the good and the bad--and then ask for the gift to see God as he truly is. When that truth comes thundering into your heart and life you will be on the path to finding forgiveness--that path that leads to the warm welcome of your true home.

(Fr. Dwight is the Pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church in Greenville, South Carolina.)

Self-centered Faith

Non-believers and nominal believers dread an encounter with a "born again" believer - somebody who had a profound religious experience after spending much of their life as an agnostic or atheist. It would seem like many such "born agains" have gone off the deep end, expressing loudly their disapproval for everything from movies and television to other religious beliefs and lifestyles. Talking to them would give you the feeling that God has empowered them to argue on His behalf. Often, by weighing in on everything without proper knowledge, they often appear intolerant and self-righteous. They want to believe in God more than everybody and practice religion better than everybody, then they want everybody - spouses, kids, relatives, coworkers - to follow them in those practices.  

Faith and Works

Ever did any good deeds hoping to erase the effects of sin, like donating money or time to the Church or a charity as a self-prescribed penance? I know I have - one of the reasons I started this blog was to bring people back to faith, in return for the many I have taken away from faith. For me, it was a reasonable thought process - I have done something bad, now I want to correct it and hope that God would forgive me for what I have done. But now that I said it like that I sense something wrong with it, I feel something divine in that statement, as if I am doing God's job. St. Paul said it the best: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8,9), and I just did the opposite. I picked out some of the horrendous things I have done and tried to make up for it with time and money. But now I am confused - if I am to quit doing everything I have been doing since my "conversion" because none of that is required of me to earn good credits with God, then what is the difference between me of the old and me of the new. If I get up in the morning everyday, kneel down in front of the Crucifix and accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, then go on with my life as I have in the past, that would make me a good Christian, really?

What everyone should know about pornography (An article by Matt Fradd)

Matt Fradd is an apologist and speaker with Catholic Answers, one of the largest lay-run apostolates of Catholic apologetics and evangelization in North America. After experiencing a profound conversion from agnosticism to Catholicism at World Youth Day in Rome in 2000, Matt has committed himself to inviting others to know Jesus Christ and the Church he founded.

I was around eight years old when I stumbled upon pornography for the first time. I was hooked. I was in intrigued. As my fascination with pornography grew, so did my defensiveness. I knew deep down that this behavior was not masculine. But the strong urge to view pornography outweighed any desire to face up to that. “She’s willing to do it!” I would say – mostly to myself. “It’s not like I’m raping anybody!” “It’s fine. It’s fine.” No one had told me that there might be a problem with porn. In fact, most adults I knew seemed to look favorably upon it. “Everything in moderation” they used to say, erg – what an extremely unhelpful – and fallacious- thing to say.

With time, grace, and support I have begun to heal from those wounds I so willingly inflicted upon myself. Ah, how much more expansive and vibrant life is now in comparison with that narrow little world in which I once chose to live.

In this article I will offer three truths about porn that I wish everyone knew. Narrowing it to three is difficult when I could write a hundred!  But these three are the most important ones I want you to know.

1. Porn is not bad because “sex is bad.”

Sex isn’t bad, and the body isn’t shameful! Porn is wrong because sex is good, and the body magnificent! As Christians we must never forget whose idea sex was in the first place. It was not thought up by Hugh Hefner or Cosmopolitan magazine but by God! In fact, the very first commandment in the Bible from God to humanity is to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28)! And as philosopher Dr. Peter Kreeft once noted, “I do not think he meant for us to grow oranges and invent calculators.”

Porn is wrong because it removes sexual intimacy from its natural context, turning it into a commodity to be bought and sold. It has been rightly said that the problem with porn is not that it shows too much but that it shows too little – too little of the human person. Porn reduces the mystery and beauty of a man or woman to a collection of body parts to be used rather than recognizing them as persons to be loved. It reduces the great mystery and sanctity of human sexuality to a trivial activity that need not be of any real importance.

2. Porn is not just a man’s issue.

While it is certainly true that men have cornered the market on visual pornography, it’s not true that women don’t also struggle. One survey revealed that 34% of female subscribers of Today’s Christian Woman’s online newsletter admitted to intentionally accessing Internet porn. Because pornography is predominantly consumed by men, many women who struggle with pornography feel an even greater sense of shame and isolation.

