Life from Light: Is It Possible to Live Without Food?a Scientist Reports on His Experiences

In 1898, Therese Neumann, a nun in Southern Germany, stopped eating and drinking. Apart from the wafer given at Mass, she did not eat again until her death thirty-five years later. Similar cases have been reported over the years―often holy men from the East―and have assumed mythical status. Nonetheless, such accounts remain obscure enough to be safely ignored by modern scientists.

Michael Werner presents a new challenge to sceptics. A fit family man in his fifties and with a doctorate in Chemistry, he is the managing director of a research institute in Switzerland. Unlike those who have achieved such a feat in the past, he is an ordinary man who lives a full and active life.

Werner has become an open challenge to all scientists: Test me, using all the scientific monitoring and data you wish. Here, he describes one such test, in which he was kept without food in a strictly monitored environment for ten days. Werner describes in detail how and why he gave up food in the first place and what his life is like without it. Life from Light also features reports from others who have attempted to follow this way of life, as well as supplementary material on possible scientific explanations of how one could “live on light.”

Michael Werner was born in 1949 and holds a PhD in Chemistry. He has worked in the chemical industry as well as pharmaceuticals and has taught secondary school chemistry and biology. For the past fifteen years, he has been managing director of a cancer research institute at Arlesheim, Switzerland. Since the publication of this book in German, he has embarked on an ever-increasing schedule of lectures and a lively correspondence with numerous individuals.

Thomas Stöckli was born in 1951. He has worked as a freelance journalist, as a teacher at middle school level, and as a lecturer on teacher training and educational research. For the past twenty-five years, he has been deeply concerned with spiritual questions and personal development and has authored many articles and books. He is currently endeavoring to link spiritual ideas with scientific thought, while conversely countering dogmatism in science.