Book Review - Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife

The problem with reading someone else's Near Death Experience (NDE) is that you want answers to your questions and of course you do not get them ! :) That about sums up my frustration with the book.

However cannot blame the author for this ! Isn't this inability to adequately describe the experience part of NDE stories ? Every time ? Most of the stories say the same thing - that it is impossible to communicate just how loved and cherished one feels in the utopia land !

I picked up this book for a change of pace. I have been reading only business books of late it seemed like so I wanted something very very different and this caught my eye. First of all - a neurosurgeon ? And NDE - felt like a perfect combination.

The main idea of this book is that each and everyone of us is loved. Truly loved by the divine.
( Call it what you will ).

Hmmmmm okay I guess.

I have read the scientific explanations of what NDE means and that it is, simplistically put - a phenomenon of the brain itself. I personally prefer to keep an open mind about this topic. So I have no need to rip into the author's theory of why his experience is special ! :) And I have no need to argue if NDEs are true or not !

In the book the author goes into coma for 7 days due to bacterial meningitis and recovers completely with no after effects and his thinking abilities are intact ! Amazing really ! He explains that in his brain - the neocortex that controls the cognitive part of the brain is dead so his experience is not a figment of imagination ( as that part of the brain switched off during his coma ! ) ; so his experience is unique.

I have no argument about the experience itself. I just found, it was not too very different from any other NDE story. I did feel that - he got no answers ( other than being told he was loved ) and his story about his recovery was unexplained.

• From what he wrote I thought the E. Coli bacteria physically ate part of his brain. What happened to that ?
• Are all his cognitive abilities intact ? So was he able to get back to his practice ?
• And, did he finally understand where he picked up the E. Coli bacteria from ?

I also could not understand the author's fixation with his birth family. Really !!!! Here is this lucky guy ( born to a teen mother ) who has been brought up by a family where he is loved, taken care of, goes on to become a neurosurgeon and he is pining for his birth family to an extent that he feels depressed for a time. Jeez why ???? Seemed ungrateful to me !

While he mentions different realms and myriad dimensions and that evil is a minuscule part of the entire universe the explanation somehow lacked conviction and felt incomplete.

My 2 cents - this is an emotional writing about an NDE experience but does not give adequate proof of heaven as the title suggests.

I better look for other books for a change of pace ! :)

To Remember Me ....

The best appeal for organ donation in my opinion ... I know I would like to end this way ....

To Remember Me - Robert N. Test

The day will come when my body will lie upon a white sheet neatly tucked under four corners of a mattress located in a hospital; busily occupied with the living and the dying. 

At a certain moment a doctor will determine that my brain has ceased to function and that, for all intents and purposes, my life has stopped. 

When that happens, do not attempt to instill artificial life into my body by the use of a machine. 

And don't call this my deathbed. 

Let it be called the bed of life, and let my body be taken from it to help others lead fuller lives. 

Give my sight to the man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby's face or love in the eyes of a woman. 

Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain. 

Give my blood to the teenager who was pulled from the wreckage of his car, so that he might live to see his grandchildren play. 

Give my kidneys to the one who depends on a machine to exist from week to week. 

Take my bones, every muscle, every fiber and nerve in my body and find a way to make a crippled child walk. 

Explore every corner of my brain. 

Take my cells, if necessary, and let them grow so that, someday a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her window. 

Burn what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow. 

If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weakness and all prejudice against my fellow man. 

Give my sins to the devil. 

Give my soul to God.

If, by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you. If you do all I have asked, I will live forever.