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Prologue

A person must see things as they are, and not as he wants to see them.

Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)


When I was little, I often flew in my dreams. It usually happened like this. I dreamed that I was standing in our yard at night and looking at the stars, and then suddenly I separated from the ground and slowly rose up. The first few inches of lift into the air happened spontaneously, without any input on my part. But I soon noticed that the higher I rise, the more the flight depends on me, or more precisely, on my condition. If I was wildly jubilant and excited, I would suddenly fall down, hitting the ground hard. But if I perceived the flight calmly, as something natural, then I quickly flew higher and higher into the starry sky.

Perhaps partly as a result of these dream flights, I subsequently developed a passionate love for airplanes and rockets - and indeed for any flying machine that could again give me the feeling of the vastness of the air. When I had the opportunity to fly with my parents, no matter how long the flight was, it was impossible to tear me away from the window. In September 1968, at the age of fourteen, I gave all my lawn-mowing money to a glider flying class taught by a guy named Goose Street at Strawberry Hill, a small grassy "airfield" near my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I still remember how excitedly my heart was pounding when I pulled the dark red round handle, which unhooked the cable connecting me to the tow plane, and my glider rolled out onto the tarmac. For the first time in my life, I experienced an unforgettable feeling of complete independence and freedom. Most of my friends loved the thrill of driving for this reason, but in my opinion, nothing could compare to the thrill of flying a thousand feet in the air.

In the 1970s, while attending college at the University of North Carolina, I became involved in skydiving. Our team seemed to me like something like a secret brotherhood - after all, we had special knowledge that was not available to everyone else. The first jumps were very difficult for me; I was overcome by real fear. But by the twelfth jump, when I stepped out the door of the plane to free-fall for over a thousand feet before opening my parachute (my first skydive), I felt confident. In college, I completed 365 skydives and logged more than three and a half hours of free-fall flying time, performing mid-air acrobatics with twenty-five comrades.

And although I stopped jumping in 1976, I continued to have joyful and very vivid dreams about skydiving.

I liked jumping most of all in the late afternoon, when the sun began to set on the horizon. It is difficult to describe my feelings during such jumps: it seemed to me that I was getting closer and closer to something that was impossible to define, but which I desperately longed for. This mysterious “something” was not an ecstatic feeling of complete solitude, because we usually jumped in groups of five, six, ten or twelve people, making various figures in free fall. And the more complex and difficult the figure was, the greater the delight that overwhelmed me.

On a beautiful fall day in 1975, the guys from the University of North Carolina and some friends from the Parachute Training Center and I gathered to practice formation jumps. On our penultimate jump from a D-18 Beechcraft light aircraft at 10,500 feet, we were making a ten-person snowflake. We managed to form this figure even before the 7,000-foot mark, that is, we enjoyed the flight in this figure for eighteen whole seconds, falling into a gap between the masses of high clouds, after which, at an altitude of 3,500 feet, we unclenched our hands, leaned away from each other and opened our parachutes.

By the time we landed, the sun was already very low, above the ground. But we quickly boarded another plane and took off again, so we were able to capture the last rays of the sun and make one more jump before it completely set. This time, two beginners took part in the jump, who for the first time had to try to join the figure, that is, fly up to it from the outside. Of course, it's easiest to be the main jumper, because he just has to fly down, while the rest of the team has to maneuver in the air to get to him and lock arms with him. Nevertheless, both beginners rejoiced at the difficult test, as did we, already experienced parachutists: after training the young guys, we could later make jumps with even more complex figures.

Out of a group of six people who had to depict a star over the runway of a small airfield located near the town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, I had to jump last. A guy named Chuck walked in front of me. He had extensive experience in aerial group acrobatics. At an altitude of 7,500 feet the sun was still shining on us, but the street lights below were already shining. I've always loved twilight jumping and this one was going to be amazing.

