Dr. Eben Alexander: A Neurosurgeon’s Near-Death Experience

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:09] Welcome to The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I am Dr. Mark Leeds and I will be your host. Join me in exploring the world of addiction treatment. How can we improve the ways that we help individuals to overcome addiction? The goal of treatment is to save lives and help people to get back on track to a path towards success and happiness in life. Dr. Eben Alexander, it’s an honor and a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you for joining me. You are a neurosurgeon with decades of experience. You’ve done thousands, I think at least 4,000 neurosurgeries. You were a professor at Harvard University. And in 2008, you had a profound life-changing experience, a near-death experience. And since then, you’ve gone on to write three books. I know at least three books about your experience and how it’s changed your life. And you’ve gone out trying to help other people to find their own experience and connection with the universe. And I’ll let you talk more about that. And you’ve also had the opportunity to meet with Oprah on her show and Dr. Oz and I think 2020 and a whole variety of other great shows and programs and radio shows and podcasts. And it’s really incredible to get this message out, the connection between mind and body and the universe. So welcome to the podcast. And that’d be great if you can tell me more about everything. Thank you.

Dr. Eben Alexander [01:47] Okay, Mark. Well, thanks for having me on. It’s a real joy to be here. And yes, I have gone through a kind of a radical reboot of my life, just in terms of my primary interests. You know, as someone, I’d spent my life as an academic neurosurgeon, more than 15 years teaching at Harvard Medical School, thought I understood brain, mind, and consciousness to some extent. And then in November 2008, all that guy flipped completely upside down when I went through a week-long coma due to a very severe case of gram-negative bacterial meningitis. In fact, it was a meningoencephalitis, meaning that my brain was also very infected by these bacteria. And that actually was a tremendous gift because as a neuroscientist, even though in the journey itself, that is deep in this week-long coma, I had no memory of my life. None of my beliefs survived it, none of my religious beliefs or scientific knowledge, no language. I didn’t have personal memories deep in this experience and yet when I woke up in the ICU bed on day seven of coma, The only thing I knew was where I had just been on this incredible odyssey that I describe in the book Proof of Heaven. But in fact, a tremendous amount of the journey has been in the almost 11 years since that occurrence, because it challenged everything that I thought I knew. And I’d always had a big interest in physics and, you know, in science. I was very much a materialist scientist. I believe the physical world is all that exists and that therefore the physical brain must somehow create consciousness. And my coma journey showed me very clearly how that’s just not true. It’s not true at all. In fact, we are conscious in spite of our brain. And this is something not only am I doing a lot of personal work in involving my understanding of relationship of brain and mind and understanding of consciousness, But I have also allied with literally hundreds of scientists around this world who do study consciousness and do realize that the simplistic assumption that the brain creates consciousness is not borne out by the evidence. And in fact, there is plenty of empirical evidence that goes much further than that to show that consciousness is fundamental in the universe. And this is an extraordinarily liberating and refreshing point of view. And the fact that it is intimately tied with the leading edges of the modern scientific study of consciousness is really phenomenal. And that is what I believe will bring this true revolution of awakening to the world because materialist science, in terms of its notions of understanding consciousness, has never even gotten out of the starting blocks. And that’s why we need a much bigger science. And this is not about rejecting any of the science we have to date. It’s just about realizing that when we adopt a much greater kind of metaphysical models or supporting worldviews to kind of put all this together, that are not limited by the bleak and paltry fiction of materialism and the false notion that only the physical world exists, we can really liberate humanity to much higher levels. And that, I believe, is a huge reason why I had this kind of miraculous recovery. But, you know, it’s not about me. It’s really about the message. And the message comes from millions of others who have had similar experiences. And not just that, the message comes from the scientific study of all aspects of non-local consciousness. That is the reality of things like telepathy, out-of-body experiences, remote viewing or the psychic spy programs and the ability to discern information at a great distance through means other than our physical senses. And even an explanation of these millions of stories of near-death experiencers and what they bring back to us. That before my coma, I assumed to be, like many material scientists do, a massive hallucination. And yet it’s really folly to ignore evidence like that by just assuming that it’s completely false. The universe doesn’t give us such robust evidence for something unless we’re supposed to pay attention and modify our world views and that’s exactly what this revolution in the understanding of consciousness is leading towards but the good news is it will definitely bring a far more peaceful and harmonious world because it will debunk some of the most ridiculous assertions of separation and things like that come from materialist thinking. So I’m very optimistic about where it’s all headed. And I am doing exactly what I am meant to do. I do not believe I was meant to spend the rest of my life in the operating room helping individual patients as much as I love doing that. And I still am in touch with a lot of my patients who have continued, you know, to benefit from my interventions with them. I love that. But this is really about the much bigger picture of tackling the understanding of the nature of reality. And that’s what I think this whole discussion is all about.

Dr. Mark Leeds [07:05] Yeah. Now, in my practice, I work with people who are addicted, in most cases to opioids, and in many cases heroin. And it’s a scary thing. You know, people are using heroin on the streets and they’re getting fentanyl, you know, which is this toxic thing from China that they’re putting into the heroin. And some people are not going to make it. I mean, the treatment that we use has about a 50% success rate. And, you know, and so you have people that they get into treatment and, you know, they start wondering, you know, what more is there to life? You know, they’ve been living on the streets and now they’re in treatment and they’re feeling better. And, you know, when you go to a program like AA or NA, you know, they talk about meditation and prayer and, you know, connecting with a higher power. And that may not be easy for someone early in recovery to understand because their thinking may be clouded by you know cravings for drugs and obsessions and you know their I guess their physical brain is still healing from the trauma of using the drug I mean what would your advice be to someone who’s who’s just coming into recovery well