One young woman I know put it this way:

“For over seven years, I was addicted to hardcore pornography, masturbation, and lust—and I am a woman. Often we hear that women may struggle with fantasy and romance novels, but porn—porn is a guy thing. One of the most shaming statements I ever heard was, ‘Women just don’t have this problem.’ I started to lose hope after I heard that. How do you argue with the ‘fact’ that only men struggle with porn? It is sad, because this mindset is causing so much damage to women. It causes many women to question their sexuality and wonder if they are homosexual because they are involved in a sin ‘only men’ get caught up in. It isolates them, silences them, keeps them trapped in this sin and drives them further away from freedom and into the darkness.”

If you or a woman you know struggles with pornography, be assured that you are not alone. Help is available, and healing is possible. You might begin by visiting the site Beggars Daughter.

3. “Porn Stars” don’t enjoy what they do!

When I inquired of a friend of mine, a former porn star, if this was the case, she said, “Well, there are several reasons why girls get into the porn industry, but a hardcore sex drive isn’t one of them. I know, because that’s what I used to tell people in interviews.”

Another former porn star put it this way:

“Sex-packed porn films featuring freshly dyed blondes whose evocative eyes say ‘I want you’ is quite possibly one of the greatest deceptions of all time. Trust me, I know. I did it all the time, and I did it for the lust of power and the love of money. I never liked sex. I never wanted sex, and in fact I was more apt to spend time with Jack Daniels than some of the studs I was paid to fake it with. That's right – none of us freshly dyed blondes like doing porn. In fact, we hate it. We hate being touched by strangers who care nothing about us.... Some women hate it so much you can hear them vomiting in the bathroom between scenes. Others can be found outside smoking an endless chain of Marlboro Lights… but the porn industry wants YOU to think we porn actresses love sex. They want you to think we enjoy being degraded by all kinds of repulsive acts.”

Porn “immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world” (CCC 2354). One such illusion is that the women in the porn industry enjoy making porn. While this may be a convenient illusion for those seeking to justify their porn use, the reality behind the fantasy is another story entirely.

The fourth thing I would say (yes, yes, I know I promised only three) is that if you or someone you love is hooked on porn, healing is possible - it's bloody hard and there are no "quick fixes" but we can do all things through him who strengthens us (Phil 4:13).  

Are you Finally Ready to be Free?

Are you finally ready to face your porn problem head on? Are you ready to do what is necessary to change, grow, and heal?

It is crucial to understand that freedom from impurity is not a destination that we reach -you wont wake up several months from now, throw your arms up in victory and announce ”I’m free!” Rather, freedom from impurity is a daily choice we make, by God’s grace, which will enable us to become more fully alive (aka more Holy).

That said, the following steps are crucial and, in my humble opinion, indispensable to anyone who is serious about overcoming their porn problem.

FIND A GOOD CONFESSOR – DON’T PRIEST HOP 

If you are a Catholic, find a good confessor and stick to him. Don’t priest hop because you’re ashamed of confessing the sin again so soon. The priest is not their to judge you but to love you. Confessing to the same priest will be an opportunity to humble yourself while honestly facing the severity of your problem.

BECOME ACCOUNTABLE 

Download Covenant Eyes, the best accountability software on the web. After subscribing, type in the email of an (1 or more) accountability partner(s) you trust. If you go to a sketchy site, your accountability partner(s) gets a report alerting him to the site you visited. As a result, you get to have a slightly awkward but very helpful conversation with someone who cares for you. It’s about 8 bucks a month.

type “pureinheart” into the promo code, you’ll get a month free.

COUNSELLING 

3rd Know that you might need professional counselling and that there is nothing shameful about wanting to be a full man/woman of God. Seewww.integrityrestored.com to contact my friend Dr. Peter Kleponis. He is a Catholic psychotherapist who specializes in dealing with overcoming porn addiction – he can do appointments by Skype.

EDUCATE YOURSELF

Educate yourself on the dangers of pornography. I highly recommend reading this article  written by Neurosurgeon Dr. Donald L. Hilton on how porn addiction damages your brain (literally). We also have some great resources here Catholic Answers such as Jason Evert’s Pure in Heart, a 5 CD retreat for men struggling with porn. You can see my products over on the right there which I believe will be of great help.

