In my column of March, 1998 I spoke of an avatar amongst us, Mother Meera, and recognized that an avatar is a high spiritual being who has returned to help humanity at a time of great need. Thus was described Mother Meera who at the earliest age shed light and love, peace and benevolence from her form and presence.

The life of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross tells a similar story, with variations which are unique to her. She was the smallest of triplet children, weighing two pounds at birth . . . but this mighty package has influenced the world in so many important ways. Even in the earliest years of her life, before the age of six, she manifested an uncompromising drive, an implacable desire to help humanity.

From the earliest time, her relentless energy and determination caused her to stand up against a Swiss father who would frame her life in the office of his business. She resisted at great risk to herself and, determined to become a medical doctor, remained resolved to live life in her own way. This was the first of many obstacles she overcame. The presence of this unrelenting desire to be helpful to humanity, wedded to a strength far beyond the determination of a small child, defined the avatar who had come into this world, and into that particular body, with a spiritual energy and dedication to service that was well-nigh irresistible.

Having defied her father, she was dispossessed by him. She went to work as a housemaid for a woman who took high advantage of her, made impossible demands and all but starved her. But fate stepped in. A guest at a party recognized Elisabeth's situation and helped her to get a job in a laboratory. Ultimately the door was opened for her participation in a biology laboratory of a medical school, and she became exceedingly happy.

World War II and the Hitler regime arrived upon the scene. In neutral Switzerland, Elisabeth was sickened by the evil destructiveness she witnessed as hordes of refugees tried to cross the border only to be shot down by Nazi guards. She was more resolved than ever to be helpful. At great risk she joined a volunteer group which took her into the devastated Warsaw ghetto. She visited the concentration camps in Germany and Poland. On the walls of the children's barracks she saw drawings of butterflies, over and over and over again. She understood that the butterfly was the emerging spirit which had been contained in the bodies of the young condemned prisoners. This image never left her, an image she pursued throughout her writings and throughout her life.

She returned to her home and was finally able to enroll in medical school. Elisabeth gloried in the service that she rendered as a country physician, and though she was determined never to be-come a psychiatrist, actually became so through a concatenation of events. She undertook psychoanalytic training under the sponsorship of the rather famous Dr. Sydney Margolin, assisted in his lectures, and came to notice that in the Chicago hospital in which she served, all the doctors and nurses avoided the dying patients. She wondered why and was educated by a lowly housemaid to the fact that the maid befriended these lonely people because she herself had lost a child through death. The maid's considerate service of love had its effect on dying patients, relieving them, brightening them, giving them a kind of spiritual hope. This effect was not lost on Elisabeth. The two became very close and in the face of disapproval of medical colleagues, Elisabeth's first assistant in the "new" field she was opening up, compassionate understanding and guidance of those who were near death along with those who cared about them, was the housemaid.

As a result, Elisabeth gave lectures on dying patients and established her famous recognition of the stages of death and dying. In 1969, her landmark book, On Death and Dying was published (and has been continuously in print since then). This book and her lectures and workshops changed the entire course of thanatology — the study of the terminally ill and their survivors. I well remember how doctors avoided the dying patients. I could identify with these doctors and nurses for I was one of them. I had my own fear and feeling of helplessness that I could do (as I then thought) nothing for them. But Elisabeth knew that something could be done and continued her mission, one which has changed the face of Medicine.

As years went on, her fiery drive to be of service led her to recognize that dying patients and those who had faced near-death all told a similar story, one which has become familiar. It is a story of moving into the light through a tunnel or traversing a beautiful grove, seeing the dear departed (always in their prime), feeling surrounded by beatitude and a peace extraordinary in its bliss. Though they didn't want to leave, they were mandated to for they hadn't completed their work on earth. She was graced with experiences with angel guides and even the presence of Jesus in a room filled with light, a scene witnessed by others who accompanied her. Thus the reward and the encounter of a saintly woman, an avatar returned to help humanity.

Elisabeth did not have to look for challenges. They found her, and she eagerly embraced them. Her next challenge was brought by AIDS patients. They, like the dying patients, were, for the most part, ostracized. Her giant heart would not let her treat these patients as others had. She embraced them both literally and symbolically, inviting them into workshops which she had developed for dying patients and those who were related to them.

I will never forget my participation in one of those workshops. We had an AIDS patient along with those who were dying of cancer and those who had relatives dying of cancer. A woman got up and shouted to Elisabeth, "You speak of God. There is no God! I am losing my nine-year-old son to leukemia!" Elisabeth, in her serene and undaunted composure, said, "Has your son changed since he had this diagnosis?" The mother replied, "Oh yes, he used to be cruel, tearing wings off flies and torturing other children. Now he has become quite saintly. He wants to give his bicycle to his younger brother, for he himself has no use for it. He has become kind and wise in so many ways."

Elisabeth replied, "This is what happens to these children. They become wise old men and women." The mother went on to say that her son had spoken of God, and how he, the son, will wait for her on the other side and how they will all be joined. He wanted to go to synagogue and so they did. Elisabeth pointed out, "Now he has become your rabbi." Before the end of the session, the mother was calmed and became serene, herself in the stage of acceptance. As I later learned, the boy died after a year but he had become a local hero in his wisdom and courage and was at the head of the county parade on July 4th. The mother went on to teach child neurologists the story of the dying patient and how to take care of dying children in a spiritual and humanistic manner.

The AIDS patients found Elisabeth and she dedicated herself to them; she was responsible for the establishment of AIDS hospices internationally. She wanted to take fifty AIDS children into her farm in Virginia to nourish them and raise them and help them to deal with their awful disease. The local citizenry became enraged. They did everything possible to drive her out, but in her courage and tenacity she persisted until — her farm was burned and every possession was lost in the fire. She would have stayed but her son spirited her away to Phoenix, Arizona. There she settled, only to have series of strokes and to await (with some impatience) her own transition.

My wife and I have been very fortunate to have known and to know Elisabeth. We visited her recently in her Swiss retreat in the Arizona desert. She remains "herself," refusing to give up cigarettes, accepting her helplessness, recovering nevertheless and warming to the memories of which we spoke when we recounted experiences in her workshops and described their beauty and the benefit they had upon us and those whom we knew.

She has written the story of her life. Undoubtedly this will be the last of her several published books. It is called The Wheel of Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying, published by Scribner in 1997.

She begins this book with the following:

"When we have done all the work we were sent to earth to do, we are allowed to shed our body which imprisons our soul like a cocoon encloses the future butterfly.

"And when the time is right, we can let go of it and we will be free of pain, free of fears and worries — free as a very beautiful butterfly, returning home to God . . ."

— from a letter to a child with cancer

And she ends with:

"You should live until you die.

No one dies alone.

Everyone is loved beyond comprehension.

Everyone is blessed and guided.

The hardest lesson to learn is unconditional love.

Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you have lived.

Death is but a transition from this life to another existence where there is no more pain and anguish.

Everything is bearable when there is love.

My wish is that you try to give more people more love.

The only thing that lives forever is love."

Maurie D. Pressman, M.D. is the co-author (with Patricia Joudry) of Twin Souls: A Guide to Finding Your True Spiritual Partner, published by Carol Southern Books, an imprint of Crown Publishers, New York.

Dr. Pressman is Emeritus Chairman of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Temple University Health Sciences Center. He is Medical Director at the Center for Psychiatric Wellness, clinics that operate in Philadelphia and Haddonfield, N.J. These clinics bridge traditional and spiritual psychotherapy. Dr. Pressman can be reached at 200 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106; telephone 215-922-0204; fax 215-922-3008.

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