Dr. Eben Alexander [08:11] I think you know I’ve had my own personal experience with alcohol and addiction in that back in 1991, my family was concerned about my use of alcohol. You know, it had nothing to do with anything at work, but when I was not on call, I tended to drink more than was healthy for me, and loved ones as Rami pointed this out, and I ended up in mid-1991 stopping drinking for good, and I’m glad I left it behind, but it was deeply kind of tied in with my own journey of self-worth. You know, those who have read the book Proof of Heaven, where I do mention briefly that I stopped drinking back in 1991, will realize that I was also adopted. And that plays in heavily to my own personal story, that adoption wound being left behind by my birth mother when I was 11 days old really set the stage for a lot of kind of deep wondering as to whether or not I was even worthy of love of this world. Like many young children put up for adoption, I stopped eating. I went on a hunger strike. And failure to thrive. And they rescued me from that over about two weeks. But by then, my birth mother was out of the picture. And so I had to kind of wrestle with that through much of my life. And I think it figured it into my relationships with others and certainly my ability to trust or not trust the world. And that’s a huge part of what my journey has been about. But something that is very important along the lines of this question of addiction has to do with the fact that our ego, the little voice in our head, the kind of set of thoughts and memories that put together who we think we are and what our relationship with this world is and our relationship with others around us. And that little ego is not necessarily a very reliable guide to getting to much more deeply know ourselves and our journey in life. And so one of the things that Karen and I, my life partner, Karen Newell, who is a co-author of our third book, Living in a Mindful Universe. One thing that we often teach in our meditation play shop using sacred acoustics, which I think you and Karen talked about a lot on your podcast earlier. One of the things we talk about is identifying that little voice in the head, the voice of the ego. And I love how Michael Singer in his book, The Untethered Soul, he calls that little running stream of thoughts in our head, that voice of the ego, the annoying roommate. And I think that’s a very important terminology to keep in mind. You know, that little voice in the head, which is also the means by which we have logical, rational discussions of ideas and concepts with other people. You know, it’s not just the voice of the ego, even though the ego is kind of the primary interpreter. But it’s important to realize that voice and that language that it uses is not really sufficient to explain a lot of things about you know who we are in our relationship with the universe a lot of that can be found by going deeper into consciousness and once you realize that the little voice in the head and that’s the little voice that’s right there with the alcoholic who’s you know making a decision about whether or not to go into the liquor store to buy another fifth of vodka or what have you, that little voice is not our consciousness. And it’s not who we are. The deep mystery of consciousness, whether you’re talking about the measurement paradox in quantum physics, which directly goes at this issue of brain and mind and consciousness, or you’re talking about what’s called the hard problem of consciousness in neuroscience, which is really the impossible problem of materialism to try and explain consciousness. This. Whatever you’re talking about there, the mystery that they’re trying to get at is the awareness, the awareness of existence. You know, as Rene Descartes said, I think, therefore I am. And I think there’s a bit of confusion around all that, because if he was referring to that little running stream of thoughts in his head, he was dead wrong. If he was referring to the fact that he was aware of those thoughts, and that he could identify with that property of awareness, then he was definitely on to something, because that property of awareness, I would say, is a fundamental property of the universe. It’s not derivative from any physical matter, and it’s one of the things that in modern consciousness studies really goes a long way, and the neuroscience of consciousness, philosophy of mind, and resolving the deep paradoxes of quantum physics, they’re all leading to this amazing conclusion that mind is fundamental in the universe, and that’s that self-awareness or awareness, given the fact that we’re really sharing one mind. And so I think the first step, you know, for the alcoholic or addict, and this is something that’s often utilized in the treatment programs by psychiatrists and psychologists who deal with the various forms of addiction, is a ritual sacrifice of the ego. And there will be some way in which they will do a psychodrama or something like that, where that ego, that little set of thoughts and kind of preconceptions about self that come in our linguistic brain are rejected and then allowed to be born anew. And it is something that can be very effective at helping to rescue people from the spiraling drain around addiction and alcoholism is that ego sacrifice and rebirth. And in essence a lot of what Karen and I teach in our meditative workshops is a very similar process where you’re actually acknowledging that little voice of the ego and that includes going all the way back to those childhood wounds like my wound at age 11 days that influenced my life even to this point even though as I’ve come to recognize it especially since my coma I’ve been much more effective at kind of dismantling its power over me. But I think that this is a very useful exercise to realize that when we question those beliefs and start to identify more with our true consciousness, that awareness of what Karen often refers to as the neutral observer, that’s that same observer that’s there as the hard problem of consciousness and is the observer in the measurement paradox in quantum physics, that observer is truly our consciousness. And by getting in richer touch with that, and learning to put the little impish teenager of the ego mind and the linguistic voice in our head that keeps telling us those childhood wounds, you’re not good enough, you don’t deserve this, you know, all the kind of traumas that we experience as children and misinterpret the message, which I would say is fundamentally a separation from source, because all of our souls, I would argue, came in from that heavenly realm. And those who have heard me talk about this realize how much I rely on the strong empirical scientific data supporting reincarnation, because you really can’t make sense of this if you don’t understand that our souls come back again and again to get it right. And in fact, the whole world of transpersonal psychology, after the work of brilliant clinicians like Stan Grof, Michael Newton, Brian Weiss, and others, is merely supporting the notion that to fully acknowledge the difficulties and challenges we have in this life, and that certainly includes things like addiction, we’ve got to realize we’ve lived a bigger existence. It’s not just confined to this little lifetime. And I think when we take this bigger point of view, and when we develop techniques for going within meditation, just as I do daily, one or two hours a day using sacred acoustics. And those who want to learn more can go to sacredacoustics.com to Karen Newell’s website. But it really can be tremendously empowering to use these kind of sacred acoustics tones to go deep into consciousness when you realize that our consciousness is not created by the physical brain and is not confined to this little three and a half pound gelatinous mass in a warm, dark bath between my ears. But in fact, our consciousness is far grander than that. And this is where I think going within can be very powerful. In fact, just some anecdotal stories that Karen has heard from several acupuncturists who worked in centers around the United States where children who had tried suicide, tried to commit suicide, but had survived it. And now we’re being sent for treatment. These acupuncturists were trying to stabilize them and help them very much. And these particular acupuncturists would use sacred acoustics tones. And it was interesting. We started hearing back from several centers that when these children would listen to these tones and be in this kind of simple meditative state, they would have such an exposure to kind of that broader consciousness and that higher soul or self that they’d come away saying, you know, if I had this feeling and known this kind of experience was available before, I never would have tried to commit suicide. And I think that’s very powerful. I mean, one of the things I’ve heard in the near-death experience community, and this comes from the horse’s mouth, really, from Dr. Raymond Moody, who wrote the book Life After Life back in 1975, which first coined the term near-death experiences and really started this whole revolution of waking the world up to the power of near-death experiences. One thing that Dr. Moody said is of all the things he had learned over the five decades that he studied these phenomena, the one he can say with the most assurance is that if someone tries to commit suicide and they witness some of those key features of an NDE, like the soul of a departed loved one or of loved ones, or that infinitely healing love force, that God force that so many near-death experiencers for thousands of years across all cultures have come back with, they never attempt suicide again. And what I would say is these anecdotal reports that we’re getting on sacred acoustics users, and yes, we are setting up the pilot studies to look at all this more scientifically, but so far what we have to work with are the anecdotes. And just by giving people that kind of glimpse, that ability to go within and in their own mind realize they’re much more than just a consciousness that resides in this little physical body in the sense of here and now, can be tremendously empowering to help liberate them. And it really gets right back to what you said at the outset of all this, the work of 12-step programs. You know, in Alcoholics Anonymous was the beginning, but of course it’s been applied in narcotics and other types of addiction, sex addiction, love addiction, work addiction, exercise addiction. There are many addictions that can kind of ruin our lives if we let them. And yet we have a way to kind of connect with our higher soul and deep meditation that enables us to tap into that higher power. Now, I know when I was first getting into recovery back in 1991, letting alcohol go, that higher power, I was told, could even be a light bulb. It just had to be outside of yourself. But what I think that really means is outside of your ego sense of self. And the good news is our very conscious awareness is something far, far more powerful than that little ego awareness. And we have an opportunity by going within and exploring consciousness to investigate that and start to prove it to ourselves. And when I talk about your higher soul that we connect with there, that kind of higher power within, it’s not really part of our ego so much. It’s liberated from the ego and from that false sense of separation. And that’s what gives it so much power. I would say, in fact, that near-death experiences, when you look at them broadly across all cultures, from every religion, from atheists and agnostics and others, what you start to realize is they’re all referring to the oneness of mind, the oneness of consciousness that we all share. I know a good friend of ours, Dr. Larry Dossey, who wrote a beautiful book called One Mind, which I highly recommend to people who want to learn more about this. That it’s all about the fact that the modern neuroscience of consciousness is absolutely filled with examples of how our thoughts overlap and how our mind is not really owned by us, but in fact, telepathy is real, precognition is real, psychokinesis, the ability to influence material objects through mental influence alone is real, and then all manner of extended consciousness like out-of-body experiences, remote viewing, past life memories in children, indicative of reincarnation, all of these things of the bigger facets of consciousness have a scientific basis and have been studied. So it’s really just up to the individual to start to explore this universe within, given the huge amount of scientific data that supports we’re all really sharing the one mind, and that the brain is actually a filter that allows that primordial consciousness in. And these are all ideas that we follow to tremendous depth in our book, living in a mindful universe.

