Dr. Eben Alexander was at the height of his career as a neurosurgeon. With a doctorate in medicine from Duke University and a residency from Harvard, he believed he understood consciousness and the brain. However, on Nov. 10, 2008, a rare and severe bacterial infection attacked his brain, challenging everything he thought he knew.

He fell into a coma and, seven days later, awakened with a complete physical recovery. Yet, while asleep, his mind was not idle. He recalls that his consciousness had gone to another dimension—a place furnished with clouds, shimmering beings, and ethereal sceneries.

“I was in a place of clouds. Big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky. Higher than the clouds—immeasurably higher—flocks of transparent orbs, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamer-like lines behind them,” Alexander wrote in his book, “A Proof of Heaven.”

“I witnessed all of that realm in all of its majesty,” Alexander recounted during an interview with The Epoch Times. “Though I didn’t know where I was or even what I was, I was absolutely sure of one thing: This place I’d suddenly found myself in was completely real,” he said.

Similarly, Dr. Sam Parnia, a medical doctor and research scientist, observed that seven percent of resuscitated patients recounted visits to an unearthly dimension during their near-death experience (NDE)—an experience people sometimes have on the precipice of death and may remember after recovery. Further, Dr. Pim van Lommel, a cardiologist from the Netherlands, reported that 29 percent of people with NDEs describe entering a vast, beautiful realm beyond our physical reality.

These shared elements have prompted experts to discuss the origin of consciousness. Can our consciousness be linked and travel to a dimension imperceptible to human eyes? While people of faith say they’ve had answers all along, medical doctors are still probing, and physicists claim they are close to finding the answer.