If you are a woman struggling with porn, be sure to visit www.beggarsdaughter.com

PATIENCE

Have patience with yourself. God’s mercy is unlimited. St. Francis de Sales wrote  that you should “Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew.”

There is much more that could be said, but I hope I’ve given you some practical leads which will be of great help to you as you strive to live porn free.

I know that I am a sinner, and I am glad

Are you one of those people who give great emphasis to living a perfect life? Are you obsessed with your image - wanting people to admire your morality and values in life? Do you observe your religious duties meticulously - giving great emphasis to saying the right prayers, hoping that God would be pleased? How about charity - do you feel necessary to be recognized by others for your generosity, want to be counted as a righteous and upright one?  Then Jesus got news for you: "Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are  entering the kingdom of God before you" (Matthew 21:31)!

Meet Doctor Luke

Today, September 18th, is the Feast of St. Luke, the Evangelist. Luke is author of Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. We only know very little about him, so here are some interesting facts about St. Luke:

• Luke was believed to be born a Greek and a Gentile.
• Luke was a physician as evident from St. Paul's words, "Luke, the beloved physician" (Colossians 4:14). He is the patron saint of physicians and surgeons.
• Many scholars believe that Luke might have been born a slave. It was not uncommon for families to educate slaves in medicine so that they would have a resident family physician.
• Of the four Gospel writers - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - Luke is the only one believed to have never walked with Jesus. Though Mark was also not among the twelve disciples of Jesus, it is believed that Mark was a follower of Christ, since his cousin Barnabas was the one who was not chosen to replace Judas Iscariot by the drawing of the lot (Acts 1:23-26). 
• Though not much known about the conversion of Luke into Christianity, it is evident from the Acts that Luke followed St.Paul in his ministry. It is widely believed that he joined Paul in Acts Chapter 16. Up until Acts 16:8, the Acts is written in the third person as a historian recording facts. But, suddenly from Acts 16:10 onwards, the language changes, "they" becomes "we", suggesting that the writer became an active participant rather than an observant from that point on. 
• During the final imprisonment and sufferings of Paul, Luke was the only one remained with Paul while all others deserted him, "Only Luke is with me" (2 Timothy 4:11).
• Luke took a different route than the other three in writing the Gospel. Since he had no personal knowledge of Jesus and his activities, Luke followed the inspirations of the Holy Spirit to "investigate everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account" (Luke 1:3). 
• Luke's is the Gospel of the poor and of social justice. He uses "Blessed are the poor" (Luke 6:20) instead of "Blessed are the poor in spirit" in beatitudes. He is the one who tells the story of Lazarus and the rich man who ignored him (Luke 16:19-31). He also is the only one who talks about the "Parable of the rich fool" (Luke 12:16-21). Through him, Jesus also encourages giving away possessions in order to be Saved, "Give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you" (Luke 11:41).
• Forgiveness and God's mercy to sinners is also of importance to Luke. Only in Luke do we hear story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) and the story of the forgiven woman disrupting the feast by washing Jesus' feet with her tears (Luke 7:36-38).
• Luke's gospel also shows special sensitivity to evangelizing Gentiles. It is only in his gospel that we see the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), that we hear Jesus praising the faith of Gentiles such as the widow of Zeraphath and Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:25-27), and we witness the story of one grateful leper who is a Samaritan (Luke 17:11-19).
• Luke also has a special connection with Mother Mary. There is no doubt that "while investigating everything carefully from the very first" (Luke 1:3), he must have paid a visit to Mother Mary to know more about how did it all started. It is only in his gospel that we hear the story of Annunciation, Mary's visit to Elizabeth, the Magnificat, the Presentation and the story of Jesus' disappearance in Jerusalem. 
• Last but not least, it is Luke that we have to thank for the Scriptural parts of the 'Hail Mary', one of the most beloved prayers among Catholics all over the world: "Hail Mary, Full of grace! The Lord is with you" (Luke 1:28) spoken by the Angel at the Annunciation, and "Blessed are you and blessed is the fruit of your womb" (Luke 1:42) spoken by her cousin Elizabeth.

What is all this noise about?

