Episode 235: A Crash Course in the Afterlife: Coincidences, STEs & NDEs!

On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons we now know that our loved ones have survived physical death and so will we Welcome.

Yvonne Cason. Now, we've heard of near death experiences, but many people believe these only happen when someone flatlines on an operating table. For instance, doctor Cason believes near death experiences fall under the umbrella of something even bigger, spiritually transformative experiences, where consciousness can often leave our bodies and we are forever changed and often have after effects like psychic awareness and wishing to better humanity. Today, I'd like

to share some of doctor Cason's coincidences and experiences. She's the author of several books, including Touched by the Light and Soul Lessons from the Light. You can find out more at Spiritual Awakenings International dot org and the YouTube channels connecting with Coincidence, and also find Spiritual Awakenings International. Here's doctor Yvonne Cason.

resident at the University of Toronto. I was completing my residency and I was assigned against my will, which that might be meaningful coincidence right there, that some bloop in the schedule, I ended up being sent somewhere I didn't want to be, but there I was in northern Ontario in the middle of winter, in a very small, remote community called Sioux Lookout that was servicing Native Indian communities

that lived very remote parts of northern Ontario. On this particular day, which was March twenty seventh, nineteen seventy nine, my supervising position assigned me to accompany a patient on a metavac because we were just at a tiny little community hospital and she was very ill with miesels meningitis and she needed to go into an ICU. So a plane was going to fly us to Winnipeg, which was the closest large community that had ICU facilities that could

accept her. And back then we didn't have helicopters for metavax. This was a small twin engine airplane called a piper Aztec and it was a tiny little thing with a plane was loaded. There was the pilot and the co pilot seat. There's no copilot, just the pilot. They removed the seat behind the pilot and that's where they placed the stretcher with the patient on it, and that went right to the back of the plane. There was like a little bench seat at the back of the plane.

I was the full plane, that's how long the plane was. And on the co pilot side, I was sitting in the seat behind the co pilot. The seat behind me was the nurse. And then again the plane was full, so that was the size of the plane we were in. Now we flew off. The patient was intubated, so she had an airway into her lungs and there was a bag called an amboo bag that I had to be compressing to keep her breathing. She was unconscious and she had two ibs going, so the nurse was tending on

the ivs. So my focus was very much untending the patient. But interestingly enough, there was the meaningful coincidence that happened when I was in the doctor's lumb getting ready to go on the plane. At that time, I was quite young. I was in my twenties. I was extremely weight conscious, and I never ate things like cookies or sweets or pastries, and there in the doctor's lounge was a plate of cookies that doctors could snack on, you know, between patients

or whatever. And I remember having this clear thought come in my mind, I better eat a cookie because I'm going to need the energy later. And it was one of those thoughts where you go, where did that focus from? You know, it was really strong and really clear. So I think that was the first meaningful coincidences, Like I reached in and I actually ate a couple of these cookies, which is really really out of character for how I was sort of obsessively weight conscious at that point of

my life. I was still single back then, so that for me was sort of the first very clear, meaningful coincidence. That day, they gave us heavy winter parkas, and I wore my heavy snow boots, et cetera to go out in the cold web because it was the middle of winter. I went out in the plane and I was attending

the patient. The plane took go off and we flew into a bad storm, a blizzard of some sort of winter storm, and there was really really high turbulence and the plane was shaking, but I wasn't really looking outside. I mean I would glance every now and then because I was really focusing on looking after the patient who

was critically ill. But all of a sudden I could hear because it was a twin propeller plane, and if you've ever been on a propeller plane, you know, the engines are really loud and you can hear them, right. And I was only like ten feet away from each propeller, that's how small the plane was, so I could hear a change in the sound that all of a sudden, the one propeller, if I believe it was the one on

the right, started sputtering to a stop. And I looked out the window and I could see the propeller slowing down. You know, you don't have to be an MD to

realize this is not good, you know. So I shouted up to the pilot, what's going on, what's happening, and he ignored me, but he was like pushing levers and pulling stuff, and it was obviously he was trying to restart the engine, right, and he did manage to get it restarted, and then I sort of okay, side to sigh of relief, and then I went back to looking after that patient. A few minutes later, I again't hear a change in the sound of the engines, and this

