I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.

A story-a true story-can heal as much as medicine can.

To experience thinking outside the brain is to enter a world of instantaneous connections that make ordinary thinking (i.e those aspects limited by the physical brain and the speed of light_ seem like some hopelessly sleepy and plodding event. Our truest, deepest self is completely free. It is not crippled or compromised by past actions or concerned with identity or status. It comprehends that it has no need to fear the earthly world, and therefore, it has no need to build itself up through fame or wealth or conquest.

Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it's 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.

I'm not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body. Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history.

There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind - my conscious, inner self - was alive and well.

We can only see what our brain’s filter allows through.