Ever wonder whatever happens to many thousands of "Our Father", "Hail Mary", and "Amen" that we say in our life time? Is there anybody listening to all our prayers on the other end, or are prayers just part of a tradition? Isn't it better if a prayer is more like what it should be like - a conversation? Why do we often feel like the only person talking in our relationship with God is us? Whatever happened to the God who spoke to His people, the God as we see Him in the Bible?

JESUS: Liar or Lord?

In an article I wrote a while back, Jesus - The Man, The God, The ???, I talked about a dilemma faced by a lot of Christians when it comes to the dual personality of Jesus Christ. Though lived only a short time here on earth as a human being, Jesus left the whole humanity - both believers and non believers alike - with enough to wonder and worry about what to make out of Him. Jesus, the very foundation of Christianity, can also be a stumbling block for many of its believers, especially when faced with questions from skeptics. In a world where more and more people are walking away from God to embrace newly found comforts of Science and Technology, Jesus is often a joke. Ordinary Christians often find it difficult to defend Jesus and their faith because they are are believing in a God - not just any god, but the only Son of the Creator of all things seen and unseen - who has long hair and beard, who wears a simple cloak, who sweated, felt hunger and pain like an ordinary human being. Many of the non-believers of Christ are willing to accept him as good man - a good teacher, a good leader, a wise man, even a prophet - but not God. We often take this view from a skeptic as an acceptable one, relived that we are not dealing with somebody who is totally against Jesus Christ. But how acceptable is that view of Jesus as a good man who taught his followers many good things including a beautiful prayer, a man with god given abilities to perform miracles? As Christians, should we compromise with the world around us about this view of Jesus? Is Jesus - a good man, better than no Jesus at all?

Does God still talk to us?

One of the things that concerned me when I began volunteering for Perpetual Adoration was the visitors at the Chapel, or the lack of it. I wanted to believe the  'Real Presence' of Jesus, but it was a difficult thing to believe. And I knew I was not the only one having a hard time believing the Real Presence; what else could explain the lack of interest from the local community. While walking the earth as a human, Jesus never had any problem attracting crowds; they followed him all the time hoping to witness miracles. If it is the same Jesus present in body and spirit at the Adoration Chapel, then where is the crowd, where is the deaf, the blind and mute, why isn't anybody taking apart the roof to lower the paralyzed? I kept going back to the Chapel to cover my scheduled time slot, but I was also beginning to wonder about the futility of my effort. Then one day, while sitting in front of the Blessed Sacrament all by myself, I told Him about my dilemma. I told Him that I really wanted to believe that it was Jesus there right in front of me in person, but the human in me was refusing to accept it. I apologized for my lack of faith, and I told Him that I wasn't planning on quitting, that I was going to be there at my scheduled time slots no matter what. A few minutes later another totally unrelated thought came to my mind, for as long as I could remember, I had struggled with introducing myself to others - I couldn't get a conversation started with a stranger even if I spend hours alone in the same room with a that person. I could talk to anybody for days if the other person took the initiative to "break the ice". As I sit at the Adoration Chapel thinking about it, I felt an urge to tell Jesus about this problem. So I told Him about it and at the end, for reasons unknown to me, I asked to give me the strength to overcome this problem.

A few days later, I was driving down the road where the Chapel sits. I wasn't planning to stop in at the Chapel because I was not scheduled to be there at that time. But suddenly I felt like somebody is asking me to stop in at the Chapel. I knew resistance is futile because of some previous experiences, so I stopped in. It was a weekday afternoon, and I found three people inside the Chapel. When I walked in, I felt the urge to kneel down and pray, so I began praying the Rosary. I also kept my eyes closed to help me concentrate. As I was nearing the end of my prayers, I heard the door to the Chapel opening and I figured somebody must have either walked in or out. But then I heard this whispering noise in my left ear and it said, "Hey look Peggy is here, you should say hello to her before you leave". I immediately opened my eyes to see who that was whispering in my ears and found no one. So I looked towards the door, which was behind me, and saw a lady in her sixties walking in through the door and going towards the adoration register to sign in (volunteers are required to sign when they arrive to adore during their allotted time slots). Now I didn't know who that lady was as I was not a member of that parish, I only went there for Adoration. So I decided to ignore the voice I heard, I figured it must have been my imagination. 

