“On Death & Dying”…and Beyond

Hello and welcome to the Wise Talkers podcast. I’m your host, Ronald Fel Jones. You can listen to and comment on all the episodes of Wise Talkers, under the “Episodes” link in the top menu of the Wise Talkers website, wisetalkers.com. You’ll also see a ’Subscribe’ link on the top right, which I invite you to click and sign up for the Wise Talkers mailing list. This is this third episode of Wise Talkers. And as with my inaugural edition, which featured an interview that I conducted in 1979 with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder, this third edition also features an interview from that period, back when I was hosting a weekly live interview show called World Views on KVMR radio in Nevada City, California. Sometime in 1981, world-renowned death-and-dying pioneer Elisabeth Kübler-Ross came to the Grass Valley/Nevada City area to teach a class and give a lecture. I was fortunate to book a half-hour in her busy schedule for a radio interview, so I took my remote recording equipment to the local school where she was giving her talk. She said she had about a half hour max, so we quickly started the interview, which I will replay here in a few minutes. And in our short conversation, we covered a wide range of subjects related to death and dying, which of course was her lifework, including what happens at the moment of death, her convictions about life after death; children and death; working with parents who have lost children in especially traumatic circumstances. We talked about parenting and grandparenting, about unconditional love and child rearing. It was a rich experience, this short interview, and I found Elisabeth to be a beautiful, warm, genuine human being. All coming up here in just a bit, in this episode, which I have titled…

“On Death & Dying”… and Beyond Of course, many of you know all about the late Swiss-American psychiatrist, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, as she was a major figure in the healthcare world in the latter half of the 1900s. Indeed, Time magazine named here one of the "100 Most Important Thinkers" of the 20th Century. But, naturally, not everybody is familiar with Kübler-Ross, especially younger people. But whether you know about this remarkable woman or not, you have in all likelihood been affected by the profound impact she had on how we view the subject of death and dying, and how the medical profession treats people who are approaching death. If you’ve ever had a grandparent or parent who was fortunate to die with peace and dignity, with adequate pain relief, whether at home or in a hospital or in a hospice, the life and work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is a major reason that was possible. If you have ever heard of, or talked about ‘the five stages of grief’ - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - you are referring to what’s officially known as “the Kübler-Ross model,” because she introduced that model in her groundbreaking, internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying, published in 1969. You simply cannot overstate the enormous impact of this book, and the many years of tireless, inspired work by Elisabeth that surrounded its publication. Now today, we take things like hospice, palliative care, end-of-life studies, dying with dignity for granted. But it was not always so. When Kübler-Ross moved from Switzerland to the United States in 1958, after receiving her medical degree from the University of Zurich in 1957, she studied and worked at several American university hospitals as she completed her psychiatric training And she was appalled, even horrified, by the treatment of dying patients, who were often given little care or completely ignored by the hospital staff. Now, I personally was a child in the 1950s and an adolescent in the ‘60s, so I was vaguely aware of the prevailing attitude toward death. It was a taboo subject, and in fact doctors would routinely not even tell a patient, or their family, that they were dying. Death was considered a failure by the medical world, and once a patient was clearly beyond any chance of survival, or revival by heroic medical intervention, they were essentially left alone to die. Families were not even allowed, in many cases, to be with their dying family member, or limited to perhaps 5 minutes visiting time per hour. As a young doctor and intern in Chicago, Elisabeth started visiting and listening to dying patients, treating them with compassion and dignity, and talking to them about their imminent death. And there are stories of more senior doctors stopping her in the halls and angrily accosting her, shouting at her – ‘how dare you tell Mrs so-and-so that she’s dying!’ Hard as that is to imagine today, that’s the world that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross encountered in the U.S. in the 1960s, and led the successful charge to revolutionize. Over her career she trained more than 125,000 students in death and dying courses. During the ‘70s she became a passionate advocate of the hospice movement, around the world. She traveled to more than twenty countries on six continents launching various hospice and palliative care programs. She wrote more than 20 books on death and dying, available in 44 languages. Two of those books, by the way, were about children and death, as she took a special interest in children, as you will hear in our 1981 interview I am about to replay.

