September 27, 2024 • 53 mins
Join Sandra as she brings to light the groundbreaking work of this Swiss-born psychiatrist who researched 20,000 near-death experiences and end-of-life visions.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast DAM paranormal
podcast network. No, I'll get ready for another episode of
Shades of the Afterlife with Sandra Champlain.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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your needs.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been
on a journey to prove the existence of life after death.
On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons we now know
that our loved ones have survived physical death, and so
will we Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. We get
(01:00):
to a certain age, my friend and I think each
one of us is familiar with the five stages related
to death and related to grief. Those five stages are denial, anger, depression, bargaining,
and acceptance. As we delve into it a little more,
(01:21):
we find that those stages don't happen in order, and
often there are other things involved, like shock and guilt,
and with grief, it's that feeling of not wanting to
go on. These five stages have been mainstream for years,
but who created them, and more importantly, did the creator
(01:46):
believe in life after death? The good news is doctor
Elizabeth Koubler Ross is our pioneer that we're going to
explore today. Let me tell you about her. She was
born July eighth, nineteen twenty six and passed August twenty fourth,
two thousand and four. Elizabeth Kobler Ross was a Swiss
(02:09):
born psychiatrist who worked with terminally ill patients. In nineteen
sixty nine, she authored a book called On Death and Dying,
in which she first discussed these five stages and not
just for dying, but for grief or any kind of
loss again, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She found
(02:36):
that people experience most of these stages, although in no
particular order, after being faced with the reality of their
impending death. Elizabeth also taught over one hundred and twenty
five thousand students about death and dying and was greatly
involved with the formation of hospice and palliative care for
(02:58):
the terminally ill. She worked a lifetime with the terminal
ill and she heard enough stories of near death experiences
and visions from patients who saw loved ones just before
they passed, and she started her own investigation into the afterlife.
(03:19):
Although she was previously a skeptic on life after death,
she researched more than twenty thousand people who had near
death experiences. She herself had a near death experience. She's
authored many books on life, on death, on life after death.
(03:39):
Convinced of our continual existence after physical death, she has
written many many books books like on Death and Dying,
On Grief and Grieving, on Life after Death, Questions and
Answers about death and Dying, The Tunnel and the Light,
(04:00):
on Children and Death, to Live until we Say Goodbye,
The Meaning of Suffering, The Cocoon and the Butterfly, and
many more. While we're together today, we're going to explore
some of the work of this amazing woman. I'll also
be reading some excerpts from some of her books and
(04:22):
telling you more about her and her life. Before we
go too far, I just want to play a minute
sound clip so that you can hear the voice of
this beautiful Swiss born pioneer This was recorded in nineteen
seventy four, when she was about forty eight years old.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
I think a lot of people in the audience have
either the tonally illness so have lost the child, or
in the process of this being forced to face the issue.
I when you're healthy and everything goes well, No that
he wants to think about it, she said, kill us.
You see, if you live wollye and little to live
without fear and guilt. It doesn't matter whether you live
(05:03):
twenty years or ninety years. And I seem to be
a little from dying patients, not so much about the
old stuffed the stages of dying that had to live
is out fear and guilt. So the twin this occurs.
It's okay, fear and guilt are the only enemies of man.
If you live to live is out fearsome guilt. You
listen every day is so foody that you feel like
(05:24):
you live a hundred lacks.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I'd like to repeat her words. She says, I think
a lot of people in the audience either have a
terminal illness, or have lost a child, or are in
the process of death being forced to face the issue.
When you're healthy and everything goes well, nobody wants to
think about it, which is ridiculous, because if you live
(05:50):
fully and learn to live without fear and guilt, it
doesn't matter whether you live twenty years or ninety years.
And I I think we have learned from dying patients
not so much about the old stuff, the stages of dying,
but how to live without fear and guilt, so that
(06:10):
when death occurs, it's okay. Fear and guilt are the
only enemies of man. If you can learn to live
without fears and guilt, you live every day so fully
that you feel like you've lived one hundred lives. One
of the things I find fascinating is that clip from
(06:33):
her was in nineteen seventy four, and she refers to
the stages of dying as the old stuff. It was
only five years before that, in nineteen sixty nine did
she publish the book on Death and Dying. In nineteen
seventy four, she was already onto What's next, having researched
(06:57):
these out of body experiences, and around the same time
that doctor Raymond Moody was also studying these extraordinary experiences
and coined the term near death experience. I'd like to
read to you now. A short excerpt that was published
in her book The Tunnel and the Light. It is
(07:19):
interesting to me as a psychiatrist that thousands of people
all around the globe should share the same hallucinations prior
to death, namely the awareness of some friends or relatives
who preceded them in death. There must be some explanation
for this if it's not real, and so I proceeded
(07:41):
to try to find out means and ways to study this,
to verify this, or perhaps to verify that it is
simply a projection of wishful thinking. The best way, perhaps
to study it is for us to sit with dying
children after family accidents. We usually did this after the
(08:02):
fourth of July weekend, Memorial Days Labor Days, when families
go out together in family cars and all too often
have head on collisions, killing several members of the family
and sending many of the injured survivors to different hospitals.
I have made it a task to sit with the
(08:23):
critically injured children, since they are my specialty. As is
usually the case, they have not been told which of
their family members were killed in the same accident. I
was always impressed that they were invariably aware of who
had preceded them in death. Anyway, I sit with them,
(08:45):
watch them silently, perhaps hold their hand, watch their restlessness,
and then often shortly prior to death, a peaceful serenity
comes over them. That is always an ominous sign, and
that is the most moment when I communicate with them,
and I don't give them any ideas. I simply ask
(09:06):
if they are willing and able to share with me
what they experience. They share in very similar words. One
child said to me, everything is all right now, Mommy
and Peter are already waiting for me. I was aware
in this particular case that the mother had been killed
immediately at the scene of the accident. But I also
(09:29):
knew that Peter had gone to a burn unit in
a different hospital, and that he, as far as I knew,
was still alive. I didn't give it a second thought,
but as I walked out of the intensive care unit
by the nursing station, I had a telephone call from
the hospital where Peter was. The nurse at the other
(09:49):
end of the line said, doctor Ross, we just wanted
you to know that Peter died ten minutes ago. The
only mistake I made was to say, yes, I know,
the nurse must have thought I was a little cuckoo.
In thirteen years of studying children near death, I have
never had one child who has made a single mistake
(10:13):
when it came to identifying in this way family members
who have preceded them in death. I'm so grateful for
all of the research that doctor Elizabeth Koopler Ross has done,
but it does break my heart to hear that in
the sixties and early seventies it was the norm to
(10:34):
have so many car accidents on holiday times, and it
was predictable that she would be able to sit by
so many dying children's bedsides. I'm grateful for the time
we are living, but always remember pay attention offensive driving
and seat belts. Here's another shortcase discussing a near death
(10:58):
experience of a blind person. Doctor Ross says, one of
our female patients was blinded in a laboratory explosion, and
the moment she came out of her physical body, she
was again able to see and to describe the whole
accident and the people who dashed into the laboratory. When
(11:20):
she was brought back to life, she was again totally blind.
Do you understand why many many of these people resent
our attempts to artificially bring them back when they are
in a far more gorgeous, more beautiful, and more perfect place.
I know we've discussed that on the show before, that
(11:41):
when people have these near death experiences, most of them
want to stay, not come back. We'll get more into
the life and discoveries of doctor Elizabeth Kobler Ross as
this episode continues, but I thought you'd like to know
there is a website for her found found it is
(12:02):
Ekrfoundation dot org, of course, standing for Elizabeth Koubler Ross.
On the site you can find their nonprofit organization, the
work that continues globally, videos on Elizabeth Pictures, and also
so much grief support. Here's a quick quote by Elizabeth.
(12:25):
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. It's time for our first break,
and we'll be back with more Elizabeth Koubler Ross. You're
listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and
(12:47):
Coast to Coast AM Paranormal podcast network.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Stay there, Sandra will be right back. Hey.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
The Coast to Coast on YouTube channel go to Coast
ghosam dot com for more information.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Hey, this is George Nori and you're listening to the
iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost Dam Paranormal podcast Network. Thanks
for being here. Now let's get back to more with Sandra.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain.
