Dr. Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross' Near-Death Experience Research
Dr.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (www.ekrfoundation.org), the Swiss-born psychiatrist
and author who gained international fame for
her landmark work on death and dying, died in
her suburban Phoenix home on August 24, 2004.
She was 78. In 1999, Time magazine named Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross as one of the "100 Most Important
Thinkers" of the past century. I might
add that she is also the "First Pioneer
of the Final Frontier Called Death."
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
was recognized as one of the leading authorities
in the field of death, dying and transition.
It can be said that she was the one responsible
for creating this field of study. She was the
author of several books including:
On Death and Dying
and
Life Lessons.
Another book of hers,
On Life After Death,
collected for the first time information drawn
from her years of working with the dying and
learning from them what life is all about, in-depth
research on life after death, and her own feelings
and opinions about this fascinating and controversial
subject. Her development of the model of the
stages of grief, known as the
Kubler-Ross Change Curve, has even been
applied to various applications such as
business. The following is an excerpt from her
book in which she described one of the most
interesting near-death experiences she has encountered.
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My
most dramatic and unforgettable case of "ask
and you will be given," and also of an
NDE, was a man who was in the process of being
picked up by his entire family for a Memorial
Day weekend drive to visit some relatives out
of town. While driving in the family van to
pick him up, his parents-in-law with his wife
and eight children were hit by a gasoline tanker.
The gasoline poured over the car and burned
his entire family to death. After being told
what happened, this man remained in a state
of total shock and numbness for several weeks.
He stopped working and was unable to communicate.
To make a long story short, he became a total
bum, drinking half-a-gallon of whisky a day,
trying heroin and other drugs to numb his pain.
He was unable to hold a job for any length of
time and ended up literally in the gutter.
It was
during one of my hectic traveling tours, having
just finished the second lecture in a day on
life after death, that a hospice group in Santa
Barbara asked me to give yet another lecture.
After my preliminary statements, I became aware
that I am very tired of repeating the same stories
over and over again. And I quietly said to myself: "Oh
God, why don't you send me somebody from
the audience who has had an NDE and is willing
to share it with the audience so I can take
a break? They will have a first-hand experience
instead of hearing my old stories over and over
again."
At that
very moment the organizer of the group gave
me a little slip of paper with an urgent message
on it. It was a message from a man from the
bowery who begged to share his NDE with me.
I took a little break and sent a messenger to
his bowery hotel. A few moments later, after
a speedy cab ride, the man appeared in the audience.
Instead of being a bum as he had described himself,
he was a rather well dressed, very sophisticated
man. He went up on the stage and without having
a need to evaluate him, I encouraged him to
tell the audience what he needed to share.
He told
how he had been looking forward to the weekend
family reunion, how his entire family had piled
into a family van and were on the way to pick
him up when this tragic accident occurred which
burned his entire family to death. He shared
the shock and the numbness, the utter disbelief
of suddenly being a single man, of having had
children and suddenly becoming childless, of
living without a single close relative. He told
of his total inability to come to grips with
it. He shared how he changed from a money-earning,
decent, middle-class husband and father to a
total bum, drunk every day from morning to night,
using every conceivable drug and trying to commit
suicide in every conceivable way, yet never
able to succeed. His last recollection
was that after two years of literally bumming
around, he was lying on a dirt road at the edge
of a forest, drunk and stoned as he called it,
trying desperately to be reunited with his family.
Not wanting to live, not even having the energy
to move out of the road when he saw a big truck
coming toward him and running over him.
It was
at this moment that he watched himself in the
street [sic], critically injured, while he observed
the whole scene of the accident from a few feet
above. It was at this moment that his family
appeared in front of him, in a glow of light
with an incredible sense of love. They had happy
smiles on their faces, and simply made him aware
of their presence, not communicating in any
verbal way but in the form of thought transference,
sharing with him the joy and happiness of their
present existence.
This
man was not able to tell us how long this reunion
lasted. He was so awed by his family's health,
their beauty, their radiance and their total
acceptance of this present situation, by their
unconditional love. He made a vow not to touch
them, not to join them, but to re-enter his
physical body so that he could share with the
world what he had experienced. It would be a
form of redemption for his two years of trying
to throw his physical life away. It was after
this vow that he watched the truck driver carry
his totally injured body into the car. He saw
an ambulance speeding to the scene of the accident,
he was taken to the hospital's emergency
room and he finally re-entered his physical
body, tore off the straps that were tied around
him and literally walked out of the emergency
room. He never had delirium tremens or any aftereffects
from the heavy abuse of drugs and alcohol. He
felt healed and whole, and made a commitment
that he would not die until he had the opportunity
of sharing the existence of life after death
with as many people as would be willing to listen.
