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By Dennis Hong, October 22, 2012 6:00 am

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had one of those uncanny dreams that go something like this:

You’re at home… or work… or school. All of a sudden, the fire alarm goes off, and you see smoke seeping in all around you. You scamper frantically down the hallway. Meanwhile, the fire alarm continues to blare—BLAAA BLAAA BLAAA BLAAA BLAAA. You claw through the thickening fumes, trying to find your way to the door. But then, the fire starts to catch up with you. You’re trapped, and just as the flames engulf you….

You wake up to your alarm clock blaring— BLAAA BLAAA BLAAA BLAAA.

And then, you think to yourself, “Whoa, how did my brain create this elaborate dream that ended exactly with my alarm going off? What kind of freaky synchronicity was that?”

The explanation is quite simple, actually. But I’ll get to that in a bit….

In a recent issue of Newsweek, brain surgeon Eben Alexander describes how a deadly bacterial infection put him in a coma for seven days. During that time, his brain registered zero activity and he was clinically brain-dead. Yet, something amazing happened. As he describes it:

I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death….

There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.

Dr. Alexander goes on to describe what he saw and uses it as proof that Heaven exists. After all, as he asserts, there is no possible scientific explanation for what he experienced.

To that, I say: “Bullshit.”

There absolutely is a scientific explanation for what happened, and it’s connected to the dream I describe above….

Continue reading 'Why You Can’t Prove (Or Disprove) That God Exists'»

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By Dennis Hong, September 4, 2011 3:02 pm

Image by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel

In my dream, she’s my best friend, and I am hers. Whenever I get a piece of great news in my life, she’s the first person I want to tell. Whenever something stressful happens, she’s the first person I think of who can comfort me. I hope to be the same for her.

In my dream, she’s the first person I want to spend time with. And I never feel inclined to blow her off to hang out with someone else—not even a dying friend or family member. (But that’s because I’d probably want her there with me.)

In my dream, I love her, and I know without a doubt that she’s the one I want to be with. In return, she loves me back, and she knows without a doubt that I’m the one she wants to be with. Yet, we accept that life is unpredictable. So, while we may never be able to say with absolute certainty that we will always get along, or even that we will love each other perfectly and unconditionally forever, what matters is that we love each other today, we’ll love each other tomorrow, and we’re going to try our hardest to love each other for the rest of our lives.

Because true love is an ideal that we can only strive towards, not an achievable endpoint that grants us complacency once we’ve reached it.

In my dream, I can tell her anything I want, knowing that she’ll accept me for who I am and won’t judge me if I reveal myself to be less than perfect. In return, I will be open to anything she tells me, and my love for her won’t diminish if she reveals her own imperfections. We never need to hide anything from each other, and we’re comfortable sharing everything about ourselves, even the worst baggage that we carry.

Because, hey, I admit that I haven’t quite reached that pinnacle of human perfection. Then again, neither has she.

Continue reading 'My Not-Quite-So-World-Changing Dream'»