In this episode, we are featuring Swiss Borne psychiatrist doctor
Elizabeth Koubler Ross, first known for her groundbreaking work and
exploring the terminal stages of the dying. Here is a
quote I think you will enjoy. Death is simply a
(14:00):
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. I want to tell you
a little more about her. Born in nineteen twenty six,
Elizabeth Koubler Ross wanted to be a doctor, but her
(14:23):
father forbade it. She left home at sixteen, was a
hospital volunteer in World War Two, and finally entered medical
school in nineteen fifty one. She studied terminal illness, publishing
her groundbreaking book on death and dying in nineteen sixty nine.
The book outlines the five stages that dying patients experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
(14:48):
and acceptance. Kubler Ross had a fragile start as an infant.
She was born as a triplet, weighing only two pounds.
Developing an interest in medicine at a very young age,
kubl Ross encountered intense resistance from her father. He told
her that she could be a secretary in his business
(15:10):
or go become a maid. Defying her family, kubl Ross
left home at the age of sixteen and worked a
series of jobs. She also served as a volunteer during
World War II, helping out in hospitals and caring for refugees.
After the war, she volunteered to help in numerous war
(15:31):
torn communities. She was profoundly affected by a visit to
a concentration camp in Poland and the images of hundreds
of butterflies carved into the walls there to kubl Ross
the butterflies, These final works of art by those facing
death stayed with her for years and influenced her thinking
(15:53):
about the end of life. Kub l Ross began pursuing
her dreams to become a doctor in nineteen fifty one
as a medical student at the University of Zurich. While there,
she met Emmanuel Robert Ross, an American medical student. They
married in nineteen fifty eight, a year after she graduated,
(16:13):
and moved to the United States, where they both had
internships at Community Hospital in Glen Cove, Long Island. Then
she went on to specialize in psychiatry, becoming a resident
at Manhattan State Hospital. In nineteen sixty two, she and
her husband moved to Denver, Colorado, to teach at the
(16:34):
University of Colorado Medical School. She had been disturbed by
the treatment of the dying throughout her time in the
United States, and found nothing in the medical school curriculum
at that time that addressed death and dying. Filling in
for a colleague one time, Kubler Ross brought in a
(16:54):
sixteen year old girl who was dying from leukemia into
the classroom. She told the students to ask the girl
any questions they wanted, but after receiving numerous questions about
her condition, the girl erupted in anger and started asking
the questions that mattered to her as a person, such
(17:15):
as what it was like to not be able to
dream about growing up or going to the prom according
to an article in The New York Times. Moving to
Chicago in nineteen sixty five, Kubler Ross became an instructor
at the University of Chicago's Medical School. A small project
about death with a group of theology students evolved into
(17:39):
a series of well attended seminars featuring candid interviews with
people who were dying. Building upon these interviews and research,
Kubler Ross wrote on Death and Dying in nineteen sixty nine,
which identified the five stages that most terminally ill patients
(17:59):
experienced es denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The identification
of these stages was a revolutionary concept at the time,
but has since become widely accepted. Life Magazine ran an
article on Kubler Ross in November nineteen sixty nine, bringing
public awareness to her work outside the medical community. The
(18:23):
response was enormous and influenced Kubler Ross's decision to focus
her career on working with the terminally ill and their families.
The intense scrutiny her work received also had an impact
on her career path. Kubler Ross stopped teaching at the
university to work privately on what she called the greatest
(18:47):
mystery in science, which was death. During her career, Kubler
Ross wrote more than twenty books. She also traveled around
the world giving her life, death and transition workshops funded
by the profits from her books, workshops and talks. She
established Shantynalaya, an educational retreat center in Escondido, California, in
(19:13):
nineteen seventy seven. Around that same time, she formed the
Elizabeth Kubler Ross Center, which was later moved to her
Virginia farm. In the mid nineteen eighties, working with AIDS
patients during the early days of the epidemic, she tried
to create a hospice for AIDS afflicted children. In the
later part of her career, Kubler Ross became increasingly interested
(19:38):
in the issues of life after death, spirit guides, spirit channeling,
which was met with criticism and scorned by her peers
in the medical community. For one who wrote so extensively
on dying and death, Kubler Ross's transition from this life
was not a smooth one. She retired to Arizona after
(20:02):
series of strokes in nineteen ninety five left her partially
paralyzed and in a wheelchair. I am like a plane
that has left the gate and not taken off. She said,
according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, I
would rather go back to the gate or fly away.
In two thousand and two, Kubler Ross moved into a hospice.
(20:26):
She died on August twenty fourth, two thousand and four,
of natural causes, surrounded by her friends and family. Not
long before her death, she had finished work on her
final book on grief and grieving, which she wrote with
David Kessler. Kubler Ross was survived by her two children
and two grandchildren. In two thousand and seven, she was
(20:50):
inducted into the National Woman's Hall of Fame for her work.
Kubler Ross helped the public discussion on death and dying
in the after life, and campaigned vigorously for better treatment
and care for the terminally ill. We certainly owe doctor
Ross a lot of gratitude. Here's some words from her book,
(21:13):
The Tunnel and the Light, essential insights on living and dying.
It is said somewhere, ask and you will be given,
knock and it will open, or in a different language,
a teacher will appear when the student is ready. This
proved to be very true within One week after raising
this important question and making a commitment to finding an
(21:36):
answer to it, we were visited by nurses who shared
with us the experience of a woman, missus Schwartz, who
had been in the intensive care unit fifteen times. Each
time this woman was expected to die, and yet each
time she was able to walk out of the intensive
care unit to live for another few weeks or months.
(21:56):
She was, as we would call it now, our first
case of a near death experience. This occurred simultaneously with
my increasing sensitivity and observation of other unexplained phenomena at
the time when my own patients were very, very close
to death, many of them began to hallucinate the presence
(22:17):
of loved ones with whom they'd apparently had some form
of communication with, but who I personally was neither able
to see nor hear. I was also quite aware that
even the angriest and most difficult patients, very shortly before
death began to deeply relax, have a sense of serenity
(22:38):
around them, and begin to be pain free in spite
of perhaps a cancer ridden body. Also, at the moment
of death, their facial features expressed an incredible sense of
peace and serenity, which I could not comprehend since it
was often a death that occurred during a stage of anger, bargaining,
(22:59):
or depression. We discovered that it is possible to do
research on life after death. This discovery was for me
an incredibly moving experience, and I will simply summarize what
we have learned in the many, many years studying this phenomena,
which is called, for the time being, the near death experience.
(23:21):
Our dream was to collect twenty cases. We now have
twenty thousand cases. We never published them, and I'm glad
we never did because what we found out when we
started to look for cases was that there were lots
of people who were willing to share with us, but
they always started sharing by saying, doctor Ross, I will
(23:41):
share something with you if you promise not to tell
it to another human being. They were almost paranoid about
it because when they came back after having this glorious experience,
which for them was very sacred, very private, and shared
it with people, they got a nice little pat on
the back and we're told, well, you are under drugs
(24:04):
or it is very normal that people hallucinate at moments
like this. They were also given psychiatric labels, which of
course made them angry or depressed. We always need to
label things we don't understand. Why is that? There are
many things that we don't know yet, but that doesn't
mean they don't exist. Amen to that, doctor Koubler Ross.
(24:27):
Let's have another quote by doctor Ross. There are only
two emotions, love and fear. All positive emotions come from love,
all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace,
and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety, and guilt.
(24:49):
It's true that there are only two primary emotions, love
and fear, but it's more accurate to say that there
is only love or fear. We cannot feel these two
emotions together at exactly the same time. They are opposites.
If we are in fear, we are not in a
place of love. When we're in a place of love,
(25:12):
we cannot be in a place of fear. In our
next segment, together, I'll read some words from Caroline Mace,
well known medical intuitive, New York Times best selling author
and friend of doctor Elizabeth Koubler Ross. We'll be right back.