Dr. Mark Leeds [22:11] Yeah. Some of the things you’re just talking about remote viewing and telekinesis, it brings me back to, I used to love listening to the show, the art bell show on the radio. And it’s funny you bring it up because I was just the other day, I was putting together a playlist of all of his bumper music. Cause I used to love all the music you play before and after. And, but yeah, I mean, I remember he had some experts on in that field of remote viewing and the military’s use of remote viewing. Right. And really interesting subject. And I’m glad you’re also, you brought up Michael Singer. I had the opportunity when I was taking a class in Gainesville, it occurred to me that I had read in his book that his temple is kind of near that area. So, you know, one night after class, I took a road trip out to Alachua, whatever he is, you know, out into the middle of the woods. And I actually got to sit for like a, you know, he gave a lecture for like an hour and then I got to meet him after, you know, really very nice, friendly person. And I’ve noticed when I’ve met or talked to or listened to or read from people who have had these spiritual experiences, you know, in the case of Michael Singer from years and years of meditation and working with gurus. And I also did an interview with Harry Derbitsky, who’s with the, he’s involved in something called the three principles, which is kind of an alternative to the 12 steps and they also talk about you know the same kind of a thing where you know you have that chattering in the head you know that monkey voice or whatever that just keeps talking and talking and that’s not you’re the observer in the back listening to that and it’s just you know really interesting that you know just and you get this kind of feeling you know like when I talk to you and when I talk to harry and like when I got to the opportunity to meet I once went to a lecture with the spiritual leader Ram Dass you know who had started out you know in the you know in the 60s he was first got involved experimenting with psychedelic drugs and then moved on to meditation and spiritualism and you just get this feeling kind of this warm feeling of you know that there’s something more to the universe you know there’s you know things like prayer love gratitude and recently I was reading a book by he’s the founder of Mindvalley and he wrote a book and he talks about an experiment they’re doing with biofeedback and training the brain to reach different states. You know, very similar to what Sacred Acoustics does of in training the brain to get into different states of different brainwaves. And they found that the best way to get to the target state was actually forgiveness. And it was kind of unusual for their participants because they thought they’re in this scientific study they’re hooking up their their heads to eeg machines and following their brainways and getting biofeedback but then they were told the best way that you’re going to get into the desired state I think they’re talking about alpha waves yeah was to forgive everybody in their life and which wasn’t easy I mean it’s when you start thinking about people that you think have wronged you in life you know how do you how do you forgive everybody but you know then I guess in the bigger picture when you think none of this is real I mean this is you know we’re all like you said ego and then we’re all kind of like a shared soul. I mean, really, what is there to forgiving people? I mean, what do you think about those kind of things like forgiveness and gratitude and prayer?