life after death. After the interview, I’ll come back to say a few words about how I see the relevance in today’s world of Elisabeth’s work and views on death and dying, and life after death.

During World War II, at only 13 years of age, Elisabeth worked as a laboratory assistant for refugees in Zürich. Following the war, she did relief work in seven different European countries. In 1947 she visited the My-Don-ick Nazi extermination camp in Poland, which sparked her interest in the power of compassion and resilience of the human spirit. The horror stories of the survivors left a permanent impression on Elisabeth, and led to her decision to dedicate her life to helping and healing others. She was also profoundly affected by images of hundreds of butterflies carved into some of the walls at the concentration camp. To Kübler-Ross, these butterflies—the final works of art by those facing death—stayed with her for years and influenced her thinking about the end of life. Ok … keep that butterfly story in mind…as you listen to my interview with Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, conducted in 1981 and broadcast on KVMR radio in Nevada City, California…

Ron I'm sitting here with Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, noted authority on the process of death, dying and beyond. Welcome to Nevada City, first of all. Elisabeth Thank you, it's delightful to be here. Ron Great. We have only a short amount of time, so I thought we'd quickly jump into what I think is the most interesting topic to you, and it is to me as well, and that is, rather than, the process of dying itself, life after death. I know that some years ago, when you came out unequivocally stating that you believe such was true that the human form, or that life did go beyond the human body, it caused controversy among your colleagues, as things like that usually do. This is still your conviction, I assume? Elisabeth Yes, and it's not a question of believing it but of knowing it, and people who really want to know the truth and are not afraid of the truth can verify those things very easily themselves. Ron How would one do that? Elisabeth Well, we started first collecting so-called near-death experiences from people who were clinically declared dead and made a comeback. And the interesting thing is, when you study these cases, there are thousands and thousands of these patients, of these cases, all over the world. The common denominator is that they don't talk about it, because they know that it will give them a psychiatric label, or you won't believe it, or you tell them to hush it up because, what might people think of it? The interesting thing is you can go and study aboriginals in Australia, or Eskimos, or people anywhere in the world. You get it from two and three-year-old children, and you know that those children have not read The National Inquirer, or Moody's book. This was also, anyway, before all these things were published. I think it's important for people to know the common denominator, and then I tell you in a brief statement how we verify that this is real. Okay, when you die, at the moment of your death – and this is true whether you die in an accidental, a sudden totally unexpected death, or whether it's murder or suicide, or a slow lingering death – it is not dependent on how you die. It is true of all human beings, of all ages, all cultural and religious backgrounds that we have been able to study. The youngest case was two years old. So even very young children share that with you. At the moment of your clinical death, where your physical body appears to be irreversibly damaged, you – the real you, the immortal part of you – will shed the physical body, very much like a butterfly drops the cocoon and comes out of the cocoon. And I'm talking now in a symbolic language simply because it's easier. The butterfly part of you, the immortal part of you, is fully aware of your physical body, either lying in a hospital bed or people working in a resuscitation attempt to revive you. Or they see their very damaged body in a car wreck, and they can tell you afterwards that they were a few feet above the scene of the accident. And they have no fear, no panic, no anxiety. They observe it almost like you would observe a television show, almost in a detached kind of a way. Then they become totally aware of everything that's going on. They can tell you, for example, the license number of a hit-and-run driver or how many blowtorches were used or how many people were in the resuscitation room. They can also repeat the complete dialogues that were going on in the hospital room at the time when they have flat brainwave tests and no vital signs. And then they become aware that they're totally whole again. Amputees have their legs. Blind people can see, deaf mutes can hear and speak. My multiple sclerosis patients, the first thing they always say is Dr. Ross, I was able to sing and dance again. Ron These are people, again, who have come back from near-death experiences. Elisabeth Yes, they were all people who have come back to tell us about it. And then they become aware. If they go a further step, they become aware that you can never, ever die alone. You could put the man in a rocket and send him to the moon and they would miss the target and they would circle around and eventually die. The moment they shed their physical body, at the moment of death – not the temporary out-of-body experiences all of us have during certain types of sleep, but at the moment of death – you begin to realize that when you're out of your physical body, your immortal