(25:32):
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Mid Shades of the Afterlife with Sander Champlain. Welcome back
to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sanders Champlain and we
(26:50):
are exploring the work of pioneer doctor Elizabeth Koubler Ross. Next,
I'd like to read to you some words from Caroline May,
who was a friend and interviewed doctor Ross. Caroline is
a five time New York Times best selling author, an
internationally renowned speaker in the fields of human consciousness, spirituality,
(27:14):
and mysticism, health, energy, medicine, and the science of medical intuition.
Here are her words. I was privileged to know Elizabeth
Koubler Ross, not as well as some, but well enough
to know that she was a paradox. For example, during
her last two years, as her health was failing, she
(27:36):
phoned me three times, not to learn what she could
do to help heal herself, but rather to find out
what she could do to help herself die more quickly
she found living in a wheelchair, slowly waiting for death
to come, and unbearable suffering. She fought with God until
the very end, angry that she could not determine her
(27:58):
time of death. Even Elizabeth, it seemed, had to walk
through the famous stages of death and dying. That was Elizabeth, feisty, stubborn, wilful, intense,
and determined to have things her way, even her own death.
Death did not scare Elizabeth. Neither her own nor anyone else's. Death, however,
(28:22):
did scare almost everyone else, and that fact is what
made Elizabeth one of the most controversial figures of the
medical community during her lifetime. All of the many things
that come to mind in describing this incredible woman, one
phrase seems to sum up her whole life. Elizabeth was,
(28:42):
as I mentioned earlier, a paradox, working within a society
and culture rooted in Judeo Christian tradition which holds fast
to the belief in the afterlife. Elizabeth devoted her life
to proving that this belief was not in vain. An
after life did exist, and not only that it was beautiful.
(29:06):
Dying was just the beginning of another life, an eternal
life that was filled with love and the promise of
meeting those who died before us. And yet it was
this Western Christian culture, rooted in an afterlife theology, which
challenged her death and dying work the most. Consider Elizabeth's
(29:28):
argument that the dying person was in fact prepared by
some cosmic pattern that organically emerged within the person's psyche
for this journey of crossing over. People didn't just leave
this earth as if their lives didn't matter. They were
prepared for the process of leaving this earth, suggesting it
(29:50):
was important that each of us take the whole of
our souls with us when we depart. She noted that indeed,
the shop of being given a critical diagnosis by a
physician most often results in anger. No one responds to
that news with joy. Then depression sets in a natural
(30:12):
response to feeling helpless when confronted with a crisis in
which you are told there is nothing you can do,
but the patient. Elizabeth urged should not be abandoned by
physicians or family during this time, nor ignored out of
fear of death. Due to the age old superstition that
(30:33):
death might be contagious. Not speaking about death does not,
in fact calm the patient. The truth is, the patient
knows he or she is dying through the natural knowledge
of the soul. To not speak about this process is
to deny the human being the essential need to complete
(30:54):
unfinished business by collecting the fragments of the soul that
long to together before the soul is called home. It
is that completion that ultimately brings the soul peace and calm,
making it ready to release from its earthly life, and
completion requires open dialogue with friends, family members, business associates,
(31:19):
and even adversaries. Identifying the stages of dying made Elizabeth famous,
but paradoxically, it also made her notorious. Notorious because she
tampered with the taboo of talking about death in a
society that is deaf phobic. Yet, and here is one
more paradox. This Christian society, with its belief in death
(31:44):
and resurrection, found death and dying to be the failure
of medicine to succeed, and thus Elizabeth's accomplishments were met
with controversy instead of with the acclaim they should have
merited during her lifetime. Nevertheless, she forged on and inspired
the hospice movement and near death studies, reporting numerous incidents
(32:08):
of people who were clinically dead and then returned to life.
In one of her lectures, she speaks of near death
experiences and notes with great hope and optimism that the
individuals who have had these extraordinary events report encounters with
their deceased family members, and then a tunnel of light
(32:30):
embraces them with a quality of love transcendent of that
which can be named here on earth. Again, the paradox
of Elizabeth's research is that it was scientific and rigorous,
yet also love centered, hopeful, and filled with messages of
christ consciousness. Yet her work was feared, especially by the
(32:54):
medical community, who simply could not break through its conditioning
that medicine was about life and not dying. The paradox
was that Elizabeth did practice medicine, but it was medicine
for the soul and not the body. She found more
than a career, Elizabeth had a spiritual calling. I have
(33:18):
no doubt in the years to come, Elizabeth's work will
continue to be valued as groundbreaking material. She took on
a cultural myth and cracked it right in half. She
took on death itself. I consider her one of the
heroines of our age. Again. That's by author Caroline Mace.
(33:40):
Caroline describes doctor Elizabeth Koubler Ross as a paradox several
times in the words that I just read the definition
of a paradox, a seemingly absurd or self contradictory statement that,
when investigated or explained, may prove to be wealthy founded
and true. Next, I'd like to read some words from
(34:05):
doctor Kubler Ross from her book on Life after Death.
I am sharing with you some of the experiences and
findings of the last decade gathered since we started seriously
studying the whole issue of death and life after death.
After working with dying patients for so many years, it
(34:27):
became very evident that, in spite of our existence for
so many millions of years, as human beings, we have
not yet come to a clear understanding of perhaps the
most important question, namely the meaning and purpose of life
and death. I wanted to share with you some of
this research on death and life after death. I think
(34:50):
the time has come when we are all going to
put these findings together in a language that can help
people to understand and also perhaps help them in dealing
with the death of a loved one, especially the tragic
occurrence of a sudden death, when we don't quite understand
why these tragedies have to happen to us. It is
(35:12):
also very important when you try to counsel and help
dying people and their families, and the question occurs over
and over again, what is life? What is death? And
why do young children, especially young children, have to die?
A long time ago, people were much more in touch
(35:33):
with the issue of death and believed in heaven or
life after death. It is only in the last one
hundred years, perhaps that fewer and fewer people truly know
that life exists after the physical body dies. We are
now in a new age, and hopefully we have made
a transition from an age of science and technology and
(35:56):
materialism to a new age of genuine and o thorthentic spirituality.
Spirituality is an awareness that there is something far greater
than we are, something that created this universe, created life,
and that we are an authentic, important, significant part of
(36:17):
it and can contribute to its evolution. All of us,
when we were born, came from the source, and we're
endowed with a facet of divinity. That means, in a
very literal sense, that we have a part of that
source within us. That is what gives us the knowledge
of our immortality. Many people are beginning to be aware
(36:41):
that the physical body is only the house or the temple,
or as we call it, the cocoon, which we inhabit
for a certain number of months or years until we
make the transition called death. Then, at the time of death,
we shed this cocoon and are once again as free
as a butterfly. To use the symbolic language that we
(37:04):
use when talking to dying children and their siblings, I
have worked with dying patients for the last twenty years.
When I started this work, I must say I was
neither very interested in life after death, nor did I
have any real clear picture about the definition of death.
When you study the scientific definition of death, you see
(37:27):
that it only includes the death of a physical body,
as if man would only exist as the cocoon. I
was one of the physicians and scientists who did not
ever question that. It only became a really relevant and
important issue in the nineteen sixties when the transplant of organs,
(37:48):
especially kidneys and hearts, raised an important question as to
when we are ethically, morally and legally allowed to remove
an organ out of a patient in order to save
another person's life. Being a skeptical semi believer, to put
it mildly, and not interested in issues of life after death,
(38:11):
I could not help but be impressed by several observations
which occurred so frequently that I began to wonder why
nobody ever studied the real issues of death. Not for
any special scientific reasons, not to cover lawsuits, needless to say,
but simply out of natural curiosity. Don't you just love
(38:34):
this woman? Don't you wish you could have a conversation
with her right now? Thankfully, she's got over twenty books
we can read. It's time for our next break, and
when we get back, I'll read some more from Elizabeth
Kobler Ross's book on life after death. You're listening to
Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to
(38:54):
Coast AM paranormal podcast network.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
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Speaker 4 (39:41):
The four.