Dr. Eben Alexander [25:33] Well, I would say that two of the most powerful forces that any individual has to help guide their life in a positive direction are gratitude and forgiveness. These are extraordinary powers that when you start to explore them and work with them you realize just how liberating refreshing and kind of reviving they are now important to point out here a lot of what I would say is evidence about the fundamental workings of the universe for me comes from near-death experiences and very specifically from the life review Life reviews are reported to occur in anywhere from a quarter to a half of NDEs, depending on the series and kind of set of the investigator, et cetera. But the reality is the life review. And I’ve met so many people who have explained kind of life reviews. And I had my own visions of life reviews, although in my journey, they could not involve the personal life of Eben Alexander because of my amnesia for the life of Eben Alexander. But I did see life reviews in ways that were very extraordinary and, of course, included reincarnation as a crucial principle. But the important thing to understand is that most people describe these not as, you know, you’re witnessing memories of your life of residual soul lessons as much as you’re going back through those residual lessons, the important ones, and doing it, but experiencing that whole interaction from the point of view of those around you who your actions and thoughts influence. That’s the important thing. A life review is a beautiful example of how we’re more like facets on the gem of the one mind than individual isolated minds. We’re different perspectives of the one mind. And we see that in that life review, and it’s a very important kind of awakening to the nature of reality because it reminds us that living these lives and having this sense of self and here and now is really only part of the stage setting for that drama to unfold, but when we leave our physical body at the end of life, we have this extraordinary review of the life, and it’s not a new age concept. In fact, the life review was written about by Plato 2,400 years ago, when he discussed the death of an Armenian soldier, Ur, who was dead on the battlefield several days. And when they finally put him up on a funeral pyre, just before they lit it, he came back to life. And his story was very simple. When you die, you go through a review of all the most important features of your life. And the only thing that matters is how much love you gave out to this world during your lifetime. Nothing else counts. And that would echo today what millions of near-death experiencers say about the life review and about their journey beginning into that afterlife. But of course, for near-death experiencers, they don’t die. They come back. But the bigger reality, as I learned, is to understand near-death experiences fully in context, you need to take the bigger picture and look at consciousness writ large. And that is all manner of conscious experiences, all those examples of non-local consciousness, like telepathy and remote viewing out-of-body experiences, precognition, the fact that we can know the future before it happens, psychokinesis, the past life memories in children that have been studied at the University of Virginia for more than six decades, with more than 2,500 cases now, where a very ready explanation is actually of reincarnation. And these were cases that were gathered scientifically with major efforts to prevent any kind of fraud or fabrication. And when you look at that body of evidence, it’s just way too strong to just ignore. But we have to take all of this in context. You were talking earlier about Art Bell, and I think also of George Noory and others who have helped from a media standpoint to expose the world to all these various positions. And of course, for the materialist science, it’s kind of like a game of whack-a-mole. You whack down on remote viewing, whack down on out-of-body experiences, whack down on near-death experiences, whack down on past life memories in children indicative of reincarnation. And yet, from that media perspective, they can back off a notch and say, well, why don’t we look at all of this? And that’s really what I had to do as a practicing neurosurgeon who fully bought into the materialist model, who then had a big wake-up call. And the gift of my journey was that wake-up call, that meningitis that was destroying my entire neocortex. And, of course, those who hear me say that, those in medicine say, well, I can’t have done that because look at him now. That’s the miracle that they ignore by failing to acknowledge the information. And luckily the information now is very objective and validated because in September of 2018 in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases three physicians wrote a case report that took them more than two years to write and get published on my medical records and in that case report which is available to anybody who wants to see it on my website go to ebenalexander.com go to my blog pages Look back in September 2018 to the blog I wrote on an independent medical review validating the facts of my case. And in the fourth paragraph, you’ll find a link right to the medical report itself. But the things that they found so interesting, these doctors who were not involved in my care, but were fascinated by this high level of recovery from a disease that normally just devastates people, kills them outright or leaves them horribly afflicted for life. How did I have this full recovery over two months? It really has no explanation of Western medicine. And in fact, in this peer-reviewed medical article, these three physicians who were familiar with other cases of really miraculous healing and near-death experiences that had been well-validated, they surmised that my miraculous recovery could be explained by the spiritual nature of my coma experience of my NDE itself. And to me, all that does is point out to all of us how we have the power within, just as medical science has admitted for more than six decades, that the power of belief is very strong indeed. That’s why we use placebo-controlled studies to assess any new treatment, is because we recognize that a patient’s beliefs can be very powerful. And once you realize this isn’t just about getting rid of a headache by giving somebody a sugar pill, but that in fact people have had advanced cancers, infections, even genital deformities that they were born with, correct under the influence of mind over matter, you start to realize that’s really the way this universe works. And if it can work in our health, you bet it can work in the rest of our lives. And I would say that any physical, mental, or emotional health is going to be fundamentally spiritual. And of course, many people gain spirituality through religion. But I would say that sometimes the orthodoxies of religion become very conflicting with each other, whereas the basic principles underlying all of the great religions, this notion of a great spirit, of oneness, of connectedness, of love, compassion, and mercy, these are concepts that emerge full force from this modern world of going within and exploring and coming to a deeper understanding of the nature of this one mind, of this consciousness that seems to rule the entire universe, and yet is not separate from us. We all have the power by going within to connect very directly with that power and just like in life reviews people can learn incredible things about their lives and moving forward and if they come back to this world after an nde with a life review their life is very much changed but look what it does it brings them much more into compassion altruism philanthropy giving to others because this is really all about taking care of each other that’s what this notion of the one mind really means when you look at it from an emotional standpoint and not just a cognitive intellectual standpoint. We’re all in this together. It’s all about that heart consciousness. And that is something that has tremendous power to heal this world. Just like in the world of addiction and alcoholism, you run into a concept of what’s called a gift of desperation. You know, that things get so bad that you really have to make the choice to either change your life fundamentally or cease to exist. Unfortunately, the disease is so strong that millions around this world have succumbed before being able to actually rise above it all. But that’s where I believe that meditation, centering prayer, this notion of a kind of a higher power, as you come to realize that higher power is actually the very source of your conscious awareness. It’s the part of you that expands tremendously when you’re liberated from the shackles of the physical brain at the time of death. That’s why near-death experiences describe what they do. That liberation is very powerful. But the good news is you don’t have to wait till you die or almost die to get this. As a conscious, sentient being, we all have the power to go within and explore and start to determine these very deep connections we share with the universe. And so I would say that spirituality in the modern sense, even though it may be engendered by some people through prayer and meditation and various religious systems, you don’t need religious orthodoxy for this to work at all. And in fact, the religious orthodoxy often greatly interferes with it. The very fact that we see violence between religious groups is an indicator that the orthodoxy has gained control and they’ve lost the sense of the original message of the prophets, which never, ever truly involve this kind of deep sense of conflict for other, you know, for those who are aware of this. And unfortunately, a lot of the world is still in the dark about it. But anyway, the sense of spirituality that I’m talking about here really just has two main ingredients. One is an acknowledgement of what’s coming to the fore in the neuroscience of consciousness and philosophy of mind, that we really are sharing one consciousness. And it’s shared with all life, all sentience throughout the universe, not just shared among human beings. This is much bigger than that. In fact, our linguistic brain gets in the way of our knowing the deep power of that one mind, of that conscious force within us. But the spirituality contains not only a sense of that oneness of mind that we’re all together. So if you hurt another, you’re truly hurting yourself. And this is something that’s a fundamental lesson of the life review in a near-death experience. But the other thing is a grand sense of purpose and meaning. I often talk about the importance of the reincarnation literature and science to help support this bigger view of mind. And the only way to really understand that reincarnation is to understand it’s not some blind mechanistic wheel of suffering where you’re trying to get off the bus, but in fact is directed towards oneness with the divine. And I would say essentially to me, It was very helpful to read the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote in the mid-20th century. He was a scientist, a paleontologist, but he was also a French Jesuit priest. And he wrote a book called The Phenomenon of Man, in which he kind of expanded on our notions of evolution. Beyond the simplistic version of materialist science of survival of the fittest. And by the way, that misinterpretation of Darwin has actually gotten us into huge, huge trouble. With this notion in our modern corporations and armies and people that you become, you know, dominant in this world by defeating and vanquishing your enemies, as opposed to realizing what most biologists recognize now, that collaboration and cooperation are the keys to success in the biological community. And that’s something we’re coming to realize in this bigger sense of evolution that Teilhard de Chardin spoke of, which is that all of consciousness is evolving towards what he called an omega point. He also labeled it a Christ consciousness. But I would say it is a world of harmony and peace where we all acknowledge that we are in this together and that if we hurt others, we are truly hurting ourselves. And there’s not a deeper, more fundamental lesson that comes back from the whole world of near-death experiences, but it’s one we can all benefit from learning. As I said a few minutes ago, the gift of desperation can be very powerful to help turn one around, to avoid that bottom and to reunite with the soul we truly came here to be. And I would say that all the hardships and polarization and conflict we see in our world today are actually a beautiful gift of desperation. That in fact, it is now time for us to acknowledge, you know, the ecological crisis of climate change is absolutely undeniable. And every year it gets more and more impressive, even to the numb-minded who deny the scientific evidence. And it won’t be long before everybody will be realizing this is a horrific devastation that we must avoid. We must start getting off of fossil fuels now. We need to be responsible for this climate. This gift of desperation comes at just the right time to help us make all of these major corrections, to realize that all the war and conflict in this world has never done any real good for humanity at all. And that in fact, we need to rise above it. There should be an end to all of such war and violent conflict because it never gets us where we want to get. We need to open our minds tremendously and that’s with this awakening in consciousness and evolving notion of spirituality as both goal and purpose directed and built on a principle of oneness of soul and mind. This is the world we face today And I believe I can be very optimistic about where I think it’s headed.