I had to leave the plane about a second after Chuck, and in order to catch up with the others, my fall had to be very rapid. I decided to dive into the air, as if into the sea, upside down, and fly in this position for the first seven seconds. This would allow me to fall almost a hundred miles an hour faster than my companions, and be on the same level with them immediately after they began to build a star.

Usually during such jumps, after descending to an altitude of 3,500 feet, all skydivers unclasp their arms and move as far apart as possible. Then everyone waves their hands, signaling that they are ready to open their parachute, looks up to make sure that no one is above them, and only then pulls the release rope.

- Three, two, one... March!

One by one, four parachutists left the plane, followed by Chuck and me. Flying upside down and picking up speed in free fall, I was elated to see the sun set for the second time that day. As I approached the team, I was about to skid to a stop in mid-air, throwing my arms out to the sides—we had suits with fabric wings from the wrists to the hips that created powerful drag as they opened fully at high speed.

But I didn't have to do that.

As I fell vertically towards the figure, I noticed that one of the guys was approaching it too quickly. I don't know, maybe the rapid descent into a narrow gap between the clouds frightened him, reminding him that he was rushing at a speed of two hundred feet per second towards a giant planet, barely visible in the gathering darkness. One way or another, instead of slowly joining the group, he rushed towards it like a whirlwind. And the five remaining paratroopers tumbled randomly in the air. Besides, they were too close to each other.

This guy left behind a powerful turbulent wake. This air current is very dangerous. As soon as another skydiver hits him, the speed of his fall will rapidly increase, and he will crash into the one below him. This in turn will give both paratroopers a strong acceleration and throw them towards the one even lower. In short, a terrible tragedy will occur.

I twisted my body away from the randomly falling group and maneuvered until I was directly above the “spot,” the magical point on the ground above which we would open our parachutes and begin our slow two-minute descent.

I turned my head and was relieved to see that the other jumpers were already moving away from each other. Chuck was among them. But to my surprise, it moved in my direction and soon hovered right below me. Apparently, during the erratic fall, the group passed 2,000 feet faster than Chuck expected. Or maybe he considered himself lucky, who might not follow the established rules.

“He shouldn’t see me!” Before this thought had time to flash through my head, a colored pilot chute jerked upward behind Chuck’s back. The parachute caught Chuck's one-hundred-and-twenty-mile-per-hour wind and blew him toward me while pulling the main chute.

From the moment the pilot chute opened over Chuck, I had only a split second to react. In less than a second I was about to crash into his main parachute and, most likely, into himself. If at such a speed I run into his arm or leg, I will simply tear it off and at the same time receive a fatal blow. If we collide bodies, we will inevitably break.

They say that in situations like this, everything seems to happen much slower, and this is true. My brain registered the event, which took only a few microseconds, but perceived it like a slow-motion movie.

As soon as the pilot chute rose above Chuck, my arms automatically pressed to my sides, and I turned upside down, bending slightly. The bending of the body allowed me to increase my speed a little. The next moment, I made a sharp jerk to the side horizontally, causing my body to turn into a powerful wing, which allowed me to rush past Chuck like a bullet just before his main parachute opened.

I rushed past him at over one hundred and fifty miles per hour, or two hundred and twenty feet per second. It is unlikely that he had time to notice the expression on my face. Otherwise he would have seen incredible amazement on him. By some miracle, I managed to react in a matter of seconds to a situation that, if I had time to think about it, would have seemed simply insoluble!

And yet... And yet I dealt with it, and as a result, Chuck and I landed safely. I had the impression that, faced with an extreme situation, my brain worked like some kind of super-powerful computer.

How did it happen? During my more than twenty years as a neurosurgeon—studying, observing, and operating on the brain—I have often wondered about this question. And in the end I came to the conclusion that the brain is such a phenomenal organ that we are not even aware of its incredible abilities.