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The Art Belvul has classic audio waiting for you now
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We are happy to announce that our Coast to Coast
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(40:11):
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dot com.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Is where you want to be. Welcome back to Shades
of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain and on this episode,
we've been exploring the work of doctor Elizabeth Koobler Ross.
(40:57):
I'd like to remind you you can visit EKO Foundation
dot org. Of course, you can go to Amazon and
look up Elizabeth Koobler Ross. Also, you don't need to
buy a book. Go to your library. There are plenty
of her books. She writes in common language for us
all to understand. She's a wonderful pioneer, and I'm sure
(41:19):
she's continuing to make a difference from the other side.
Now I'll continue reading from her book on Life after Death.
Man has existed for forty seven million years and has
been in its present existence, which includes the facet of divinity,
for seven million years. Every day people die all over
(41:40):
the world. Yet in a society that is able to
send a man to the moon and bring him back
well and safe, we have never put any effort into
the definition of human death. Isn't that peculiar? So, in
the midst of caring for dying patients and the teaching
of medical and seminars students, we decided one day, on
(42:02):
the spur of the moment, that we would try to
come up with a new, updated, all inclusive definition of death.
Doctor Ross goes on to share the story I told
to you earlier about Missus Schwartz, who had fifteen near
death experiences. Then she says, my third and perhaps most
subjective observation was the fact that I have always been
(42:27):
very close to my patients and allowed myself to get
deeply and lovingly involved with them. They touched my life.
I touched their lives in a very intimate and meaningful way.
Yet within minutes of their death, I had no feelings
for these patients and often wondered if there was something
wrong with me. When I looked at them, they appeared
(42:50):
similar to a winter coat to be shed with the
occurrence of spring, knowing it wasn't needed anymore. I had
this incredibly clear image of a shell, and my beloved
patient was no longer in that shell. Naturally, as a scientist,
I could not explain this, so I would have to
(43:10):
put these observations aside. If it had not been for
Missus Schwartz. Her husband was a known schizophrenic, and each
time he had a psychotic episode, he would try to
hurt his youngest son, the youngest of many children and
the only one still at home. Missus Schwartz was convinced
that if she should die prematurely, her husband would lose
(43:33):
control and the life of her youngest son would be
in danger. Through the help of the Legal Aid Society,
we were able to make arrangements for her to transfer
the custody of this child to some relatives. She left
the hospital with a great sense of relief and a
new freedom, knowing that should she not be able to live,
(43:54):
at least her youngest child was now safe. It was
this same patient who returned to our hospital again almost
a year later and shared her near death experience. Experiences
like this have been published in many books and magazines
in the last few years and have become familiar to
the general public. But our first experience with missus Schwartz,
(44:16):
who told of having been hospitalized in an emergency basis
in a local hospital in Indiana at the time, being
too sick to be transferred as far as Chicago. She
remembers being admitted in critical condition. She was put into
a private room in a hospital, and just as she
was contemplating whether she should struggle once more for the
(44:40):
sake of her youngest child or simply let go lean
back into a pillow and shed her cocoon. She became
aware of her nurse, who walked into the room, took
one look at her, and dashed out. At that very moment,
she saw herself slowly and peacefully floating out of her
physic body, hovering just a few feet above her bed.
(45:04):
She even had a great sense of humor, relating that
she looked at her body, which looked pale and icky.
She said she had a sense of awe and surprise,
but no fear or anxiety. She then told of watching
the resuscitation team walk into the room, enumerting in great
detail who walked in first and who walked in last.
(45:27):
She was totally aware of every word of their conversations,
of their thought patterns, and she had only one great
need to convey to them to relax, to take it easy,
and to tell them that she was all right. But
the more desperately she tried to convey this to them,
the more frantically they seemed to work on her body. Finally,
(45:49):
it dawned on her that she was able to perceive them,
but they were not able to perceive her. Missus Schwartz
then decided to give up her attempts, and in her
own language, she said I lost consciousness. She was declared
dead after forty five minutes of unsuccessful resuscitation attempts, but
(46:11):
later on showed signs of life again, much to the
surprise of the hospital staff. She lived another year and
a half. Missus Schwartz shared this with my class and
myself in one of my seminars. Needless to say, this
was a brand new experience for me. I had never
heard of near death experiences in spite of the fact
(46:33):
I had been a physician for many years. My students
were shocked that I did not call this hallucination an
illusion or a feeling of depersonalization. They had a desperate
need to give it a label, something that they could
not identify, and then put it aside and not have
to deal with it. Missus Schwartz's experience, we were sure
(46:55):
could not be a single unique occurrence. Our hope was
to be able to find more cases like hers, and
perhaps move in the direction of collecting data to see
if this was a common, rare or a very unique experience.
It has become known recently that many many researchers, physicians, psychologists,
(47:18):
and people who study this phenomena have tried to collect
cases like this. In the last ten years, over twenty
five thousand cases have been collected from all over the world.
I'm going to stop reading right now, and what occurs
to me, even though this was first published back in
(47:39):
nineteen ninety one, is that over twenty thousand people were
documented having these experiences, and doctor Ross promised that she
wouldn't share them for people's fear of being thought crazy
or hallucinating. I know now that near death experiences is
(48:00):
the hottest topic, and even from you, dear listeners, you
want more and more stories, so I always try to
bring them to you. But getting these stories out in
the open is what's going to have us go from
believing to knowing. I don't want any of us to
have a near death experience, because chances are there's going
(48:20):
to be some pain and suffering involved, but to learn
from others and possibly have our own induced after death communication,
whether through meditation or some other spiritually transformative experience, it
is possible. Later on in the book on Life after Death,
(48:43):
doctor Koobler Ross shares some interesting experiences from her journey
into meditation. She calls them out of body experiences and
witnesses so much in detail and clarity convinced that we
are are more than our bodies. Later on in her life,
closer to passing, she even had her own near death experience,
(49:07):
so it was no wonder. Like Caroline Mace said in
the beginning, she was looking for her way to get
over there. It's not easy, as you know, to be
living in a human body with any infirmities that we have,
or the older we get, things start shutting down and
breaking down and aches and pains. But it's all an
experience for the soul. And I do think when we
(49:30):
can turn in to our inner selves, it can provide
relief but also access to that invisible world around each
one of us. I'd like to remind you now of
those words that doctor Elizabeth Koobler Ross spoke in the
beginning of this episode. She said, I think a lot
(49:51):
of people in the audience have either a terminal illness,
or have lost a child, or are in the process
of death. Being four to face the issue. When you're
healthy and everything goes well, nobody wants to think about it,
which is ridiculous because if you live life fully and
learn to live without fear and guilt, it doesn't matter
(50:15):
whether you live twenty years or ninety years, and I
think we have learned from dying patience, not so much
about the old stuff, the stages of dying, but how
to live without fear and guilt, so that when death occurs,
it's okay. Remember, fear and guilt are the only enemies
(50:36):
of man. If you can learn to live without fear
and guilt, you live every day so fully that you
feel like you've lived one hundred lives. As we leave
each other today, could it be as simply as having
a note with you that says, am I living from
(50:57):
fear and guilt? Or am I living in love? As
she says love and fear cannot exist at the same time,
we can definitely inject love into every situation we are in. Well,
my friend, it's been wonderful spending this time with you.
A reminder come visit me, would you? At we doodie
(51:18):
dot com. That's my home base. I have a free
Sunday gathering every Sunday two pm New York time on
Zoom inspirational, motivational, and a free medium demonstration within each
and everyone. So much more to explore there at weedodie
dot com. I'd like to leave you with one final
(51:41):
quote by doctor Elizabeth Koobler Ross. 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 sense activity,
and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness,
(52:06):
and a deep, loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
I know who I'm speaking to right now. You are
a beautiful person. For all the struggles you've endured. You
are compassionate, You're kind, and you make a difference everywhere
you go. And in that invisible space around you, you
(52:28):
have the biggest team of cheerleaders from the other side.
There will be a reunion and happiness for eternity, but
we have a job to do first here on Earth.
I'm Sandra Champlain. Thank you so much for listening to
Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to
(52:48):
Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
And if you like this episode of Shades of the Afterlife,
wait until you hear the next one. Thank you for
listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal
Podcast Network.