As I walked towards the door to leave after finishing the Rosary, I felt curious to know the name of that woman, so I peeked at the adoration register. To my surprise, the last person signed in was Peggy, and after reading her last name I knew who she was. Peggy was the one who co-ordinated volunteers for adoration, and I have spoken to her one time over the phone in the past while signing up for volunteering, but never in person. And I immediately realized what had just happened - with one shot, God was answering two of my prayers. First, by telling me "Hey look Peggy is here", He was telling me that He was actually there and that He kept track of everybody that comes in, by their names. I could never explain the happiness in the voice I heard, it was like somebody talking out of pure joy when they see a loved one after a long interval. Second, by telling me "You should say hello to her before you leave", He was encouraging me to tackle my other problem - introducing myself to a stranger, and He wanted me to do it right in front of Him. 

So I decided to approach this lady and introduce myself to her. But I had nothing to tell her except hello and who I was. Then I had this crazy idea that if I would do that much, perhaps God would inspire her to say something to me. So I went to Peggy, said hello, and introduced myself. During that brief introduction, I knew one thing for sure that this lady had no clue who I was. She kept looking at me, eagerly waiting for me to say something after the introduction, and I had nothing to say. As I stood there thinking about the awkwardness of the situation, I begged God to interfere, but nothing. So I told her that I recently signed up to volunteer and just wanted to say hello, and immediately walked out of the Chapel. 

As I drove out of the parking lot, I began kicking myself for making a fool out of myself. Then I heard that voice again, it said "You should call Peggy tonight and tell her what happened". I was angry at first, I just embarrassed myself in front of a stranger and the voice was nowhere to be found when I needed it. After all that, I am being asked to call this woman again, "No way I am doing it", I said to myself. And I didn't call her that evening. The next day, I found an email from Peggy telling me that it was a pleasure to meet me in person finally and that she would have never known who I was unless I introduced myself to her. So I called her and told her everything that happened. She was speechless for a moment, then she said that she has been volunteering for adoration for a long time, and never had an experience even remote to it. She also said that being a co-ordinator is lot of work, but she did it because she firmly believed that Jesus Christ is present there in body and spirit. Before finishing the conversation she said that she was extremely happy to know that Jesus called her by her first name, like friends do. 

All during this wonderful experience, I felt so special because I thought Jesus took the time to answer my prayer, exactly the way I would have liked it to be answered. It took me a couple of days before I realized how foolish I was in thinking that I was the star of this story. I was never the star of the story, it was Peggy all along. I was a mere instrument in God's hands for rewarding Peggy's faithfulness, "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed" (John 20:29). Peggy believed in the Real Presence of Jesus and made time to adore Him, she could have done a lot of other things during that time - spending it with her family, spending it on herself. So God felt that it was time to reward her hard work, and He wanted her to know that in His book, she goes by the name Peggy, nothing more nothing less. And He used the curiosity of a seeker with a problem making friends to do it. In rewarding Peggy, Jesus also made me an ardent believer, with no trouble initiating a conversation with total strangers.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." (Matthew 7:7,8)

Heaven Is Real - Story of Dr. Eben Alexander

Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife

Oct 8, 2012 1:00 AM EDT

When a neurosurgeon found himself in a coma, he experienced things he never thought possible—a journey to the afterlife.

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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.

The brain is an astonishingly sophisticated but extremely delicate mechanism. Reduce the amount of oxygen it receives by the smallest amount and it will react. It was no big surprise that people who had undergone severe trauma would return from their experiences with strange stories. But that didn’t mean they had journeyed anywhere real.Although I considered myself a faithful Christian, I was so more in name than in actual belief. I didn’t begrudge those who wanted to believe that Jesus was more than simply a good man who had suffered at the hands of the world. I sympathized deeply with those who wanted to believe that there was a God somewhere out there who loved us unconditionally. In fact, I envied such people the security that those beliefs no doubt provided. But as a scientist, I simply knew better than to believe them myself.

In the fall of 2008, however, after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.I know how pronouncements like mine sound to skeptics, so I will tell my story with the logic and language of the scientist I am.

