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M.I.A.S. BULLETIN
A COMMUNICATION FROM THE MONROE INSTITUTE OF APPLIED SCIENCES
#G22580
DR.
ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS
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 of 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
I was
still "with her" on her journey:
"When
1 decide to do something.
1 do
it wholeheartedly,
and
one
great
asset
I
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
I went
'kerplunk'
back
into my
body.
I was mad
as
could
be.
It
was
the
first
time
I
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,
1 thought,
'1 m going to beat
him to
it.
1 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.
‘1 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
1 said that,
I took off faster than the speed of
light.
felt
like
1 must have gone a million miles,
in my
language.
But
I 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
1 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
started
to
experiment.
It
is incredible
to get
to a place where there
is
no time and space.
"It was an important voyage, and
1 had
a super
time.
was
in
total, absolute, completest silence, and
1 was
thrilled
about experiencing
this. And
I went
to
a place
so
lar
that
when
1 came back, something
very
incredible happened.
felt
like
a beaming source of
light
is
the
best
description
I
can give you.
I
felt
like a source of
light
that could
illumi-
nate the darkest corner of the world— 1 can't describe
it any
other way.
"When
1 walked
out of the laboratory, everybody stared
at me and asked what had happened, but
1 had no recollec-
tion— 1 could not remember or
tell them where
1 was. All
knew
w-as
that
something
so
absolutely
incredible
had
happened to me that
it was beyond description.
All
J could
remember was
the word Shanti
Nilciya, 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
I ended up sleeping alone
in a very isolated guest
house, and
I was
in
a
questioning
sort
of
conflict,
feeling
that should
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
I
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
I knew
the imminence of some-
thing
horrendous—not
horrible,
but
horrendous—that
something horrendous would happen.
1 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:
1 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
I 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
I was awake.
1 mean,
it wasn’t a dream.
I was
Approved For Release 2003/09/10
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 70021 0060-6
Approved For Release 2003/09/10
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 70021 0060-6
reliving every
single death
of every one
of my dying pa-
tients—and every aspect
of
it,
not
just the
physical.
“Then
about
an
eternity
later,
I begged
for
a hand
to
hold. My
fantasy was
that
a hand would come up on
the
right side of the bed and
I could hold
it. And then again this
voice: ‘You
shall
not be given.” Then you know, there was
the whole
self-pity
trip
I went through: Tve held so many
hands, and yet
1 am not to have even one hand
in my own
hour
of
agony—that
whole
thing.
[She
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
I couldn’t hold on
to, but
at
ieast
I would know about
the presence
of another human
being. But
typically me,
I
said, ‘Dammit,
no.
If
I
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
I
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—‘Okay.
Give
it to me. Whatever
it
is that
I have to take.
1 am ready
to
lake
it.’
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
I
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’eame,
all the dyspnea, hemorrhage, pain, and
agony disappeared
in one
split second, and out of
it came
the most incredible rebirth experience.
"It
w'as so beautiful there are no words to describe
it.
It
started
as my
belly wall
vibrating, and
I looked—this was
full, open eyes, fully conscious—and
I
said, ‘This can’t be.’
I 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, ‘I'm okay, because I'm part of all this.’
“I know
that’s a crazy description for anybody who has
not experienced this.
It
is the closest
I can share
it with you.
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
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
I
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.
I 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
Shanti 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."
Approved For Release 2003/09/10
: CIA-RDP96-00788R001 70021 0060-6