Welcome to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast DAM paranormal
podcast network. No, I'll get ready for another episode of
Shades of the Afterlife with Sandra Champlain.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The thoughts and opinions expressed by the host are thoughts
and opinions only and do not necessarily reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio,
Coast to Coast AM, employees of Premiere Networks, or their
sponsors and associates. You are encouraged to do the proper
amount of research yourself, depending on the subject matter and
your needs.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been
on a journey to prove the existence of life after death.
On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons we now know
that our loved ones have survived physical death, and so
will we Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. We get
(01:00):
to a certain age, my friend and I think each
one of us is familiar with the five stages related
to death and related to grief. Those five stages are denial, anger, depression, bargaining,
and acceptance. As we delve into it a little more,
(01:21):
we find that those stages don't happen in order, and
often there are other things involved, like shock and guilt,
and with grief, it's that feeling of not wanting to
go on. These five stages have been mainstream for years,
but who created them, and more importantly, did the creator
(01:46):
believe in life after death? The good news is doctor
Elizabeth Koubler Ross is our pioneer that we're going to
explore today. Let me tell you about her. She was
born July eighth, nineteen twenty six and passed August twenty fourth,
two thousand and four. Elizabeth Kobler Ross was a Swiss
(02:09):
born psychiatrist who worked with terminally ill patients. In nineteen
sixty nine, she authored a book called On Death and Dying,
in which she first discussed these five stages and not
just for dying, but for grief or any kind of
loss again, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She found
(02:36):
that people experience most of these stages, although in no
particular order, after being faced with the reality of their
impending death. Elizabeth also taught over one hundred and twenty
five thousand students about death and dying and was greatly
involved with the formation of hospice and palliative care for
(02:58):
the terminally ill. She worked a lifetime with the terminal
ill and she heard enough stories of near death experiences
and visions from patients who saw loved ones just before
they passed, and she started her own investigation into the afterlife.
(03:19):
Although she was previously a skeptic on life after death,
she researched more than twenty thousand people who had near
death experiences. She herself had a near death experience. She's
authored many books on life, on death, on life after death.
(03:39):
Convinced of our continual existence after physical death, she has
written many many books books like on Death and Dying,
On Grief and Grieving, on Life after Death, Questions and
Answers about death and Dying, The Tunnel and the Light,
(04:00):
on Children and Death, to Live until we Say Goodbye,
The Meaning of Suffering, The Cocoon and the Butterfly, and
many more. While we're together today, we're going to explore
some of the work of this amazing woman. I'll also
be reading some excerpts from some of her books and
(04:22):
telling you more about her and her life. Before we
go too far, I just want to play a minute
sound clip so that you can hear the voice of
this beautiful Swiss born pioneer This was recorded in nineteen
seventy four, when she was about forty eight years old.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
I think a lot of people in the audience have
either the tonally illness so have lost the child, or
in the process of this being forced to face the issue.
I when you're healthy and everything goes well, No that
he wants to think about it, she said, kill us.
You see, if you live wollye and little to live
without fear and guilt. It doesn't matter whether you live
(05:03):
twenty years or ninety years. And I seem to be
a little from dying patients, not so much about the
old stuffed the stages of dying that had to live
is out fear and guilt. So the twin this occurs.
It's okay, fear and guilt are the only enemies of man.
If you live to live is out fearsome guilt. You
listen every day is so foody that you feel like
(05:24):
you live a hundred lacks.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I'd like to repeat her words. She says, I think
a lot of people in the audience either have a
terminal illness, or have lost a child, or are in
the process of death being forced to face the issue.
When you're healthy and everything goes well, nobody wants to
think about it, which is ridiculous, because if you live
(05:50):
fully and learn to live without fear and guilt, it
doesn't matter whether you live twenty years or ninety years.
And I I think we have learned from dying patients
not so much about the old stuff, the stages of dying,
but how to live without fear and guilt, so that
(06:10):
when death occurs, it's okay. Fear and guilt are the
only enemies of man. If you can learn to live
without fears and guilt, you live every day so fully
that you feel like you've lived one hundred lives. One
of the things I find fascinating is that clip from
(06:33):
her was in nineteen seventy four, and she refers to
the stages of dying as the old stuff. It was
only five years before that, in nineteen sixty nine did
she publish the book on Death and Dying. In nineteen
seventy four, she was already onto What's next, having researched
(06:57):
these out of body experiences, and around the same time
that doctor Raymond Moody was also studying these extraordinary experiences
and coined the term near death experience. I'd like to
read to you now. A short excerpt that was published
in her book The Tunnel and the Light. It is
(07:19):
interesting to me as a psychiatrist that thousands of people
all around the globe should share the same hallucinations prior
to death, namely the awareness of some friends or relatives
who preceded them in death. There must be some explanation
for this if it's not real, and so I proceeded
(07:41):
to try to find out means and ways to study this,
to verify this, or perhaps to verify that it is
simply a projection of wishful thinking. The best way, perhaps
to study it is for us to sit with dying
children after family accidents. We usually did this after the
(08:02):
fourth of July weekend, Memorial Days Labor Days, when families
go out together in family cars and all too often
have head on collisions, killing several members of the family
and sending many of the injured survivors to different hospitals.
I have made it a task to sit with the
(08:23):
critically injured children, since they are my specialty. As is
usually the case, they have not been told which of
their family members were killed in the same accident. I
was always impressed that they were invariably aware of who
had preceded them in death. Anyway, I sit with them,
(08:45):
watch them silently, perhaps hold their hand, watch their restlessness,
and then often shortly prior to death, a peaceful serenity
comes over them. That is always an ominous sign, and
that is the most moment when I communicate with them,
and I don't give them any ideas. I simply ask
(09:06):
if they are willing and able to share with me
what they experience. They share in very similar words. One
child said to me, everything is all right now, Mommy
and Peter are already waiting for me. I was aware
in this particular case that the mother had been killed
immediately at the scene of the accident. But I also
(09:29):
knew that Peter had gone to a burn unit in
a different hospital, and that he, as far as I knew,
was still alive. I didn't give it a second thought,
but as I walked out of the intensive care unit
by the nursing station, I had a telephone call from
the hospital where Peter was. The nurse at the other
(09:49):
end of the line said, doctor Ross, we just wanted
you to know that Peter died ten minutes ago. The
only mistake I made was to say, yes, I know,
the nurse must have thought I was a little cuckoo.
In thirteen years of studying children near death, I have
never had one child who has made a single mistake
(10:13):
when it came to identifying in this way family members
who have preceded them in death. I'm so grateful for
all of the research that doctor Elizabeth Koopler Ross has done,
but it does break my heart to hear that in
the sixties and early seventies it was the norm to
(10:34):
have so many car accidents on holiday times, and it
was predictable that she would be able to sit by
so many dying children's bedsides. I'm grateful for the time
we are living, but always remember pay attention offensive driving
and seat belts. Here's another shortcase discussing a near death
(10:58):
experience of a blind person. Doctor Ross says, one of
our female patients was blinded in a laboratory explosion, and
the moment she came out of her physical body, she
was again able to see and to describe the whole
accident and the people who dashed into the laboratory. When
(11:20):
she was brought back to life, she was again totally blind.
Do you understand why many many of these people resent
our attempts to artificially bring them back when they are
in a far more gorgeous, more beautiful, and more perfect place.
I know we've discussed that on the show before, that
(11:41):
when people have these near death experiences, most of them
want to stay, not come back. We'll get more into
the life and discoveries of doctor Elizabeth Kobler Ross as
this episode continues, but I thought you'd like to know
there is a website for her found found it is
(12:02):
Ekrfoundation dot org, of course, standing for Elizabeth Koubler Ross.
On the site you can find their nonprofit organization, the
work that continues globally, videos on Elizabeth Pictures, and also
so much grief support. Here's a quick quote by Elizabeth.
(12:25):
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. It's time for our first break,
and we'll be back with more Elizabeth Koubler Ross. You're
listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and
(12:47):
Coast to Coast AM Paranormal podcast network.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Stay there, Sandra will be right back. Hey.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
The Coast to Coast on YouTube channel go to Coast
ghosam dot com for more information.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Hey, this is George Nori and you're listening to the
iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost Dam Paranormal podcast Network. Thanks
for being here. Now let's get back to more with Sandra.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain.