time it's the left engine. It's the opposite engine that it now is sputtering to a stop. And I looked up and I noticed that the pilot he had lowered or altitude, so we weren't flying so high anymore. We were much lower over the trees. But I just noticed that, which later I found out he did that on purpose in case something went wrong. I hollered up to the pilot again, what's going on, what's going on? And he's, you know, pulling levers and doing this and doing that again,

trying to start the engine. And then I hear and see that the original one that had stopped now was also sputtering to a stop. So that meant we had no engines, and the plane started going down really rapidly towards the ground, started crashing. My immediate reaction was like a reflex intense fear and panic. I remember the thought, oh God help, I'm going to die. Interestingly enough, it was right after that thought leapt out of my heart is when what I now know was a near death experience.

When my experience began. So this was before the plane had even crashed. And what happened was all of a sudden, it was like I could feel a force field of peace descending on me. And it was literally like it was pushing down all of my fear, and I felt incredibly peaceful, very very calm. My fear had gone. And then I heard an inner voice. Now I had never

heard inner voices before this event. This was the very first time I'd ever heard an inner voice, Like I was literally hearing the voice, and it sounded like a masculine voice. And I heard the voice and it said, be still and know that I am God. I am with you now and always. And with those words came this profound feeling that just permeated my soul that everything was right with the universe, that there was absolutely nothing to be afraid. Now I was still fully, conscious fully alert.

The plane had not crashed yet. We were descending with horrible turbulence. If you wonder what it's like to be in a plane crash, well there's bad turbulence. You won't

miss it. So we were descending towards the ground. What I later found out is that the pilot had asleep and flying low in case there was a mishap, and he had pulled his wheels up and he was trying to do a guided belly landing basically on the surface of a frozen lake, and really heroically he did sort of manage to do that to get us down to avoid crashing into the trees, because it's heavily forested up there, but with lots of lakes too, So we'd gotten this

over a lake and avoided the trees, and he was trying to do it safe belly landing. But the problem was when the plane skidded to a stop, the weight of the plane quickly broke the ice. Ice was too thin. The plane nose dived and then it sunk into very deep water. So I had to get out of the plane really really quickly while the plane was sinking, and so I managed to sort of with the pilot's help,

get the co pilot's door open. I climbed out. I was already up to my thighs in ice cold lake water, standing on the wing that was underneath the co pilot store and I was trying to pull the patient stretcher. I was trying to get her floating on her stretcher to come out of the co pilot store and then suddenly the pilot shouts out, get away from the plane. It's going down. And I reached in and I got the nurse and I pulled her out because she was

trying to push the stretcher from behind. So then the two of us were on the wing and we were trying to pull the patient stretcher out. Well, the plane nos dive, but we were unable to and the plane this suddenly just did its nose dive and down into very deep water. So unfortunately we lost the patient. She went down with the plane, but the nurse, the pilot,

and I were now in open, frigid water. The place that we had crashed, we later found out, is called Devil's Gap on the Lake of the Woods close to Kenora, and it's called Devil's Gap because it has a really really strong current there, which makes the water very treacherous in the summer and in the winter, and in the winter the ice never freezes there, So of all the places for us to crash, if we'd been somewhere else

the ice was thick, we might have been fine. But no, we crashed right at the edge of Devil's Gap, where the ice was thin. Plane sunk, and in order to get to the closest land we would have to swim from where we were across the Devil's Gap two hundred yards of fast moving current, heavy winter close. So there I was. The three of us were in the water.

The pilot started shouting out, try to get on the ice, try to get out in the ice, because if we looked away from land out towards the lake, you could see some ice that way, but we didn't know how thick that ice was. Again, I heard a voice in my mind and it said, swim to shore.

the ice. The ice had broken, the plane sunk into the water, leaving the pilot, Yvonne, and the nurse to survive. Let's continue.