It was after reading a newspaper article about
my appearance in Santa Barbara that he sent
a message to the auditorium. By allowing him
to share with my audience he was able to keep
the promise he made at the time of his short,
temporary, yet happy reunion with his entire
family.
We do
not know what happened to this man since then,
but I will never forget the glow in his eyes,
the joy and deep gratitude he experienced, that
he was led to a place where, without doubt and
questioning, he was allowed to stand up on the
stage and share with a group of hundreds of
hospice workers the total knowledge and awareness
that our physical body is only the shell that
encloses our immortal self.
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Quotes by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross |
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And after your death, when most of you for the
first time realize what life here is all about,
you will begin to see that your life here is
almost nothing but the sum total of every choice
you have made during every moment of your life.
Your thoughts, which you are responsible for,
are as real as your deeds. You will begin to
realize that every word and every deed affects
your life and has also touched thousands of
lives.
As far as service goes, it can take the form
of a million things. To do service, you don't
have to be a doctor working in the slums for
free, or become a social worker. Your position
in life and what you do doesn't matter as
much as how you do what you do.
Death is simply a shedding of the physical body
like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is
a transition to a higher state of consciousness
where you continue to perceive, to understand,
to laugh, and to be able to grow.

Dying is an integral part of life, as natural
and predictable as being born. But whereas birth
is cause for celebration, death has become a
dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided
by every means possible in our modern society.
Perhaps it is that in spite of all our technological
advances. We may be able to delay it, but we
cannot escape it. We, no less than other, non-rational
animals, are destined to die at the end of our
lives. And death strikes indiscriminately --
it cares not at all for the status or position
of the ones it chooses; everyone must die, whether
rich or poor, famous or unknown. Even good deeds
will not exclude their doers from the sentence
of death; the good die as often as the bad.
It is perhaps this inevitable and unpredictable
quality that makes death so frightening to many
people. Especially those who put a high value
on being in control of their own existence are
offended by the though that they too care subject
to the forces of death.
Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most
wonderful experience of your life. It all depends
on how you have lived.
For those who seek to understand it, death is
a highly creative force. The highest spiritual
values of life can originate from the thought
and study of death.
Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion
of death.
How do the geese know when to fly to the sun?
Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans,
know when it is time to move on? As with the
migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a
voice within, if only we would listen to it,
that tells us so certainly when to go forth
into the unknown.
I believe that we are solely responsible for
our choices, and we have to accept the consequences
of every deed, word, and thought throughout
our lifetime.
I didn't fully realize it at the time, but
the goal of my life was profoundly molded by
this experience - to help produce, in the next
generation, more Mother Teresas and less Hitlers.
I say to people who care for people who are
dying, if you really love that person and want
to help them, be with them when their end comes
close. Sit with them - you don't even have
to talk. You don't have to do anything but
really be there with them.
It is not the end of the physical body that
should worry us. Rather, our concern must be
to live while we're alive - to release our
inner selves from the spiritual death that comes
with living behind a facade designed to conform
to external definitions of who and what we are.

It's only when we truly know and understand
that we have a limited time on Earth -- and
that we have no way of knowing when our time
is up, we will then begin to live each day to
the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.
I've told my children that when I die, to
release balloons in the sky to celebrate that
I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.
Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself
and know that everything in life has a purpose.
Live, so you do not have to look back and say: "God,
how I have wasted my life."
People are like stained-glass windows. They
sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when
the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed
only if there is a light from within.
Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms,
you would never see the beauty of their canyons.
The most beautiful people we have known are
those who have known defeat, known suffering,
known struggle, known loss, and have found their
way out of the depths. These persons have an
appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding
of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness,
and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people
do not just happen.
The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn
is unconditional love, which includes not only
others but ourselves as well.
There is no joy without hardship. If not for
death, would we appreciate life? If not for
hate, would we know the ultimate goal is love?
At these moments you can either hold on to negativity
and look for blame, or you can choose to heal
and keep on loving.
