Proof of Heaven

nightmare—were extremely intense, and even outright terrifying while
happening. But in retrospect—indeed, almost immediately after this
period ended—it all became clearly recognizable as what it was:
something cooked up by my very beleaguered brain as it was trying to
recover its bearings. Some of the dreams I had during this period were
stunningly and frighteningly vivid. But in the end they served only to
underline how very, very dissimilar my dream state had been compared
with the ultra-reality deep in coma.
As for the rockets, airplanes, and skydiving themes that I imagined so
consistently, they were, I later realized, quite accurate from a symbolic
point of view. Because the fact was that I was making a dangerous reentry
from a place far away, to the abandoned but now once again functional
space station of my brain. One could hardly ask for a better earthly
analogy for what happened to me during my week out of body than a
rocket launch.