In a book (Proof of Heaven) that is sweeping through the best seller lists this week, Eben Alexander, a leading neurosurgeon, recounts what appears to be a so-called "near death" experience that he had while in a coma brought on by severe bacterial meningitis.  Though well aware of the controversy surrounding such experiences, Dr. Alexander insists that, because all available instruments indicated his neocortex was "entirely shut down, inoperative" (in other words, his brain "wasn't working at all"), he has no way to explain what he saw other than attributing it to something beyond himself.
     As to what that "something" is, Dr. Alexander is not yet willing to say.  Although believers of every stripe may be lining up to attempt to reconcile his vision with their own understandings of the afterlife, that is not the point.  What we can most take away from Dr. Alexander's experience is that despite all our protestations to the contrary, we must admit that we live in a universe whose deepest dimensions we will never, in this life, fully understand.  There are things beyond our grasp, things of which, try as we might, we cannot make total sense, things that perhaps though we would like not to have to think about them, we inevitably do.  We cannot escape our sense of eternity.