never going to swim ashore. You know, I took lifeguarding and they tell you in a boating accident not to swim to shore, that you're going to drown on the way to shore, that you're not supposed to stay where you are. So I literally mentally argued with my inner guidance, which was a learning lesson for me. Anyway, I tried to get on the ice. I swam towards the ice, and you have to realize when you're wearing heavy winter clothes like a heavy parka and snow boots, they're like

lead weights pulling me down into the water. So it was a lot of effort to even get over to the ice to try and get on, And another meaningful coincidence, I was an extremely strong swimmer. I used to do swimming laps, broat crawl is my favorite form of exercise. I was certified as a lifeguard and a swim instructor since I was a teenager, so I was a very strong swimmer. Again, another meaningful coincidence that kept me alive

in this cratch. As I tried to get on the ice, every time I got my arms on the ice, the ice would break just from the weight of my arms, and there was just no way that I could crawl on. And I was getting more tired and more tired with the effort and the kicking of trying to get on the ice, and the voice repeated, swim to the shore. The third time the voice repeated swim to shore. I finally surrendered to it and started swimming to shore. Now. I hope I would realize when I get that kind

of guidance to listen the first time. Father well, iving to wait till the third time, So I turned and I started swimming to shore. Now. It was a very long and a very difficult swim somewhere in the process of swimming to shore, I started going under. You know that just set of exhaustion, I would go under and

my throat would fill with water. I would just use all my strength and all my well parent, all my adrenaline to try and clawn my way up to the surface again, to get my mouth above water, and you know, try and breathe some air in and then to continue swimming to shore. So it was a very very difficult swim. Then part way in swimming to shore is when you know, now I can use the vocabulary, my near death experience deepened.

But I'll describe to you what I experienced. So I'm part way to swimming to shore, and all of a sudden I heard this loud, inner sort of whushing or noisy roaring sound like like the war of a waterfalls. And I feel my point of perception just who rise up above my body and suddenly, I mean, my body's still alive, my body's still swimming. I'm finding most of my consciousness about twenty or thirty feet above my body. But it was more complicated than that, because now with

split screen TVs and zoom people can get it. It was like there was the largest part of my consciousness, which is like the big image on the screen, was up above my body. But there was still a small part of my consciousness, like a small screen in the corner of the big screen, that was still in my body. So actually my consciousness was two places at the same time. It seems inexplicable, but that is what I was experiencing.

Most of my consciousness now was up above my body, and then the bulk of my consciousness rose higher and I went into this place staked. It's hard to use the words. What I experienced was ProSound, unconditional, powerful love, while I was also experiencing beautiful white light. Many people talk about it as a white light realm, and I purposely said that last because the most powerful part of it for me was not the light. It was the love,

the powerful, unconditional love that I was feeling. Yes, it was in a space that was filled with light. The best that I have been able to find that somewhat is similar to what I experienced in this light filled, love filled realm. Is when you're in a plane that's rising and just at the top of the clouds before it's going to go into the sunlight above the clouds where it's all sparkly and bright and diffused white light

around you. That's what it was like when I was in the white light realm that was diffused, was beautiful, But the most powerful part was what I was feeling. I felt this profound unconditional love, and I was home, that all was right with the universe, that all was perfect. For instant I saw a face of light and then it sort of disappeared into the periphery, the cloud like periphery. I just somehow knew things when I was in this realm of light, not because they were spoken to me

or told to me by somebody or something. I just somehow knew. I knew that what I was experiencing was the profound unconditional love of the Higher Power, or what I had been taught in my religion of childhood to call God. And what I was experiencing God to be was not anything like what I'd been taught. It was not an old man with a long white feard sitting on a throw judging you have you good of you been bad? That was not what I was experiencing God

or the Higher Power to be. What I was experiencing was that God or the Higher Power is like a force, infinitely vast and infinitely intelligent and infinitely loving force that interpenetrates all of creation and non creation, past, present, future. Everything is like the substance, the stuff that all of us are interpenetrated with. I knew also without being told

I this somehow knew that me. What I think of is I would live on whether that physical body that was struggling to swim to shore survived or not to fear deathless impossible in the state, I already knew, Oh, this is great, this is home, and this is where I stay. That body doesn't make it to shore anyway, I stayed, you know, for timeless time in this state of love and mystical communion is the best I can describe it. And my body below was struggling to swim

to shore. So it looked like my body was not going to be able to make it to shore because my body was just too physically exhausted. And by this time I was also profoundly hypothermic. And I remember that I was looking through my physical eyes. You know, It's as if my focus had shifted. The two screens has shifted for an instant, and now the big screen was looking through my physical eyes of my body, and I saw that I was about twenty feet from shore and

the strong current was carrying me to the right. I knew I couldn't make it. I remember thinking, oh, okay, yes, I'm going to die, and I basically surrender, like to go under for the third time. But just then, as I looked out in my physical eyes, I could see that the current was carrying me to the right, and by meaningful coinstance, a tall pine tree had fallen some

