In today's world of electronic interconnectedness, it's amazing how some ideas seem to go 'Viral' and others don't. 

         I received word of this book via a group email from a friend, Trisha Aude, who was a friend of Helen Schucman and William Thetford, scribe and co-scribe respectively of A Course in Miracles. Aude also currently transcribes the messages of Jesus aka Rajpur ( Hindi for 'place of the prince') as He delivers them through Paul Tuttle.   

         Or was it a message I received from another dear friend who mentioned they have just purchased and read it via Kindle or a second friend who shared they had just finished it?

         The Universe was saying, "pay close attention," just as It did years ago when I kept hearing 'A Course in Miracles' mentioned over and over or recently when I learned of Anita Moorjani's NDE experience. It appears that this is another one of those 'wake up calls' from [y/our] BEING.

        And so it is!

         The most significant facets of this Near Death Experience [NDE] are:

• The person who experienced it was a skeptical neurosurgeon scientist.
• The CORTEX of his brain was not functioning, yet he experienced crystal clear clarity.
• He had a complete and total recovery from E. coli meningitis, which is a medical miracle.

         We may have seen television shows regarding NDE's which often begin with phenomenal claims of other worldly experiences and end with a scientific de-bunking using medical science of the brain to prove it was 'all in their head.' The evidence the scientists present is offered in an effort to show that there IS no 'scientific proof' that these experiences were anywhere but in the physical brain. This is exactly how Eben [Dr. Alexander] thought until his own first-hand experience of an NDE: 

"The more I read of the "scientific" explanations of what NDE's are, the more I was shocked by their transparent flimsiness. And yet I also knew with chagrin that they were exactly the ones that the old "me" would have pointed to vaguely if someone had asked me to "explain" what an NDE is."

         As I began reading this book and began reading some of the doctor's experiences during his seven day coma, I noticed a skepticism that was creeping in. I was asking myself, "Does this feel true or is this just another ploy to sell books and ride on the wave of NDE curiosity?"

         Although I am very open minded, I always employ my own internal 'TRUTH METER'. I ask, "Does this resonate with the Truth I know within as the Christ?" This experience Eben was relaying was very different from the NDE's I am used to reading and hearing about and that caused my comfort zone to be stretched. His NDE in the beginning wasn't all warm and fuzzy and I wondered if it were truly REAL.

         As A Course in Miracles tells us, "Nothing REAL can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the Peace of God."

         When Dr. Alexander began to speak about the REALITY of his experience, that's when my METER registered GREEN! I was getting a sense that the reality of the Interconnectedness and immensity of Spirit that Eben experienced could never be threatened.

"The word real expresses something abstract, and it's frustratingly ineffective at conveying what I'm trying to describe. Imagine being a kid and going to a movie on a summer day. Maybe the movie was good, and you were entertained as you sat through it. But then the show ended, and you filed out of the theater and back into the deep, vibrant, welcoming warmth of the summer afternoon. And as the air and the sunlight hit you, you wondered why on earth you'd wasted this gorgeous day sitting in a dark theater.

Multiply that feeling a thousand times, and you still won't be anywhere close to what it felt like where I was." P.39

         Dr. Eben Alexander, husband, father, neurosurgeon, contracted the extremely rare condition of E. coli meningitis completely out of the blue. Only 1 in 10 Million people will do the same. He made a full recovery one month after lying in a coma, near death, for seven days. This book is his best attempt at trying to share an experience which was truly beyond words.  

         As the book progresses, his story becomes an exquisite tapestry.  The experiences of his family and friends and doctors in the hospital, dealing with this grave E coli infection, are interwoven with a recounting of Eden's experience as a consciousness, with no connection to the past, in a 'place' where words could never do it justice.

         Even though it kept the attention of the reader by vacillating between the solid world that we know and the ephemeral, albeit Real world, that Eben was experiencing, it wasn't until toward the end of the book that I found myself grabbing for the tissues.

         Just as we have all experienced wanting to tell everyone we know about a great book we just read or a great movie we just saw, Eben wanted to share this discovery with his friends and family and most of all with his colleagues. And that's when he came up against 'himself.' He saw in their eyes his own disbelief; the disbelief he had once embraced.

"I was wildly --and naively--eager to share these experiences, especially with my fellow doctors. After all, what I'd undergone altered my long-held beliefs of what the brain is, what consciousness is, even what life itself means--and doesn't mean. Who wouldn't be anxious to hear of my discoveries?"

"Quite a few people, as it turned out. Most especially, people with medical degrees."           

         But more than just wanting his colleagues to look beyond the solid physical aspects of their experience, he also extended his Vision to our united situation on this planet. When he expressed these thoughts, my heart opened with recognition and empathy:

"For all of the successes of Western civilization, the world has paid a dear price in terms of the most crucial component of existence-our human spirit."

"The shadow side of high technology-modern warfare and thoughtless homicide and suicide, urban blight, ecological mayhem, cataclysmic climate change, polarization of economic resources-is bad enough."

"Much worse, our focus on exponential progress in science and technology has left many of us relatively bereft in the realm of meaning and joy, and of knowing how our lives fit into the grand scheme of existence for all eternity." P.152

"Without recovering that memory of our larger connectedness,  

and of the unconditional love of our Creator, we will always feel  

lost here on earth." P.171

         We are all so ensconced in the 3D that it seems we can't see the forest for the trees. I began to see Eben, much as he sees himself, as another facet of our infinitude who knows now that he is "Here to Heal". Eben recovered the memory of our larger connectedness.

