January 2015 - Eben Alexander

Earlier this week (Jan 2015), Dr. Alexander was invited to weigh in on a groundbreaking new study that shows coma patients actually heal faster and more completely when they hear their loved ones voices telling them loving things. The sample size was small, but it’s extremely promising, and the results were strongly in favor of introducing a new protocol for coma patients.

Dr. Alexander himself may have benefited from his family doing this during his illness. Of course, his family hadn’t read any studies saying they should talk to him and pray for him–they just did it. As it turns out, that was probably the smartest thing they could have done.

He was unconscious, of course, so he couldn’t hear his family speaking to him during the coma, but as he describes in the interview, he remembers his sisters fighting to bring back his memory when he awoke, dazed and amnesiac.

“My sisters’ role in my healing came after I initially awoke from coma, when my brain was still extremely compromised and I was in and out of awareness of my surroundings in the ICU,” he told me. “I believe that those stories played a major role in my rapid recovery of brain functions.”

You can watch that interview about the new coma study here.

Fox News Magazine’s Jaimie LaBella talked with Dr. Alexander before the holidays, and that article is out now. You can read it online here.

Jaimie asked Dr. Alexander one question that he’s rarely asked about in interviews–the age-old Problem of Evil.

If you’ve read books on philosophy, especially religious philosophy–or even spent a lot of time thinking about those things–then the Problem of Evil is a concept that’s familiar to you

It goes like this: If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, why does evil exist in the world?

Different religions have taken different paths to answering this question. But any religion that posits an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent Deity has to grapple with it.

Some have put forth that evil is a result of human free will, and our imperfect understanding of Divine will. Others suggest that evil–and even intense human suffering–are necessary for spiritual development, and that our souls would experience a kind of stagnation or atrophy without it. Still others say that evil is simply the absence of good, and exists where God has chosen to withdraw, or even that evil is an alternative power, weaker than God but still a continually challenging, balancing force.

That last scenario doesn’t fit in with what Dr. Alexander saw during his experience. So when Jaimie LaBella asked Dr. Alexander to weigh in on what he thought about a battle between good and evil, here’s what he said:

“I rather see it that the power of that unconditional love, of the light and love of the creator, is an infinite force that can expel the darkness of evil; both in material realm and spiritual realm,” he says.

“It was clear to me the infinite love of that creator, that I encountered in the spiritual world, had infinite power to heal. [And] to defeat that ‘evil’ in the world, we can all serve with the power of love, compassion and forgiveness. We need to wake up and take greater responsibility for this world. I believe this is all a part of a grander plan.”

The article is worth reading in full. In the meantime, here’s hoping that in this new year, 2015, we all find ways to contribute light to the darkness, and serve with the power of love, compassion, and forgiveness.