Very early one morning four years ago, I awoke with an extremely intense headache. Within hours, my entire cortex—the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human—had shut down. Doctors at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia, a hospital where I myself worked as a neurosurgeon, determined that I had somehow contracted a very rare bacterial meningitis that mostly attacks newborns. E. coli bacteria had penetrated my cerebrospinal fluid and were eating my brain.

When I entered the emergency room that morning, my chances of survival in anything beyond a vegetative state were already low. They soon sank to near nonexistent. For seven days I lay in a deep coma, my body unresponsive, my higher-order brain functions totally offline.

Then, on the morning of my seventh day in the hospital, as my doctors weighed whether to discontinue treatment, my eyes popped open. There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.

But that dimension—in rough outline, the same one described by countless subjects of near-death experiences and other mystical states—is there. It exists, and what I saw and learned there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a world where we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is not the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably positive, journey.

I’m not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body. Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history. But as far as I know, no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full seven days of my coma.

All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent. It took me months to come to terms with what happened to me. Not just the medical impossibility that I had been conscious during my coma, but—more importantly—the things that happened during that time. 

Toward the beginning of my adventure, I was in a place of clouds. Big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky.Higher than the clouds—immeasurably higher—flocks of transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamerlike lines behind them.

Birds? Angels? These words registered later, when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms.

A sound, huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wondered if the winged beings were producing it. Again, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that the joy of these creatures, as they soared along, was such that they had to make this noise—that if the joy didn’t come out of them this way then they would simply not otherwise be able to contain it. The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet.

Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place where I now was. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of those scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang. It seemed that you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it—without joining with it in some mysterious way. Again, from my present perspective, I would suggest that you couldn’t look at anything in that world at all, for the word “at” itself implies a separation that did not exist there. Everything was distinct, yet everything was also a part of everything else, like the rich and intermingled designs on a Persian carpet ... or a butterfly’s wing.

It gets stranger still. For most of my journey, someone else was with me. A woman. She was young, and I remember what she looked like in complete detail. She had high cheekbones and deep-blue eyes. Golden brown tresses framed her lovely face. When first I saw her, we were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface, which after a moment I recognized as the wing of a butterfly. In fact, millions of butterflies were all around us—vast fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the woods and coming back up around us again. It was a river of life and color, moving through the air. The woman’s outfit was simple, like a peasant’s, but its colors—powder blue, indigo, and pastel orange-peach—had the same overwhelming, super-vivid aliveness that everything else had. She looked at me with a look that, if you saw it for five seconds, would make your whole life up to that point worth living, no matter what had happened in it so far. It was not a romantic look. It was not a look of friendship. It was a look that was somehow beyond all these, beyond all the different compartments of love we have down here on earth. It was something higher, holding all those other kinds of love within itself while at the same time being much bigger than all of them.

Without using any words, she spoke to me. The message went through me like a wind, and I instantly understood that it was true. I knew so in the same way that I knew that the world around us was real—was not some fantasy, passing and insubstantial.

The message had three parts, and if I had to translate them into earthly language, I’d say they ran something like this:

“You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”

“You have nothing to fear.”

“There is nothing you can do wrong.”

The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief. It was like being handed the rules to a game I’d been playing all my life without ever fully understanding it.

“We will show you many things here,” the woman said, again, without actually using these words but by driving their conceptual essence directly into me. “But eventually, you will go back.”

A warm wind blew through, like the kind that spring up on the most perfect summer days, tossing the leaves of the trees and flowing past like heavenly water. A divine breeze. It changed everything, shifting the world around me into an even higher octave, a higher vibration.

Although I still had little language function, at least as we think of it on earth, I began wordlessly putting questions to this wind, and to the divine being that I sensed at work behind or within it.

Where is this place?

Who am I?

Why am I here?

Each time I silently put one of these questions out, the answer came instantly in an explosion of light, color, love, and beauty that blew through me like a crashing wave. What was important about these blasts was that they didn’t simply silence my questions by overwhelming them. They answered them, but in a way that bypassed language. Thoughts entered me directly. But it wasn’t thought like we experience on earth. It wasn’t vague, immaterial, or abstract. These thoughts were solid and immediate—hotter than fire and wetter than water—and as I received them I was able to instantly and effortlessly understand concepts that would have taken me years to fully grasp in my earthly life.