part of you exists in an existence where there is no place and no time, and that means you can think of anybody on this planet earth and you can be with that person at the speed of your thought. And that is something that you can repeat in a laboratory. For that you require a laboratory set-up and the group of scientists and an induction technique to help you to get out of your body on command. Ron Has that been done? Elisabeth Yes naturally. Ron Is that done with any person, or does a person have to be a pretty willing participant in that? Elisabeth It has been done with many people. But if you have a fear of it, it will never happen. You have to be willing and volunteer to undergo such a research project. I have never published or talked about anything in public that I have not experienced myself, so naturally I immediately signed up as a guinea pig and did this research to know that this is real, because for me all these things were far out. You understand. Ron And you didn't grow up with a lifelong belief in life after death? Elisabeth No, I was a very wishy-washy Protestant and very square, and anything that sounded like this I thought only happens in California. And I was very straight and square and I was the most unlikely person even to go into research like this. So to me that's even more important, that any skeptical, non-believer, even scientist, can study some of these things objectively. But the thing that impressed me the most… that is only one reason why you cannot die alone. The other reason has to do with the existing life after death, that is, people who have lost a father or a grandmother, for example, 10 or 20 or 30 years before. They're always there to meet you when you make the transition called death, and you will always be met by the ones that you have loved the most. And naturally, as a scientist and as a skeptic, I thought that's projection of wishful thinking. Well, we have had young children who have had siblings who died before they were born, who were never told that the parents had other children, and when they made the comeback they talked about that brother, and mentioned the name and described the appearance of that brother. Ron They’d never heard about him before. Elisabeth Never heard of it before. But that didn't impress me so much. That helped me, naturally, on the way. But what impressed me most, when I tried to find out if you can study that more scientifically, and even with people who never believed in a life after death. What I did is to study children who were in car accidents, in family accidents, head-on collisions, where a mother is killed at the scene of the accident. One brother went to a burn unit in another hospital and this little girl was in a very critical condition in an intensive care unit. I always spend time with the youngest children, who are the most critically injured and are not expected to live, and shortly before they die, I ask them if they are willing to share with me what is happening to them. And they always share the same thing with you. They tell you everything is okay now. Mommy and Peter are already waiting for me. None of these children in 10 years have ever, ever, ever mentioned a person who has not preceded them in death by at least 10 minutes. Those children have never been informed that somebody in the family was killed. Peter was in a burn unit and was not dead. But I listened to those children because I know that they know more than I do. So I went out to the nursing station, and they had a telephone for me. The other hospital called up to inform me that Peter died 10 minutes ago. And I naturally respond to this phone call, ‘yes, I know’ and they think Dr. Ross is really kooky. Do you understand? If you listen to these children, it's amazing that not one of them has ever mentioned a person that had not preceded them in death. In all statistics of scientists, they do not have such statistics. And then you naturally move on. Those are things that any ICU nurse can verify. Ron Well, in face of that kind of evidence, why is there so much disbelief in that among your colleagues and people in general? Elisabeth It is very frightening for people, because that's not what we share with people. We also share with people that you are fully and totally and 100% responsible, not only for your deeds, but for every thought and every word you have ever said in your life. You will have to review after your physical death and at that time you will have no longer a physical brain and you're no longer limited. And that implies that you will have all knowledge of not only every thought and word and deed of your life, but also of all the consequences of your words and thoughts and deeds. That is very scary to people. They can't blame Satan for it and they can't blame the husband and they can't blame the neighbors. You're fully responsible for your total life, your life at the end, when you review, it is a consequence of all your choices you take every single day and that puts you in charge of whether you're going to have a meaningful life and touch lives and leave this place a little better, or whether you ruin it for a lot of people, including yourself. Ron In your work with dying patients, does your belief in life after death an integral part of that? Elisabeth Not really, if you understand that for 10 years I've worked full-time with dying patients and still did not really believe in a life after death. Ron What about since you've come to believe yourself? Elisabeth It helps me mainly when I work with parents of murdered children. I'm working an awful lot with