#98 Betty Kovacs: Evidence Of Our Shaman-Mystic Past: What The Church Doesn’t Want You to Know
Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer to Venus. I’m Johnny Burke, and today’s guest is Betty Kovacs. She has a PhD from the University of California Irvine in comparative literature in theory of symbolic mythic language. She’s also the author of Merchants of Light, The Consciousness that Is Changing The World as well as The Miracle of Death: There Is Nothing But Life. Today we’ll discuss the blueprint for our conscious evolution and what we know about the continuity of life after death. Betty, welcome to the show.
Betty Kovacs: Thank you so much, John
Johnny Burke: That is quite a mouthful, a blueprint for our conscious evolution and the continuity of life after death, are those two things directly connected or related, or are they pretty much separate ideas?
Betty Kovacs: No, they’re absolutely related because it’s so important in the blueprint for our evolution. Those who had experienced that wanted us to know when they did everything they could to save this information, to preserve it in all ways is that we are immortal, that our consciousness does not die, and that we are all part of the divine and that we are creators. These three things are absolutely essential for our knowledge of who we are.
Johnny Burke: Now you mentioned that we are creators. That’s actually the first time I’ve ever heard that. can you tell us exactly what that means?
Betty Kovacs: Well, we’re all born out of what we might call the Big Bang , and that is divine consciousness that is born into time and space, and we are all part of that. So in many different ways, we are creative and the mind, something that we’ve forgotten in our culture is so powerfully creative, we’ve just forgotten it. We don’t quite know what we can actually do by thinking and allowing that conscious energy to flow through us. So we are creative in that way.
Johnny Burke: When speakers come onto the show and they talk about things we have forgotten, I can’t help but think that that recalls theories of where thousands of years ago, we really were an advanced race. Not just technology-wise, but consciousness-wise. what are your thoughts?
Betty Kovacs: Well, I have become convinced through my research that yes, there was an ancient culture probably worldwide, and we did have a higher level of consciousness that expressed itself spiritually and technically. I think that we’re discovering this more and more each decade. But yes, I would say yes to that. I’m quite convinced of it.
Johnny Burke: And when you mention worldwide, I could not help or think of ancient civilizations like Atlantis, which I hear about quite a bit on the show and others as well. Lemuria is another. What are your thoughts on those cultures?
Betty Kovacs: that was a question for me for a long time of course, as it has been for anyone who ever hears it. Let me just say one thing that I thought was quite convincing. That is that now, archeologists have discovered that at the Temple of Edfu in Egypt, on the walls are engraved texts, and these texts tell us that the people came to Egypt from Atlantis and they engraved on the wall that they had come from Atlantis, they were a higher civilization, and that they had gone to Egypt in various other places around the world, those who survived and held some of the knowledge of that, civilization. So I thought that was kind of convincing. At Edfu they were probably engraved around 200. BCE, but they were from much older texts, it was clear. So that’s one thing. There are other things that are convincing, but I thought that was a pretty convincing one.
Johnny Burke: It does sound like it. And many speakers that come onto the show have had certain types of intuitive experiences. They saw spirits when they were younger and, they’re able to channel and things of that nature. Have you had any of those experiences directly in your life?
Betty Kovacs: Well, yes but I didn’t have for a very long time, although I certainly sought such experiences. I had intuition and I had dreams, and I paid very close attention to the dreams, but it really wasn’t until our only child, our son Pisti was killed in an automobile accident at 20 that that just opened up, and my husband hadn’t even been interested in trying – he was a businessman. Although he is sympathetic to my interest, they weren’t his. But when our son died, about a week after his death, we began to experience his consciousness very, very powerfully. And he wanted us to know he’s fine, he’s alive, that of course we are immortal, all of us, and that he was still creating.
And he also wanted us to know what the earth was going through for the next few decades that we were going to be going through a huge transition, and he wanted to tell us and talk to us about that. But it wasn’t only with him that opened up and we experienced such a vast consciousness that we had no idea about before.
In fact, Miracle of Death is a recording of many of those experiences because we recorded them right after we had them so that we could keep a very precise record of them. And so, we actually knew after having those experiences that there was something very vast and we were involved in it. All of us on the planet are involved in this right now. So that is in Miracle of Death.
Johnny Burke: A very traumatic experience like that obviously it’s very hard to go through, but it also seems to have had a vast impact on your work going forward, exploring consciousness and all the things that are connected,
Betty Kovacs: Yes, my work would’ve been historical, and based on some of the dreams that were very powerful. But it wouldn’t have had the power, and I hope it has power, at least they were very, very powerful for me. I had always wanted to know for sure. And that’s what Gnosis actually is. It’s a direct experience in which we know we don’t need someone else to tell us or teach us or a doctrine; we know.