I continued moving forward and found myself entering an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting. Pitch-black as it was, it was also brimming over with light: a light that seemed to come from a brilliant orb that I now sensed near me. The orb was a kind of “interpreter” between me and this vast presence surrounding me. It was as if I were being born into a larger world, and the universe itself was like a giant cosmic womb, and the orb (which I sensed was somehow connected with, or even identical to, the woman on the butterfly wing) was guiding me through it.

Later, when I was back, I found a quotation by the 17th-century Christian poet Henry Vaughan that came close to describing this magical place, this vast, inky-black core that was the home of the Divine itself.

“There is, some say, in God a deep but dazzling darkness ...”

That was it exactly: an inky darkness that was also full to brimming with light.

I know full well how extraordinary, how frankly unbelievable, all this sounds. Had someone—even a doctor—told me a story like this in the old days, I would have been quite certain that they were under the spell of some delusion. But what happened to me was, far from being delusional, as real or more real than any event in my life. That includes my wedding day and the birth of my two sons.

What happened to me demands explanation.

Modern physics tells us that the universe is a unity—that it is undivided. Though we seem to live in a world of separation and difference, physics tells us that beneath the surface, every object and event in the universe is completely woven up with every other object and event. There is no true separation.

Before my experience these ideas were abstractions. Today they are realities. Not only is the universe defined by unity, it is also—I now know—defined by love. The universe as I experienced it in my coma is—I have come to see with both shock and joy—the same one that both Einstein and Jesus were speaking of in their (very) different ways.

I’ve spent decades as a neurosurgeon at some of the most prestigious medical institutions in our country. I know that many of my peers hold—as I myself did—to the theory that the brain, and in particular the cortex, generates consciousness and that we live in a universe devoid of any kind of emotion, much less the unconditional love that I now know God and the universe have toward us. But that belief, that theory, now lies broken at our feet. What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are more, much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my fellow scientists and to people at large.

I don’t expect this to be an easy task, for the reasons I described above. When the castle of an old scientific theory begins to show fault lines, no one wants to pay attention at first. The old castle simply took too much work to build in the first place, and if it falls, an entirely new one will have to be constructed in its place.

I learned this firsthand after I was well enough to get back out into the world and talk to others—people, that is, other than my long-suffering wife, Holley, and our two sons—about what had happened to me. The looks of polite disbelief, especially among my medical friends, soon made me realize what a task I would have getting people to understand the enormity of what I had seen and experienced that week while my brain was down.

One of the few places I didn’t have trouble getting my story across was a place I’d seen fairly little of before my experience: church. The first time I entered a church after my coma, I saw everything with fresh eyes. The colors of the stained-glass windows recalled the luminous beauty of the landscapes I’d seen in the world above. The deep bass notes of the organ reminded me of how thoughts and emotions in that world are like waves that move through you. And, most important, a painting of Jesus breaking bread with his disciples evoked the message that lay at the very heart of my journey: that we are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand and unfathomably glorious than the one I’d learned of as a child in Sunday school.

Today many believe that the living spiritual truths of religion have lost their power, and that science, not faith, is the road to truth. Before my experience I strongly suspected that this was the case myself.

But I now understand that such a view is far too simple. The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed. In its place a new view of mind and body will emerge, and in fact is emerging already. This view is scientific and spiritual in equal measure and will value what the greatest scientists of history themselves always valued above all: truth.

Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander, M.D. To be published by Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Copyright (c) 2012 by Eben Alexander III, M.D.

This new picture of reality will take a long time to put together. It won’t be finished in my time, or even, I suspect, my sons’ either. In fact, reality is too vast, too complex, and too irreducibly mysterious for a full picture of it ever to be absolutely complete. But in essence, it will show the universe as evolving, multi-dimensional, and known down to its every last atom by a God who cares for us even more deeply and fiercely than any parent ever loved their child.

I’m still a doctor, and still a man of science every bit as much as I was before I had my experience. But on a deep level I’m very different from the person I was before, because I’ve caught a glimpse of this emerging picture of reality. And you can believe me when I tell you that it will be worth every bit of the work it will take us, and those who come after us, to get it right.