In this episode, we are featuring Swiss Borne psychiatrist doctor
Elizabeth Koubler Ross, first known for her groundbreaking work and
exploring the terminal stages of the dying. Here is a
quote I think you will enjoy. Death is simply a
(14:00):
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. I want to tell you
a little more about her. Born in nineteen twenty six,
Elizabeth Koubler Ross wanted to be a doctor, but her
(14:23):
father forbade it. She left home at sixteen, was a
hospital volunteer in World War Two, and finally entered medical
school in nineteen fifty one. She studied terminal illness, publishing
her groundbreaking book on death and dying in nineteen sixty nine.
The book outlines the five stages that dying patients experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
(14:48):
and acceptance. Kubler Ross had a fragile start as an infant.
She was born as a triplet, weighing only two pounds.
Developing an interest in medicine at a very young age,
kubl Ross encountered intense resistance from her father. He told
her that she could be a secretary in his business
(15:10):
or go become a maid. Defying her family, kubl Ross
left home at the age of sixteen and worked a
series of jobs. She also served as a volunteer during
World War II, helping out in hospitals and caring for refugees.
After the war, she volunteered to help in numerous war
(15:31):
torn communities. She was profoundly affected by a visit to
a concentration camp in Poland and the images of hundreds
of butterflies carved into the walls there to kubl Ross
the butterflies, These final works of art by those facing
death stayed with her for years and influenced her thinking
(15:53):
about the end of life. Kub l Ross began pursuing
her dreams to become a doctor in nineteen fifty one
as a medical student at the University of Zurich. While there,
she met Emmanuel Robert Ross, an American medical student. They
married in nineteen fifty eight, a year after she graduated,
(16:13):
and moved to the United States, where they both had
internships at Community Hospital in Glen Cove, Long Island. Then
she went on to specialize in psychiatry, becoming a resident
at Manhattan State Hospital. In nineteen sixty two, she and
her husband moved to Denver, Colorado, to teach at the
(16:34):
University of Colorado Medical School. She had been disturbed by
the treatment of the dying throughout her time in the
United States, and found nothing in the medical school curriculum
at that time that addressed death and dying. Filling in
for a colleague one time, Kubler Ross brought in a
(16:54):
sixteen year old girl who was dying from leukemia into
the classroom. She told the students to ask the girl
any questions they wanted, but after receiving numerous questions about
her condition, the girl erupted in anger and started asking
the questions that mattered to her as a person, such
(17:15):
as what it was like to not be able to
dream about growing up or going to the prom according
to an article in The New York Times. Moving to
Chicago in nineteen sixty five, Kubler Ross became an instructor
at the University of Chicago's Medical School. A small project
about death with a group of theology students evolved into
(17:39):
a series of well attended seminars featuring candid interviews with
people who were dying. Building upon these interviews and research,
Kubler Ross wrote on Death and Dying in nineteen sixty nine,
which identified the five stages that most terminally ill patients
(17:59):
experienced es denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The identification
of these stages was a revolutionary concept at the time,
but has since become widely accepted. Life Magazine ran an
article on Kubler Ross in November nineteen sixty nine, bringing
public awareness to her work outside the medical community. The
(18:23):
response was enormous and influenced Kubler Ross's decision to focus
her career on working with the terminally ill and their families.
The intense scrutiny her work received also had an impact
on her career path. Kubler Ross stopped teaching at the
university to work privately on what she called the greatest
(18:47):
mystery in science, which was death. During her career, Kubler
Ross wrote more than twenty books. She also traveled around
the world giving her life, death and transition workshops funded
by the profits from her books, workshops and talks. She
established Shantynalaya, an educational retreat center in Escondido, California, in
(19:13):
nineteen seventy seven. Around that same time, she formed the
Elizabeth Kubler Ross Center, which was later moved to her
Virginia farm. In the mid nineteen eighties, working with AIDS
patients during the early days of the epidemic, she tried
to create a hospice for AIDS afflicted children. In the
later part of her career, Kubler Ross became increasingly interested
(19:38):
in the issues of life after death, spirit guides, spirit channeling,
which was met with criticism and scorned by her peers
in the medical community. For one who wrote so extensively
on dying and death, Kubler Ross's transition from this life
was not a smooth one. She retired to Arizona after
(20:02):
series of strokes in nineteen ninety five left her partially
paralyzed and in a wheelchair. I am like a plane
that has left the gate and not taken off. She said,
according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, I
would rather go back to the gate or fly away.
In two thousand and two, Kubler Ross moved into a hospice.
(20:26):
She died on August twenty fourth, two thousand and four,
of natural causes, surrounded by her friends and family. Not
long before her death, she had finished work on her
final book on grief and grieving, which she wrote with
David Kessler. Kubler Ross was survived by her two children
and two grandchildren. In two thousand and seven, she was
(20:50):
inducted into the National Woman's Hall of Fame for her work.
Kubler Ross helped the public discussion on death and dying
in the after life, and campaigned vigorously for better treatment
and care for the terminally ill. We certainly owe doctor
Ross a lot of gratitude. Here's some words from her book,
(21:13):
The Tunnel and the Light, essential insights on living and dying.
It is said somewhere, ask and you will be given,
knock and it will open, or in a different language,
a teacher will appear when the student is ready. This
proved to be very true within One week after raising
this important question and making a commitment to finding an
(21:36):
answer to it, we were visited by nurses who shared
with us the experience of a woman, missus Schwartz, who
had been in the intensive care unit fifteen times. Each
time this woman was expected to die, and yet each
time she was able to walk out of the intensive
care unit to live for another few weeks or months.
(21:56):
She was, as we would call it now, our first
case of a near death experience. This occurred simultaneously with
my increasing sensitivity and observation of other unexplained phenomena at
the time when my own patients were very, very close
to death, many of them began to hallucinate the presence
(22:17):
of loved ones with whom they'd apparently had some form
of communication with, but who I personally was neither able
to see nor hear. I was also quite aware that
even the angriest and most difficult patients, very shortly before
death began to deeply relax, have a sense of serenity
(22:38):
around them, and begin to be pain free in spite
of perhaps a cancer ridden body. Also, at the moment
of death, their facial features expressed an incredible sense of
peace and serenity, which I could not comprehend since it
was often a death that occurred during a stage of anger, bargaining,
(22:59):
or depression. We discovered that it is possible to do
research on life after death. This discovery was for me
an incredibly moving experience, and I will simply summarize what
we have learned in the many, many years studying this phenomena,
which is called, for the time being, the near death experience.
(23:21):
Our dream was to collect twenty cases. We now have
twenty thousand cases. We never published them, and I'm glad
we never did because what we found out when we
started to look for cases was that there were lots
of people who were willing to share with us, but
they always started sharing by saying, doctor Ross, I will
(23:41):
share something with you if you promise not to tell
it to another human being. They were almost paranoid about
it because when they came back after having this glorious experience,
which for them was very sacred, very private, and shared
it with people, they got a nice little pat on
the back and we're told, well, you are under drugs
(24:04):
or it is very normal that people hallucinate at moments
like this. They were also given psychiatric labels, which of
course made them angry or depressed. We always need to
label things we don't understand. Why is that? There are
many things that we don't know yet, but that doesn't
mean they don't exist. Amen to that, doctor Koubler Ross.
(24:27):
Let's have another quote by doctor Ross. There are only
two emotions, love and fear. All positive emotions come from love,
all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace,
and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety, and guilt.
(24:49):
It's true that there are only two primary emotions, love
and fear, but it's more accurate to say that there
is only love or fear. We cannot feel these two
emotions together at exactly the same time. They are opposites.
If we are in fear, we are not in a
place of love. When we're in a place of love,
(25:12):
we cannot be in a place of fear. In our
next segment, together, I'll read some words from Caroline Mace,
well known medical intuitive, New York Times best selling author
and friend of doctor Elizabeth Koubler Ross. We'll be right back.
