Dr. Eben Alexander is by far the most controversial figure on this list and probably isn't considered eminent in many circles. The reason I include him is because he is a neurosurgeon, which adds a unique flavor to the discussion.
Alexander claims to have visited heaven in a near-death experience. His experience is documented in his book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, which concludes that life does not end after death, that there follows the resurrection of the mind into a different state.
Alexander defended himself against his critics by writing the following:
“Critics have maintained that my near-death experience, like similar experiences others before me have claimed, was a brain-based delusion cobbled together by my synapses only after they had somehow recovered from the blistering weeklong attack. I also experienced that transitional period, when my mind began to regain consciousness: I remember a vivid paranoid nightmare in which my wife and doctors were trying to kill me, and I was only saved from certain death by a ninja couple after being pushed from a 60-story cancer hospital in south Florida. But that period of disorientation and delusion had absolutely nothing to do with what happened to me before my cortex began to recover: the period, that is, when it was shut down and incapable of supporting consciousness at all. During that period, I experienced something very similar to what countless other people who have undergone near-death experiences have witnessed: the transition to a realm beyond the physical, and a vast broadening of my consciousness. The only real difference between my experience and those others is that my brain was, essentially, deader than theirs.”
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