KING: Today on "Larry King Now,"
Dr. Eben Alexander, the neurosurgeon and once skeptic
on his journey into heaven while in a deep coma.
ALEXANDER: And I do have a story to tell to people
that I think will help us
understand our existence much better.
KING: How he came back to life
just as doctors were ready to pull the plug.
ALEXANDER: On the seventh day,
when my ten-year-old son came running in the room
and held my eyes open and he's telling me,
"Daddy, you're gonna be okay. Daddy, you're gonna be okay,"
There was something about the connection between us.
I knew I had to come back to be there for him.
KING: Plus...
ALEXANDER: I mean, there's no question
in my mind that it was the all-powerful creator
of everything.
KING: That's next on "Larry King Now."
Welcome to "Larry King Now."
For the past 25 years, Dr. Eben Alexander
has been a highly-trained neurosurgeon,
and he would've been the first
to discount a near-death experience
as a product of a brain under extreme stress.
That is, until he found himself in a deep coma,
fighting a rare and deadly illness.
As doctors debated whether to stop his treatment,
he journeyed beyond this world,
where he communicated with the divine source
of the universe, God, and came back to life.
He writes of it, this incredible journey,
in the book "Proof of Heaven,"
a major best seller it's been
since the first day it was published
and continues to rank high on the best-seller list.
First, why did you choose neurosurgery?
ALEXANDER: Well, my father was a neurosurgeon,
and he had been a combat surgeon
in the Pacific in World War II,
and then he came back, and it was really the only thing
he wanted to do with his life.
His father had been a general surgeon,
but my dad wanted to do neurosurgery,
and, for me, he was really a saint,
and I wanted to follow in his footsteps.
KING: I interviewed Dr. White,
who was the first cardiologist, who treated Eisenhower,
and he said if he was starting today,
he would choose neurology because of the brain.
Would you agree that the brain is still the great mystery?
ALEXANDER: I think so very much.
I mean, the brain, for me, holds so much mystery,
and yet, it's so rewarding
to uncover the workings of the mind and the brain.
KING: Were you a believer before this amazing episode?
ALEXANDER: Well, I had grown up--
as I said, my father was very much a scientist,
but he also had a very strong spiritual base.
KING: He gave you a religious name.
ALEXANDER: He gave me a very-- KING: Eben, right?
ALEXANDER: Eben, right.
It is a biblical name,
but actually, that goes back several generations.
And I wanted to believe in an afterlife,
but, as a youth, I knew that science
was the pathway to truth,
and I must say, over many years working in neurosurgery,
it was very hard for me to see how any kind of consciousness
could survive after death of the body and brain.
KING: So would you say that you were
religious, not religious, did you think--?
ALEXANDER: Well, I would say-- KING: Did you pray to God?
ALEXANDER: I was skeptical,
and because of other events in my life,
for eight years leading up to my coma,
I had absolutely no faith in a loving, personal God,
and no belief in prayer.
KING: Agnostic. ALEXANDER: I was agnostic.
KING: What happened?
By the way, what was the illness that you had?
ALEXANDER: Well, I very suddenly,
4:30 in the morning, came down with symptoms
of acute bacterial meningitis,
and in fact, they found out on the second day,
when I was already deep in coma,
that it was E. coli,
and spontaneous E. coli meningitis in adults
is less than 1 in 10 million per year,
almost always happens in newborns,
very rare beyond the age of three months,
and it was an extremely rare entity,
and my doctors never found out why I got it.
KING: What were the symptoms?
ALEXANDER: Well, it started with severe back pain
at about 4:30 in the morning,
and that rapidly evolved to headache.
And, really, within about three or four hours,
I was so kind of out of my mind
that I lapsed into coma, and I don't remember anything
of the next seven days from this earth.
KING: And when you woke up, what?
ALEXANDER: Well, deep in the middle of coma,
I had lost all of my memories
and knowing of my personal life on this earth,
and was originally in a very kind of
monotonous pounding realm underground,
kind of like being in dirty Jell-O,
and I was there for a very long time,
and, again, having no words, no memory of life,
it was not as foreboding as it sounds now to describe it.
And then, from that, I was rescued
by this beautiful melody of white light
that came towards me slowly spinning,
and opened up as a gateway into a lovely ultra-real realm,
very verdant, fertile, flowers blossoming, and--
KING: Did you know you were Eben Alexander?
ALEXANDER: No, I had no memory
of my personal life or even, really, of humans on earth.
I had no language, no words.
All that was gone, which I attribute to the meningitis
because it was a perfect way to get rid
of any kind of human experience.
KING: So is there-- you would know, I guess--a God?
ALEXANDER: I would say, "Absolutely."
There is an all-loving, infinitely powerful,
loving source right at the core of all.
KING: He or she?
ALEXANDER: God has no gender.
