Akiane Kramarik

Akiane Kramarik is an extraordinarily gifted young artist. Her work has been featured on ABC, Fox, CNN, and international television. She has been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, Diane Sawyer, Lou Dobbs, Craig Ferguson, and Peter Jennings. Her story is an interesting one. She allegedly grew up in an atheist household with absolutely no exposure to Christian dogma, yet her work became famous for the realistic religious imagery she has translated into art.

Nevertheless, I’d never heard of her until I was reading the book Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo. A friend lent me his copy, being well aware of my keen interest in learning about the near death experience. In this instance, the book recounts an NDE experienced by four-year-old Colton Burpo, who almost died after the doctors at the hospital misdiagnosed his burst appendix and failed to treat it for several days.

His story affirmed my belief that NDEs are not merely pleasant hallucinations produced by ketamine reaction in a dying, strictly materialist brain.  Todd Burpo hammered home that Colton had accurately conveyed new memories obtained while his physical brain was literally separated from his obviously still-functioning mind. He apparently gained new knowledge of information to which he could not possibly have had access while undergoing a life-saving medical procedure.

Colton accurately recounted where his mother and father were during his surgery and what they were doing while he could not possibly have known by observation. His physical body was in surgery in a different part of the hospital at that time. He also revealed that while “dead” and visiting heaven, he met his unborn sister, who died in utero before he had been born.  In the book, Todd insisted that Colton had never been told about the miscarriage prior to his NDE. Yet somehow, he knew her.

Akiane Kramarik’s name appeared in the story as Todd Burpo struggled to get a physical description of Jesus from his son. Colton claimed to have met the Christ in heaven, and Todd wanted to know what he really looked like in person.  After Colton rejected countless efforts by a great number of artists to capture the real face of Jesus, he said Akiane’s work Prince of Peace got it absolutely right. It was perfect, in every detail.

Kramarik also claimed she visited heaven and met Jesus when she was very young. Her painting was allegedly from memory, a loving rendition faithfully produced when she was only eight years old.

I couldn’t help but notice uncanny similarities between the face in Kramarik’s painting and the result of an attempt to reconstruct an image of the face captured on the Shroud of Turin.

Question: what is going on here? Could this possibly be part of an elaborate scheme by two young children to fool people into believing in a supernatural realm that religious believers like to call heaven? Even the most ardent conspiracy theorist would have trouble swallowing that proposition, considering Burpo lives in rural Nebraska and Kramarik in Idaho. Have these young children simply mistaken a vivid dream or hallucination for a real experience, independently of each other?

If so, then how are accurate new memories formed when the physical brain apparently doesn’t have access to the information in question? Remember, this is hardly the first incidence where the participant in an NDE claimed to create new memories. Also remember, not every NDE is a pleasant experience in heaven; some claim to have visited hell.

Of course, my atheist friends like to describe these stories as “anecdotes” to devalue their importance.  However, once these purported “new memories” become validated by multiple witnesses and impartial observers, they become something more comparable to testimony that would stand up in a court of law, as opposed to mere gossip.

Sometimes, the simplest explanation is also the best one. Heaven is for real. Unfortunately, so is hell.