The direct experience, of course, the Roman church rejected because it would go against dogma perhaps. So they didn’t want anyone having these direct experiences, and so they called people who had them heretics, but of course it was the mystics who were the heretics who had experiences. So it made all the difference in the world.
Johnny Burke: And isn’t it a bit ironic, we can learn more from the mystics than we can from the canon of the church. Would you agree??
Betty Kovacs: Oh well I do agree because, the mystics, had their texts. Those texts were written out of the teachings of the great mystics, and Jesus was one such teacher, a great shaman mystic, who was actually a rebirth of the ancient shaman mystic tradition in Judaism in the first temple. And that was destroyed in 621 BCE. Jesus was a rebirth of that as were the Essenes at the Dead Sea Scrolls– before Jesus. They were a continuation of the Judaic mystical tradition of the Dead Sea. So that makes the Dead Sea Scrolls very important later. Well, actually, Jesus was born while the mystics around the Dead Sea were still there, not really writing anymore, but Jesus was also the rebirth of that.
And all the way from Egypt through the Palestinian area were those people who rejected the second temple, which had rejected mysticism, and they were mystics. This is a Christianity, a mystical Christianity, which still exists today, but is not part of the church the Roman church.
Johnny Burke: I was about to say when I used to go to catechism, we called it CCD, I just assumed everyone went to church and had to go to CCD at least once a week after school. They never taught us any of that, but while we’re on that subject, in your book you mentioned that Jesus was part of the resurgence of ancient wisdom. I believe you were speaking to that right now.
Betty Kovacs: Yes. Yes, that’s correct. And it’s very, very important to know that, at 621 BCE, the tradition of Solomon Temple, the first temple tradition through the work of Old Testament scholar Margaret Barker. We know that it was a shaman mystic tradition. We didn’t know that before, but since the Dead Sea Scrolls have been found, we are able to put all of those texts together, not the Hebrew text and Christian texts, the Bible, they’re no longer privileged because we have all of these other texts now that we can see a much larger picture. And so we now know that this first temple tradition was a shaman mystic tradition, and then it became very clear that Jesus was a mystic, a shaman mystic, continuing that ancient Hebrew tradition.
Now, the scholars and the mystics at the Dead Sea. They were earlier and they had probably been in existence before they began collecting and writing at the Dead Sea, which was about 200. BCE up to 70 AD when the temple was destroyed again. So these mystics were scattered throughout Egypt, all through the Palestinian area, but then they began collecting at the Dead Sea and they then said very clearly, we are the true covenant of Israel. Meaning we are carrying on the tradition of the first temple, which is shaman mystic that we can have direct experience of the divine.
Johnny Burke: it’s really interesting because I just recently interviewed someone who wrote a book entitled Jesus The Ultimate Shaman.
Betty Kovacs: Oh, that’s good.
Johnny Burke: I think the way that you explain this, you’re going way back in history and talking about mystics but what this man was saying was a lot of the things that Jesus did, appear to be shamanic practices. Shamanism is what, 50, 60, 70,000 years old, if not older.
Betty Kovacs: Yes. Yeah, about 40,000 BCE as far as we know. It developed, interestingly, all around the world. I think that’s when we learned how to tune in to this vast consciousness that we all are. And of course, a shaman who’s well developed could heal. That’s very, very important in healing. And of course could go beyond the physical laws of nature as we know them. So the miracles were their ability to go beyond those laws that we know, and Jesus seemed to have been able to do that. Mm-hmm.
Johnny Burke: Yes. And while we’re on that subject, another question I had, was from the book, How is The Voice of Jesus different in the Nag Hammadi Gospels as opposed to the New Testament gospels?
Betty Kovacs: Well, that’s a very important and crucial question, because of the Jesus tradition that existed when Jesus was alive. He was creating the tradition all along. He was a shaman and a mystic, and he was giving up those teachings. But when the Roman church in the fourth century became the religion of Rome, The territory, the empire. They took the texts. There were hundreds of texts available, but the church, the men who met, who decide which text would go in the canon, the Bible, they were texts that would support what they had developed in their doctrine. I think it’s amazing that the teachings of Jesus, many of them are in that text and they’re beautiful because they give us a glimpse of the depth and the beauty and the consciousness that we are capable of.
The beauty of that character was very influential to me as a child. I’d go to Sunday school, and I would hear these stories of this person who was honest, had great integrity and loved that was incredible. However, the church denied so much of the hidden tradition that Jesus, when he was alive, had taught, and he did not teach that he was a God. We didn’t know that though, because those texts weren’t chosen by the church. And in Egypt there was a monastery and the Catholic church amongst the church, visited that area and they told them, either you get rid of these texts, or we’ll destroy them. And that was at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. So they didn’t get rid of them. They pretended I guess, but they buried them. And we -I know it!