time ago. I guess into the water from the shore of the island and was sticking out into the water, and the current was actually carrying me towards this pine tree. So all that I had to do was swim one more stroke and the current would carry me. And that's what happened. In my hand hit that pine tree. I remember clearly when I touched the tree, I didn't feel anything. My hand was so frozen, and I remember looking at my hand and thinking, you know, your intellectual mind still

going that's odd. My hand is bright red. I think it should be white when a frozen. But later I found out in advanced stages hypothermia, you lose the ability to vasoconstrict and then you vasodilate, and actually you're very close to death when that happens with hypothermia. Anyway, I managed to pull myself along this tree and climb over some ice piles that were on the shore and get onto the shore. And then I turned around and started shouting out to the pilot and to the nurse, swimmed ashore,

swim ashore, or you can do it. I did it, and then I instinctively got into the crouch position with my fingers toocked into my armpits because I was profoundly hypothermic at that time, and waited the pilot. He managed to swim to shore. After I started shouting out. He followed me, so he made it to shore too. He

was also a very strong swimmer. The nurse who could not swim, managed to find a piece of ice that had some wood frozen in it, so it was enough to keep her afloat, you know, at least with her mouth above the water, and she literally froze onto that like a human icicle. And that's what she was like when the rescue helicopter came. So let me tell you

all the coincidences that led to the rescue. So when we crashed, when we were actually in distress before we lost the second engine, I now know because I've spoken to the pilot on numerous occasions. We're still in contact.

We actually had a reunion a plane correction online this year, wonderful. Anyway, he had been radioing to the ground, you know, to the closest airport, which was Kenora Airport, that we were having engine trouble and we needed to make an emergency landing, and so they were trying to radio him how to get to a closest airstrip or something where he could land. But of course, naturally we never made it to that airstrip. So at least somebody knew that we were having trouble.

So that was step number one. Then when we actually crashed, okay, and as the plane was thinking, the pilot stood out on the wing on his side by the pilot store, and he radioed out in may day, may day, may day, you know, plane down or whatever it is that they say when they rade out a may day. Now, because where we crashed was in very hilly terrain, the islands

at hills and they were all forested. The only way somebody really could have picked up the may day is if there was an airplane flying almost directly overhead.

there was so by coincidence, by meaningful coincidence. There was a regularly scheduled Air Canada flight from Edmonton I believe it was to Toronto that was flying very very high overhead, and they picked up the Mayday message and they knew almost exactly where we were, so they were able to radio down to the ground. So the Kenora Airport got the message that oh, approximately here there is the plane that's down. Okay, so they know where we are and that we have crashed, But how are they going to

get to us? We swam to an island, right. It was not accessible by skiddoo, which is what a lot of people use in the winter, because there was open water next to the island. It was not accessible by boat because there's ice before you get to the water. It's not accessible by road because there were no roads to the island. So the only vehicle that could possibly have rescued us was helicopters. And normally there are no

helicopters anywhere in this area, so how could we be rescued? Well, by meaningful coincidence, on that particular day, there was an empty helicopter being fery from Winnipeg to Baldore, Quebec, and it ran into the same snowstorm that we did, so it decided to land until the storm had passed. By coincidence, at what's called the Ministry of Natural Resources base, five miles from where we crashed and it had just landed.

It had just landed, and the helicopter pilot said he was starting to, you know, like cover up the propellers and all the things he does. He went inside the base and met the pilot who was in the base we'd never met before. He still had the radio on whatever frequency they have on at the base, so they heard the message from Kenora Airport. We just got a may day that there is a plane down in such and such a location. Is there anybody nearby who could

look for them? And these two fellows, their name is Bob Grant and Brian Klig. They never met each other, two pilots, they didn't even think. They both went into the helicopter and they immediately went to where the plane was reported to go down, and they started looking for us. Now, they didn't know that we crashed and sank into the only piece of open water for hundreds of miles. They

were looking for wreckage. They were looking for wreckage in trees or wreckage in the ice, because everything else is frozen solid except Devil's Cap at this time of year. Their first fly by, they didn't even see us. They just kept on searching. You have to remember, this is a stom with blowing snow, and they're looking for wreckage. They didn't see any wreckage. They didn't see us huddled under the trees, and it was fully forested island or

