Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is the world's foremost expert on the subjects of death, dying, and the afterlife.  Her book, On Life After Death, collects for the first time information drawn from her years of working with the dying and learning from them what life is all about, in-depth research on life after death, and her own feelings and opinions about this fascinating and controversial subject.  The following is an excerpt from her book where she describes one of the most interesting NDEs she has encountered. 

My most dramatic and unforgettable case of "ask and you will be give," and also of a near-death experience, was a man who was in the process of being picked up by his entire family for a Memorial Day weekend drive to visit some relatives out of town.  While driving in the family van to pick him up, his parents-in-law with his wife and eight children were hit by a gasoline tanker.  The gasoline poured over the car and burned his entire family to death.  After being told what happened, this man remained in a state of total shock and numbness for several weeks.  He stopped working and was unable to communicate.  To make a long story short, he became a total bum, drinking half-a-gallon of whisky a day, trying heroin and other drugs to numb his pain.  He was unable to hold a job for any length of time and ended up literally in the gutter.

It was during one of my hectic traveling tours, having just finished the second lecture in a day on life after death, that a hospice group in Santa Barbara asked me to give yet another lecture.  After my preliminary statements, I became aware that I am very tired of repeating the same stories over and over again.  And I quietly said to myself: "Oh God, why don't you send me somebody from the audience who has had a near-death experience and is willing to share it with the audience so I can take a break?  They will have a first-hand experience instead of hearing my old stories over and over again."

At that very moment the organizer of the group gave me a little slip of paper with an urgent message on it.  It was a message from a man from the bowery who begged to share his near-death experience with me.  I took a little break and sent a messenger to his bowery hotel.  A few moments later, after a speedy cab ride, the man appeared in the audience.  Instead of being a bum as he had described himself, he was a rather well dressed, very sophisticated man.  He went up on the stage and without having a need to evaluate him, I encouraged him to tell the audience what he needed to share.

He told how he had been looking forward to the weekend family reunion, how his entire family had piled into a family van and were on the way to pick him up when this tragic accident occurred which burned his entire family to death.  He shared the shock and the numbness, the utter disbelief of suddenly being a single man, of having had children and suddenly becoming childless, of living without a single close relative.  He told of his total inability to come to grips with it.  He shared how he changed from a money-earning, decent, middle-class husband and father to a total bum, drunk every day from morning to night, using every conceivable drug and trying to commit suicide in every conceivable way, yet never able to succeed.  His last recollection was that after two years of literally bumming around, he was lying on a dirt road at the edge of a forest, drunk and stoned as he called it, trying desperately to be reunited with his family.  Not wanting to live, not even having the energy to move out of the road when he saw a big truck coming toward him and running over him.

It was at this moment that he watched himself in the street, critically injured, while he observed the whole scene of the accident from a few feet above.  It was at this moment that his family appeared in front of him, in a glow of light with an incredible sense of love.  They had happy smiles on their faces, and simply made him aware of their presence, not communicating in any verbal way but in the form of thought transference, sharing with him the joy and happiness of their present existence.

This man was not able to tell us how long this reunion lasted.  He was so awed by his family's health, their beauty, their radiance and their total acceptance of this present situation, by their unconditional love.  He made a vow not to touch them, not to join them, but to re-enter his physical body so that he could share with the world what he had experienced.  It would be a form of redemption for his two years of trying to throw his physical life away.  It was after this vow that he watched the truck driver carry his totally injured body into the car.  He saw an ambulance speeding to the scene of the accident, he was taken to the hospital's emergency room and he finally re-entered his physical body, tore off the straps that were tied around him and literally walked out the emergency room.  He never had delirium tremens or any aftereffects from the heavy abuse of drugs and alcohol.  He felt healed and whole, and made a commitment that he would not die until he had the opportunity of sharing the existence of life after death with as many people as would be willing to listen.  It was after reading a newspaper article about my appearance in Santa Barbara that he sent a message to the auditorium.  By allowing him to share with my audience he was able to keep the promise he made at the time of his short, temporary, yet happy reunion with his entire family.

We do not know what happened to this man since then, but I will never forget the glow in his eyes, the joy and deep gratitude he experience that he was led to a place where, without doubt and questioning, he was allowed to stand up on the stage and share with a group of hundreds of hospice workers the total knowledge and awareness that our physical body is only the shell that encloses our immortal self.