Dr. Mark Leeds [39:52] And for people who think that near-death experiences are rare, you’ve mentioned the fact that in recent decades, there’s more near-death experiences than ever before in history because medical science has progressed and people are able to be resuscitated after being dead, where that wasn’t possible in the distant past.

Dr. Eben Alexander [40:17] Right. And that is no accident, by the way. The universe did that on purpose. In the late 1960s, doctors developed ways to resuscitate cardiac arrest patients. And so before that time, you know, it was very rare to have people get that close to death and come back. And basically we had 5,000 years of a world where you would have the occasional prophet or mystic who had taken such a journey and they would come back and tell their story and try and help people to get on board with it but it was always a question of do you believe what that journey or that mystic, that prophet says or not but the good news is now this whole revolution is actually strongly based in science the science of consciousness is what is supporting this gigantic shift in our understanding that will be revolutionary. It absolutely goes far beyond the Copernican revolution, where Nicholas Copernicus basically moved the center of mankind view of the universe from the earth to the sun. Very revolutionary and something the church did not like. But in fact, I think the revolution that’s on us now about the primacy of mind And the power of mind over matter is going to absolutely revolutionize humanity all in a much more positive direction than what we’ve faced so far.

Dr. Mark Leeds [41:39] Yeah. And I think that’s the incredible thing about your story is that, you know, when we hear these kind of things coming from different people, you know, you wonder, you know, where’s the science behind it? And you’re providing a continuity with traditional science moving forward because you have a history, you know, you’re a medical doctor, a neurosurgeon, a scientist. And so you bring credibility and also continuity with the research and you know you’ve done studies you’ve made sure that your experience was thoroughly documented and kept very pure and you’ve done extensive research you’ve talked about hundreds and hundreds of people who’ve had near-death experiences and this isn’t just something that’s in the fringe literature this is in peer-reviewed medical journals and you know so it’s not something that’s rare unknown this is you know very solid real scientific stuff that’s out there and people can research it and learn a lot more about you know what has happened these things can’t just be explained by brain chemistry and you know that sort of thing

Dr. Eben Alexander [42:41] Yeah that’s a very important point and I would also say you know I often mention you know this revolution depends not just on the neuroscience of consciousness and philosophy of mind but it depends quite heavily on quantum physics. When you think about it, physics, you know, is looking at the physical world around us and understanding what are the natural laws that govern the workings of that physical world. And what happens is as you examine physics more and more deeply, and this is what happened in the 20th century, you start finding that you cannot connect the dots as well as you would like to. And in fact, if you try and pretend that the observing scientists is separate from the universe they’re observing, you find, no, no, no, that’s not the way it works. Every bit of reality is manifested as it presents through the prism of the mind. The mind is what ultimately governs all this. And this is something the founding fathers of quantum physics tried to tell us, like Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger and Wolfgang Pauli and others. So they said consciousness is fundamental. It’s not derivative from matter. And they were very adamant about that. And that is what has turned out to be the case. So, you know, the interesting thing about quantum physics is it points out that there really is no reality until it’s observed in the level of mind. And in fact, those who kind of doubt this and wonder about it, I would steer them to a beautiful one-page essay that was written by Richard Conn Henry in the scientific journal Nature back in 2005. It’s called Mental Universe, and he makes it very clear. He was the head of astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University, So no slouch in modern science, physics, cosmology. And he made it very clear in that one-page essay that quantum physicists were coming to acknowledge that there is a top-down organizational principle in this universe, something that David Bohm had hinted at in his version of the interpretation of the measurement paradox in quantum physics to a mental pilot way. But in essence quantum physics has done progressive experiments since the 1970s that prove that the best model for how this all works is what is called metaphysical or ontological idealism that’s the notion that it’s all mental at the outset and for those like me before Coleman like certain say physicists who still argue that near-death experiences are nonsense that consciousness has nothing to do with quantum physics they are just ignorant of the work being done in consciousness. That’s their problem. And in fact, when you look at it, the best solution that many of them can come up with to explain the results of experiments in quantum physics are to postulate a universe that at every choice point where a sentient being is making an observation, making a choice about seeing the universe, that every one of those choice points ends up leading to a separate universe. The universe splits every time, infinite parallel universes. It’s called the many worlds interpretation. And to this day, if you take a poll among physicists, it’s their favorite interpretation of the measurement paradox in quantum physics. And yet it really is kind of nonsensical. Others have looked at, well, can we look at a many minds interpretation, things like that. But I think ultimately what the experiments are showing now is that we’re really dealing with that mental universe where the mind is controlling all of emergent matter. That’s why things like placebo effect actually work, because mind over matter has tremendous power. And as we go into meditation and come to realize we are not that little voice in our head, that little stream of thoughts, but that our awareness is something far more powerful than that has existed in previous lifetimes and will exist in future lifetimes, all in this journey of growth and furtherance of understanding. That can be a very liberating concept, especially to one who is slave to that crazy little voice of the ego With all those childhood wounds and all those feelings of unworthiness, this is about reuniting with your higher soul, which is on a far grander mission than all that.