the nurse like an icicle in open water. Then, again by coincidence, if you want to call it, that some floatable item we don't know what it was was came out of the sunken plane and floated to the surface. It might have been I don't know, a seat cushion or something that floats. Anyway, was on Devil's Gap. And so when they couldn't find us, they said, well, there was something on the water in Devil's Gap. Could they possibly have gone down in the one place for this

open water? So they came back and again the coincidence of whatever that was that floated to the surface, they came back closer. And when they came back for a closer look, and they came back real low because of the visibility, is when they saw the nurse frozen holding on to a piece of ice, and at first they

thought she was the only survivor. They realized the plane had gone down, so they very very heroically dragged her body along the ice until they got to a place where the ice was strong enough to even support her weight. Then Bob managed to sort of wed her into the co pilot's seat, but then he couldn't get the helicopter.

And so how they actually flew with her to the closest hospital, which was Canora Hospital, was that Bob was standing outside the helicopter on the strut sort of wedging the door shut to keep the nurse's body in there, while Brian flew the helicopter to Canora Hospital. So they brought her there and then the two of them said, well,

let's go back and see if there's anybody else. And I have to tell you that when the pilot, whose name was Jerry Kushensky and I, who were waiting on shore freezing to death when they left, we were waving and waving and shouting and shouting, but actually the helicopter was facing away from us, and obviously the helicopter pilots were focused on trying to rescue the nurse theory pulling out of the water. It seemed they had not seen us, so we didn't know if they'd come back. And it

was a really really long period of time. It was until they came back. I really didn't know if they would be coming back to look for us, but they had thought, thank goodness, well let's go back and see just in case there are any other survivors that we didn't see in the water. So first they looked in the water, but then they saw us on shore. Well, again by coincidence, a little bit up to the right of where I was, there was a small inlet in

the island. They brought the helicopter over there, so they gestured us to walk over to the helicopter. I was so hypothermic and I don't know, semi conscious, relapsing in and out of consciousness. At that point, there was no

way I could walk that distance to the helicopter. So Bob Grant, again, the one that could not swim, He got out of the helicopter, walked across that ice, not knowing how thick the ice on the inlet was or how deep the water was, walked over the little hill and got me and sort of like slung me and have sort of dragged me, carried me over and brought me into the helicopter. The pilot, Jerry Koshinsky, was able

to get into the helicopter. So then they had both of us in the helicopter and they brought us to Kenora Hospital. Now I remember watching from above because once I was in the helicopter, I think I lost consciousness. I stopped having awareness of my body, and it was just that I was watching my body. I watched from above as they landed on the driveway at the hospital and the emergency room staff. They put us each on

a stretcher and put us in the emergency department. And I remember watching from above as a nurse was trying to take my temperature. She was using a standard mercury thermometer, and I remember she was puzzled. She was looking at it like, why was she not getting a temperature reading on my body? Well, my body temperature was below the bottom reading on a standard mercury thermometer, which is why

she was not getting a temperature reading. I could feel my consciousness drifting further and further away from my body. I knew I was dying. That's okay, I mean I was in the light. I knew I was dying. All of a sudden, I hear a voice, boy, could I use a hot bath? I remember being very surprised to discover that those words came out of my mouth, my physical body's mouth, because I'd not been thinking that, I'd

not been trying to say it. I don't know if my guardian angels spoke through my mouth or what happened, but here's your meaningful coincidence. That's exactly what we needed. We needed to be submerged in hot water. We needed to be reheated. They didn't realize how hypothermic and close to death I was. But when those words came out of my mouth, the nurses said to one another, I remember watching from above. Hey, maybe that would help her.

Maybe we should take her down the physiotherapy put her in the hot world pulled bath, and so they did. They wheeled me and the pilot and the nurse down to the physiotherapy department, finally took off my ice encrusted clothes, put me in the hot water. It was there, as my body rewarmed, that I felt my consciousness under my body, and it was like wsh how they depict the genie

being sucked into a bottle. I felt like I'd been in this expansive, wonderful place above, and suddenly some other force sucked me into the small confines of my body and then I was back. All of stes are spiritually transformed it experiences. I coined that phrase back in nineteen ninety four in one of my earlier books and also in an article that I wrote for the Journal of

Mere Death Studies. And I coined that phrase because I felt it was really important both for medicine and for the general public to have a non pathological word to describe some of the spiritual and pureanormal experiences that were happening to people. Because back when this happened to me in nineteen seventy nine, you know, I discomp did my

medical training. There was nothing in medicine that would embrace the type of experience I had as real that when I spoke with all of my medical doctor friends after it happened, I wanted to tell people and if you ever heard anything like this, and what's it called? I mean, I didn't even have a word to describe my experience.

