========================
From Reductive Materialism to Knowing the Primacy of Mind
~ A Neurosurgeon’s Remarkable Near-Death Experience
an evening with Eben Alexander III, MD
Friday October 7 , 2011
Stedman Auditorium on the Duke Center for Living Campus
7:30 -9:00 pm
Dr. Eben Alexander III has been an academic neurosurgeon for the last 25 years, including 15 years on staff at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He firmly believed in the conventional reductive materialist view of the world. This left little room for acknowledgement of the existence of parapsychological (or psi) phenomena.
He had dealt with hundreds of patients rendered comatose by trauma, brain tumors, infections, or stroke. None of them offered insight about their experience. Early on November 10, 2008, he became a comatose patient.
It remains obscure why he was overcome by a fulminant bacterial meningitis and was comatose, on a ventilator, in the Intensive Care Unit within hours. Bacterial meningitis provides the most efficient means of mimicking human death by selectively destroying the outer surface, or neocortex, which is the part of the brain that makes us human.
His physicians were stunned to find that the culprit was E. coli, a bacteria that almost never causes spontaneous meningitis in adults. After six days on triple antibiotics, showing no response and with little neurological function remaining, his physicians were close to giving up. Chances for meaningful recovery were very slim.
On day seven he started to come back, to the great surprise of his doctors. Like a newborn, he had no functioning language, nor knowledge of this world, of human culture, or of the loved ones surrounding him. Foggy-minded for several days, he steadily improved and began writing his recollections of the experience.
The most extraordinary part of his journey happened deep in coma. His earliest recollections were of strange, hyper-realistic experiences in an awesome realm. They involved no recall of his life before coma. How was it possible for that rich, vivid experience to originate in his badly infected brain, especially with his neocortex shut down?
Reports of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) have been limited in their value of elucidating what occurs after actual death. The treasure trove is in teasing out what death is like, not near-death. In the midst of his week in coma, he had an extraordinary spiritual experience, one that irrefutably proved the primacy of the realm of mind and consciousness.
He has been blessed with a complete recovery. In analyzing his experience, including the scientific possibilities and grand implications, he envisions a profound reconciliation of modern science and spirituality as a natural product. The keystone is in the nature of consciousness, and what his experience revealed about the relationship of mind and reality.
Enlightened science will acknowledge the primacy of mind and the existence of psi phenomena. Thence on to pursue the grander elucidation of truth, and the fundamental nature of reality and existence. His will be a critical addition to the understanding of NDEs, the spiritual realm, and psi phenomena in general. He is writing a book about this most powerful, life-changing story, which should be available in 2012.
For more information, go to http://www.lifebeyonddeath.net/.
Eben Alexander III graduated from UNC 1976 with a BA in Chemistry, graduated from Duke University Medical School in 1980, and completed his neurosurgical residency training at Duke in 1987. He was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School from 1988 through 2001, achieving the rank of Associate Professor of Surgery (Neurosurgery) by 1994. He then directed the Movement Disorders Surgery Program (Neurosurgery) at UMass Medical School. He moved to Virginia in 2006, where he continued in neurosurgery, including work as director of global research for the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation in Charlottesville, VA.
Members $15.00
Non-members $20.00
We do expect this event to be sold-out.
Please purchase your tickets in advance
to ensure your seat at this special talk.
====================================================
As I have mentioned before - I have at least ONE event listed in the databanks of the Rhine Institute.
====================================================
======================================
Thanks for being a Clocker today.
Need More? - http://thedebrisfield.blogspot.com/ - Featured In The UDCC Sidebar along with other Great Content.
========================
========================
