Loved by the Light

The following are excerpts from Loved by the Light a new book from John Audette, co-founder of IANDS (The International Association for Near-Death Studies). He has been featured more than once in Dr. Kenneth Ring's wonderful blog (Without Him, IANDS Would Not Exist, and The Phantom Hitchhiker) and is a personal friend of Dr. Raymond Moody. In this book, he shares his personal encounters with the divine, the effects of spiritually transformative experiences, stories from those he's met over the years, and hope for why the best is still to come for all of us.

Excerpts from the Foreword by Dr. Raymond Moody:
John Audette is one of my dearest friends. I tell people who inquire about him that he is by far the most idealistic person I know, and the purest of heart too. This has been true consistently throughout the entire course of our special friendship which began in February 1974.

My high regard for John notwithstanding. I believe he has written a seminal work on the topic of progressive spirituality. Loved by the Light is truly a one-of-a-kind book in terms of the spectrum of peak experiences it addresses and the crystal-clear message points it delivers. 

This powerful gem is in a class all its own. Along with its uniquely holistic and integrative approach, it offers practical strategies to help people awaken spiritually, buttressed by a realistic plan for constructive transformational social action. 

Expect much wisdom to be revealed on these pages, including John's deeply personal stories about life-saving angel encounters, near-death and shared-death experiences, bona fide after-death communication, personal sacred epiphanies, as well as several other extraordinary events. He also discusses mystical synchronicities such as the intriguing story about how he and I came to meet. All this information is presented in a smartly organized and riveting manner. It affirms that God is real and so too is survival of human consciousness after bodily death.

John has written a timely and powerful book, a genuine page-turner, one that compulsively engages the reader from start to finish. I am confident that many will be comforted by the conclusions he espouses, and by the recognition that they themselves have had similar kinds of experiences. They may even have been puzzled by them as John was at first, not knowing what to think.

So, prepare to be deeply inspired by this wonderful book and soulfully enriched by it too. Reading it might just take you on a life-changing transformative journey of your very own. I feel sure it will inspire many others to enjoy their very own voyage of spiritual awakening.

Excerpt from the Introduction:
In nearly all such cases, including the many exceptional experiences I personally encountered as detailed in this book, there are two main commonly reported recurring motifs. The first is that experiencers feel a profound sense of peace and acceptance about what is happening to them during their close encounters with death. There is no fear, angst or trepidation.

It is indeed fascinating to hear people consistently report that during their experiences, they felt cradled in the arms of the universe, suspended outside of time and space, floating in some kind of divinely created womb or bubble. They felt no anxiety whatsoever, only joy and a strong sense of euphoric anticipation about what might come next during their other- worldly adventures.

The second commonly reported element is that they experience a glorious overpowering love like none they have ever felt before. It shines forth in powerful undulating rays of golden-white light gloriously emanating from an effulgent deity or Supreme Being. They invariably perceive it to be an indescribable canopy of unconditional love and compassion. It is extended equally to all regardless of who they are or what they may have done during their lifetimes. In the sacred presence of this transcendent deity or Supreme Being, who many identify to be God or Christ, all are uniformly and equally Loved by the Light.

Some report visual perception of this divine presence, but others simply feel it energetically deep within the core of their being. It manifests in waves of engrossing, captivating, mesmerizing, awesome energy. But always, nearly everyone is at a loss for words to accurately describe the fullness of what they experienced during their journey to the other side.

Typically, they say they lack the vocabulary to do justice to what they encountered. They report that what happened to them cannot be adequately explained in mere words. But all agree that they were Loved by the Light, like they have never experienced love before. I am no exception.

In all my miraculous experiences, the very same thing happened to me. I encountered the same exact feelings. Thus, I am as resolute in my convictions as anyone who had a bona fide near-death experience, or out-of-body experience, or who accurately recalled a past life in a highly evidential manner such as Jenny Cockell does in her wonderful book Across Time and Death, and she did so spontaneously, interestingly, without the use of hypnosis.