Everybody knew me, they knew I wasn't crazy, but all my medical colleagues said it was a hallucination brought on by a low blood sugar hallucination brought on by an electro life and beho hallucination brought on by the cold. I don't think so it started as the plane was going down. The other thing is I've seen many people hallucinating, they don't become changed and spiritually transformed afterwards. This experience changed me in a positive way, in a spiritual way.

I lost my year of death because I knew we live on after we die. I became much more spiritual, not because I was taught in my religion of childhood to be religious or spiritual, but because I knew that we were truly spiritual beings, and that what I'd been taught in the books when I was younger, that there is a God, a higher power. Maybe the way I was taught the higher power looked was not exactly accurate, but the Higher Power is real, It exists and loves

us all. I became much more tolerant with people with diverse religious viewpoints and traditions because I realized we're all trying to understand the same one truth. I had a psychic awakening shortly afterwards. A few weeks afterwards, I was driving to visit a friend and I was stopped at a red light, and all of a sudden, I got a clear visual image in my mind's eye of my friend's brain covered in puss.

acute meningitis. So that was my first and many clairvoyant experiences. Then I started having clear audience experiences, clear sentient experiences and for years, when I tried to understand what happened to be in the plane crash, I was told it was not a near death experience because I'd not been dead, okay, and because I hadn't seen a tunnel okay. So I said, well, if it's not a near death experience, what is it. The best word I could find was a mystical experience.

For many years, for almost ten years, I called it my mystical experience that happened in the plane crash. So here's me, a young doctor. I'd had an out of body experience. I'd had a mystical experience. Now I was having all sorts of psychic experiences prior to this end. I know I'm not crazy. I mean, I'm running a metal practice, I'm teaching at the University of Toronto. But I'm keeping all of this in the closet. It's all sort of secret that these things are happening to me.

But at the same time, more and more patients started coming to see me in my practice and telling me their stories. I sensed it as someone that they felt safe to talk to, an MD they felt safe to talk to, who would not immediately judge it as a hallucination or sign of mental illness. The stories I heard

from people were heartbreaking. I was really really disturbed how people were being pathologized, sometimes put in psychiatric wards, sometimes by their churches, being told it's work of the devil, being estranged by their family. Why are they obsessed with this?

It really became clear to me that we needed to have a greater understanding, meaning the medical profession, society in general, of spiritual experiences because they are happening to people, and they are not a sign of mental illness, and we are actually causing harm by labeling them as mental illness. That's what propelled me to come up with this term spiritually transformative experiences as an umbrella term for the wide range of spiritual and paranormal experiences that people are having

today that are not signs of mental illness. They are part of a spiritual awakening process, an expansion of consciousness that's happening on the planet. We haven't mentioned my book Touched by the Light, which I released in twenty nineteen, where I described many of my experiences because I've had five near death experiences. Each one is different, but each

one is complementary, you know. I look at it that the nature of the universe is so vast, and when you have, you know, mystical experiences or near death experience or other sorts of stes, it's like you're getting a bigger glimpse than what we normally have in our normal worldview. Those bigger glimpses, there's still much more to be seen, so the glimpses are cumulatively additive. I was elected president

of in twenty nineteen. I was invited to be on the board of directors in twenty eighteen, and then I was elected president, but I stepped down from that early in twenty twenty because my passion, as I have said, going back to the seventies, has been the whole range. And how I understand it is that near death experience is our one type of spiritually transformative experience. And what felt right for my soul was I felt the need.

In fact, I had a strong calling or what we sometimes call a download, where I felt guidance from spirit that I was being called to start a new organization, and I was even given the name of the organization. This happened in July of twenty nineteen. I remember clearly I was given the name of the organization Spiritual Awakenings International.

And I didn't know how I would do it or when I would do it, But all I knew is that this resonated with my soul, that this was a set for me, that just looking at near death experiences was too narrow a focus. It all came together in twenty twenty with a whole series of coincidences. But I happened to meet by coincidence, Robert Beer, and once we started talking, it was actually Robert who got the download first.

