Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander’s NDE convinced him we are more than bodies, and death is not the end of consciousness. Neurologist Sachs gave a naturalistic, scientific explanation, and St. Francis of Assisi reminds us, “In dying we are born to eternal life.”

1. Transcending Death
During COVID-19
by Paul H. Carr
ARE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES
“PROOF OF HEAVEN”?

2. There are only two things that are certain:
DEATH & TAXES
Ecclesiastes 3 (500 – 250 BCE)(NIV)
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot….
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from
embracing….
God has put eternity in their hearts.
COVID-19 has made me more immediately aware of
the reality of my own inevitable death.

3. OUTLINE: ARE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES (NDE) “PROOF OF HEAVEN”?
1. Neurosurgeon Eban Alexander MD, after his NDE became convinced
that we are more than bodies and death is not the end of
consciousness. He experienced God as Divine Presence (3min video)
3. Neurologist Oliver Sachs, MD, author of Hallucinations, had a
naturalistic, scientific explanation of Alexander’s NDE.
4. Cardiologist Pim van Lommel, MD studied NDE in 100s of
patients, which he published in the medical journal Lancet..
Consciousness can even be experienced separate from the body.
2. Theologian Paul Tillich’s God as the Ground of all Being and as
Spiritual Presence.
5. Raymond Moody, MD, PhD, coined the term NDE and
concludes they are “visits to another dimension of reality.”
Originally a skeptic, after 50 years of research, NDEs are real.
6. Tillich’s & Whitehead’s theology of eternal life.

4. A SCIENTIST’S CASE FOR THE AFTERLIFE
In the fall of 2008, academic neurosurgeon
Eben Alexander, MD had a near death
experience. Before this, he had thought he
understood what happened to the brain when
people are near death. He had always believed
there were good scientific explanations for the
heavenly out-of-body journeys described by
those who narrowly escaped death.
However, after seven days in a coma during
which his brain showed complete absence of
neural activity in all but the primitive portions,
he experienced something so profound that it
gave him a scientific reason to believe in
consciousness after death. This included
meeting his deceased sister whom he never
knew he had. He was able to verify this later.

5. During his NDE Alexander recalled: “Because I
forgot my mortal identity, I was granted access
to the true cosmic being I really am ( and we
all are).”
“Did you see God?”
Oprah Winfrey interviews Eben Alexander, MD
(4 min)
He experienced an ineffable Divine Presence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQH_X1JByks
1

6. After God spoke to Moses from the burning bush,
He asked, “Who are you.”
God answered, “I am. “
I am being itself.

7. The Hebrew word ‫אדמה‬ (adamah) is the feminine form of ‫אדם‬ meaning "ground" (see
Genesis 2:7). “And the Lord God formed Adam from the
dust of the ground”

8. God is not a being but the Ground of All Being.
Being includes personal relations
Existential Theologian

9. The conclusion of Alexander’s book
Proof of Heaven.
“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.”

10. A hallucinatory journey to the bright light and beyond, a full-blown NDE, can occur in
20 or 30 seconds, even though it seems to last much longer. Subjectively, during such
a crisis, the very concept of time may seem variable or meaningless. The one most
plausible hypothesis in Dr. Alexander's case, then, is that his NDE occurred not
during his coma, but as he was surfacing from the coma and his cortex was
returning to full function. It is curious that he does not allow this obvious and
natural explanation, but instead insists on a supernatural one.
Hallucinations, whether revelatory or banal, are not of supernatural origin; they are
part of the normal range of human consciousness and experience. This is not to say
that they cannot play a part in the spiritual life, or have great meaning for an
individual. Yet while it is understandable that one might attribute value, ground
beliefs, or construct narratives from them, hallucinations cannot provide evidence
for the existence of any metaphysical beings or places. They provide evidence only
of the brain's power to create them.
For Sacks, Alexander’s NDE was not “Proof of Heaven.” However, Sacks would, I
believe, be open to the possibility “to see Heaven in a wildflower .”
SEEING GOD IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
The Atlantic December 12, 2012
By OLIVER SACKS MD
is a professor of neurology at NYU School of Medicine. His most recent
book is Hallucinations.

