WASHINGTONIn a world of uncertainty there appears to be an abiding desire for some kind of surety about the hereafter. The Washington-based Conversations on the Green, tapped into this wellspring of interest Sunday afternoon when it presented the bestselling author of "Proof of Heaven," Dr. Eben Alexander, and Dr. Lisa Miller, a scholar on spirituality at Columbia University, in a debate that explored the role of spirituality in modern life.

Dr. Alexanders own near-death experience left him profoundly persuaded that there is life after death.

The packed forum was moderated by former NBC News correspondent and talk show host, Jane Whitney, a local resident and it benefited Greenwoods, a Litchfield County nonprofit that provides help to anyone struggling with emotional, behavioral or psychological issues.

Dr. Alexander's book details the events leading up to his illness, as well as the unearthly journeys he took while in a coma caused by bacterial meningitis. He met God, he says, and now believes that death is a passageway to an eternal world led by a Divine being.

He is currently preparing another book, "The Map of Heaven," to be released this fall.

Tongue in cheek, Ms. Whitney opened the discussion by asking Dr. Alexander, You say that during your near-death experience, you saw God. What is she like?

The deity is beyond anything you could remotely put in words, he responded. When I first came back and was trying to understand what had happened, I realized it was more than words could describe. When journeyers do go there and come back, it is important t to realize that earthly language cannot do justice to that realm. Language very much gets in way. Its hard to use earthly worlds to describe something that is not like a trip to Disney World.

The word God was such a puny little human word, he continued. I had witnessed was what many call Godcheck off God, Jehova, Yahweh, Buddhawhatever you call him. I came to realize the hard problem of consciousness, what near death experiences have been telling us for millennia, is that there is something we dont understand at all and it is really beyond naming, that infinite power, that all-loving light. It takes the fear of death away forever.

He said he came to accept what he had seen slowly. I had been a man of science, he said. I liked facts and I really didnt buy into this. I had grown up in the Methodist churchmy father was both religious and scientificbut over the course of my career in neurosurgery, my faith waned. I couldnt understand how consciousness survived the death of the brain. For the eight years before my coma I was agnostic.

But the belief that the physical brain creates consciousness is false, he concluded. Whether it filters it or allows it to come into existence is quite another thing, but the hard problem of consciousness is that no one can give you the first sentence on how the brain creates consciousness, because it does not. Continued...

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'Proof of Heaven' Conversation is Held