Betty J. Kovacs Ph. D. is a professor, author and speaker who teaches about the prehistoric link between western religious culture and altered states of consciousness. Her extensive research of the shaman-mystic spiritual tradition reveals how western religion has covered up its mystic roots.

Dr. Kovacs received her Ph.D. from UC Irvine and 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 3 year period, Dr. Kovacs experienced the deaths of her mother, son and husband in separate motor vehicle collision. 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, Cosmic/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. Anthony Chene’s documentary, A Spiritual Renaissance, is about her life and work (YouTube 2021).

Dr. Kovacs comes on the podcast to discuss her life, her work and the early mystic roots of Christianity. She discusses views of Christ from "lost gospels," including early mystic doctrines that Jesus was married and that God is married. She discusses the use of psychedelics in religions and the lost faith in spiritual experience as opposed to logical reasoning.

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