parents of murdered children and, as you know, crime in this country is horrible and there is no group and no organization and literally no one that helps parents of murdered children or parents who die very gruesome kind of deaths, like a mother who watched her child being eaten up by sharks and the only thing that was left was a little hand. This woman almost went insane. And that's when I use my knowledge of what happens to the person. See, at the time of a horrible crisis, like a little girl is brutally raped and murdered, these children have the ability to leave their physical body before they're clinically dead, and they have no pain and agony and anguish. And I'm not minimizing the anguish for the parents, but they have to know that the children are alive and well and loved beyond any description, and that they do not have to relive and ruminate the agony of the moment of death, because the moment of death is an incredibly beautiful experience. So the child doesn't experience the pain, and also their playmates, which people call their guardian angels or their playmates or their guides, are always with them and once in their presence, you are always with them. And once in their presence, you are surrounded with so much indescribable, incredible love, that the moment of suffering is absolutely nothing in comparison with it. There is no description for it, and once you've been in that presence, there are just no words for it. And if people can experience and at least know that, then they're able to let go of the need to suffer. Ron I take it you've experienced that presence yourself. Elisabeth Yes, yes. It is beyond any description. Ron Is that through the experiments you were… Elisabeth I've experienced it in many different settings. No, I was never clinically sick to the point where I had that near-death experience. I had it through many others. Ron I was thinking of the experiments you were talking about, where a person can… Elisabeth Well, that's when I experienced out-of-body experiences for the first time, to know that this is real. No, that is like the first step. I've been fortunate to be able to go beyond that. Ron Are you looking forward to your own death? Elisabeth Yes, very much, but there is still a lot of work to be done, so I cannot retire yet. Ron I'm wondering if… let's say, a person who is getting very old and has always not believed in life after death, do they tend to become more open to the idea as their own death becomes imminent, or does the opposite happen? Do they absolutely reject it? Elisabeth It is more true with children who have been raised in a family without any religious education or belief. The beauty about human beings is that we consist of a physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual quadrant. We were created that way. When in a child that has not fully developed the total wholeness ,which only happens in adolescence if you had been raised with unconditional love and firm discipline, no punishment, then you would be a whole person by the time you're a teenager. If children die before that, when the physical quadrant deteriorates, the spiritual quadrant compensates for that and they become very prematurely old, wise, very special people and they have then much knowledge far beyond their chronological age, and it's like a compensatory mechanism to help them not to be afraid. That's why it's so beautiful to work with dying children, because it's like talking to old, wise people. They know more than any grown-up. Ron The same process doesn't happen with older people who are dying? Elisabeth It does, except their own negativity prevents them from their awareness. See, if you're full of fear and guilt, which is the only enemy of man, you kind of cloud up your own awareness, and then they're not open to all the help that we get day after day. Ron I assume you're not really saying that people can't do that. Elisabeth Oh no! In my last workshop, we had a woman who was 100 years old, and it’s never too late, it takes a very short time to help them. This is my main work, to help people of any age, to help them get in touch with their own fears and guilt and their unfinished business and get rid of it so they can be open and have all the experiences that I've had. And it doesn't take magic or drugs or a guru. Ron You say it doesn't take these things. Elisabeth No, I've never had any of this. Ron Never? That's amazing. Elisabeth It is literally available to any human being. I can't even meditate, you know. I have ants in my pants and I travel all the time and I'm a terribly straight, square person. Ron What advice do you give somebody who says, yeah, that's like me. I can't meditate and I don't take drugs and I don't have a guru. How can I do it? Elisabeth You don't need all that. All you have to do is to become aware of your own negativity, and that's our specialty is to help people get in touch with it, get rid of it. In our five-day live-in workshops we do this every two weeks all over the United States and Europe and Australia. Teach people how to do that. Ron So you believe in finding and experiencing the negativity and then just seeing what replaces it? Elisabeth And lay claim to it that you have a Hitler inside of you, that it is your choice to keep it, to punish the world with your bad moods or punish yourself with your bad moods, or get rid of it. Because you're the only living creature on this galaxy that has free choice and you have the possibility to change your attitudes and your behavior. And we show them how to do that. And once you do that, your life opens up. It's