Dr. Christian Alexander is a world renowned cognitive neuroscientist working at a neurological research center in New York City. His father, a well-published research psychiatrist who specialized in the study of human near death experiences disappeared before Christian's birth. Following the discovery of some photographs one day as a child, Christian is driven by an obsession to find his father who he believes left to live in a far off paradise. From that point on Christian is consciously and unconsciously driven to find his father, which means he has to first discover the realm where he lives - a place beyond the near death experience. After measuring electrical activity in human brains during near death experiences, Christian begins to look at what happens in the brains of our closest relative the Great Ape after they die. His hypothesis that there is considerable cognitive activity within the human brain for several minutes after death is bolstered by what he finds going on in the brains of Great Apes after they die. Driven by his inner child, he begins to conduct clandestine human post-death experiments even though he has no approval for human testing, and his grant funding specifically excludes it. Regardless of being pursued by grant administration officials after his last and failed human experiment, Christian presses on.

Obsessed to the point of hallucinations, Christian continues to conduct clandestine human post death research looking for that realm beyond death which, his inner child tells him, is where his father has gone. In the process he comes upon a revelation of just what the human brain is actually capable of well after all life has left he rest of the body.