11. Dr . Sach’s “Metaphysical Beings”?
The SOURCE of the COURAGE TO BE ( by Paul Tillich) is the
“GOD ABOVE GOD” OF THEISM & NATIONALISM
Examples of the God who must be transcended :
1.“The God of theism who is a being beside other
beings, (hence finite and provable), an invincible tyrant
who controls and determines everything and allows us no
freedom.”
2.The rhetorical-political abuse of the name of God:
S. Hussein: “We will win because God is on our side.”
vs. Abraham Lincoln: “The question is not whether God is
on our side but, Are we on God’s side?”

12. Eben Alexander, MD, cites the following in PROOF of HEAVEN
Nobel Laureate Sir John C Eccles critique of
Reductionism in “relating the brain and consciousness.”
I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly
demeaned by scientific reductionism with its claim in
promissory material materialism to account eventually
for all the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal
activity. This belief must be classified as superstition…
We must recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls
existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with
bodies and brains existing in the material world.

13. Consciousness Beyond life:
The Science of the Near-Death Experience
By Cardiologist Pim van Lommel, MD
Pim van Lommel designed a research study to investigate NDE
under the controlled environment of a cluster of hospitals with a
medically trained staff.
For more than 20 years van Lommel systematically studied such
near-death experiences in a wide variety of hospital patients who
survived a cardiac arrest.
In 2001, he and his fellow researchers published his study on near-
death experiences in the renowned medical journal The Lancet. The
article caused an international sensation as it was the first
scientifically rigorous study of this phenomenon.
Now Van Lommel offers an in-depth presentation of his results and
theories in this book that has already sold over 125,000 copies in
Europe.

14. Van Lommel provides scientific evidence that the near-death
phenomenon is an authentic experience that cannot be
attributed to imagination, psychosis, or oxygen deprivation. He
further reveals that after such a profound experience, most
patients' personalities undergo a permanent change.
In van Lommel's opinion, the current views on the relationship
between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians,
philosophers, and psychologists are too narrow for a proper
understanding of the phenomenon.
Van Lommel shows that our consciousness does not always
coincide with brain functions and that, remarkably and
significantly, consciousness can even be experienced separate
from the body.

15. Dr. Moody coined term NDE and concludes they are “visits to another dimension of reality.”
Originally a skeptic, his is convinced they are real after 50 years of research.
https://youtu.be/lunfjnCt5ic

16. 1
.
A Strange Sound: A buzzing, or ringing noise, while having a sense of being dead.
2
.
Peace and Painlessness: While people are dying, they may be in intense pain, but as soon as they leave the body the pain vanishes and
they experience peace.
3
.
Out-of-Body Experience: The dying often have the sensation of rising up and floating above their own body while it is surrounded by a
medical team, and watching it down below, while feeling comfortable. They experience the feeling of being in a spiritual body that appears
to be a sort of living energy field.
4
.
The Tunnel Experience: The next experience is that of being drawn into darkness through a tunnel, at an extremely high speed, until
reaching a realm of radiant golden-white light. Also, although they sometimes report feeling scared, they do not sense that they were on the
way to hell or that they fell into it.
5
.
Rising Rapidly into the Heavens: Instead of a tunnel, some people report rising suddenly into the heavens and seeing the Earth and the
celestial sphere as they would be seen by astronauts in space.
6
.
People of Light: Once on the other side of the tunnel, or after they have risen into the heavens, the dying meet people who glow with an
inner light. Often they find that friends and relatives who have already died are there to greet them.
7
.
The Being of Light: After meeting the people of light, the dying often meet a powerful spiritual being whom some have identified as God,
Jesus, or some religious figure.
8
.
The Life Review: The Being of Light presents the dying with a panoramic review of everything they have ever done. That is, they relive
every act they have ever done to other people and come away feeling that love is the most important thing in life.
9
.
Reluctance to Return: The Being of Light sometimes tells the dying that they must return to life. Other times, they are given a choice of
staying or returning. In either case, they are reluctant to return. The people who choose to return do so only because of loved ones they do
not wish to leave behind.
Dr. Raymond Moody's Nine Elements of the Near-Death Experiences. www.lifeafterlife.com

17. Raymond Moody, M.D. , Ph. D., author of Life after Life
(1975), which sold 12 million copies. (23 min)
Dr. Moody coined the term Near Death Experience
(NDE) and compiled their 9 characteristics.
Dr. Moody was originally skeptical of NDEs. He came
from a non-religious family and was convinced during his
50 years of research,
He believes NDEs are visions of another world we
enter after death.
”Visits to another dimension of reality.”
NDEs involve an overview of one’s entire life:
The happiest life is that of love.