He says, you know, Yvonne, I'm just getting this strong intuition that we're meant to start another organization looking at all of stes or spiritually Transformed it experiences. And I of course said, well, I'll have to meditate on that. And then when I meditated on it, bang, I got my downloads. Yep, that's right. That we'll do our best for I ins while we're president and vice president some time in the future. We both felt really strongly called

that we were to found another organization. Well, as it turned out, by coincidence, again, we both were clear by March of twenty twenty not we wish to step down. We were elected as president and vice president of Illans.

We stepped down very cordially wish them well, but we feel called to start this new organization, so together, in June of twenty twenty, we launched Spiritual Awakenings International as a nonprofit global network incorporated as a five oh one c three nonprofit charity in the United States, and our mission, our vision is global because we know that spiritual awakenings is a human phenomenon. It's happening to people all over

the world. We're focusing on all types of spiritually transformative experiences. Our goal is to raise awareness of all these types

of stes spiritually transformative experiences. Secondly, to facilitate networking, because so many people or groups are sort of isolated out there and they don't realize that by invisible fingers or meaningful coincidences, there are many groups all over the world and we actually are a network and if we can connect with each other, we can strengthen each other and form a stronger mesh that is helping to raise awareness. So for us safe place to share and also where

researchers can share. We have a great website with a lot of information about all different types of spiritually transformative experiences and for a lot of people, just even getting an accurate name for your type of experience is profoundly healing. We have monthly events. We have a featured speaker event always the third Saturday of the month. We have our SAI Experiences sharing circles the first Saturday each month. This is all online and it's all free. We've also now

started in Spanish. The second Saturday, we have speaker events and we have sharing circles in Spanish. We are really proud to be so international. We have subscribers. Although the United States and Canada are our top subscribers for a Spiritual Weakness International, we have subscribers from sixty five countries around the world. So go to our website, which is Spiritual Awakenings International dot org and you can find out

about events. And also we have a Spiritual Awakenings International YouTube channel that you can go to and you can watch videos of some of our past speakers and last year's conference. So invite people to do that if they'd like to learn more. Also, I'm a very proud grandmother. My first and only grandson was born approximately one year ago. I love being a hands on grandmother. He is my pride and joy, but my spiritual work, my volunteer work,

is my other big joy. I also have a local group here in Toronto that I lead called Toronto Awakening Sharing Group. I'm retired from medical practice. We didn't have time to say that. My last near death experience in two thousand and three was because I had a serious accident with a traumatic brain injury, and that traumatic brain injury disabled me for twelve years, and then I experienced

a miracle. It might be a meaningful coincidence in that since I was disabled, I focused very much on my meditation practice, and they now realize, have discovered medical science that meditation is a very strong stimulus to brain neuroplasticity. So I was doing lots and lots of meditation and deep in meditation. February of twenty sixteen, I experienced a miracle. I had an eruption of light in the center of my brain and my brain was healed. And since that

time I started writing books again. I wrote that book, Touched by the Light, was the first book I wrote after my brain healing. I've written another one. I have two more that are cooking. I started volunteering public speaking. That's all been since my brain healing in twenty sixteen. I call myself Yvonne version two point zero. That I was offline for refurbishing it for twelve years and then the Good Lord brought me back by meaningful coincidence to

continue on. And I'm really really delighted and grateful to had that profound healing experience, and I'm delighted to currently be the president of Spiritual Awakenings International.

they were born? We have an intelligent universe. Why wouldn't it make sense that in the dying process, we're greeted by our deceased loved ones, looking young and healthy, telling us we're going on a trip to get ready as we've heard in so many deathbed visitations. And then when we pass, we're drawn to the light. We have those reunions with our loved ones. We're filled with a feeling of unconditional love, colors we've never seen, celestial music. I

think these are much more than meaningful coincidences. I think this is the intelligence of life and death. I want to remind you that much. My website is we Don't Die dot com. Join my Insiders Club. That's just my email list at the bottom of the page. I've got all kinds of surprise free goodies for you, and of course come meet me on one of my free Sunday gatherings. It's an inspirational and empowering service on Zoom with a

medium demonstration included atweedotdie dot com. In closing, I'm Sandra Champlain. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast am Paranormal Podcast Network.