Now I already understand that the real answer to this question is much more complex and fundamentally different. But to realize this, I had to experience events that completely changed my life and worldview. This book is dedicated to these events. They proved to me that, no matter how wonderful the human brain is, it was not the brain that saved me on that fateful day. What came into play the second Chuck's main parachute began to open was another, deeply hidden side of my personality. She was able to work so instantly because, unlike my brain and body, she exists outside of time.

It was she who made me, a boy, rush into the sky. This is not only the most developed and wise side of our personality, but also the deepest, most intimate. However, for most of my adult life I did not believe this.

However, now I believe, and from the following story you will understand why.

* * *

My profession is neurosurgeon.

I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976 with a degree in chemistry and received my doctorate from Duke University School of Medicine in 1980. For eleven years, including medical school, then a residency at Duke, as well as work at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, I specialized in neuroendocrinology, studying the interaction between the nervous system and the endocrine system, which consists of glands that produce various hormones and regulate the activities of body. For two of those eleven years, I studied the pathological response of blood vessels in certain areas of the brain when an aneurysm ruptures, a syndrome known as cerebral vasospasm.

After completing my postgraduate training in cerebrovascular neurosurgery in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, I spent fifteen years teaching at Harvard Medical School as an Associate Professor in Neurology. Over the years, I have operated on a huge number of patients, many of whom were admitted with extremely severe and life-threatening brain diseases.

I paid great attention to the study of advanced treatment methods, in particular stereotactic radiosurgery, which allows the surgeon to locally target a specific point in the brain with radiation beams without affecting surrounding tissue. I took part in the development and use of magnetic resonance imaging, which is one of the modern methods for studying brain tumors and various disorders of its vascular system. During these years, I wrote, alone or with other scientists, more than one hundred and fifty articles for major medical journals and gave presentations on my work more than two hundred times at scientific and medical conferences around the world.

In a word, I devoted myself entirely to science. I consider it a great success in life that I managed to find my calling - learning the mechanism of functioning of the human body, especially the brain, and healing people using the achievements of modern medicine. But just as important, I married a wonderful woman who gave me two wonderful sons, and although work took up a lot of my time, I never forgot about my family, which I always considered another blessed gift of fate. In a word, my life was very successful and happy.

However, on November 10, 2008, when I was fifty-four, my luck seemed to change. A very rare illness left me in a coma for seven days. All this time, my neocortex - the new cortex, that is, the upper layer of the brain hemispheres, which, in essence, makes us human - was turned off, did not function, practically did not exist.

When a person's brain turns off, he also ceases to exist. In my specialty, I heard many stories from people who had unusual experiences, usually after cardiac arrest: they allegedly found themselves in some mysterious and beautiful place, talked with deceased relatives, and even saw the Lord God himself.

All these stories, of course, were very interesting, but, in my opinion, they were fantasies, pure fiction. What causes these “otherworldly” experiences that people who have had near-death experiences talk about? I didn’t claim anything, but deep down I was sure that they were associated with some kind of disturbance in the functioning of the brain. All our experiences and ideas originate in consciousness. If the brain is paralyzed, switched off, you cannot be conscious.

Because the brain is a mechanism that primarily produces consciousness. The destruction of this mechanism means the death of consciousness. With all the incredibly complex and mysterious functioning of the brain, this is as simple as two. Unplug the cord and the TV will stop working. And the show ends, no matter how much you liked it. That's pretty much what I would have said before my own brain shut down.

During the coma, my brain didn’t just work incorrectly—it didn’t work at all. I now think that it was a completely non-functioning brain that led to the depth and intensity of the near-death experience (NDE) that I suffered during the coma. Most stories about ACS come from people who have experienced temporary cardiac arrest. In these cases, the neocortex is also temporarily switched off, but does not suffer irreversible damage - if within four minutes the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain is restored using cardiopulmonary resuscitation or due to spontaneous restoration of cardiac activity. But in my case, the neocortex showed no signs of life! I was faced with the reality of the world of consciousness that existed completely independent of my dormant brain.

