Article December 3, 2012 Issue

Heaven is here

Madora Kibbe

I think it’s safe to assume that as long as there’s been life on earth there’s been the hope of heaven, or something more than this experience. Heaven is the great equalizer. It means no matter how long or short your life is, there’s a promise of something more, something better. Call it the afterlife, nirvana, or paradise; it’s natural for us to want life to go on.

How and where, then, does this happen? Near-death experiences such as the one described in Eben Alexander’s new book Proof of Heaven give us a compelling reason to believe that life is more about consciousness than anything else (see Newsweek, October 15, 2012, and ABC News Nightline, October 24).

One of the more interesting things Alexander writes (considering the long-held belief by most academics and medical practitioners that the spiritual can neither be quantified nor verified) is this: “My experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness, that human experience continues beyond the grave. More important, it continues under the gaze of a God who loves and cares about each one of us and about where the universe itself and all the beings within it are ultimately going.”