Dr. Mark Leeds [47:01] Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It’s interesting when you look at the history, when you talk about things that happened for a reason. And in the mid 20th century, you know, there was the suddenly the psychedelic drugs went from being, you know, something that we’re found in cactuses and shamans out the desert were using to suddenly Timothy Leary, Harvard professor, comes in contact with LSD. And suddenly people are exploring consciousness with the aid of drugs. And you know these psychedelic drugs you know get out there and of course get squashed by the government because you know anything that’s chemically induced is not allowed alcohol of course which they love

Dr. Eben Alexander [47:43] Yeah yeah

Dr. Mark Leeds [47:44] Which you know so and so that kind of came and went but interestingly timothy leary later in life said that you know the future of expanding consciousness is not going to be drugs, it’s going to be technology. He talked about cyberspace and virtual reality. And he was talking about that decades before, now when we’re finally seeing actual virtual reality is something workable, it’s actually becoming usable. But interestingly, also around that same mid-20th century time period, I think in the late 30s, early 40s, binaural beats were discovered, or the idea of it came up, I forgot the guy’s name, Wilhelm, something.

Dr. Eben Alexander [48:27] It was actually back in the mid 19th century.

Dr. Mark Leeds [48:30] Oh, Dove was his name. So even a hundred years before. Well, yeah. So the idea that you could have a tone, very close tones, you know, playing in each year and your brain perceives the beat, you know, the lower frequency, you know, I’m thinking like maybe say, say you have a 400 Hertz frequency and a four 10 frequency on this side, your brain hears that 10 Hertz beat.

Dr. Eben Alexander [48:55] Exactly. Very important point. And I think just to amplify on the point you’re making, every sound we’ve ever heard, every symphony, every chant, anthem, hymn, what have you, has been processed up here in the neocortex, in our acoustic cortex of the temporal lobes, in circuits that have really developed in the last one to 10 million years, by and large. And contrast that with the effect of sacred acoustics and these binaural beats. They are actually influencing a circuit in the lower brainstem, the superior olivary nucleus complex, that evolved more than 300 million years ago. And from my point of view, this is one of the fundamental reasons why these differential frequency sounds can be so extraordinarily powerful at liberating transcendental states of conscious awareness is because they’re impacting our consciousness way back in time from an evolutionary standpoint. And that’s a general principle in evolutionary biology is if you want to really get to know a function and how it works, follow it back in evolutionary time to its origins. And that’s what we can do by utilizing these kinds of sounds that affect the lower brainstem. And I believe that is why they engender such an extraordinary kind of liberation. They set our conscious awareness free basically by monotonizing the information process and going on in the neocortex and helping us to step out of the illusion of the here and now.

Dr. Mark Leeds [50:25] Yeah. So, you know, and in the past, scientists have used these fancy sensory deprivation tanks, you know, floating in saltwater in a dark tank. And, you know, which is kind of a scary and extreme process. But we don’t have to do that anymore. Where we can just put headphones on and lay back in bed. And now my favorite, I love sacred acoustics. I’ve been using the recordings and my favorite, and I don’t know if everyone has a favorite, my favorite frequency is the theta programs. I mean, those are just my favorite, you know, going into, you know, like maybe between four to six hertz, you know, 6.3 hertz. And it’s very meditative. And a lot of times I just fall asleep at the end, But I usually have these really vivid dreams. And right before I fall asleep, I go into, I guess, a hypnagogic state where I hear voices in my head and stuff.

Dr. Eben Alexander [51:15] That’s what Theta is all about. That’s where we live, you know, that state of hypnagogia, halfway between awake and asleep, is that Theta range, a very hefty dose of it. In fact, my oldest son, Eben IV, who just finished medical school, he listened to Theta for several hundred hours while he was studying for the medical boards part two. And his percentile ranking in that test went well above what it had been before, which he attributes to his listening to Theta while he was studying. And I know other people have used it for all kinds of things. I think it can be a very healing frequency and it’s very good background. I listen to forms of theta a lot. So I highly recommend it. And again, you don’t have to use these tones for sound journeys and meditations. Cosmic womb is especially good background. That’s a sacred acoustics title for pretty much any activity where you want to enhance your thinking, artistic creativity, what have you. I would highly recommend people try that one out. But you’re right. People do find favorites. And the good news is my iPhone is absolutely loaded, not just with the current Sacred Acoustics offerings, but with a lot of the other ones that never went all the way to commercial product and yet are very powerful. I mean, Kevin, over the last nine years, have put out a prodigious amount of very powerful kind of mind-bending binaural beat tones. Now, I would just add, though, that Sacred Acoustics is far beyond anyone else I know who produces binaural beats. And also, a warning, never take binaural beats, say, from YouTube or off of an iTunes account, assuming that they’re going to have full power. Because the devil’s in the details with these tones, and the real power of them is in all the frequencies being available. And unfortunately, in the modern era, especially with people acquiring such audio files, you know, from YouTube and other sources that insist on compressing the files, what you get is not strong enough. Much of the power signal has been stripped out of it. So I would encourage people, go to Sacred Acoustics website, sacredacoustics.com. You’ll learn a tremendous amount more. Karen has some beautiful free teaching videos on there. But they talk about all kinds of things from how to get into deep meditative states to you know the best way to transfer these files so you don’t lose any of the power of them