My personal experience of clinical death was a real explosion and shock for me. As a neurosurgeon with extensive experience in scientific and practical work, I, better than others, could not only correctly assess the reality of what I experienced, but also draw the appropriate conclusions.

These findings are incredibly important. My experience has shown me that the death of the body and brain does not mean the death of consciousness, that human life continues after the burial of its material body. But most importantly, it continues under the watchful gaze of God, who loves us all and cares about each of us and about the world where the universe itself and everything that is in it ultimately goes.

The world where I found myself was real - so real that compared to this world, the life we ​​lead here and now is completely illusory. However, this does not mean that I do not value my current life. On the contrary, I appreciate her even more than before. Because now I understand its true meaning.

Life is not something meaningless. But from here we are not able to understand this, at least not always. The story of what happened to me while I was in a coma is filled with the deepest meaning. But it is quite difficult to talk about it, since it is too alien to our usual ideas. I can't shout about her to the whole world. However, my conclusions are based on medical analysis and knowledge of the most advanced concepts in the science of the brain and consciousness. Having realized the truth underlying my journey, I realized that I simply had to tell about it. Doing this in the most dignified manner became my main task.

This does not mean that I left the scientific and practical activities of a neurosurgeon. It’s just that now that I have the honor to understand that our life does not end with the death of the body and brain, I consider it my duty, my calling to tell people about what I saw outside my body and this world. It seems especially important to me to do this for those who have heard stories about cases similar to mine and would like to believe them, but something prevents these people from completely accepting them on faith.

My book and the spiritual message contained in it are addressed primarily to them. My story is incredibly important and completely true.

Chapter 1
Pain

Lynchburg, Virginia

I woke up and opened my eyes. In the darkness of the bedroom, I peered at the red numbers of the digital clock - 4:30 a.m. - an hour earlier than I usually get up, considering that I have a ten-hour car ride from our home in Lynchburg to my place of work - the Specialized Ultrasound Surgery Foundation in Charlottesville. Holly's wife continued to sleep soundly.

I worked as a neurosurgeon in the big city of Boston for about twenty years, but in 2006 I moved with my entire family to the mountainous part of Virginia. Holly and I met in October 1977, two years after we graduated from college at the same time. She was getting her Master of Fine Arts degree, I was in medical school. She dated my ex-roommate Vic a couple of times. One day he brought her to meet us, probably he wanted to show off. As they left, I invited Holly to come over anytime, adding that she didn’t have to be with Vic.

On our first real date, we went to a party in Charlotte, North Carolina, a two and a half hour drive there and back. Holly had laryngitis, so I did most of the talking along the way. We were married in June 1980 at St. Thomas's Episcopal Church in Windsor, North Carolina, and shortly thereafter moved to Durham, where we rented an apartment in the Royal Oaks building. 1
Royal Oaks - royal oaks (English).

Since I was a surgical fellow at Duke University.

Our house was far from royal, and I didn’t even notice any oak trees. We had very little money, but we were so busy—and so happy—that we didn't care. On one of our first spring vacations, we loaded a tent into the car and set off for a road trip along the Atlantic coast of North Carolina. In the spring, in those places there were apparently all sorts of biting midges, and the tent was not a very reliable refuge from its formidable hordes. But we still had fun and interesting. One day, while swimming off Ocracoke Island, I came up with a way to catch blue crabs, which quickly fled, afraid of my legs. We took a big bag of crabs to the Pony Island Motel where our friends were staying and grilled them. There was enough food for everyone. Despite strict savings, we soon found that we were running out of money. At this time we were visiting our close friends Bill and Patty Wilson, and they invited us to a game of bingo. For ten years, Bill went to the club every Thursday on Thursday, but never won. And Holly played for the first time. Call it beginner's luck or providence, but she won two hundred dollars, which to us was the same as two thousand. This money allowed us to continue our journey.

