Includes bibliographical references (pages 177-182) and index.

The pain -- The hospital -- Out of nowhere -- Eben IV -- Underworld -- An anchor to life -- The spinning melody and the gateway -- Israel -- The core -- What counts -- An end to the downward spiral -- The core -- Wednesday -- A special kind of NDE -- The gift of forgetting -- The well -- N of 1 -- To forget, and to remember -- Nowhere to hide -- The closing -- The rainbow -- Six faces -- Final night, first morning -- The return -- Not there yet -- Spreading the news -- Homecoming -- The ultra-real -- A common experience -- Back from the dead -- Three camps -- A visit to church -- The enigma of consciousness -- A final dilemma -- The photograph -- Appendix A. Statement by Scott Wade, M.D. -- Appendix B. Neuroscientific hypotheses I considered to explain my experience.

Thousands of people have had near-death experiences, but scientists have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those scientists. A highly trained neurosurgeon, Alexander knew that NDEs feel real, but are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress. Then, Dr. Alexander's own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion--and in essence makes us human--shut down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. Then, as his doctors considered stopping treatment, Alexander's eyes popped open. He had come back. Alexander's recovery is a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere. While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of super-physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the universe itself. Alexander's story is not a fantasy. Before he underwent his journey, he could not reconcile his knowledge of neuroscience with any belief in heaven, God, or the soul. Today Alexander is a doctor who believes that true health can be achieved only when we realize that God and the soul are real and that death is not the end of personal existence but only a transition. -- Cover, p. [4].