There is no need to go to India or anywhere
else to find peace. You will find that deep
place of silence right in your room, your garden
or even your bathtub.
Those who learned to know death, rather than
to fear and fight it, become our teachers about
life.
Throughout life, we get clues that remind us
of the direction we are supposed to be headed
if you stay focused, then you learn your lessons.
Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds
us of a falling star; one of a million lights
in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment
only to disappear into the endless night forever.
We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is
to remain a humanitarian and respected profession
or a new but depersonalized science in the service
of prolonging life rather than diminishing human
suffering.

We make progress in society only if we stop
cursing and complaining about its shortcomings
and have the courage to do something about them.
We need to teach the next generation of children
from day one that they are responsible for their
lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its
greatest curse, is that we have free choice.
We can make our choices built from love or from
fear.
We run after values that, at death, become zero.
At the end of your life, nobody asks you how
many degrees you have, or how many mansions
you built, or how many Rolls Royces you could
afford. That's what dying patients teach
you.
When we have passed the tests we are sent to
Earth to learn, we are allowed to graduate.
We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons
our souls
When you learn your lessons, the pain goes away.
You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful
flower garden, but you will grow if you are
sick, if you are in pain, if you experience
losses, and if you do not put your head in the
sand, but take the pain as a gift to you with
a very, very specific purpose.
Instead, the goal of life becomes not to elude
death but, because one's fears do not center
so much on it, rather to live in concert with
it. After an NDE, the survivor finds a new lease
on life; she/he is more willing to try new things
and to fit as many things as possible into it
because she/he is no longer so afraid of what
will happen at death. After the NDE, life is
more cherished, and the relationships that gave
that life more meaning are emphasized upon.
The NDE encourages growth and exploration; its
acknowledgment helps for those in a society
to desire continued testing of the limits and
possibilities of life.
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Books
by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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Questions and Answers On Death and Dying
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by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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This book is one of the most important
books ever written on the subject and
is still considered the benchmark in
the care of the dying. It became an
immediate bestseller, and Life magazine
called it "a profound lesson for the
living." This companion volume consists
of the questions that are most frequently
asked of Dr. Kubler-Ross and her compassionate
answers.
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The Wheel of Life: A Memoir of Living
and Dying
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by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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Dr. Kubler-Ross has brought comfort
and understanding to millions coping
with their own deaths or the deaths
of loved ones. At the age seventy-one
and facing her own death, this world-renowned
healer tells the story of her extraordinary
life. Having taught the world how to
die well, she now offers a lesson on
how to live well. Her story is an adventure
of the heart - powerful, controversial,
inspirational - a fitting legacy of
a powerful life.
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Death: The Final Stage of Growth
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by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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Ours is a death-denying society. But
death is inevitable, and we must face
the question of how to deal with it.
Coming to terms with our own finiteness
helps us discover life's true meaning.
Why do we treat death as a taboo? What
are the sources of our fears? How do
we express our grief, and how do we
accept the death of a person close to
us? How can we prepare for our own death?
Drawing on our own and other cultures'
views of death and dying, Dr. Kubler-Ross
provides some illuminating answers to
these and other questions.
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On Children and Death: How Children
and Their Parents Can and Do Cope With
Death
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by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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This book is a major addition to the
classic works of Dr. Kubler-Ross, whose
"On Death and Dying" and "Living with
Death and Dying" have been continuing
sources of strength and solace for tens
of millions of devoted readers worldwide.
Based on a decade of working with dying
children, this compassionate book offers
the families of dead and dying children
the help - and hope - they need to survive.
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Living With Death and Dying
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by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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In this compassionate and moving guide
to communicating with the terminally
ill, Dr. Kubler-Ross shares her tools
for understanding how the dying convey
their innermost knowledge and needs.
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The Tunnel and the Light
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by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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This is an engaging introduction to
the beliefs, work, and life of psychiatrist
Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who "declared
war on the denial of death in America"
according to the New York Times. This
book is based on her more than 30 years
experience with the dying, this book
offers both challenge and hope.
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Working It Through
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by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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This is the companion guide to Dr. Kubler-Ross'
famous workshops on death and dying.
This remarkable guide to coping with
death and dying grew out of Dr. Kubler-Ross's
realization that she ould help larger
numbers of terminally ill people directly
by meeting with them in groups.
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