In 1980 I received my M.D. and Holly received hers and began working as an artist and teaching. In 1981, I performed my first solo brain surgery at Duke. Our first child, Eben IV, was born in 1987 at the Princess Mary Maternity Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne in Northern England, where I was doing postgraduate work in cerebrovascular diseases. And the youngest son Bond - in 1988 at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Eben Alexander

Proof of heaven. The true story of a neurosurgeon's journey to the afterlife

PROOF OF HEAVEN: A NEUROSURGEON’S JOURNEY INTO THE AFTERLIFE


© 2012 by Eben Alexander, M.D.


A person must rely on what is, and not on what supposedly should be.

Albert Einstein

As a child, I often dreamed that I was flying.

It usually happened like this: I was standing in the yard, looking at the stars, and suddenly the wind picked me up and carried me upward. It was easy to get off the ground by itself, but the higher I rose, the more the flight depended on me. If I was overexcited, gave in too much to the sensations, then I would fall to the ground with a bang. But if I managed to remain calm and cool, I took off faster and faster - straight into the starry sky.

Perhaps it was from these dreams that my love for parachutes, rockets and airplanes grew - for everything that could return me to the transcendental world.

When my family and I flew somewhere on a plane, I was glued to the window from takeoff until landing. In the summer of 1968, when I was fourteen years old, I spent all the money I earned mowing lawns on gliding lessons. I was taught by a guy named Goose Street, and our classes took place in Strawberry Hill, a small grassy “airfield” west of Winston-Salem, the town where I grew up. I still remember how my heart was pounding as I pulled the big red handle, released the tow rope that was holding my glider to the plane, and banked toward the airfield. Then for the first time I felt truly independent and free. Most of my friends got this feeling while driving a car, but three hundred meters above the ground it is felt a hundred times more acutely.

In 1970, already in college, I joined the parachuting club team at the University of North Carolina. It was like a secret brotherhood - a group of people doing something exceptional and magical. The first time I jumped, I was scared to death, and the second time I was even more scared. It was only on the twelfth jump, when I stepped out the door of the plane and flew more than three hundred meters before the parachute opened (my first jump with a ten-second delay), that I felt in my element. By the time I graduated from college, I had completed three hundred and sixty-five jumps and almost four hours of free fall. And although I stopped jumping in 1976, I still dreamed of long jumps, as clearly as in reality, and it was wonderful.

The best jumps happened in the late afternoon, when the sun was setting on the horizon. It's hard to describe how I felt: a feeling of closeness to something that I couldn't quite name, but that I'd always been missing. And it’s not a matter of solitude—our jumping had nothing to do with loneliness. We jumped five, six, and sometimes ten or twelve people at a time, forming figures in free fall. The larger the group and the more complex the figure, the more interesting it is.

One wonderful autumn day in 1975, the university team and I gathered at our friend's parachute center to practice group jumps. Having worked hard, we finally jumped out of the Beechcraft D-18 at an altitude of three kilometers and formed a “snowflake” of ten people. We managed to form a perfect formation and fly for more than two kilometers, fully enjoying the eighteen-second free fall in a deep crevice between two tall cumulus clouds. Then, at an altitude of one kilometer, we dispersed and went our separate ways to open our parachutes.

It was already dark when we landed. However, we hurriedly jumped into another plane, quickly took off and managed to catch the last rays of the sun in the sky to make a second sunset jump. This time two beginners jumped with us - it was their first attempt to participate in figure building. They had to join the figure on the outside, rather than being at its base, which is much easier: in this case, your task is simply to fall down while others maneuver towards you. It was an exciting moment both for them and for us, experienced parachutists, because we were creating a team, sharing experience with those with whom we could form even larger figures in the future.

I was to be the last to join the six-pointed star we were about to build over the runway. small airport near Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. The guy who was jumping in front of me was named Chuck, and he had a lot of experience in free-fall formations. At an altitude of more than two kilometers, we were still bathed in the rays of the sun, and on the ground below us the street lights were already blinking. Jumping at dusk is always amazing, and this jump promised to be simply amazing.

- Three, two, one... let's go!

