Exploring the afterlife in Vail Symposium’s winter season finale

Believing in the afterlife is one thing — proving it is another. On Tuesday, April 5 at 6 p.m. at the Edwards Interfaith Chapel, Jeffrey Mishlove and Dr. Eben Alexander will discuss “life after life.” This thought-provoking program will be the last in the Vail Symposium’s winter season before summer programming begins in June.

“‘What comes next?’ is a question that cuts across religions and cultures,” said Vail Symposium’s Executive Director Kris Sabel. “Everyone has their own ideas, but Jeffrey Mishlove put his in writing and won first prize in the Bigelow essay contest which sought to understand the possibility of survival of human consciousness beyond bodily death. Mishlove and best-selling author Eben Alexander will discuss Mishlove’s winning entry and their personal philosophies on the topic.”

This year, people from around the world competed in an essay contest providing their rationale for life after death. Nearly $2 million in prize money was awarded, with Las Vegas entrepreneur Robert Bigelow putting up the prize money. Jeffrey Mishlove took home half a million dollars for the winning essay.

Dr. Eben Alexander, author of “Proof of Heaven,” does not need to be convinced — he lived it. A highly trained neurosurgeon, Alexander was taught that although near death experiences feel real, they are nothing more than fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress.

Then, Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness and shut down completely; Alexander spent a week in a coma. As his doctors considered stopping treatment, Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back. Alexander is a doctor who believes that true health can be achieved only when we realize that God and the soul are real and that death is not the end of personal existence but only a transition.

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Mishlove and Alexander come together to tackle big questions such as: What is the best evidence for postmortem survival of human consciousness? How can we accommodate this evidence within a contemporary scientific and philosophical framework? Where is research on postmortem survival leading? Join the Vail Symposium for a program that will plumb the depths of belief on this consequential topic.

About the speakers

Academic neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander III, whose career includes decades as a physician and associate professor at Harvard Medical School and revered teaching hospitals, was once staunchly committed to the materialist worldview — the belief that the physical world is all that exists. His scientific belief system was altered by his 2008 transcendental near-death experience, an odyssey into another realm during a week-long coma. Despite a bleak medical prognosis, Dr. Alexander awoke to make an inexplicable return to full health. His medical case and recovery were validated in the peer-reviewed Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Since his near death experience, Dr. Alexander has been reconciling his rich spiritual experience with quantum physics, cosmology and the philosophy of mind. Dr. Alexander speaks around the world to educate about the role that consciousness plays in wellness, healing and recovery.

Jeffrey Mishlove, Ph.D., is host and producer of the New Thinking Allowed channel on YouTube. He is the author of “The Roots of Consciousness,” “Psi Development Systems” and “The PK Man.” He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “Parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). Between 1986 and 2002, he hosted and co-produced the original “Thinking Allowed” public television series. He is the 1st Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death.