This God is not even something
I could physically describe because--
KING: So you didn't see a God.
ALEXANDER: No, but I experienced that God
outside of the whole universe,
and, I mean, there's no question in my mind
that it was the all-powerful creator of everything.
KING: Did it speak?
ALEXANDER: Not in words, but in pure concepts,
and when I was in that realm, actually,
what I call in the book "the Core,"
that was beyond that lovely valley.
The valley's kind of a gateway,
and of course, a lot of people
who return from these journeys,
their personal and cultural kind of mind and brain
do an overlay that kind of colors the facts
of the story they bring back.
But what people miss is
that there's actually a very real realm
that gives origin to all that,
and the conceptual flow from that being
were beautiful revelations about so much,
not just about the existence of the physical universe,
but so much about our souls and what we're doing here.
KING: What-- were you in body?
Were you a spirit? What were you?
ALEXANDER: I had no image of body at any--
KING: So you were traveling. ALEXANDER: I was traveling.
I was a piece of awareness, and initially--
KING: So you couldn't feel an arm or a leg?
ALEXANDER: No, no, not during the entire journey
did I have any kind of awareness of body.
KING: So you were a spirit? ALEXANDER: Yes.
KING: Why should--
By the way, you called it "Proof of Heaven."
There is a heaven, a place?
ALEXANDER: There is a spirit realm
of our eternal conscious spirit or soul
where we all dwell and, in fact, become one,
and at the deepest core, are one with that all-creative,
infinitely powerful, and totally loving,
unconditionally loving creator of all,
and I think a lot of people would call that a heaven.
KING: When we come back, Dr. Alexander will tell us
about a mysterious young woman that he met in heaven.
Stay with us.
KING: We're back with Dr. Eben Alexander.
"A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife."
The book, major best seller, is "Proof of Heaven."
We'll talk about this woman in a moment.
Do you think the attraction of your book,
the attention it's gotten,
is because we all want to live--
we all want to know there's an afterlife,
and hearing it from you makes us feel good?
ALEXANDER: Well, I think the real magic
behind my story is the fact
that I had a very severe meningitis,
and certainly, all my training in neurosurgery before
would've told me that I should've had no experience
and remembered nothing.
I mean, maybe a little trace of something
with a case of meningitis in general,
but not with a severe, week-long comatose meningitis
with all my neurologic function gone.
KING: If one of your patients
had told this story to you, would you have bought it?
ALEXANDER: Before my coma,
I would've assured them that--
KING: They were hallucinating?
ALEXANDER: I would've told them the dying brain
does many strange things, and that's what this is.
I would've said it was a hallucination,
but, of course, the issue is most people
do not come back from this severe meningitis.
That's very rare.
KING: Doctor, how do you know it wasn't a halluci--
how do you know that?
ALEXANDER: It's mainly because having meningitis
that's so severe that you get driven into coma
within a few hours
and then having a neurologic exam.
Even at the beginning, my cortical function was gone.
My neurologic exams showed
that I had very little cortical function initially--
KING: Brain-dead?
ALEXANDER: Not brain-dead
because I still had some brain stem function
even though my brain stem was also badly damaged.
I mean, even the first day,
my extraocular movements, the movements of the eyes,
my eyes were askew.
They didn't move in response to any stimuli,
and the pupils were fixed.
I mean, there were a lot of things showing
that I had a severe infection
not just of my cortex, the part that makes us human,
but also my brain stem.
KING: So you never thought to yourself,
"I was hallucinating"?
ALEXANDER: No, it could not have been a hallucination.
There was far too much. KING: Who's the woman?
ALEXANDER: The woman, a beautiful woman
that I saw the first time that I went up in that valley--
KING: In physical form.
ALEXANDER: Absolutely, a lovely woman.
I could remember her face and the way she was dressed,
the way she was sitting.
She never said a word to me,
but she looked at me with the warmest smile
and these deep, sparkling blue eyes.
KING: Were you in a room?
ALEXANDER: No, we were on the wing of a butterfly.
KING: Come on. ALEXANDER: Absolutely.
KING: You're starting to lose it, Doc.
ALEXANDER: Well, totally, absolutely
on the wing of a butterfly with millions
of other butterflies around us.
Now, important to point out,
you know, this is not a butterfly
where some etymologist could actually
tell us the genus and species, because in that realm,
butterfly is just an approximate word to tell you
what this was all about, and I must say
I was reassured when I found Elisabeth Kubler-Ross,
and when she went through the death camps
right after the end of World War II,
saw butterflies etched in the walls.
KING: I interviewed her. ALEXANDER: Really?
Now, that would be a wonderful interview.
KING: Oh, I've interviewed a lot of people
that have talked about this subject.
It is a fascinating subject. ALEXANDER: It is.
