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'i
M.I.A.S. BULLETIN
A COMMUNICATION FROM THE MONROE INSTITUTE OF APPLIED SCIENCES
J
DR.
ELISABETH KUBLER-RQSS
The following
is
an excerpt
from an article
in
the February,
1980,
issue
of Cosmopolitan Mag-
azine:
~
"
”
immediately read up on the subject and subsequently got in.
touch
with
Robert
A. Monroe,
a
Virginia
businessperson
who has had hundreds of such experiences himself, some of
which he describes in a mind-boggling book called Journeys
Out oj the Body. Monroe has a laboratory in Virginia where
he does out-of-body research, which
includes experimenta-
tion with
teaching people how
to have out-of-body experi-
ences on command.
Elisabeth wanted
very much
to learn
this so that she might
better understand
the experiences
of
her
patients,
so
she
went
to
visit Monroe
and
succeeded
without difficulty in mastering his techniques.
Her
account
of where
this
led
her began
to flow
in
a
nonstop
stream
of words
that she
constantly
described
as
inadequate to communicate the truth of what happened. I sat
spellbound as she recreated for me a remarkable experience
that
she
seems
herself
to
view
with,
a
combination
of
matter-of-factness and
a
still-lingering sense of amazement
and awe. She touched my arm often
as she spoke,
as
if to
make sure that
1 was
still "with her" on her journey:
"When
decide
to do something.
1 do
it wholeheartedly,
and
one
great
asset
have
is
that
1 am
not
afraid
of
anything—or almost anything. But Bob Monroe didn't know
that: so when
I had my
first experiment
1 went too fast, and
he interfered when
I was
just
at the
ceiling. He called me,
and
1 went
‘kerplunk’ back
into my
body.
was mad
as
could
be.
It
was
the
first
time
was
able
to
do
it
on
command, and
it was a big
thrill
that
it actually worked.
was
like an
excited
child, but
just
as
1 was
getting
to the
ceiling, boom. So the next time,
I thought, ‘I'm going to beat
him to
it.
I am going so far that he can't catch me.’ That’s in
our language, which in an out-of-body thing doesn’t exist.
"So the moment we, started,
said to myself.
‘I am going
so
fast
that nobody has ever gone that
fast, and
1 am going
further than anybody has ever gone.’ And
at
that moment
when
said
that.
I took
off faster than
the speed of
light.
felt
like
I must have gone
a
million
miles,
in mv language.
But
1 was going
horizontal
instead of
up. You
understand
that
in an out-of-body experience there
is no space and no
time,
but you
are so conditioned
in your thinking
that you
think you have to go up or otherwise you
will
hit
a wall or
something. The moment
realized
I was going
at the speed
of light horizontally
.
I switched and made a right-angle turn,
rounded
a
big
hill
and
went
up. And
then
I
started
lo
experiment.
It
is
incredible to get
to
a place where
there
is
no time and space.
#G22580
"It was an important
voyage, and
I had
a super
time.
was in
total, absolute, completes! silence, and
1 was
thrilled
about experiencing
this. And
I went
to
a
place
so
far
that
when
1 came back, something very
incredible happened.
felt
like
a beaming source of
light
is
the
best
description
can give you.
felt
like
a source of
light
that could
illumi-
nate the darkest corner of the world— I can
t describe
it any
other way.
"When
1 walked out
of
the laboratory, everybody stared
at me and asked what had happened, but
I had no recollec-
tion— ] could not remember or
tell them where
1 was. All
knew
was
that
something
so
absolutely
incredible
had
happened to me that
it was beyond description.
All
I could
remember was
the word
Shonti hilaya, and nobody
there
knew what that meant. They tried every .gimmick
to get me
to
remember,
but
nothing
worked— I
know
now
it
was
because
I
didn't want
to share
it
yet.
It was too sacred
to
share with a bunch of strangers.
“That night the sleeping arrangements where
I was were
such that
1 ended up sleeping alone
in
a very isolated guest
house, and
1 was
in
a
questioning
sort
of
conflict,
feeling
that should f actually go
to
sleep
there, something
horren-
dous would happen.
