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Dr. Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross
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. 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 a 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 a 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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On Death and Dying
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by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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One of the most important
psychological studies of the
late twentieth century, "On
Death and Dying" grew out of
Dr. Kubler-Ross's famous
interdisciplinary seminar on
death, life, and transition.
In this remarkable book, Dr.
Kubler-Ross first explored
the now-famous five stages
of death: denial and
isolation, anger,
bargaining, depression, and
acceptance.
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On Life After Death
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by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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In this collection of
inspirational essays,
internationally known author
Dr. Kubler-Ross draws on her
in-depth research of more
than 20,000 people who had
near-death experiences,
revealing the afterlife as a
return to wholeness of
spirit.
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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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Life Lessons: Two Experts on
Death and Dying Teach Us
About the Mysteries of Life
and Living
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by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and
David Kessler
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Is this really how I want to
live my life? Each one of us
at some point asks this
question. The tragedy is not
that life is short but that
we often see only in
hindsight what really
matters. In this, her first
book on life and living,
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross joins
with David Kessler to guide
us through the practical and
spiritual lessons we need to
learn so that we can live
life to its fullest in every
moment.
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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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