KING: But you wouldn't have bought
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross before this episode, right?
ALEXANDER: No, no, I would not have,
but I now know much more about consciousness
and about our spirit and soul than I did before.
KING: So do you now believe this happens to everybody?
ALEXANDER: Yes. KING: Everybody?
ALEXANDER: I think that's one reason
that the book is kind of taking off,
is it reminds souls of something they know
because I make points in there about consciousness
and points about our spirit or soul
as being an eternal part of us, and it doesn't--
consciousness does not come from the physical brain.
The physical brain actually works
to reduce our consciousness that we have when freed up,
and it's a reducing valve, and it kind of brings it
down to a level, which is what we need, you know,
for survival in this realm.
KING: Where is the soul? ALEXANDER: The soul is--
All soul is really connected as one
with that universal, divine, all-loving consciousness
that's the creator of everything,
but the boundaries disappear as we get closer to that.
KING: The book is "Proof of Heaven."
Next, how Dr. Alexander came back to life
and when his doctors were ready to end his treatment
and what they said.
That's next.
KING: We're back with Dr. Eben Alexander.
By the way, on our next program,
we will have the doctor stay with us and a panel
to discuss all of this, including a skeptic.
The book is "Proof of Heaven."
One other thing about the woman--
She was your sister? ALEXANDER: Yes.
This beautiful woman, whose face I remembered so well,
and I cycled through that realm several times,
and she was always there, giving me
that wonderful, loving comfort of unconditional love,
and, yet, when I came back from all this,
I was very mystified especially as I read more and more
about near-death experiences-- where was my father?
If I had scripted this, he would be the one
I would want to be there, and he was not there,
and who was this beautiful woman
who I saw over and over again, and, yet,
I remembered her face so well.
I knew I'd never seen her in my life,
and in fact, this is kind of a spoiler alert
for anyone reading the book,
but I found out four months after my coma
when I was sent a picture
of my birth sister who I'd never met.
I was adopted and had never met
my birth sister, who passed over
two years before I found out she even existed.
KING: She died.
ALEXANDER: She had died in 1998.
I found out about my birth family,
and my parents had actually gotten married.
I find that out in 2000,
but it was not a good time to come back in their lives,
and that is part of why my spiritual life deteriorated,
and from that point on, I believed there could be no God
and no answer to prayer.
KING: Do you think all this is a miracle?
ALEXANDER: I think my medical recovery
was certainly a miracle,
but I think we're-- this has shown me a lesson
about each and every one of us and about our souls,
that, I think, in all senses of the word,
is certainly a miracle,
but it belongs to all of us.
KING: How were you cured?
ALEXANDER: Um, I really--
My doctors would tell you
that my having a full recovery after seven days in coma
from bacterial meningitis
is a medical miracle that they cannot explain.
I was originally trying to write this up
as a neuroscientific report of what it's like in coma,
and I didn't like going there to it being a miracle
because I just thought I was very fortunate,
but over time, as I came to realize
what really happened and of course
realized how sick I was, I do realize
that it was a medical miracle that I came back--
KING: Did they treat you with drugs, what did they--?
ALEXANDER: They treated me
with three very powerful antibiotics
from the very beginning.
I mean, it was very good treatment,
very appropriate treatment--
KING: Must've worked.
ALEXANDER: Well, the only thing about that
is I was not responding, really,
for about the first three or four days to those antibiotics,
KING: But then it did-- ALEXANDER: And even then,
only my white count started to turn around,
but I was showing no neurologic signs of coming back,
and that's why, by the sixth day,
my doctors were talking with my family
about stopping the antibiotics
because, usually, at that point,
there's just no way you're gonna have somebody come back
and have quality of life.
KING: Why'd you come back, do you think?
ALEXANDER: Well, I do know that the thing
that kind of forced me to come back very strongly
was when, on the seventh day,
when my ten-year-old son-- his name is Bond--
and he had just heard from the doctors
that they were talking about stopping the antibiotics,
and this was just time to forget about it,
and he came running in the room and held my eyes open
and was, you know, looking at my eyes like this,
and he's telling me, "Daddy, you're gonna be okay.
Daddy, you're gonna be okay. Daddy, you're gonna be okay,"
as if he said it enough, it would work.
And I remember this soul,
and, so far, in my entire journey,
the advantage I had was nothing mattered.
I had no attachments, and it could all end.
So what?
All of a sudden, now,
here's this ten-year-old.
I didn't even remember what a father and son were.
I didn't recognize him, but there was something
about the connection between us.
When I saw him pleading with me,
I knew I had to come back.
I had to 'cause I somehow had to come back
to be there for him.
KING: You think this happens to everybody when they die?
ALEXANDER: I think that all of our souls are eternal.
That's my belief,
that all of our souls are eternal
and that we actually come to a much richer knowing
when we leave this body.