Johnny Burke: And good for us, rather
Betty Kovacs: Good ? Yes. Isn’t it so? Because after the war they were discovered. Well, of course there were a lot of political difficulties, both with the Dead Sea text., They were also discovered after the war, and that was Judaism, but okay, was Jesus and the Nag Hammadi text, who is not God. And he says” I did not come to save you. I did not die to save you. I came to remind you of who you are. You are the light, and we are divine and conscious and creative.” And here is this incredible, Jesus who’s speaking as a true shaman that he is saying,” Remember who you are. You have forgotten. I am here to remind you.”
Johnny Burke: the layman’s interpretation of that, and correct me if I go off track here, is Jesus said in that text, in the Nag Hammadi gospels,” don’t worship me, become me.”
Betty Kovacs: Oh, yes. That’s so beautiful. And for people who are interested in the Nag Hamaddi texts , I would recommend, Marvin Meyers Gospels of Jesus, because he is a wonderful introduction. In many of these gospels, it’s very clear we’re not to worship. We are not to worship Jesus, not follow the Christ, but to become the Christ, which is that higher consciousness, that is so important because of course the church could not have power unless they said,” you are nothing. You must follow this. You must worship this.” Being outside yourself, and of course, once we put it outside, we are nothing. And that’s a great, great shame and it had a tremendous negative effect on humanity, on the western world especially.
Johnny Burke: Without question. When we first spoke about this, I thought, what would it actually take for the church to basically do a 180 and say,” Oh, by the way, we were wrong.” That’s never going to happen.
Betty Kovacs: It’s not,
Johnny Burke: But there are those of us who will eventually come to acknowledge this and say that is much more aligned with a newer consciousness. What I mean by that, is not new age or anything that reeks of hokey, pseudoscience, but everything that is aligned with Ascension and trying to raise your vibe and everything. That statement,” don’t follow me, become me”sounds a lot more realistic.
Betty Kovacs: Of course. Well, in the early shamans, there was no doctrine, there were no statements about what we ought to do. It was how do we release that valve. We’re all born into universal consciousness, but there’s a valve that we sort of keep all of that from coming in. We sort of just reduce that consciousness to a trickle so that we can brush our teeth, go to the grocery store, do interviews and things like that. The clue was, and this is what the Shaman Secret was, how do you release that valve? Many of their rituals were repetitive movements, which we now know, does release that valve- open consciousness. It creates a wave of energy that flows through all the brain components and integrates them. Then that kind of releases that valve and we remember who we are. After that, we can go back to it. But it’s so important that we know that we are all universal consciousness. We all have this ability. Once we know that, then we can begin working on how we want to create worlds, that we create the world that we are in, and co-create it. So how can we work together to co-create a better world?
Johnny Burke: Since you just mentioned remembering who we are. I want to go back to when we talked about ancient cultures that were more advanced and knowledgeable about the nature of humankind. Can we talk a little bit more about how they were firmly rooted in a higher consciousness, which was consistent with not worshiping Christ, but trying to actually become him?
Betty Kovacs: Yes. Well, the information is, not as plentiful as we would like, but if we just look at. shamans, 40,000 BCE and down. Then we see that it’s not about worshiping anybody. it’s about knowing that we have the ability to move from this dimension into the other dimension of consciousness.
When I was in South America working with shamans, they always talked about moving from the Tonal to the Naguel. It’s that we are here in this dimension for very good reasons, consciously, but then when we do our rituals, when we meditate, we move into that other consciousness, which is so incredibly important now.
The Egyptian culture, when that developed, we could get a better idea from the Egyptian culture than from anything else perhaps of what this culture was like because it was very much a development of heart consciousness of feeling. They knew that. Feeling from the heart opens us to that vast consciousness. Is a major thing we know from these ancient cultures, and we know it very much particularly through the Egyptian culture, and early Egyptian culture. There was a balance between, of course, masculine and feminine energies between matter and spirit. So there was that balance and that joy of being alive, there was nothing like you’re a sinner, you have to do this, we did none of that. It was, we are spirit in matter creating worlds and we can keep that connection, which is our heritage, to keep that connection conscious through the heart.
Now we know even scientifically that the heart is a brain component and that the heart gives more, information to the brain than the brain gives to the heart. There should be a circulation of energy constantly going through the heart, up the brain, the spine up through all of the brain components into the heart. When we get scared, all of that energy goes back to the reptilian brain. That’s why anyone who wants to control us makes us scared to death- scare the people and they’ll believe anything because they’re not circulating that energy through the brain components and into the heart. So that was the teaching, and it was a joy of being alive. But they also knew that there is no way that you could have a civilization if you didn’t have the feeling from the heart.
Look at what Western culture has done; it’s cut out the heart. We haven’t even known it’s a brain component. And we also dismiss the right hemisphere, which is very receptive to heart consciousness and speaks in its language of symbols to the left brain. So the symbolic brain has a poetic logic. The Western mind is that, oh, it’s nothing. No logic at all. And it gives that logic to the left brain, which does its wonderful work of analyzing and separating, but it must always include the right brain. So we saw that this is what these ancient cultures knew. They understood that, and that’s what we lost in the west and became pathological.
