Dr. Betty Kovacs discusses Western culture's lost spiritual history of altered states of consciousness, its reemergence, and what that means for us today.
Betty J. Kovacs’ extensive study of the shaman-mystic spiritual tradition of prehistory reveals how this early knowledge of the blueprint for our evolution was distorted and covered up by Western religions. More than 2,500 years of repression by both Church and State have thwarted our evolution, forced our science into a limited, materialistic understanding of life, and now threatens the survival of all life on our planet. We need to know this history.
Twentieth-century scholars have unearthed this lost history in the nick of time. In spite of its repression, this is the fifth time this ancient knowledge has emerged in Western history. Only now are we able to see its origins, its continuity, and the depth of what it can mean for us today.
The ultimate fruit of the tree of life is the knowledge that we are all Universal Mind, immortal, divine, and creators. Without this knowledge of who we really are, we have fallen into depression, violence, fanaticism, fundamentalism, addiction to power, death and drugs that promise to transform our experience of a world without heart and soul. We are destroying ourselves and the planet.
We have forgotten that the heart connects us to a larger reality that nurtures the birth of a just and feeling world. Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing the World returns to us our shaman-mystic-scientist heritage that carries the blueprint for heart consciousness. This blueprint is revealed in the heart wisdom of the mystic and in the new science of quantum physics. The return of this Consciousness is changing the world.
Here [in Merchants of Light] are the spiritual secrets that the priests of the patriarchy and their drive for power have tried to repress, but which we urgently need at this present moment of evolutionary crisis. Lewellyn Vaughan-Lee, PhD, Sufi teacher and author
Interview Topics
The complementary roles of the scientist and the shaman/visionary The blueprint for our conscious evolution and its negation in Genesis Examples of people who have experienced Cosmic Consciousness, Christ Consciousness Death and the surprising creativity of grief The “secret tradition” that Jesus taught Mystic, contemplative, esoteric Christianity Discoveries about the relationship of the brain, mind, heart and the centrality of the heart in the development of higher consciousness The urgent message of indigenous peoples around the world The sacred gifts of our ancestors, including the San Bushmen
Author Betty J. Kovacs, PhD, a recognized expert, shares her knowledge and passion through her books, speaking, teaching and media interviews in the United States and Europe. She speaks to national and global audiences through webinars, keynote presentations and media interviews. She received her PhD from the University of California, Irvine, in Comparative Literature and Theory of Symbolic, Mythic Language. She taught Literature, Writing, and Symbolic, Mythic Language for 25 years. She served many years as Chair and Program Chair on the Board of Directors of the Jung Society of Claremont in California and sits on the Academic Advisory Board of Forever Family Foundation.
Within a three-year period, she experienced the deaths of her mother, her son, and her husband in separate automobile accidents. While she had studied shamanism before her son’s accident, she and her husband actually experienced their son’s consciousness after his death for an extended period of time. These experiences completely changed their lives. Her first book, The Miracle of Death: There Is Nothing But Life, is about these altered states of consciousness. After her retirement, she began an intensified period of research into our ancestors’ experience of a vaster consciousness, commonly known as Cosmic Consciousness or Christ Consciousness, which she relates in her new book, Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing the World, winner of the Nautilus Silver Book Award and The Scientific & Medical Network 2019 Book Prize.