(25:32):
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Mid Shades of the Afterlife with Sander Champlain. Welcome back
to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sanders Champlain and we
(26:50):
are exploring the work of pioneer doctor Elizabeth Koubler Ross. Next,
I'd like to read to you some words from Caroline May,
who was a friend and interviewed doctor Ross. Caroline is
a five time New York Times best selling author, an
internationally renowned speaker in the fields of human consciousness, spirituality,
(27:14):
and mysticism, health, energy, medicine, and the science of medical intuition.
Here are her words. I was privileged to know Elizabeth
Koubler Ross, not as well as some, but well enough
to know that she was a paradox. For example, during
her last two years, as her health was failing, she
(27:36):
phoned me three times, not to learn what she could
do to help heal herself, but rather to find out
what she could do to help herself die more quickly
she found living in a wheelchair, slowly waiting for death
to come, and unbearable suffering. She fought with God until
the very end, angry that she could not determine her
(27:58):
time of death. Even Elizabeth, it seemed, had to walk
through the famous stages of death and dying. That was Elizabeth, feisty, stubborn, wilful, intense,
and determined to have things her way, even her own death.
Death did not scare Elizabeth. Neither her own nor anyone else's. Death, however,
(28:22):
did scare almost everyone else, and that fact is what
made Elizabeth one of the most controversial figures of the
medical community during her lifetime. All of the many things
that come to mind in describing this incredible woman, one
phrase seems to sum up her whole life. Elizabeth was,
(28:42):
as I mentioned earlier, a paradox, working within a society
and culture rooted in Judeo Christian tradition which holds fast
to the belief in the afterlife. Elizabeth devoted her life
to proving that this belief was not in vain. An
after life did exist, and not only that it was beautiful.
(29:06):
Dying was just the beginning of another life, an eternal
life that was filled with love and the promise of
meeting those who died before us. And yet it was
this Western Christian culture, rooted in an afterlife theology, which
challenged her death and dying work the most. Consider Elizabeth's
(29:28):
argument that the dying person was in fact prepared by
some cosmic pattern that organically emerged within the person's psyche
for this journey of crossing over. People didn't just leave
this earth as if their lives didn't matter. They were
prepared for the process of leaving this earth, suggesting it
(29:50):
was important that each of us take the whole of
our souls with us when we depart. She noted that indeed,
the shop of being given a critical diagnosis by a
physician most often results in anger. No one responds to
that news with joy. Then depression sets in a natural
(30:12):
response to feeling helpless when confronted with a crisis in
which you are told there is nothing you can do,
but the patient. Elizabeth urged should not be abandoned by
physicians or family during this time, nor ignored out of
fear of death. Due to the age old superstition that
(30:33):
death might be contagious. Not speaking about death does not,
in fact calm the patient. The truth is, the patient
knows he or she is dying through the natural knowledge
of the soul. To not speak about this process is
to deny the human being the essential need to complete
(30:54):
unfinished business by collecting the fragments of the soul that
long to together before the soul is called home. It
is that completion that ultimately brings the soul peace and calm,
making it ready to release from its earthly life, and
completion requires open dialogue with friends, family members, business associates,
(31:19):
and even adversaries. Identifying the stages of dying made Elizabeth famous,
but paradoxically, it also made her notorious. Notorious because she
tampered with the taboo of talking about death in a
society that is deaf phobic. Yet, and here is one
more paradox. This Christian society, with its belief in death
(31:44):
and resurrection, found death and dying to be the failure
of medicine to succeed, and thus Elizabeth's accomplishments were met
with controversy instead of with the acclaim they should have
merited during her lifetime. Nevertheless, she forged on and inspired
the hospice movement and near death studies, reporting numerous incidents
(32:08):
of people who were clinically dead and then returned to life.
In one of her lectures, she speaks of near death
experiences and notes with great hope and optimism that the
individuals who have had these extraordinary events report encounters with
their deceased family members, and then a tunnel of light
(32:30):
embraces them with a quality of love transcendent of that
which can be named here on earth. Again, the paradox
of Elizabeth's research is that it was scientific and rigorous,
yet also love centered, hopeful, and filled with messages of
christ consciousness. Yet her work was feared, especially by the
(32:54):
medical community, who simply could not break through its conditioning
that medicine was about life and not dying. The paradox
was that Elizabeth did practice medicine, but it was medicine
for the soul and not the body. She found more
than a career, Elizabeth had a spiritual calling. I have
(33:18):
no doubt in the years to come, Elizabeth's work will
continue to be valued as groundbreaking material. She took on
a cultural myth and cracked it right in half. She
took on death itself. I consider her one of the
heroines of our age. Again. That's by author Caroline Mace.
(33:40):
Caroline describes doctor Elizabeth Koubler Ross as a paradox several
times in the words that I just read the definition
of a paradox, a seemingly absurd or self contradictory statement that,
when investigated or explained, may prove to be wealthy founded
and true. Next, I'd like to read some words from
(34:05):
doctor Kubler Ross from her book on Life after Death.
I am sharing with you some of the experiences and
findings of the last decade gathered since we started seriously
studying the whole issue of death and life after death.
After working with dying patients for so many years, it
(34:27):
became very evident that, in spite of our existence for
so many millions of years, as human beings, we have
not yet come to a clear understanding of perhaps the
most important question, namely the meaning and purpose of life
and death. I wanted to share with you some of
this research on death and life after death. I think
(34:50):
the time has come when we are all going to
put these findings together in a language that can help
people to understand and also perhaps help them in dealing
with the death of a loved one, especially the tragic
occurrence of a sudden death, when we don't quite understand
why these tragedies have to happen to us. It is
(35:12):
also very important when you try to counsel and help
dying people and their families, and the question occurs over
and over again, what is life? What is death? And
why do young children, especially young children, have to die?
A long time ago, people were much more in touch
(35:33):
with the issue of death and believed in heaven or
life after death. It is only in the last one
hundred years, perhaps that fewer and fewer people truly know
that life exists after the physical body dies. We are
now in a new age, and hopefully we have made
a transition from an age of science and technology and
(35:56):
materialism to a new age of genuine and o thorthentic spirituality.
Spirituality is an awareness that there is something far greater
than we are, something that created this universe, created life,
and that we are an authentic, important, significant part of
(36:17):
it and can contribute to its evolution. All of us,
when we were born, came from the source, and we're
endowed with a facet of divinity. That means, in a
very literal sense, that we have a part of that
source within us. That is what gives us the knowledge
of our immortality. Many people are beginning to be aware
(36:41):
that the physical body is only the house or the temple,
or as we call it, the cocoon, which we inhabit
for a certain number of months or years until we
make the transition called death. Then, at the time of death,
we shed this cocoon and are once again as free
as a butterfly. To use the symbolic language that we
(37:04):
use when talking to dying children and their siblings, I
have worked with dying patients for the last twenty years.
When I started this work, I must say I was
neither very interested in life after death, nor did I
have any real clear picture about the definition of death.
When you study the scientific definition of death, you see
(37:27):
that it only includes the death of a physical body,
as if man would only exist as the cocoon. I
was one of the physicians and scientists who did not
ever question that. It only became a really relevant and
important issue in the nineteen sixties when the transplant of organs,
(37:48):
especially kidneys and hearts, raised an important question as to
when we are ethically, morally and legally allowed to remove
an organ out of a patient in order to save
another person's life. Being a skeptical semi believer, to put
it mildly, and not interested in issues of life after death,
(38:11):
I could not help but be impressed by several observations
which occurred so frequently that I began to wonder why
nobody ever studied the real issues of death. Not for
any special scientific reasons, not to cover lawsuits, needless to say,
but simply out of natural curiosity. Don't you just love
(38:34):
this woman? Don't you wish you could have a conversation
with her right now? Thankfully, she's got over twenty books
we can read. It's time for our next break, and
when we get back, I'll read some more from Elizabeth
Kobler Ross's book on life after death. You're listening to
Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to
(38:54):
Coast AM paranormal podcast network.