18. 20
Donald P. Merrifield, S. J., (1928 – 2010)
Former President, Loyola Marymount Univ.
•The mind-body problem is philosophic and
ontological not scientific. There is a spiritual
dimension beyond the physical. If matter were
an abstraction removed from its holistic
spiritual ground and only governed by natural
laws, then we humans would be nothing but
biological machines.
• There is spiritual core totally at home and incarnate in
the brain though not emerging from its structure but
from its being. If this is an attempt to resurrect the old
Thomastic soul, the form of the body, so be it.

19. My friendship with
Donald Paul Merrifield, SJ
developed when we were taking
MIT theoretical physics courses.
--Before classes started, I
would tell him about
existentialist theologian Paul
Tillich’s course at Harvard for
my minor requirement. He
would smile understandingly.
--Don completed his PhD in
theoretical physics in 1962
--After 30 years of separation,
he invited for breakfast at this
Jesuit residence at Loyola
Marymount
Fall 1958
Photo I took of Don in front of
Harvard U Memorial Church.

20. 20
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

21. It is giving we receive,
It is in pardoning we are
pardoned,
It is dying we are
born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi’s
Prayer1182 – 1226

22. “A time to be born and a time to die…
God has put Eternity in their hearts. Ecc. 3:11.”
Paul Tillich in his sermon “The Eternal Now” wrote,
“Our lives are limited in time but fulfilled by our participation in
what is Eternal.”
For Tillich, the Eternal is not endless time, but a dimension above
time, that enables us to perceive events as happening in temporal
sequence.
For Tillich, “life after death” is “returning to the Eternal from which
we came.”
Similarly Thoreau states, “The pen is soon destroyed but the
poem lives on.”

23. Whitehead & Hartshorne’s process
philosophy- theology has a di-polar God:
Primordial and Consequent.
(1)The primordial-transcendent pole is
God’s creation of everything, including
potential events.
(2) Consequent-immanent pole
comprehends and experiences the world,
including humans, and incorporates them
into God’s own process.
We have “eternal life” by participating in
the consequent, immortal, eternal “mind of
God.” We are remembered in the “mind of
God.”
“Now I know in part, then shall I know even
as I am fully known.” St. Paul in I Cor.13:12
Charles Hartshorne’s
(1897-2000)
pan-en-theistic
Process Theology.

24. Whitehead’s Process Theology
(2) Consequent-immanent pole
“Om (God) understands and sympathizes with our human
situation more profoundly and personally than we can
even understand.” (Eben Alexander)
God does not control but grants freedom. Air molecules
are free to form natural hurricanes and humans commit
murder, as when Cain killed his brother Abel.
God’s creative aim lures the universe towards the goal of
greater beauty.

25. SUMMARY: NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES (NDE) INDICATE A SPIRITUAL DIMENSION
• “While the neurons of my cortex were stunned into inactivity, my
brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension
of the universe.” Eben Alexander MD
• Van Lommel, MD. Consciousness does not always coincide with
brain functions, consciousness can be experienced apart from the
body. Present concepts are too limiting.
• Raymond Moody, MD. PhD coined the term NDE and concludes
they are “visits to another dimension of reality.” Originally a
skeptic, after 50 years of research he is convinced they are real.
• There is a spiritual dimension beyond the physical.
D. Merrifield, S.J.,PhD
• “Our lives are limited in time but fulfilled in the eternal
dimension.”Adapted from PaulTillich.

26. June 24
Transcending Death during COVID-19:
Are scientific worldviews converging with religious ones?
Our lives are limited in time but fulfilled by eternity.
Mathematical relations are eternal.
Is God a mathematician?
NDEs: Another dimension of reality.
Is the material world the ultimate, ontological reality?
What about energy, and spirit?