Where our Muse Resides

A few weeks ago my Red Read Robin book club read and discussed Proof of Heaven, A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander, M.D.  Dr. Alexander is a highly trained neurosurgeon who not only practices neurosurgery, but also is a scientific academic, and has studied and spent fifteen years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School as well as other renown hospitals. He has authored or co-authored more than 150 papers on his findings in medical journals and presented those findings at more than 200 medical conferences around the world. In other words, Dr. Eben Alexander is no quack.

The first part of the book details his life up to the time he became seriously ill with a rare disease and lapsed into a coma for a week. The part of his brain controlling thoughts and emotions was being eaten by rare e-coli bacteria which were not responding to antibiotics. After a few days the prognosis for him living was slim. If by some miracle he did live, he would almost certainly be in a vegetative state.

He not only came out of the coma, but after a period of recuperation his brain was functioning as well as before. The doctors and scientists who were there couldn’t find a rational scientific explanation for what he experienced.  Eventually he continued his work as a neurosurgeon and as a scientist. The only difference now was that he believed in NDE’s (near death experiences) because while he was in a coma, he had one that changed his beliefs.

Previously, he listened to patients tell him about their NDE’s and he made some placating comments. He was what he described as a C&E Christian, only attending church on Christmas and Easter and didn’t believe them.  So he wouldn’t become tainted  by others’ experiences, he wrote his experience down, pages and pages of  details about his experience before he started reading and studying other NDE’s. He found his NDE was quite different. It was an interesting book, although the ending was slowed down by all the scientific and medical jargon and terminology. Still, I found that interesting, too.

How does this relate to our muse, that mysterious something we know we have, but don’t exactly know where it is in our brain? According to Dr. Alexander, we have limited earthly consciousness, but we also have “thinking behind the thinking . . . a thinking that is not dependent on linear deduction.” He claims that what he calls subliminal thinking is what is behind inspired scientific insight or the writing of a song.” He believes we all have subliminal thinking that is there when we really need it, but many of us have lost the ability to access it or believe in it.

So I think this is where our muse lives, hidden out of sight, deep in our consciousness. It’s why so many writers claim, and I’m one of them, that somehow when we start writing the characters or plot or poem take control and something we hadn’t intended writing shows up instead. A character we thought would be our murderer isn’t and another character is instead.

Although I haven’t had a NDE, my ex-husband did when he was electrocuted and his heart stopped until someone pounded on his chest and got it started again. However, I had another unexplained happening. While camping in Maine with my sisters and having a great time, an incredible sadness overcame me. Although I tried to hide it from my sisters, the tears kept coming. Finally, the next day one sister suggested I call home – this was before cell phones.

I discovered my family had the Maine highway patrol looking for us. My granddaughter had broken her arm and during X-rays, had gone first into convulsions and then fallen into a coma and been life flighted to a children’s hospital in Pittsburgh, Pa. My daughter was crying for me and wanted me there. Of course, I got a flight out of Bangor and flew to Pittsburgh as soon as I could.

There have been other things, too, defying scientific explanation both in my life and in others I know. So I do believe somewhere within each of us there is a deeper level of the brain with a deep consciousness capable of communication we aren’t aware we possess until something truly unusual happens to convince us we have it. Now if only we could access it whenever we have writer’s block. Wouldn’t that be wonderful if we could just punch in a password and ask for our muse to help us?

 Have you experienced something without a scientific explanation?

Do you believe in subliminal thinking?