"So I was communicating directly with God? Absolutely. Expressed that way, it sounds grandiose. But when it was happening, it didn't feel that way. Instead, I felt like I was doing what we can all do right now through various methods of prayer and deep meditation. Communicating with God is the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times."

"Omniscient, omnipotent, personal-and loving us without conditions. We are connected as One through our divine link with God." P.161 

         There is a part of Eben's life that I have not mentioned and it has everything to do with the message he received and more importantly the Being who brought the message to him. Now I leave that mystery of WHO that was for you to discover, dear reader, although the message itself is for all to know and to remember.

~*~ 

http://bitly.com/ProofofHeaven-Alexander 

http://bitly.com/Wormhole-LifeAfterDeath 

 ARTICLE  HERE  

*Eben Alexander, MD  has been an academic neurosurgeon for the past 25 years, including 15 years at the Brigham & Women's and the Children's Hospitals and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Visit him at www.lifebeyonddeath.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Reja Janaki Joy Green [Reja_CIMS] is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS] as well as the CIMS webmaster, newsletter editor and producer of the Daily Lesson Mailings. Reja facilitates the Course in Miracles study group in Omaha, and is in the 2nd year of the CMC Ministerial program.  

 

 

As a registered Yoga Instructor, Reja teaches Hatha Yoga from the perspective of A Course in Miracles and hosts several social media groups for those who share this journey. Reja currently resides with her loving husband Chris Green in Omaha, NE.    

 

          The history of the reception of A Course In Miracles by members of the Sonship has shown that quite a few students have been guided or drawn to using the Original Edition of The Course. It allows us to deepen our study and understanding and to enjoy the depth and beauty contained in the first historic compendium of The Course' content. It had been prepared for all of us by the author and scribes' team in the year 1972. This document which is known as the third in the 'trilogy' of the three cardinal versions of The Course, had only been seen by a rather small group of students until divine orchestration provided for its discovery in the Association for Research and Enlightenment [A.R.E] library on November 29^th, 1999, and its subsequent sharing among Course students. What a glorious gift in the very beginning of the new millennium, and what timing!

          The commonly acknowledged importance of the Trinitarian ontology which is so central to The Course's thought system, once again becomes apparent to the vigilant observer in the smallest detail. With the ur-handscript and the ur-typescript as the first two cardinal versions, the third cardinal version completes the fruit of the co-creative collaboration which was to bring the contemporary teachings of Christ Jesus, faithful to its initial transmission's content from Whole Mind to humanity, into the world.  

          The Course in Miracles Society CIMS has been instrumental in sharing the original Course ever since. The time had also come for translations into various languages, in order to provide more miracle workers worldwide with this beautiful compendium of essential Course teachings in their own respective native tongue. Quickly, the legal modalities for its distribution had also been taken care of, so that its popularity and therefore its usefulness is constantly increasing.

          Meanwhile, the work of scholars and instructors had helped many to find detailed information about the profound differences in form, and therefore in underlying content, when a line-by-line comparison with earlier presentations of The Course were conducted. At the same time the many testimonials shared among students spoke for the tremendous impact the Original Edition has had on the student's development regarding study and application. During my talks to groups of interested Course students in Germany, where we have started to share the translation and audio-book in an interactive manner, Guidance prompts me to cite from the Original Edition, chapter twenty-two, paragraph 22, in order to illustrate my personal, irresistible attraction to the third cardinal version and its content. Philosophically speaking, the author makes one of his unambiguous statements in the context of the underlying 'radical idealism' which, by the way, has been quite challenging for me for years:

"This course will be believed entirely or not at all.
For it is wholly true or wholly false
and cannot be but partially believed." (OrEd.Tx.22.22)

          Surely, as a student I would only be pretending to have reached a more advanced level of mind training than I have actually attained so far if I implied that I truly experience, already, absolutely everything the Course contains. Honesty obliges me to make this clear, yet what is also clear is that once I embark on a course and see its results, then gradual learning and step by step instructions are all geared towards some point of graduation. Hurdles and temporary learning failures are obviously part of the training, and also sufficiently and individually addressed.  

          A course which is honoring "beliefs that lead to progress" also requires solid faith in what is announced and yet to come. (i.e. OrEd.Mn.24.6). The point of graduation in time is also summarized in OrEd.Tx.4.11, where it is said: "Every good teacher hopes to give his students so much of his own thinking that they will one day no longer need him. This is the one real goal of the parent, teacher, and therapist."

          It always made a lot of sense to me to study and use The Course in its entirety and exactly as it has been prepared for us by the author and the scribes' team. This very much seems to be a necessary prerequisite for believing it entirely: learning what it truly says. When this realization had occurred, the next natural development to be observed was that I was not alone in this realization, and others had come to the same conclusion independently.  

          So, one of the shared aspects of the unified purpose in the Atonement had become to join efforts and talents in order to make the Original Edition more widely available, and in other languages for those who are not in a position to read and study it in its originally English language. The author's instruction to always 'listen, learn and do' applied also here.

          What was to be understood before taking on such a task? In chapter seven, paragraph 15 of the Text we are given a clear description of a translators' responsibilities:

 CONTINUED HERE