Now some will say that my combined spectrum of metaphysical experiences are merely the result of accidental random events or fortuitous coincidence. This could be a plausible theory to explain away perhaps a few incidents, but taken altogether as a whole, it is inconceivable that the sum of all my exceptional experiences in life could be readily dismissed or explained away in such a fashion. The odds of that would be beyond astronomical.

Looking back on these life-saving angel rescues and many other kinds of extraordinary experiences throughout my life, a child-like sense of awe and wonder has preoccupied me for decades about what it all might mean. After spending almost five decades reflecting on this question, the time for wonder and reflection has been replaced in my mind by certainty and conviction, reinforced by accounts from millions of other people around the world who have been blessed to experience various mystical events like my own.

I am not a religious person. I have no affiliation with any religion. Rather, I am a dispassionate observer of what enters my life; that is to say what happens around me and to me. I keep an open mind, a "beginner's mind," in Zen speak. My nature is guided by logic and deductive reasoning in the formulation of objectively defensible conclusions. I endeavor to be scholarly and academic in my analysis of data and events. I form grounded opinions, but they are subject to change if and when new credible information arrives.

I freely admit I was an agnostic about the matter of God... that is up until the time that I could no longer be. I evolved from shallow half-hearted beliefs based on tenuous religious faith, to becoming an avowed agnostic, to holding firm abiding convictions derived from knowledge acquired through direct personal spiritual experiences as detailed and discussed in this book.

Frankly, I outgrew agnosticism when compelling evidence in support of God's existence and the continuation of human consciousness after physical death became so overpowering and undeniable, I could reach no other defensible conclusion.

I am one who is extremely reticent to presume or proclaim firm sweeping conclusions. Yet, all these sacred events taken together as described in this book now compel me without reservation, trepidation or equivocation, to wholeheartedly affirm the certainty of God's existence, God's unconditional love for all things, God's omnipresence throughout creation and the reality of an afterlife.

There is no other satisfactory explanation I can offer for all the mystical events in my life, much as I have tried, certainly not one that would do full justice to all I have experienced. For me, the evidence is overwhelmingly convincing that God is indeed real, and so too is the afterlife, and so too is God's infinite love and grace for us all.

Please understand that this work is not a personal memoir. If it were, there would be so much more to tell. While it may seem like an autobiography in places, it should not be construed as such. Yes, I do tell my life's story to some extent, but only in the context of sharing many remarkable events throughout my life which brought me to the firm conclusion that God exists and so too does survival of human consciousness after physical death of the body. This is the recurring message in all the stories I share.

After many decades of personal debate and vacillation, at the encouragement of a few close friends, I finally decided to write this book, not only to share my eight angel encounters, but also a wide variety of other extraordinary sacred experiences that personally happened to me, all of which are veritable instances of unmistakable divine intervention and providence...all of which prove how very loved I am by the Light, and by extension, you too!

To my academically trained mind, these experiences are evidential confirmation of God's existence and God's love. But in making this declaration, I rely not just on my own personal experiences, but also on the exceptional experiences of millions of other people all over the world throughout recorded history.

John Audette

John Audette served in several senior executive positions during a long career in hospital and hospice administration, as well as physician practice management, public broadcasting, and the performing arts. He earned a Master of Science degree from Virginia Tech.

Mr. Audette is CEO of Eternea, Inc. (Eternea.org), which he co-founded with the late Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and Dr. Eben Alexander, Harvard neurosurgeon and best-selling author. Eternea’s mission is to facilitate scientific research, public education, outreach and practical programmatic initiatives to help people recognize that eternal existence in some form or fashion is a fundamental reality for all living things.

Mr. Audette is also the co-founder of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, Inc. (IANDS.org). He contributed several chapters about spiritually transformative experiences and non-local consciousness to various scholarly books in the company of such prominent authors as Ervin Laszlo, Deepak Chopra, Jane Goodall, Gary Zukav, Stan Grof, Jean Houston, Larry Dossey and others. He is also gratefully acknowledged in numerous other books on these subjects by various well-known authors whom he assisted dating back to 1975. Loved by the Light is his first solo book.

Mr. Audette is an honorably discharged veteran with three years of active-duty service in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era.