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Speaker 4 (40:32):
Is where you want to be. Welcome back to Shades
of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain and on this episode,
we've been exploring the work of doctor Elizabeth Koobler Ross.
(40:57):
I'd like to remind you you can visit EKO Foundation
dot org. Of course, you can go to Amazon and
look up Elizabeth Koobler Ross. Also, you don't need to
buy a book. Go to your library. There are plenty
of her books. She writes in common language for us
all to understand. She's a wonderful pioneer, and I'm sure
(41:19):
she's continuing to make a difference from the other side.
Now I'll continue reading from her book on Life after Death.
Man has existed for forty seven million years and has
been in its present existence, which includes the facet of divinity,
for seven million years. Every day people die all over
(41:40):
the world. Yet in a society that is able to
send a man to the moon and bring him back
well and safe, we have never put any effort into
the definition of human death. Isn't that peculiar? So, in
the midst of caring for dying patients and the teaching
of medical and seminars students, we decided one day, on
(42:02):
the spur of the moment, that we would try to
come up with a new, updated, all inclusive definition of death.
Doctor Ross goes on to share the story I told
to you earlier about Missus Schwartz, who had fifteen near
death experiences. Then she says, my third and perhaps most
subjective observation was the fact that I have always been
(42:27):
very close to my patients and allowed myself to get
deeply and lovingly involved with them. They touched my life.
I touched their lives in a very intimate and meaningful way.
Yet within minutes of their death, I had no feelings
for these patients and often wondered if there was something
wrong with me. When I looked at them, they appeared
(42:50):
similar to a winter coat to be shed with the
occurrence of spring, knowing it wasn't needed anymore. I had
this incredibly clear image of a shell, and my beloved
patient was no longer in that shell. Naturally, as a scientist,
I could not explain this, so I would have to
(43:10):
put these observations aside. If it had not been for
Missus Schwartz. Her husband was a known schizophrenic, and each
time he had a psychotic episode, he would try to
hurt his youngest son, the youngest of many children and
the only one still at home. Missus Schwartz was convinced
that if she should die prematurely, her husband would lose
(43:33):
control and the life of her youngest son would be
in danger. Through the help of the Legal Aid Society,
we were able to make arrangements for her to transfer
the custody of this child to some relatives. She left
the hospital with a great sense of relief and a
new freedom, knowing that should she not be able to live,
(43:54):
at least her youngest child was now safe. It was
this same patient who returned to our hospital again almost
a year later and shared her near death experience. Experiences
like this have been published in many books and magazines
in the last few years and have become familiar to
the general public. But our first experience with missus Schwartz,
(44:16):
who told of having been hospitalized in an emergency basis
in a local hospital in Indiana at the time, being
too sick to be transferred as far as Chicago. She
remembers being admitted in critical condition. She was put into
a private room in a hospital, and just as she
was contemplating whether she should struggle once more for the
(44:40):
sake of her youngest child or simply let go lean
back into a pillow and shed her cocoon. She became
aware of her nurse, who walked into the room, took
one look at her, and dashed out. At that very moment,
she saw herself slowly and peacefully floating out of her
physic body, hovering just a few feet above her bed.
(45:04):
She even had a great sense of humor, relating that
she looked at her body, which looked pale and icky.
She said she had a sense of awe and surprise,
but no fear or anxiety. She then told of watching
the resuscitation team walk into the room, enumerting in great
detail who walked in first and who walked in last.
(45:27):
She was totally aware of every word of their conversations,
of their thought patterns, and she had only one great
need to convey to them to relax, to take it easy,
and to tell them that she was all right. But
the more desperately she tried to convey this to them,
the more frantically they seemed to work on her body. Finally,
(45:49):
it dawned on her that she was able to perceive them,
but they were not able to perceive her. Missus Schwartz
then decided to give up her attempts, and in her
own language, she said I lost consciousness. She was declared
dead after forty five minutes of unsuccessful resuscitation attempts, but
(46:11):
later on showed signs of life again, much to the
surprise of the hospital staff. She lived another year and
a half. Missus Schwartz shared this with my class and
myself in one of my seminars. Needless to say, this
was a brand new experience for me. I had never
heard of near death experiences in spite of the fact
(46:33):
I had been a physician for many years. My students
were shocked that I did not call this hallucination an
illusion or a feeling of depersonalization. They had a desperate
need to give it a label, something that they could
not identify, and then put it aside and not have
to deal with it. Missus Schwartz's experience, we were sure
(46:55):
could not be a single unique occurrence. Our hope was
to be able to find more cases like hers, and
perhaps move in the direction of collecting data to see
if this was a common, rare or a very unique experience.
It has become known recently that many many researchers, physicians, psychologists,
(47:18):
and people who study this phenomena have tried to collect
cases like this. In the last ten years, over twenty
five thousand cases have been collected from all over the world.
I'm going to stop reading right now, and what occurs
to me, even though this was first published back in
(47:39):
nineteen ninety one, is that over twenty thousand people were
documented having these experiences, and doctor Ross promised that she
wouldn't share them for people's fear of being thought crazy
or hallucinating. I know now that near death experiences is
(48:00):
the hottest topic, and even from you, dear listeners, you
want more and more stories, so I always try to
bring them to you. But getting these stories out in
the open is what's going to have us go from
believing to knowing. I don't want any of us to
have a near death experience, because chances are there's going
(48:20):
to be some pain and suffering involved, but to learn
from others and possibly have our own induced after death communication,
whether through meditation or some other spiritually transformative experience, it
is possible. Later on in the book on Life after Death,
(48:43):
doctor Koobler Ross shares some interesting experiences from her journey
into meditation. She calls them out of body experiences and
witnesses so much in detail and clarity convinced that we
are are more than our bodies. Later on in her life,
closer to passing, she even had her own near death experience,
(49:07):
so it was no wonder. Like Caroline Mace said in
the beginning, she was looking for her way to get
over there. It's not easy, as you know, to be
living in a human body with any infirmities that we have,
or the older we get, things start shutting down and
breaking down and aches and pains. But it's all an
experience for the soul. And I do think when we
(49:30):
can turn in to our inner selves, it can provide
relief but also access to that invisible world around each
one of us. I'd like to remind you now of
those words that doctor Elizabeth Koobler Ross spoke in the
beginning of this episode. She said, I think a lot
(49:51):
of people in the audience have either a terminal illness,
or have lost a child, or are in the process
of death. Being four to face the issue. When you're
healthy and everything goes well, nobody wants to think about it,
which is ridiculous because if you live life fully and
learn to live without fear and guilt, it doesn't matter
(50:15):
whether you live twenty years or ninety years, and I
think we have learned from dying patience, not so much
about the old stuff, the stages of dying, but how
to live without fear and guilt, so that when death occurs,
it's okay. Remember, fear and guilt are the only enemies
(50:36):
of man. If you can learn to live without fear
and guilt, you live every day so fully that you
feel like you've lived one hundred lives. As we leave
each other today, could it be as simply as having
a note with you that says, am I living from
(50:57):
fear and guilt? Or am I living in love? As
she says love and fear cannot exist at the same time,
we can definitely inject love into every situation we are in. Well,
my friend, it's been wonderful spending this time with you.
A reminder come visit me, would you? At we doodie
(51:18):
dot com. That's my home base. I have a free
Sunday gathering every Sunday two pm New York time on
Zoom inspirational, motivational, and a free medium demonstration within each
and everyone. So much more to explore there at weedodie
dot com. I'd like to leave you with one final
(51:41):
quote by doctor Elizabeth Koobler Ross. 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 sense activity,
and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness,
(52:06):
and a deep, loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
I know who I'm speaking to right now. You are
a beautiful person. For all the struggles you've endured. You
are compassionate, You're kind, and you make a difference everywhere
you go. And in that invisible space around you, you
(52:28):
have the biggest team of cheerleaders from the other side.
There will be a reunion and happiness for eternity, but
we have a job to do first here on Earth.
I'm Sandra Champlain. Thank you so much for listening to
Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to
(52:48):
Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
And if you like this episode of Shades of the Afterlife,
wait until you hear the next one. Thank you for
listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal
Podcast Network.
Host
Sandra Champlain
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