A Neurosurgeon’s Near-Death Experience With Reincarnation and Deep Time

In this NDE story, Dr. Eben Alexander recounts a seven-day coma, a musical ascent through realms of light, and teachings about life review, reincarnation, and what he calls the "Core".

Backstory

Dr. Eben Alexander spent decades in academic neurosurgery with a conventional scientific worldview. On November 10, 2008, he woke with a crushing headache and back pain. Hours later he was in deep coma, diagnosed with gram-negative meningoencephalitis, a form of bacterial meningoencephalitis that should have destroyed any capacity for dreaming or hallucination. Yet during that coma he underwent a vivid, structured near-death experience that he later described in detail and that attending physicians deemed extraordinary given his prognosis.

Eben Alexander:
“My brain was too damaged to have any kind of dream or hallucination. Yet there I was, moving through realms more real than this world, guided by a love that felt like home.”

From Earthworm Sight to a Gateway of Life

Eben describes first awakening in what he calls the earthworm’s eye view, a coarse, dark, rootlike realm without language or personal memory. An empty slate. A slowly spinning white light appeared, ringed with silvery and golden tendrils, carrying a melody. That music acted as a vehicle. He rose through a portal into a verdant Gateway Valley that felt “ultra real.”

In this Valley he found himself as a pinpoint of awareness on the wing of a butterfly, one among millions spiraling in formation. Below stretched a living meadow ringed by forests. Flowers pulsed with life. There was joy. There was a breeze he later called the divine wind, a palpable current of love. Beside him sat a young woman with sparkling blue eyes who never spoke in words yet communicated a message that would anchor the rest of his life: you are deeply loved and cherished forever. You have nothing to fear. You are cared for.

Eben Alexander:
“Her message arrived without language. It was telepathy and feeling at once: you are deeply loved and cherished forever. You have nothing to fear.”

In the sky above, choirs of orbs sang. Their anthems opened another passage upward, like a wormhole of sound. Here, music was more than vibration. It was architecture and motion, the key that allowed him to move between levels.

Life Review, Deep time, and the Core

At the next turning he watched the four-dimensional fabric of physical space and time compress. Another order of time emerged. He calls it deep time. Within that ordering he understood life reviews in a striking way. They are not a quick replay. They are a reliving from the emotional vantage point of those affected by one’s choices. The boundary of the separate self loosens, and accountability becomes insight rather than punishment. Free will matters. Choices matter. Relationships matter.

Through yet another portal he entered the Core, an infinite inky blackness saturated with a presence he names the divine. In that stillness he felt acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, and a love that seemed to be the ground of consciousness itself. He perceived the higher-dimensional multiverse collapsed into a teaching sphere. There he received images that disclosed reincarnation as a necessity of growth. Souls, he understood, cannot complete their ascent toward oneness in a single life. Multiple lifetimes are the school.

He uses the name “Alm” for this source, noting that human labels for God are secondary to the living reality of love. The core message he carried back is less about dogma and more about direct experience: the universe has a loving background, and consciousness is primary.

Oscillation and the power of sound

His journey was not a straight line. Each time he returned to the lower realm, he remembered the melody and used it like a rope to climb back into the Gateway Valley, then through the choirs to the Core. This cycling happened repeatedly. Eventually the melody stopped working. Stranded in the murk, he felt a wave of comfort rising from countless beings. Some held candles. Some lifted hands. He recognized this as prayer. It was a lesson about connection. Prayer and meditation bridge realms. Love is a conduit.

Return: Six Faces and a Ten Year Old Boy

As he approached reentry, six faces surfaced one by one. Later he would learn that five had been physically present near his hospital bed during the final day of coma. They served as anchors that helped him place the timing of his experience within the medical arc of that week. The last face was his ten-year-old son, Bond. Protected from grim updates for much of the week, Bond arrived just as doctors advised withdrawing antibiotics due to a two percent chance of survival and no realistic prospect of recovery. He pulled his father’s eyelids open and pleaded, Daddy, you are going to be okay. The words did not reach by ear or eye, but the feeling did. A responsibility to another soul. That is when he chose to come back.

He returned to the ICU with no memory of his life or family. Language rebuilt within hours and days. Childhood memories returned over weeks. His scientific knowledge returned over months. The physicians who later reviewed his case called his recovery unprecedented for that diagnosis and pointed to the near-death experience as key in his healing trajectory.

Reflections: Consciousness First, Love as Law

Alexander’s core claim after years of study and dialogue is simple. We live in a mental and spiritual universe where top-down causality operates. We share a single consciousness, and love is the binding force. Prayer and meditation are not wishful thinking. They are methods for aligning with that field and for connecting across veils, especially in grief. He argues that widespread illness in our culture is tied to a deficit of love for self and others, and that remembering our shared mind is both medicine and mission.

Eben Alexander:
“We are all in this together. The binding force of love with kindness, compassion, mercy, and acceptance are the absolute rules of our existence.”

Key takeaways

• Life review is experiential and relational. We feel our impact through others’ eyes, which teaches responsibility and growth.
• Reincarnation functions as a curriculum. One life is not enough for the soul’s evolution toward oneness.
• Love is the architecture. Music, prayer, and intention are practical tools for crossing thresholds and healing.

Curious about my writing process? Learn how I made this post.

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