I thought of taking a room
in
a motel
and asking to be in the presence of other human beings, but
at the moment
I contemplated my alternatives,
I knew that
had gone too far and could not back out.
I had to finish up
what
I had started—that’s
all
I knew
at the moment. So
I
went into
that house, and
1 knew the imminence of some-
thing
horrendous—not
horrible,
but
horrendous
that
something horrendous would happen.
I couldn
t sleep, and
I
couldn’t
stay awake.
I wanted
to
sleep
to
avoid
it,
but
I
knew at the same time that
I could not avoid
it.
"And then
I had one of the most incredible experiences of
my
life. In one sentence:
] went through every single death
of every single one of my thousand patients. And
I mean the
physical
pain,
the dyspnea
[labored
breathing],
the
agony,
the screaming for help. The pain was beyond any
descrip-
tion. There was no time to think and no time for anything
except that twice
I caught
a breath, like between two labor
pains.
I was able to catch my breath like for a
split second,
and
I pleaded,
1 guess, with God for a shoulder to lean on,
for one human shoulder, and
visualized a man s shoulder
that
I could put my head on. And a thunderous voice came:
‘You
shall
not
be
given.’ Those
words. And
then
I
went
back to my agony and pain and dyspnea and doubling up
in
the bed. But
1 was awake.
1 mean,
it wasn’t
a dream.
1 was
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Approved For Release 2003/09/10
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reliving
every
single
death
of
every
one
of my
dying
pa-
tients—and
every
aspect
of
it.
not
just
the physical.
"Then
about
an
ctcrnitx
later,
begged
for
a
hand
to
hold. My
fantasy was
that
a hand would come up on
the
right side of the bed and
1 could hold
it. And then again this
voice: ‘You
shall not be given.” Then you know,
there was
the whole
self-pity
trip
] went through:
‘I've
held so manv
hands, and
yet
1 am
not
to have even one hand
in mv own
hour
of agony— that
whole
thing.
IShe
laughs.]
I
"didn't
have
time
to
think
of
all
this,
but
it was
all
part
of
the
agony. Then for a moment
I contemplated whether
1 should
ask for a fingertip— a
fingertip
1 couldn't hold on
to, but
at
'cast
1 would know
about
the presence
of another human
being.
But
typically
me,
said. ‘Dammit,
no.
If
can't get
one hand,
I don't want
a fingertip either.' That was my
final
outpouring of rage and
indignity at God or whoever, that
didn't
want
a
fingertip
if
I
couldn’t
have
a
hand.
It was
something
like
anger
or
defiance,
but
also
the
realization
that
in the ultimate agony you have to do
it alone-^nobody
can do
it for you.
"Once
1 realized
this,
1 said in almost
a challenging way
and
again
this
is
not
in words
but
in
experience
1—‘Okay.
Give
it to me. Whatever
it
is that
I have to take.
1 am readv
to
take
it.'
I
guess
by
then
the agony and
pain—and
this
went on
for hours—were so great that
10.000 more deaths
wouldn't have made any
difference,
since
all
the
pain you
could endure was already
there anyway.
But
the second
said
yes
to
it and
really meant
it from
the bottom
of my
heart, the moment
I
felt the confidence that
1 could actually
take whatever came,
all the dyspnea, hemorrhage, pain, and
agony disappeared
in one
split second, and out
of
it came
the most incredible rebirth experience.
“Jt was so beautiful
there are no words to describe
it.
It
started
as my
belly
w-all
vibrating, and
I looked—this was
full, open eyes, fully conscious—and
I
said, ‘This can’t be.’
J mean, anatomically, physiologically,
it was not possible.
It
vibrated
very
fast. And
then
everywhere
I
looked
in
the
room—my
legs,
the
closet, the window—everything started
to
vibrate
into
a
million
molecules.
Everything
vibrated
at
this
incredible speed. And
in
front of me was a form. The
closest way
to describe
it
is
like a vagina.
I looked
at that,
and as
I focused on
it,
it turned into a lotus-flower bud. And
while
I watched this in utter amazement—there were incred-
ibly beautiful colors and smells and sounds in the room—it
opened up into the most beautiful
lotus flower. And behind
it was
like
a
sunrise,
the
brightest
light
you
can
imagine
without
hurting
your
eyes. And
as
the
flower opened,
its
absolute
fullness
in
this
life
was
totally
present.
