Hello

At one point I greatly admired EKR and read a number of her books. She seemed to be a very warm and caring, and it seemed to me at the time, wise and strong person. Do you know her and what is your opinion of her? (she passed away a couple of years back I think). I understand some in the scientific/medical community think she lost the plot a bit when she became very interested in the afterlife, but then that is quite predictable. However there was also some suggestion, I think, that she latterly became rather obsessed with visits to a physical medium who was probably fraudulent , to which she may have alluded in her autobiography - it's been a long time since I read it and I forget the details - and some said she had become gullible because she was so keen to see proof of the afterlife (I don' t blame her though, having spent much of her career working with children dying of terminal illnesses).

I was reminded of her when I read recently that it was the Monroe Institute that she had an OOBE she found very impressive - I recall the description was that she felt herself shoot out of her body up into the stars and came back with the words Shanti Nilaya in her head, which mean unltimate peace or something in an Indian language) and she soon afterwards had an amazing experience of cosmic consciounsness. Anyone know what programme/technique etc she went through at TMI? I think she might have used the hemi-sync as part of it?

Probably the oddest thing I remember she claimed in her books was an occasion when she was at work in a hospital and a deceased patient, I think she was called Mrs Schwartz, visited her, looking as solid and normal as in life and even wrote a note on a piece of paper for her at her request so she could know afterwards it was "real". The visit was to encourage her at a point when she was considering abandoning her research into NDEs and helping the dying. I have since often read about materialisation séances where mediums used to (and still do) claim to materialise spirits in a darkened room ("so as not to damage the ectoplasm") and so on, but this experience EKR seems of a different order - unless it was a hallucination and she wrote the note herself without realising it?

If it IS true, and spirits can do that in exceptional circumstances,  maybe  some of us have walked past visting "dead"people at some point without realising it!

I can't comment on the reality or otherwise of her experience O, but I think EKR was an amazing lady. One that isn't half as much celebrated as she should be.

If the published story is even half true she from a very young age combined an amazing strength of will with such an enormous drive to help others - somehow managing to stay in the system while finding a way through the culture of what is one of the most conservative professions there is.

And in doing so did so much to open the way for a more loving way of treating the seriously ill in institutions - starting long before new age sensibilities had rendered this sort of thinking (if not the action) normal.

Her later life seemed very much to epitomise the opening that some around here may recognise - a transiton to a scenario where somehow the individul becomes unwilling or unable to play the game of life the old way any more....

Thanks for those thought vajra. I am glad you were impressed by her too. Yes, even if "only" juged on her medical work with the dying (her book, On Death and Dying, is still considered the classic in the field I believe) she was pretty amazing - like the simple, but powerful idea, that the dying don't want lying to and being told that "everything will be OK and you'll get better". They need to be helped to achieve closure with their business in this world and acceptance of what is to come, at which point, EKY used to say, may people found a state of peace and serenity.

I'm not familiar with the claim that she became interested in a fraudulent medium and I don't know anything about her experiences at TMI but she was an interesting person.

I had an opportunity to hear her speak once and she was incredibly interesting. She definitely was charismatic. I was working in a research lab associated with the Mayo Clinic...the heart of conservative country I would think...so it was astounding to hear her relate that story you mentioned to that audience. (It was not a talk sponsored by Mayo). The version I recalled was slightly different than what I recall reading in one of her books. She was so charismatic that I never doubted it happened! The way I recall her telling it, the person who manifested was a former patient of hers who had passed over and may have had some pressing family issues that made her reluctant to let go when she was dying. Maybe a child still at home and the father had mental issues. And in the story, Kubler-Ross gets on to the elevator and there this "dead" person  is...like, there's no escaping this experience on the elevator! Delivered what ever message there was to deliver, and poof! vanished. Anyway it is no stranger than Don/Berserk's story of his friend showing up to relatives after the friend died. Maybe it happens more than we realize even if it not an every-day occurrence.

Thanks for those recollections. Can you say any more about the impression she made on you as a person and a speaker?

Re. the story we are talking about, as I recall it from the books there was an elevator involved. But as I reall it - and this may be inaccurate, I thought she (EKR) was coming out of an elevator in the hospital when she saw this woman who was an ex--patient who had died, and amazed, she followed the woman to her office, or led her there, and there the woman said EKR must not get discouraged and give up her work, and EKR asked her to sign a piece of paper as proof she was really there and then the woman left.

Either way, a pretty strange occurance. But yes, she must have been a courageous person, to say the least, and not afraid of ruffling some feathers.

The internet is so handy sometimes - never heard her voice etc before, but have found these nice clips on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ry4iIegZrU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0JVsdKNq6g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px2FNUPAkug

....And this is just the beginning!

These pioneers such as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross have spent their lives on just their one facet of spirit interacting with the material world, ---and yet there is so much more to learn and experience!

Do you know if EKR was always 'charismatic' or did she become so when she had an important truth to convey?
From a web dictionary:
"charisma |k??rizm?| noun 1 compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire
devotion in others : she enchanted guests with her charisma. 2 ( pl. -mata |-?m?t?|)
(also charism |?kar?iz?m|) a divinely conferred power or talent. ORIGIN mid 17th cent.
(sense 2) : via ecclesiastical Latin from Greek kharisma, from kharis ‘favor, grace.’ "

Betson

:) I'd say that to many she was a slightly dogmatic European sounding old ....... in whom they saw nothing.

Yet to those that were open she was magic.

Connection and charisma are two way streets.....