There are two basic forms of lying.

The first one is more crude, but still powerful. You simply invent something that didn’t happen. i.e: “I burped up $10,000.00 yesterday.”

The second is when you simply choose to call something that may have actually happened whatever you find convenient to your desired outcome: i.e: “While unconscious (and perhaps brain-dead) I had some form of nonordinary experience which obviously comprises proof of the afterlife.”

Both of these are lies. But the second is slightly more difficult to detect. Unless you don’t want to detect it, in which case it becomes practically impossible.

Dr. Eben Alexander is lying for a simple reason. The fact that he -had an experience- has -nothing to do with proving heaven- or stories about it. These two things cannot really be connected by simple experience. His experience only proves that humans have experiences, and has little or nothing to do with ‘the afterlife’ or ‘heaven’, though it may have interesting implications for consciousness/neuroscience research.

Furthermore, when you are a scientist, that is to say, a trusted knowledge authority, lying about something this momentous is a horrifying crime against human intelligence. I consider this person incredibly misguided, not to mention openly stupid. On the other hand, nonordinary experience can be so shockingly profound that it produces uncommon expressions of identity, hope, narratives about the event(s), and the future.