At
that
moment the light was full and open, like the whole sun was
there,
and
the
flower was
full
and
open.
The
vibrations
stopped, and the million molecules, including me— it was
all
part of the world—fell
into one piece.
It was like a million
pieces
fell into one, and
I was part of that one. And
I finally
thought, Tm okay, because I'm part of all
this.’
know: that
s
a crazy description
for anybody who has
not experienced
this.
It
is the closest
I can share
it with vou.
It was so incredibly beautiful
that
if
I would describe
it
as
a thousand orgasms
at one time
it would be a very shabby
comparison. There are no words for
it, really. We have very
inadequate language.
"And then
the
next morning
as
I walked
outside
it was
incredible, because I was in love with every
leaf, every tree,
every
bird—even
the pebbles.
I know
I
didn’t walk on the
Approved For Release 2003/09/10
pebbles but
a
little above them. And
I
kept saying
to
the
pebbles,
‘I can’t step on you because
I can’t hurt you.’ They
were
alive
as
was, and
I was
part
of
this
whole
alive
universe.
It took me months to be able to describe
all this in
any halfway adequate words.
“And then somebody told me that this was an experience
of cosmic consciousness.
1 have had many experiences
like
this
since, always spontaneously when
I
least expect them.
But
I have the experience
first, the mystical experience, and
then
1 have to read up on what the heck
it
is, because
I don’t
read things like this or have time to study them. In a way
I
am
fortunate
to have the experience and then catch up
in
my head afterward.
“But
Sharin' Nilaya means
the
‘home
of
peace,’ which
is
where
we
all
end
up
one
day
when
we
have
gone
through
all the
hell and
all the agonies that
life brings and
have been able
to accept
it. This
is
the reward
for
all the
pain and agony that people have to go through."
Wonderful but Weird
By the time Elisabeth finished this story, we were the only
ones
left
in
the
cafeteria.
"Is
it
one
o'clock?"
she
asked,
man
is generally acxnowiedgea. l nartes
J.
Jart. a psycnuiu-
gy professor who wrote the introduction
to Monroe's Jour-
neys Out
of
the
Body,
considers
out-of-body
experiences
(OOBEs) to be “a univeral human experience” in that they
have happened throughout recorded history with
little varia-
tion
in
the
descriptions of
the
basic
event. “One can
find
reports
of OOBEs
by
housewives
in
Kansas,"
he
writes,
“which
closely resemble accounts
of OOBEs from
ancient
Egyptian
or
oriental
sources." (A wide-ranging
survey
of
cases on record can be found
in Herbert
B. Greenhouse’s
The Astral Journey .
)
Although
a
mystical
rebirth
or
“cosmic
consciousness”
experience such as Elisabeth's certainly does not accompany
or follow
as
a standard
part of the
typical OOBE,
it has
been found that people who have experienced themselves
in
the
“second” or
“spiritual”
body
no
longer
question
the
existence of an afterlife—they have experienced being alive
and conscious outside the physical body and thus know they
have some kind
of
soul
that
will
transcend
bodily
death.
Certainly the subjects of Moody’s investigation
felt this way,
regardless of their religious beliefs prior to their near-death
experiences.
I
presume
that
this
accounts
for
Elisabeth's
own deep conviction
that
“there
is
life
after death beyond
the shadow of a doubt." Her favorite metaphor for death,
now
is
that
of
the
butterfly
leaving
its
cocoon,
and
it
is
through her own experience that she has come to see birth
and death as not so different from one another. As we were
on our way
to
the
afternoon
lecture,
she mentioned
that
she had
undergone
age-regression
hypnosis
and
reexper-
ienced
her own
birth
(she
was
the
oldest
of
triplets
and
weighed
only two pounds).
She found
the
experience
of
traveling from
her
mother's
uterus
and down
the
vagina
toward
light and
a waiting hand remarkably similar
to the
"dark tunnel" experiences of her dead-and-revjved patients.
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