The day after Alexander awakened, Eben IV connected with his father via Skype and was alarmed by his slow, incoherent speech. Two days later, Alexander was transferred to the Neuroscience Step-down Unit. His sisters stayed at his bedside, as he refused to sleep, instead rambling about various things, including the internet and space stations. They told him childhood stories, which gradually sparked his recognition.

Markers of his personality returned. He joked with his sisters and showed ingrained social graces with a visiting friend. A neurologist suggested that his euphoric mood might be a sign of brain damage, but Alexander, still unaware of how close he had been to death, felt well. His returning humor signaled to his family that he was coming back.

After moving to outpatient rehab, Alexander called Eben IV and, upon hearing that he was working on a neuroscience paper for a class, tried to help. However, Alexander struggled to retrieve basic neuroscience terminology, realizing how far he had to recover. Soon after, large blocks of his medical and scientific knowledge returned intact.

His memories from the NDE, however, remained crisp. He shared his experience with physician colleagues. They congratulated him on his survival but dismissed his account as a product of cortical damage. The contrast between the clarity of his NDE memories and the slow return of his medical knowledge prompted him to investigate further.

Alexander returned home two days before Thanksgiving. Eben IV drove through the night to surprise him, arriving just after six o’clock in the morning. Though Alexander was thin, Eben IV noticed a new clarity and presence in his father.

Eben IV advised him to write down his experience before reading other accounts of NDEs to preserve the integrity of his memories, and Alexander agreed. For the next six weeks, he rose early to write, recording his journeys through the Gateway and Core from a chair in his den.

As he wrote, Alexander contrasted his ICU psychosis (which he identified as a brain phenomenon) with his NDE. He concluded that the NDE was far more real than the material world. He struggled to reconcile this with his scientific training, which taught that the neocortex generates all experience.

After finishing his record, Alexander read NDE literature and found recurring elements that he experienced: passage into a vivid realm, angelic guardians, timelessness, and overwhelming love. He noted that others also struggled with language to describe these experiences.

He reviewed his medical data and concluded that since his neocortex had been verifiably offline, standard materialist explanations for his experience were untenable. He recalled previously dismissing Raymond Moody’s book Life After Life because many NDEs occur during cardiac arrest, which does not mean that the brain is inactive. Reading it now, he saw parallels to his own experience.

People reacted with astonishment. A physician who saw him in the ER joked that he must have a twin. Alexander realized that he must integrate his scientific identity with his new one to share his story effectively.

He recalled a story from a former patient’s mother about her gravely ill daughter’s dream of her father, which included specific details she could not have known. At the time, Alexander had considered it a psychological manifestation of grief. After his coma, however, he recognized it as a common pattern of “dream confirmation” and understood that the mother was sharing a miraculous occurrence that she believed was true, not seeking comfort.

Alexander sorted potential audiences for his story into three groups: believers, unbelievers, and the undecided. He then considered and rejected leading neuroscientific hypotheses for his NDE. He rejected clinical explanations, such as drug effects or a “DMT dump” (in which the pineal gland releases a form of dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, to the brain in response to stress), as all would require a functional neocortex.

He likewise discounted “reboot phenomenon” (the disjointed piecing together of memory fragments upon reawakening) because his recollections were too intricate and anchored by real-time actions of friends and family in the physical world. He visited an old friend, a leading neuroscience chair, who recounted his own father’s terminal lucidity. Alexander’s account helped his friend accept what he had witnessed. Alexander points to terminal lucidity as a phenomenon that modern neuroscience cannot explain.

In December 2008, Alexander attended church with Holley. Reverend Michael Sullivan invited him to light the Advent wreath candle.

The church’s music and art triggered memories of his journey. The sound of the organ reminded him of the underworld, the stained-glass windows evoked the Gateway, and a painting of Jesus resonated with the Core. He concluded that religious symbols are attempts to portray the spiritual realities he visited. During Communion, he wept as he reconnected with the divine presence.

Within two months, Alexander’s neurosurgical knowledge fully returned, demonstrating an unprecedented recovery. Reflecting on quantum mechanics, he notes David Chalmers’s 1996 book The Conscious Mind, which defined the “hard problem of consciousness” (151) by examining how the brain produces consciousness, how it relates to behavior, and how the real and perceived worlds interrelate.

Alexander now believes that consciousness likely underlies physical reality. Using Hemi-Sync meditation, he learned to access deep states and experienced moments of unity with the divine.

Alexander cites one of his favorite Einstein quotes: “I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be” (162). After his recovery, he reflected on how he now had a fuller understanding of this quote.

He then realized that his NDE lacked certain aspects of other reported NDEs, such as meeting deceased figures from his time on Earth, and that these aspects all centered on one difference between his NDE and others: During his NDE, he had no memory of his earthly identity. This created a lingering doubt about the authenticity of the realms he had visited.

Four months after his coma, Alexander’s biological sister, Kathy, sent him a photograph of their deceased biological sister, whom he had never met. He studied her blue eyes and warm smile.

The next morning, after reading an account of an NDE similar to his, he looked at the photo again and recognized the face as that of the girl who rode with him on the butterfly wing. This revelation resolved his last doubt about his experience, unifying the scientist and the experiencer. It confirmed the core message of eternal connectedness and unconditional love, and he accepted his duty to tell the story.