KING: When we return,
how did Dr. Alexander's colleagues
react to this experience?
We'll find out, and then on our next show,
we'll have a panel.
We'll be back right after the break.
KING: We're back. Okay, Doctor.
What did the doctors say?
ALEXANDER: Well, you know, initially,
as I would volunteer any of this incredible journey,
which was the only thing I remembered
when I first came back, and then over four weeks,
my kind of family memories, and then neuroscience came back,
but, initially, I would say a few words about this,
and they'd kind of pat me on the back
and look at me like, "Yeah, well, when the brain is dying,
all kinds of weird things can happen,"
So I learned early on, "Well, don't take it as truth.
"Just--it was more real than-- too real to be real,
"but, you know, try and understand it
as a brain-based mechanism."
So I was writing a paper as a neuroscientist
trying to explain hyperreality,
an incredibly rich world, how that could happen
in a brain, especially one so sick
that it's soaking in pus,
and the whole neocortex is shut down.
KING: Have any of your colleagues come around?
ALEXANDER: I would say that they have,
that those, especially if, you know, 10 or 15 minutes
discussing consciousness and what we call the hard problem
of consciousness, which is the fact
that no one on earth has a clue
how consciousness could emerge from the physical brain,
and the enigma of quantum mechanics,
which is just another way of saying
that consciousness is far more profound
than our kind of materialistic thinking gives it credit.
KING: This has obviously changed your life.
ALEXANDER: It's changed everything about my life.
KING: Do you still practice neurosurgery?
ALEXANDER: Well, I've not operated
because, mainly, I feel like you operate on people,
you have to be there 24 and 7 for 'em,
and you can imagine that, once I realized
what this book meant and the story meant,
I've gotten much more into involvement there
and in presentations,
but I do still see patients occasionally.
Haven't been able to do that for a few months
just from time constraints.
KING: Are you on the lecture circuit?
ALEXANDER: I am giving talks,
and I hope to give more talks to the medical community,
especially medical students and help open them up
to consciousness and what it is.
KING: Do you want to go back to that heavenly world?
ALEXANDER: Well, I do believe,
I, finally, after several years, came to realize
that I think this did happen for a reason,
and I do have a story to tell to people
that I think will help us
understand our existence much better,
and that's why I'm back here.
I have no fear of death.
I know that when the time is right,
that I'll make that transition again.
It's kind of like getting rid of this costume
and this act of the play.
KING: What do you think it all means?
What does it-- Okay, all right.
You go back, you don't know you're Dr. Alexander.
You're just experiencing all this.
You have no feeling of body.
You see this beautiful woman.
You later discover it's your sister.
Okay, so she had passed on before you.
She didn't speak to you.
ALEXANDER: No, but she did pass--
she showed me that unconditional love.
She said, "You are loved, you are cherished dearly forever."
KING: Didn't say it, though.
ALEXANDER: Oh, she didn't have to.
In that realm, nobody says a word.
KING: So you don't have to eat.
ALEXANDER: You get the concepts directly.
KING: And then for eternity, that's what's happening?
ALEXANDER: No, we're cycling through.
We actually come back here for a reason.
You know, this realm, we have a veil
that prevents us from seeing that realm in its full glory,
although we all get to see it when we go back there.
KING: Well, you came back.
What about someone who's murdered
or someone who dies of cancer?
ALEXANDER: Well, reincarnation is a huge part of it, and--
KING: You believe in that.
ALEXANDER: Well, there's no way
I can see any of this working without--
the eternity of our souls
implies that reincarnation.
KING: So you don't believe,
as some faiths do, that you go somewhere,
and you meet all the people you knew before, and you talk,
and you live another life and go on and on.
You think you come back to this earth.
ALEXANDER: Well, we do that with our--
with those same souls that we've known.
In other words, we have soul mates,
and we keep coming back in.
I look at it as schools of flying fish,
and, just remember, the clock is not ticking
out there like it is down here
because that's completely different from earth time,
and that explains so much about this,
but we come back in with our soul mates
and go through these lives,
learn the lessons that we have to learn.
It's all about being a conduit
for that unconditional love of the creator,
for the creation, and showing the compassion
and showing the forgiveness in this very imperfect realm
with all the evil and kind of injustice
that is so rampant here.
But that's what we're here for,
and illness, disease, hardships--
those are all about facing up to hurdles.
They're opportunities for learning and growth,
and there is a big purpose to it all.
KING: Extraordinary. Thank you, Doctor.
ALEXANDER: Well, thank you.
KING: I thank our guest Dr. Eben Alexander.
His book "Proof of Heaven" is in stores everywhere,
and he'll be back with us in a major panel discussion
with others on our next show,
and you can find me on Twitter @KingsThings.
See you at the next program, next time.