Ultimate Mystery Trip

          When our children were little, I would often put them in the car and announce that I was taking them on a “Mystery Trip”.  And no matter how much they questioned where we were going, all I would say was, “You’ll see when we get there.”  This tradition of “Mystery Trips’ has continued with our grandchildren and it is something they seem to enjoy.  Very often, the excitement that is generated in the idea of going on a “Mystery Trip” is as great as or greater than the actual final destination itself.

              In several religions, we have been assured by a deity of the greatest “Mystery Trip” of all, which is where we will go after our life here on earth has ended.  The idea of the heaven that awaits us generates much excitement in our hearts and minds.  However, we all must admit that heaven is the ultimate mystery that may be waiting for us.

              The proof of the existence of a heaven has been debated for centuries by philosophers and theologians.   Scientists, those who use facts rather than faith to make conclusions, have often been wary to admit to the existence of a heaven because of the inability to find conclusive facts that would substantiate heaven’s existence.

               A neurosurgeon, Dr. Eben Alexander, wrote a book, entitled, “Proof of Heaven”, in which he describes his journey into the Afterlife.  As a neurosurgeon, Dr. Alexander did not believe in the phenomenon of near death experiences.  He thought he understood what happened to the brain when people are near death, and 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, caused by a rare bacterial meningitis, and during which the human part of his brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, Dr. Alexander experienced something so profound that it gave him a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.

              Dr. Alexander writes, “There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in a 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.

              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, streamer like 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.

              For most of my journey, someone else was with me.  A woman.  Without using any words, she spoke to me.  The message went through me like a wind, and I instantly understood that it was true.  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

              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.”

              Dr. Alexander did regain consciousness and has attempted to explain what happened to him and, when explaining his experience to his medical friends, has received looks of polite disbelief.  He writes, “One of the few places I didn’t have trouble getting my story across was in 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.”

          Many of us look forward with anticipation and excitement for the Mystery Trip that awaits us.  In the meantime, we should live our lives here on earth with the knowledge and the comfort that we are loved unconditionally and that we may be going to an afterlife that exceeds our dreams and expectations.