like a flower blooming and all we do is we add a little water and sunshine. Ron Sounds nice. Elisabeth It's not difficult. See, life is really very simple and beautiful if we wouldn't make such a big nightmare out of it. And we learned all these things from dying patients who suddenly realize they have such a short time left. And they always come to us and say, Dr. Ross, all I ever did is to make a living and I've never really lived. And you hear that day after day. And then you go home and then you try to tell younger people to prevent having to die talking like that. And it's beautiful. Ron Do you believe that people who do realize that, either near or after death… well, I guess I'm asking if you believe in the basic reincarnation theory, that they come back and try to learn again? Elisabeth If you have not learned unconditional love, you have no choice. You will choose yourself to come back. You cannot return to God without having learned that lesson. Ron Unconditional love yes. Do you have any words for what unconditional love is as compared to other types of love? Elisabeth Most love that people call love has nothing to do with love. Most people were raised, ‘I love you if you cut your hair or your beard. I love you if you clean up your room. I love you if you bring good grades home. Boy, would I love you if you finish high school. I would really love you if you would go to college. Boy, would I love you if I could say that my son, the doctor!’ And children think they can buy love, and that's to me pure prostitution. Ron That's certainly prevalent. Elisabeth Because you can never buy love. Then you marry somebody who says, I would love you if you buy me a mink coat. And next year it's a sable coat. And that kind of demanding love – clinging, clutching and demanding – is totally insatiable. They will never get what they really search for. Love, real love, is a willingness to share of yourself without any expectation and accept your fellow man where he's at and not try to put him into your mold because of your needs, because your needs will be insatiable. And if two people can share with each other in a give-and-take relationship without demanding things from each other, it can be very beautiful. You see, in the older days people grew up knowing unconditional love because they still had their grandmas or grandpas at home, and there were many grandpas and grandmas that loved the grandchildren unconditionally. They found them the most beautiful children and the most loving children and they made no demands on them. And they grew up at least having experienced unconditional love once in their life. And now we put old people in nursing homes and dying patients in hospitals. And children don't know anymore the beauty of an old, wrinkled face, and they do not experience any more unconditional love. Then they raise their children the same way they have been raised and it's a tragedy, Ron One thing that comes to mind when you describe that scene about grandparents giving unconditional love, what about the argument that the parent in the middle of that might say is yeah, yeah, it's easy for you to give unconditional love. You're not worried about their safety and feeding them, and we're the ones that have to do that and we have to be stern, and all that. So that's not a real situation, they might say. If you were there alone with the child and you had to do those things, you couldn't give unconditional love. How do you answer that? Elisabeth You could. But you see, they need the rationalization, the justification for why they are such grouches and such sour pusses and so nasty and mean, sometimes because of their headache or their migraine or their unhappiness with the husband the night before. So they let it out on the children And then they see what they could be like when they watch Grandpa. And then they have to justify their own negativity. It is a very understandable human behavior, and it is in reality much easier for a grandpa because you don't have to dash off to work and you don't have to worry about your own schedule. It is, in reality, easier. Ron That makes it a great opportunity for that grandfather as well, doesn't it? Elisabeth It is a beautiful give and take. It helps grandpa to live, not just exist, in a nursing home. Somebody misses him if he doesn't come downstairs. Ron Right, yes, that is quite different, for sure. Elisabeth And it's nice to be hugged and loved and touched, and somebody climbing on your knees and hug you, and mean it. Ron Yes, for sure. Elisabeth And see, children are not yet phony baloneys. They hug you when they love you and they stay away from you if they don't want to hug you. Ron Although they do learn those games quickly. Elisabeth Yes, until they are about three or four years old. If they have not been contaminated by then. Ron Speaking of children, earlier you said, when speaking about how a child could reach full maturity by teenage years, if they receive stern discipline without punishment. I think is what you said. Where's the line? How do you be a stern disciplinarian without punishing? Elisabeth They need consistent discipline and not punishment. You do not have to beat or belt the child, ever. Ron What would be a form of discipline? Go to your room or… Elisabeth No. Say, for example, a mother bought a very fancy or expensive, gorgeous toy for a child. They go in the backyard and play. Then in the evening they come back in and the next morning they realize that the child left that fancy toy in the backyard and it's either ruined by the rain or the weather or it was stolen. A very negative mother would give a big speech and put the guilt trip on that child. ‘Look what sacrifice I made. I saved for a year, all my pocket money, to buy you this great gift. And you're an ungrateful brat.’ And shake him and, you know, make a big drama scene, about me, the big martyr. ‘Look at all the sacrifice and you only have it one night.’ That's very negative. That’s, ‘look at me poor me, the sacrifice, and you're ungrateful.’ Another mother is even more negative. Say oh, my poor sweetie pie, you lost that most beloved. Let's go to the shop and buy another one. Ron That's worse. Elisabeth That's worse because she's, you know, working out of pure guilt and feels so inferior that she buys love with expensive gifts. A healthy mother would say that is terribly sad. We both loved this toy, we had a wonderful time and we didn't think, or you didn't think of taking it back in, because it was your gift and your responsibility. Next time we get a beautiful gift, we will always remember this day and then, before we go back in, you will check whether all your things are in the house and safe. And that child will cry, which is a natural grief over a loss of something you have lost. And the next time they get the fancy toy, that child will be responsible, will have a sense of self-worth, of responsibility, and will personally see to it that the things that belong to him will be in good hands and back in the house in the evening before it rains. See, every discipline should turn into a growth and learning experience, not a punishment. Ron Well, I'm wondering if, in taking that same example, if a week later the child got something else and, for whatever reason, left it out again, do you do anything different the second time? Do you become more… Elisabeth No, I say, if your friends who get you beautiful gifts know how sloppy you are, very soon there will be nobody anymore who will ever get your toy because they know it lasts only one day. Or maybe they buy you some cheap junk, some plastic toy, because they know that you never keep it more than a day anyway. And then the child learns that they have to live with the consequences of their own choices. See, that's the most important lesson you can teach a child and you don't have to spank them or shake them or beat them up or put the guilt trip on them. Ron What about a case where, unfortunately, it's too far into the process, that it doesn't work, and the child fights back and they argue and they don't accept it readily. Can you unwind and get back to a point where you can deal with logical consequences and constructive Elisabeth See, if you become negative, then the child will become negative and then it becomes a power struggle. You can do this very beautifully if you have no fear and guilt. If you're full of fear and guilt that you're not a good mother and all sorts of things, you put all these trips on your children and they will know it and they will manipulate you. Ron Yes, and they will know. And boy they are clever. Elisabeth Yes, they are. You sound like you have children. Ron Yes, I do, I do have children. I know that you have a busy schedule and you've actually gone beyond my limit, which I appreciate. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy your stay here. Elisabeth Thank you, it’s delightful here. Ron I know your audience will. And I hope you come back and visit us again sometime. Elisabeth I hope so. Ron Okay, thank you. Elisabeth Thank you. Epilogue So there you have it, my interview with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, conducted in 1981 on KVMR radio in Nevada City, California. I knew back then that I was very fortunate to get this half hour interview with the esteemed doctor, and I feel that even more now than I did then. Fortunately I kept a cassette tape of our interview all these years, but I had not listened to it again until recently, working on it here for my Wise Talkers podcast. And in carefully listening to it again multiple times as I’ve worked on this episode, and digging more deeply into the life and work of Kübler-Ross, I’m discovering how much working on this project has affected me… and is still affecting me. I was 34 years old when I conducted this interview in 1981. And now, looking back to that point in my life, I realize I had surprisingly little personal experience with death at that age. I had not even lost my grandparents by then, let alone my parents. But now I am 77, and in those intervening 43 years, well, unsurprisingly… I have had a good deal of experience with death. All three grandparents I grew up with have passed, of course; both my dad and mom, a nephew, several other other relatives, five or six very close friends – and most consequentially, I have lost two of my children, my 19-year-old step daughter in 1992, and ten years later, my 34-year-old son, both victims of freak accidents that caused fatal had injuries. So with all that as background, and now delving into this Elisabeth Kübler-Ross podcast episode, I find myself thinking more than ever about the whole profound, mysterious subject of death and dying. My first thought here is… what if we took Elisabeth Kübler-Ross seriously? I mean, there is probably nobody in history who has done more work with dying people, and their grieving loved ones, than Elisabeth. And then all there’s all the people she interviewed who have come back from near death, and told her what they experienced. Given all this, shouldn’t we listen to what she says? Even if we are strongly disinclined to believe the bold claims she makes, shouldn’t we at least take her seriously?

