Words from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

from the Epilogue to QUEST: The Life of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, acclaimed author of ON DEATH AND DYING

When Derek Gill approached me, I was ready at last to share this life story, because my work in the last few years has led me not only to a greater understanding of life and death but to a deeper realization of the significance of our early years.  Research in the process of time, in death itself, and especially in life after death, has revealed insights that are very important in the bringing up of children, for the way in  which we are going to raise our next generations.

This book becomes important only when we have a full understanding of the purpose of life, the significance of our relationships, and the awareness of the extraordinary guidance and help that we receive from an invisible world which very few people perceive.  We  must also realize the fact that in our lives there are no coincidences.  Even the parents we choose do not become ours by coincidence.  They, and our siblings, our teachers, the friends who share parts of our life, are all determined by our own choices and are part of the overall plan that directs our life--a plan  that will reveal itself only at the end, at that final transition into another existence:  that moment we call death.

I believe this book will be seen as even more significant when the story of my later years, and of our research into life after death, is published in the future, and it is seen why that which happened  to me had to happen.  It will become obvious why I had to be born a triplet...had to experience a total lack of individual identity in a grownup world that was unable to differentiate between my sister and myself.  This early loneliness and, at times, self-chosen  isolation were preparation for the years to come.  I had to find my love objects in birds and animals, in meadows and among hills and trees and wildflowers rather than among individuals.  I had to leave home before I was sixteen, had to work through years of hardship and physical deprivation.  Thereby I was blessed with experiences  I would never otherwise have had.  Those years in the French part of Switzerland, inPoland, France, Germany, Belgium and Italy were gifts of awareness, gifts of sharing with other human beings who had survived the war but lost many loved ones under the most tragic of  circumstances.  By viewing the gas chambers, the concentration camps, the train  filled with the baby shoes of murdered children in Maidanek, by talking with the Jewish girl who had lived through  the nightmare of  seeing her family march to their deaths, I learned that it is our  choice, our own personal choice, whether we want to continue living as victims of resentment, negativity, the need for revenge; or whether we elect to leave the negativity behind and view such tragedies as the windstorms of life which  can both strengthen us and help us to grow.  Such experiences can help others as well, leaving them stronger and more polished and more beautiful, like a rock that has gone through the tumbler.... We must have the courage and honesty to look within ourselves, to identify our fears, greed, guilt and shame, whatever prevents us from using our energy positively.  If we are able to follow our own intuition and not be concerned about what others may say or think about us; if we listen to our inner voice and to our fellow human being who is suffering; if we share our love without expectation of reward, we will realize that each of us is student as well as teacher...and our rewards will be manifold and come when we least expect them.

My destiny had to be the United States, where I was free to pursue  my own work, my own research and my own form of teaching, none ofwhich would have been possible in any other nation in this world.