I fell out of the plane just a second after Chuck, but I had to hurry to catch up with my friends when they began to form a figure. For about seven seconds I was flying upside down like a rocket, which allowed me to descend at a speed of almost one hundred and sixty kilometers per hour and catch up with the others.

In a dizzying flight upside down, almost reaching critical speed, I smiled as I admired the sunset for the second time that day. When approaching the others, I planned to use the “air brake” - fabric “wings” that stretched from our wrist to our hip and sharply slowed down our fall if deployed at high speed. I spread my arms to the sides, spreading my wide sleeves and slowing down in the air flow.

However, something went wrong.

Approaching our “star”, I saw that one of the newcomers had accelerated too much. Perhaps falling between the clouds frightened him - made him remember that at a speed of sixty meters per second he was approaching a huge planet, half-hidden by the thickening darkness of the night. Instead of slowly clinging to the edge of the "star", he crashed into it, so that it crumbled, and now my five friends were tumbling in the air at random.

Usually, in group long jumps at a height of one kilometer, the figure breaks up, and everyone scatters as far as possible from each other. Then everyone gives the go-ahead signal with his hand as a sign of readiness to open the parachute, looks up to make sure that there is no one above him, and only after that he pulls the ripcord.

But they were too close to each other. The skydiver leaves behind an air trail of high turbulence and low pressure. If another person gets caught in this trail, his speed will immediately increase and he may fall onto the one below. This, in turn, will give acceleration to both of them, and the two of them can crash into the one who is under them. In other words, this is exactly how disasters happen.

I twisted and flew away from the group so as not to get caught in this tumbling mass. I maneuvered until I was directly above the “spot,” the magical point on the ground over which we would open our parachutes for a leisurely two-minute descent.

I looked back and felt relieved - the disoriented paratroopers were moving away from each other, so that the deadly pile of malas was gradually dissipating.

However, to my surprise, I saw Chuck heading towards me and stopping right below me. With all this group acrobatics, we passed the six hundred meter mark faster than he expected. Or maybe he considered himself lucky, who did not have to scrupulously follow the rules.

“He must not see me,” - before this thought had time to flash through my head, a bright pilot chute flew out of Chuck’s backpack. He caught an air current rushing at a speed of almost two hundred kilometers per hour and shot straight at me, pulling out the main dome behind him.

From the moment I saw Chuck's pilot chute, I literally had a split second to react. Because in a moment I would have fallen onto the opened main dome, and then - very likely - onto Chuck himself. If I had hit his arm or leg at that speed, I would have torn them off completely. If I had fallen right on top of him, our bodies would have shattered into pieces.

People say that time slows down in such situations, and they are right. My mind tracked what was happening microsecond by microsecond, as if I were watching a movie in extreme slow motion.


I came face to face with a world of consciousness that exists completely independent of the limitations of the physical brain.

Sf came face to face with the world of consciousness, which exists completely independently of the limitations of the physical brain.

As soon as I saw the pilot chute, I pressed my arms to my sides and straightened my body into a vertical jump, bending my legs slightly. This position gave me acceleration, and the bend provided my body with horizontal movement - at first small, and then like a gust of wind that picked me up, as if my body had become a wing. I was able to get past Chuck, right in front of his bright parachute.

Books similar to Alexander Eben - Proof of Paradise read online free full versions.

Eben Alexander

Proof of Heaven

A person must see things as they are, and not as he wants to see them.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

When I was little, I often flew in my dreams. It usually happened like this. I dreamed that I was standing in our yard at night and looking at the stars, and then suddenly I separated from the ground and slowly rose up. The first few inches of lift into the air happened spontaneously, without any input on my part. But I soon noticed that the higher I rise, the more the flight depends on me, or more precisely, on my condition. If I was wildly jubilant and excited, I would suddenly fall down, hitting the ground hard. But if I perceived the flight calmly, as something natural, then I quickly flew higher and higher into the starry sky.

