I now find myself regularly confronted with that question I so dreaded as a surgeon: Why did my child die? Though it is asked every day, in every part of the world, by people of countless different faiths, it is a question that for Christians comes into especially sharp focus on Easter.

As a self-confessed mystic and spiritual teacher myself, I have dedicated my life to bearing witness to this invisible yet fundamental and primary dimension of reality. Yet, whenever Spirit seems to speak to us or display itself in specific forms, I find myself growing uncomfortable.

The NDEs that occurred during ancient history would have been so instantaneously transformative, so powerfully seductive, that it would have been impossible for a culture not to incorporate the experience into a model of heaven.

A successful neurosurgeon, who has taught at Harvard Medical School and other universities, spent his life dismissing claims of heavenly out-of-body e...