Dr. Mark Leeds [53:45] Yeah yeah and now I think I remember seeing when I don’t know where I saw it if it was on the sacred acoustics website but that there was something about like a recording that could help to promote astral projection and that one intrigued me because it’s kind of something I’ve always been interested in and I think I’ve even read that it’s like a maybe even a dangerous thing like you have to be careful if you if you leave your body to maybe not go too far or not do it if you might be physically disturbed is that something that could a state that can actually be induced by by

Dr. Eben Alexander [54:18] I’ll say yes it is a state that can be induced and the important thing to remember is you start you know karen is an excellent teacher about all this that’s why I encourage people to go look at her free training videos on her website but she starts by really kind of addressing the heart. I mean, the first thing you’ve got to realize is for one thing, our notion that, you know, mind is stuck inside this brain and is not part of this bigger mind. We need to let go of that assumption but that we can do in meditation readily enough. But then a very important thing is acknowledging that you’re going to encounter as you start visiting these bigger realms of kind of mind and spirit, it, you’re going to start encountering that baggage that you built up around your heart since you were a young child. You know, those baby wounds, as Karen calls them, like my being abandoned by my mother at age 11 days. That was a little baby wound that actually was giant. It got in my way for a lot of things. And acknowledging it was a first step. But then is the potential for release. And that’s something Karen is an expert at teaching, is that ability to release some of those hardships from the heart. And then people can really go deep. And there’s no cause for fear. Once you have freed yourself of those egoic kind of baby wounds and those kind of misperceptions about self and relationship with the universe, from that point on, there really is nothing to fear. People want it to be all, you know, like harps and pink clouds and all that kind of thing. And no, that’s not like my earthworm’s eye view is a stage that I can learn to embrace. But I do that by knowing that ultimately the most powerful force in this universe is one of infinitely healing, unconditional love. And when you go into the spiritual space with that kind of knowing, and it’s something that you build up the knowing as you go along, there really is nothing to fear there. And it’s all about learning, teaching, growing together, and helping other souls. That’s really kind of the highest value here is to help other souls. So it really is a gift all around to have this kind of awakening and to start exploring of these mental realms. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Leeds [56:29] And one issue, you know, when I see patients, you know, when they come in for medical treatment for addiction, the medication we’re using is usually buprenorphine, which is great to get people into a state where they’re not feeling, they’re not suffering from the withdrawal and the cravings and obsession, you know, the physical. I mean, a lot of those symptoms are mental, but they’re really physical, you know, the things that involve.

Dr. Eben Alexander [56:51] And they’re also, I would, as I said earlier, physical, mental, and emotional health is fundamentally spiritual. So in many ways, they have to do with a disconnect from the universe. And what we’re trying to do is reestablish the strength of that very natural birthright of a connection with the formative powers of the universe. Yeah. And I think another point to make along these lines of addiction studies, you know, I do not recommend the use of psychedelic drugs like psilocybin, DMT, LSD on a casual recreational basis. Because if you have any kind of emotional or mental instability, they’ll really kick you off the edge of the cliff. But under the proper therapeutic intervention, they can be very powerful. And for example, work with psilocybin is now showing it probably to be one of the most powerful drugs ever studied to alleviate the symptoms you’re talking about. With withdrawal crisis in opiates, in nicotine, which is one of the most addictive substances known to man, alcoholism, things like that. Some work with psilocybin in a proper therapeutic setting in just one session can be enough to greatly diminish or eliminate the kind of symptoms you’re talking about. I know Karen may have told you about a colleague of ours who’s an addiction specialist out in Utah who himself had recovered from fentanyl. He almost died from opiates. But one of the things he does to help stabilize his patients when they first come in and in the throes of withdrawal is to play the alm file the sacred acoustics on file and give them 20 minutes of calm down and he says it’s amazing how powerful even that simple step can be to help kind of blunt these symptoms allow them to start connecting with the universe in ways that are much more natural and then you know just building on that with meditation and centering prayer

Dr. Mark Leeds [58:50] Yeah and like psilocybin, I’ve heard that ibogaine is being used in other countries. It’s not legal here, but some countries have these ibogaine clinics and people will go on a psychedelic three-day trip. One patient had told me a story of going to one of these clinics and said it was a very unpleasant experience, but the patient came out of it without any feeling of having been addicted to the drug that they were addicted to previously. And maybe now with psilocybin being decriminalized in Colorado, maybe that’s a step towards at least the possibility of it being researched further and maybe used clinically, at least early studied.

Dr. Eben Alexander [59:27] Well, I hope so, because the studies look very good at this point. And, you know, these are challenges that we’ve not done very well with in the past. Yeah. 12-step program has been successful, but even they will tell you know, The recidivism rate is well over 50%. It’s still a very dangerous set of circumstances. What I would say is the reason the psilocybin works and the reason these kind of meditations work is very simply by getting in touch with that primordial mind, with the ultimate creative and evolutionary force of the universe, realizing that it is part of us. It’s part of our very awareness, and that we can actually use that to grow tremendously beyond the hardships of addictions and alcoholism and all the kind of petty problems that our ego throws at us. So in his book, Dark Night, Early Dawn, Christopher Bache, B-A-C-H-E, actually compares head to head his work with high-dose LSD for spiritual journeying and the use of binaural beats. And he had, you know, kind of an earlier form, not as powerful as sacred acoustics, in my view, that he was using. But he came down saying in that book, Dark Night, Early Dawn, that in fact, he got as much, if not more, progress using the sound than he did the psychedelic drugs. And I would say they’re opening similar doors, but the drugs create such a big splash that I think it’s safer and more effective to do it through sound. And if you use differential frequency sound on a regular basis, I do it an hour or two a day, and I’ve been doing that for more than nine years. I assure you that in many cases, it will have tremendous benefit by connecting with that all-powerful primordial mind.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:01:19] Yeah, and now there is some concern out there. You know, I’ve read some articles where, you know, people are calling binaural beats a digital drug and they’re concerned about. And I think the bigger concern is not so much the binaural beats and the sound programs themselves, but where they’re coming from. Like, you know, you talk about YouTube and I’ve seen these ones where they connect the title will connect the sound program to a specific drug. Like, you know, get the DMT experience, get the LSD experience by listening. And you don’t it’s kind of like I tell my patients, don’t don’t take anything off the streets. And, you know, kind of going out to these YouTube channels and putting on headphones is kind of like taking something off the streets. And especially when they start connecting it to drugs, you know, and someone says get the Adderall effect, which is probably not a good association, especially for the recovering addict. You know, so as far as, you know, these sound programs, is there any risk, though? I mean, when a person puts on headphones and listens to binaural beats, is there any concern about, you know, any adverse effects from it?