Perhaps partly as a result of these dream flights, I subsequently developed a passionate love for airplanes and rockets - and indeed for any flying machine that could again give me the feeling of the vast expanse of air. When I had the opportunity to fly with my parents, no matter how long the flight was, it was impossible to tear me away from the window. In September 1968, at the age of fourteen, I gave all my lawn-mowing money to a glider flying class taught by a guy named Goose Street at Strawberry Hill, a small grassy "airfield" near my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I still remember how excitedly my heart was pounding when I pulled the dark red round handle, which unhooked the cable connecting me to the tow plane, and my glider rolled out onto the tarmac. For the first time in my life, I experienced an unforgettable feeling of complete independence and freedom. Most of my friends loved the thrill of driving for this reason, but in my opinion, nothing could compare to the thrill of flying a thousand feet in the air.

In the 1970s, while attending college at the University of North Carolina, I became involved in skydiving. Our team seemed to me like something like a secret brotherhood - after all, we had special knowledge that was not available to everyone else. The first jumps were very difficult for me; I was overcome by real fear. But by the twelfth jump, when I stepped out the door of the plane to free-fall for over a thousand feet before opening my parachute (my first skydive), I felt confident. In college, I completed 365 skydives and logged more than three and a half hours of free-fall flying time, performing mid-air acrobatics with twenty-five comrades. And although I stopped jumping in 1976, I continued to have joyful and very vivid dreams about skydiving.

I liked jumping most of all in the late afternoon, when the sun began to set on the horizon. It is difficult to describe my feelings during such jumps: it seemed to me that I was getting closer and closer to something that was impossible to define, but which I desperately longed for. This mysterious “something” was not an ecstatic feeling of complete solitude, because we usually jumped in groups of five, six, ten or twelve people, making various figures in free fall. And the more complex and difficult the figure was, the greater the delight that overwhelmed me.

On a beautiful fall day in 1975, the guys from the University of North Carolina and some friends from the Parachute Training Center and I gathered to practice formation jumps. On our penultimate jump from a D-18 Beechcraft light aircraft at 10,500 feet, we were making a ten-person snowflake. We managed to form this figure even before the 7,000-foot mark, that is, we enjoyed the flight in this figure for eighteen whole seconds, falling into a gap between the masses of high clouds, after which, at an altitude of 3,500 feet, we unclenched our hands, leaned away from each other and opened our parachutes.

By the time we landed, the sun was already very low, above the ground. But we quickly boarded another plane and took off again, so we were able to capture the last rays of the sun and make one more jump before it completely set. This time, two beginners took part in the jump, who for the first time had to try to join the figure, that is, fly up to it from the outside. Of course, it's easiest to be the main jumper, because he just has to fly down, while the rest of the team has to maneuver in the air to get to him and lock arms with him. Nevertheless, both beginners rejoiced at the difficult test, as did we, already experienced parachutists: after training the young guys, we could later make jumps with even more complex figures.

Out of a group of six people who had to depict a star over the runway of a small airfield located near the town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, I had to jump last. A guy named Chuck walked in front of me. He had extensive experience in aerial group acrobatics. At an altitude of 7,500 feet the sun was still shining on us, but the street lights below were already shining. I've always loved twilight jumping and this one was going to be amazing.

I had to leave the plane about a second after Chuck, and in order to catch up with the others, my fall had to be very rapid. I decided to dive into the air, as if into the sea, upside down, and fly in this position for the first seven seconds. This would allow me to fall almost a hundred miles an hour faster than my companions, and be on the same level with them immediately after they began to build a star.

Usually during such jumps, after descending to an altitude of 3,500 feet, all skydivers unclasp their arms and move as far apart as possible. Then everyone waves their hands, signaling that they are ready to open their parachute, looks up to make sure that no one is above them, and only then pulls the release rope.

Three, two, one... March!

