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