Soul Lessons from the Light

Yvonne is a family physician and transpersonal MD psychotherapist who coined the term spiritually transformative experience (STE, and see pp. 26 and 102 ff) in 1994, and who is President and co-founder of Spiritual Awakenings International. This powerful book is her spiritual autobiography detailing multiple STEs and five distinctive NDEs, each of which marked a new phase of her spiritual development. Her role has therefore being an educational one of physician-experiencer. She sees herself as a Christian yogi and mystic whose life has been finely sculpted by the Divine. The book is dedicated to Paramahansa Yogananda and Mahavatar Babaji.

Already as a child, Yvonne was aware of living in a multi-dimensional world, and her first NDEs happened aged 5 and 11, which gave her the realisation that she was a soul, not just her body. For each of her major experiences, she analyses their main features and psychological, psychic and spiritual aftereffects. At the age of 16, she was already thinking in terms of the need for a spiritual revolution in consciousness. Her first kundalini awakening in 1976 was followed in 1979 by an extraordinary incident involving a small plane forced to land on a freezing lake, which she describes in literally chilling detail. It turned out to be a miraculous survival through following an inner voice while also experiencing ‘an infinitely intelligent, all-powerful, force field of love that was interpenetrating and underlying all of creation.’ (p. 56, 84) This corresponds to the depth dimension of reality experienced by mystics in all cultures. Interestingly, there were precognitive elements in three out of the five NDEs. In addition, she found herself painfully misunderstood and mislabelled by her colleagues, but her resolute character in spiritually ‘coming out’ brought her through, and has made her one of the leading figures in the field.

Yvonne becomes progressively more spiritually committed to her practice in accordance with her calling, finding further affirmation in native American elders. Her 1995 NDE also involved an aeroplane and an experience of a being of light conveying to her that it was not her time. She finds herself in deeper communion with the Higher Power in which we all live, move and have our being (pp. 122-3) and of which we can have a personal realisation. Her spiritual surrender leads her to be more intensely devoted to service in the spirit of St Francis, and she also finds resonances and nourishment in classics like Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism and Yogananda’s Autobiography. She finds herself undergoing a process of ‘psychospiritual housecleaning’ and refinement of character so as to align herself with the Divine will. Meditation plays a central role, and she begins to get a sense of her life in a larger context of multiple incarnations.

Yvonne’s most transformative and life shattering experience occurred in November 2003 when she slipped on ice and sustained a traumatic brain injury that debilitated her for over a decade until she had a miraculous spontaneous healing. Here she encountered her spiritual teachers and had the option of terminating her incarnation as Yvonne Kason, but she chose to come back in spite of the terrible injury. This represented a further surrender to the Divine will, and a huge challenge was that she was unable to focus and meditate – only through sustained and discipline perseverance was she gradually able to recover this capacity. Nevertheless, she trusted in the Divine plan, and in 2016 experienced liquid light turning on and healing the centre of her brain (p. 197). Since then, she has experienced a huge surge of creativity and inspiration, following the instruction to pass on what she has learned and give people hope.

Yvonne explains her mystical journey in terms of a number of stages of the heart as outlined by the great sage Sri Yukteswar. She observes that we must all ‘continuously self-reflect with honesty and humility’ and concludes with four soul lessons: we are immortal souls, we are all loved by the Universal Higher Power, meditation and the moral living can speed up soul evolution, and there is always hope for a better tomorrow. Yvonne’s passion in sharing her life story is a gift and inspiration to all spiritual seekers – a life well and faithfully lived in the service of the Divine.