First, the ‘butterfly’ analogy, that “the real you, the immortal part of you, will shed the physical body, very much like a butterfly drops the cocoon….” In the interview, she makes the following assertions about what happens right after the moment of death… You are fully aware of your physical body. You have no fear, no panic, no anxiety. You become aware that you are totally whole again. You can never, ever die alone… you will always be met by the ones that you have loved the most. The immortal part of you exists in an existence where there is no place and no time. You might consider listening to the interview again – or at least the part where she talks about what happens at the moment of death and beyond – while asking yourself, what if this is really true? What impact would that have in my life?

“…once in their presence, you are surrounded with so much indescribable, incredible love, that the moment of suffering is absolutely nothing in comparison with it. There is no description for it, and once you've been in that presence, there are just no words for it. And if people can experience and at least know that, then they're able to let go of the need to suffer.” This is an astounding claim, and remember, she says she doesn’t simply believe it, she knows it, from her own experience as well as from the thousands of patients she interviewed. Moreover, she didn’t grow up indoctrinated in these views, she was a skeptic. Ron And you didn't grow up with a lifelong belief in life after death? Elisabeth No, I was a very wishy-washy Protestant and very square, and anything that sounded like this I thought only happens in California. And I was very straight and square and I was the most unlikely person even to go into research like this. So to me that's even more important, that any skeptical, non-believer, even scientist, can study some of these things objectively. Now, I am certainly not saying that anyone should simply believe her about this view of death and life after death. But I am saying that we would benefit greatly, as individuals and as a society, by talking openly about this profoundly important subject, without fear of being ridiculed, or, as she says being given ‘a psychiatric label’ for talking about such experiences. Finally, here’s what I find myself especially intrigued with, in terms of death and dying, and it’s not only about my own inevitable death, or even the deaths of friends and family. There’s a lot of death and dying in the world today, a growing amount of tragedy and suffering and trauma all around us, whether in the horrific wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, as particularly notable and heartbreaking examples among many global conflicts, or in the proliferation of mass shootings in the U.S., even all the death over the past few years from the Covid pandemic. Moreover, the earth itself, if not literally dying, is certainly suffering, with ongoing ecological damage, habitat destruction, an alarming rate of species extinction. Many scientists believe we are already past the tipping point with climate change. And sadly, I could go on, as we all know all too well. Now, you may be optimistic about our ability right the ship and create a better world for all of us…as I have always been in my relentless optimism…or you may be pessimistic about our plight, as more and more of us increasingly are… which I must admit, is the direction my own prognosis has been trending of late. But whatever your stance on all this, what if we stepped back for a moment, whether from our passionate desire to change the course of civilization, as I have long been obsessed with, or, from your pessimism about the future. What if we put aside our hopes and dreams, or our anger and depression and sense of hopelessness about the future, and, instead, just as an exercise, what if we viewed our current world predicament from this radically enlightened perspective on death and dying that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross came to know and advocate? In sitting with this wider perspective these past few weeks, I find it is opening up new vistas, even a growing sense of equanimity about the future. And interestingly, this does not feel at all like a retreat from taking a hopeful stance, or doing what I can to make some small contribution to a better world for all, in fact it feels like it will positively affect those goals. So…I don’t know just where this train of thought leads, but I’m pretty sure it’s a worthwhile expedition, and going forward I’ll be thinking more about this, and will quite likely be exploring it in future editions of Wise Talkers. And I would love to engage others in this exploration. Perhaps in a future episode of Wise Talkers, I’ll replay this interview and then hold a live-streamed conversation, with a panel of guests, and also taking listener call-ins. Let me know if you’re interested in that possibility, which you can do on the website, wisetalkers.com, in the Comments section in the post about this episode. You can find that under the Episodes link in the top menu. Or you can email me directly if you prefer, from the Contact link in the top menu. And, of course, you can also subscribe to Wise Talkers from a link at the top right of every page of wisetalkers.com. So I’ll leave you with that invitation, to engage one way or another in an ongoing conversation about the many interconnected crises and predicaments we are facing, individually and collectively, viewed through the lens of what I guess I’m calling ‘the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross radically enlightened understanding of death and dying .’ Thanks for tuning in, and I look forward to ongoing discussions with you all, and I hope you stick around for future episodes of the Wise Talkers podcast.