Dr. Eben Alexander [1:02:23] Well, I think there are some people who just find it uncomfortable. They’ll listen and they might feel some heaviness in their heart or something, which I would assume is they’re just beginning to get that emotional baggage that they’re going to be able to release. But for some of them, they just feel like that’s too much to deal with and they’d rather do it some other way. So it doesn’t work in everyone, although it’s amazing to me how many people it does seem to work in. The other point I’d like to make is that in many ways, the sacred acoustics is kind of like training wheels. The more you use it, the more your mind just starts to live in that theta state of, I don’t want to label it with an EEG frequency, but for me, I know it’s a theta state because we’ve measured it. But you really, your whole mind starts to develop in a way that’s very positive so that you start to live this life of oneness with all others and of compassion and mercy, of forgiveness. They just become natural. Gratitude is in every breath. So that’s just part and parcel of what happens so it’s not like I view myself as having to listen to sacred acoustics to get this fixed I use it really to kind of help me further evolve my relationship with the realms that I first discovered in my NDE and again you don’t need to die or almost die to get this as a conscious sentient being we all have the power to do this and that’s why I would encourage people to do so and also for any of your listeners who want to learn more about this but really don’t have any money to spend on it, I highly encourage you go to ebenalexander.com and on the welcome page is a banner that wiggles in your face, your 33-day journey into the heart of consciousness. It’s a 33-day email course that presents 33 of the main concepts of our book, Living in a Mindful Universe. This course has been taken by more than 8,000 people around the world. It has a translate button so people from all over the world, all different languages are participating on each of the 33 days they’re leaving comments helping each other leaving experiences it’s developing into this rich community of like-minded souls who are waking up to this much bigger reality of how we influence the world and you don’t have to spend one penny just go to ebenalexander.com join on that 33-day course and you are off and running

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:04:47] Yeah that and that sounds great because I know any any course I’ve taken one of the biggest values that comes with anything of those sort of things is the community, you know, connecting with a community of like-minded people. So that sounds really good. It’s very good. And, you know, and like what I was getting at with, you know, when patients, they come into treatment, they’re kind of programmed to ask for medication for everything. You know, they say, doctor, I can’t sleep. Can you give me a sleeping pill? I’m anxious. Can you give me an anxiety pill? And so these programs, these sound programs, are like an incredible alternative. Very, very good at that.

Dr. Eben Alexander [1:05:21] And a lot of people, in fact, Sacred Acoustics has some products specifically for sleep and one specifically for naps. And for people with sleeping or want help with a quick nap, I would encourage you to go to Sacred Acoustics and check out those particular products. But there’s a whole host of other things. And Karen has a beautiful page on her website, Iwantto… And then it has all the different things. Creativity, reunite with the soul of a departed loved one, enhance my immune system, or relieve stress or hypertension, things like this. And she has pathways to all of that. So I would encourage people to visit sacredacoustics.com and follow the pathway she suggests. It’s very, very powerful stuff.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:06:07] And I understand that there’s a study about to be published, like a scientific study in a reputable peer-reviewed medical journal, a study of sacred acoustics being used in clinical practice.

Dr. Eben Alexander [1:06:21] There is. It’s a study that was done in conjunction with Dr. Anna Yusim, Y-U-S-I-M. She’s a psychiatrist in New York, a brilliant psychiatrist. She wrote a beautiful book called Fulfilled. This book is one of the best books I’ve ever read on psychiatry and spirituality. It’s a very powerful book. But anyway, yes, that study will come out, I believe it’s in October. So this month, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases. I haven’t even checked yet. But it basically showed that Sacred Acoustics gave about a 26% improvement in anxiety and depression symptoms in patients of Dr. Yusim’s in New York City. And that was compared with, I believe, 9% in control. So a tremendous boon by adding these tones beyond the typical talk therapy and alleviating anxiety and depression. We have other pilot studies we’re working on. We’re trying to get sacred acoustics out into hospice centers to help induce episodes of terminal lucidity and also potentially shared crossings. That is a near-death experience, but happening in a loved one at the bedside when a dying family member crosses over. Shared crossing is actually with the soul of the bystander going along, even to the point of witnessing a full-blown life review, then coming back to this world. These are well-described events that occur, and what we’re looking at is in the hospice setting, can we enhance their occurrence and the strength of the spiritual lessons that people are able to bring back through the use of sacred acoustics tones? So there’s several other ways we’re looking at using sacred acoustics to really help and do the scientific studies to prove their utility.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:08:14] Okay, great, great. And so thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it. And I want to encourage the viewers and listeners to go visit your website, ebenalexander.com, to visit sacred acoustics, sacredacoustics.com, right? That website. And I encourage people to take the 33-day course. And I appreciate it. And just one final thing. So people watching who may right now may be afraid, you know, they’re afraid of death. They’re afraid of walking out their front door. In your experience, would you agree people really have nothing to fear at all?

Dr. Eben Alexander [1:08:48] There is nothing to fear. It is actually a shocker because as opposed to everything blinking down to nothingness, it’s actually an awakening to a far grander, richer world, reuniting with our higher soul and soul groups, going through that life review. I mean, the only thing to be careful of is if you spent your whole life handing out a lot of pain and suffering, your life review might not be the most pleasant experience, but it’s one that will build you up and help you to grow stronger. You know, the universe is very fair. We reap what we sow. And why anybody would think differently, I don’t know. But that’s what the life review is all about. But there really is nothing to fear when you go into it with a heart full of love and compassion for others and knowing that this is all about the higher good. You have nothing whatsoever to fear about dying. But it’s certainly not the oblivion that the materialists mistakenly promise you from their lack of experience. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for joining me today. Okay, thank you very much, Mark. Great talking with you. I hope to talk again soon.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:09:52] Thank you for joining us today on The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I hope that you have found this show to be interesting and useful. If so, please subscribe to the Rehab Podcast and share on social media. I appreciate your taking the time to listen to the Rehab.