One by one, four parachutists left the plane, followed by Chuck and me. Flying upside down and picking up speed in free fall, I was elated to see the sun set for the second time that day. As I approached the team, I was about to skid to a stop in the air, throwing my arms out to the sides - we had suits with wings of fabric from the wrists to the hips, which created powerful resistance, fully expanding at high speed.

But I didn't have to do that.

Falling vertically in the direction of the figure, I noticed that one of the guys was approaching it very quickly. I don't know, maybe the rapid descent into a narrow gap between the clouds frightened him, reminding him that he was rushing at a speed of two hundred feet per second towards a giant planet, barely visible in the gathering darkness. One way or another, instead of slowly joining the group, he rushed towards it like a whirlwind. And the five remaining paratroopers tumbled randomly in the air. Besides, they were too close to each other.

This guy left behind a powerful turbulent wake. This air current is very dangerous. As soon as another skydiver hits him, the speed of his fall will rapidly increase, and he will crash into the one below him. This in turn will give both paratroopers a strong acceleration and throw them towards the one even lower. In short, a terrible tragedy will occur.

I twisted my body away from the randomly falling group and maneuvered until I was directly above the “spot,” the magical point on the ground above which we would open our parachutes and begin our slow two-minute descent.

I turned my head and was relieved to see that the other jumpers were already moving away from each other. Chuck was among them. But to my surprise, it moved in my direction and soon hovered right below me. Apparently, during the erratic fall, the group passed 2,000 feet faster than Chuck expected. Or maybe he considered himself lucky, who might not follow the established rules.

“He shouldn’t see me!” Before this thought had time to flash through my head, a colored pilot chute jerked upward behind Chuck’s back. The parachute caught Chuck's one-hundred-and-twenty-mile-per-hour wind and blew him toward me while pulling the main chute.

From the moment the pilot chute opened over Chuck, I had only a split second to react. In less than a second I was about to crash into his main parachute and, most likely, into himself. If at such a speed I run into his arm or leg, I will simply tear it off and at the same time receive a fatal blow. If we collide bodies, we will inevitably break.

They say that in situations like this, everything seems to happen much slower, and this is true. My brain registered the event, which took only a few microseconds, but perceived it like a slow-motion movie.

As soon as the pilot chute rose above Chuck, my arms automatically pressed to my sides, and I turned upside down, bending slightly.

The bending of the body allowed me to increase my speed a little. The next moment, I made a sharp jerk to the side horizontally, causing my body to turn into a powerful wing, which allowed me to rush past Chuck like a bullet just before his main parachute opened.

I rushed past him at over one hundred and fifty miles per hour, or two hundred and twenty feet per second. It is unlikely that he had time to notice the expression on my face. Otherwise he would have seen incredible amazement on him. By some miracle, I managed to react in a matter of seconds to a situation that, if I had time to think about it, would have seemed simply insoluble!

And yet... And yet I dealt with it, and as a result, Chuck and I landed safely. I had the impression that, faced with an extreme situation, my brain worked like some kind of super-powerful computer.

How did it happen? During my more than twenty years as a neurosurgeon—studying, observing, and operating on the brain—I have often wondered about this question. And in the end I came to the conclusion that the brain is such a phenomenal organ that we are not even aware of its incredible abilities.

Now I already understand that the real answer to this question is much more complex and fundamentally different. But to realize this, I had to experience events that completely changed my life and worldview. This book is dedicated to these events. They proved to me that, no matter how wonderful the human brain is, it was not the brain that saved me on that fateful day. What came into play the second Chuck's main parachute began to open was another, deeply hidden side of my personality. She was able to work so instantly because, unlike my brain and body, she exists outside of time.

It was she who made me, a boy, rush into the sky. This is not only the most developed and wise side of our personality, but also the deepest, most intimate. However, for most of my adult life I did not believe this.

However, now I believe, and from the following story you will understand why.

//__ * * * __//

My profession is a neurosurgeon.

I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976 with a degree in chemistry and received my doctorate from the School of Medicine in 1980.