Johnny Burke: We’ve touched on a bunch of different things here which sounds like the decline of Western civilization. But also, in Merchants of Light- this is where you talk about the evidence of shaman-mystic- scientists past -I believe you called it, which was consistently repressed by church and state. Now it’s emerging with the blueprint for our evolution. The emergence of that blueprint, how does that coincide with what a lot of intuitives describe as ascension? Is it the same thing or not necessarily?
Betty Kovacs: Yes. I think that once we recognize, once again that we have everything we need to be who we are, to be fully in that vast consciousness. Then come back and create in time and space that this is the blueprint of allowing our consciousness to be heart centered because that opens to that vast consciousness and flows through all the brain components. That opening to the vast consciousness is our ascension and integrating it.
Johnny Burke: Does that have something to do with moving from the third dimension or three D to five D, as well as moving away from the masculine energy to the feminine energy or the divine feminine? Or are we seeking more of a balance between the divine masculine and the divine feminine?
Betty Kovacs: Definitely a balance. we in the west have repressed, and suppressed the heart consciousness, which was always symbolized as feminine. The feminine was the life-giver, soul, and nature. So once we suppressed that and repressed that, we just developed the left-brain rational consciousness.
This was a loss of the blueprint; the blueprint is taking consciousness in through the heart to feel everything and allow it to flow through the brain. All of the brain components that we’ve developed, which would be the feminine we’d call the heart, and the symbolic right brain into the masculine and the masculine is a very important brain component because it analyzes it. We love that in the west, and I love it -that looking at things from a rational perspective, what we call scientific, but it has to flow back into the right brain and its connection to heart, the feeling and balance. So it’s a balance between the masculine and feminine. The. Masculine has suffered just as much as the feminine from this repression and suppression because it can’t be who it is without its partner.
And this is what, of course, in the Nag Hammadi text, and the Jesus of the Nag Hammadi text is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalena. He loved her and he was sexually related to her. This is very different from the church because we live in time and space in a physical world. Matter is sacred. So this was a very important aspect of being alive in the mystical tradition. I think it was Pope Innocent. The third, I believe, who said “sexuality is so shameful that it is intrinsically evil. ‘And another theologian said, “Wherever sex is, the Holy Spirit is absent” this is pathological.
Johnny Burke: It’s interesting that you, mentioned that because the Pope making a statement like that, that’s actually closer to blasphemy than anything else. You have to kind of turn your brain upside down to really understand their logic because I never could
Betty Kovacs: There’s no logic in it.
Johnny Burke: even as a young boy, I thought something doesn’t really add up or make sense here.
Betty Kovacs: We were born into that, into that pathology,
Johnny Burke: There’s good things about faith communities, but the more I interview people on the show and these types of things come up, I think many of us realize that religion- with all due respect to people that go to church, it does tend to get in the way for those that want more answers.
There are people that go to church and they’re content to just go through the motions and, network with people and meet new people. And I guess there’s nothing wrong with that, but at the same time, what you’re saying is that what they’re doing is teaching inaccuracies- it’s not correct.
Betty Kovacs: That’s right. They have selected a few texts and tampered with them, you know, and many things that I hear Christians say that the church teaches, I don’t know where they find it even in those texts.
Let me go just for a moment to the Gospel of Philip, which is in the Nag Hammadi text, and in the Gospel of Philip, he teaches the teachings of Jesus and that sexuality- the actual sexual coming together of male and female is the holy of Holies. It is the sacred initiation and to the depths of who we are. This is so different from what the church teaches. Of course, they don’t want to look at the Nag Hammadi text, because in this, Jesus is married to Mary Magdalena, and the sexual act is where God is. It is where the Holy Spirit is. This is the initiation, the experiencing of the sacred marriage of matter and spirit, and recognizing that matter is sacred.
Johnny Burke: I’ve never heard it explained like that, but to me it’s a union, casual or not. There’s a reason why people are attracted to each other and,
Betty Kovacs: It’s a beautiful reason. And to have made it evil, is pathological and we have to recognize that.
This emerged very clearly at the time of the first Temple, 621 BCE under Josiah. When the Deuteronomists, were a minority group of priests, they then destroyed everything from the first temple. The shaman mystic tradition was destroyed and the feminine was prominent because she and the masculine, the union was sacred, and she had images all over the place. They destroyed all of the images of the feminine, her sacred tree. She had groves of trees, because the tree was a symbol of life and becoming conscious, destroyed all of those trees, wiped out the feminine, and wiped out the wisdom literature about the blueprint for our development. Some Jews took it to Egypt, and it was saved, but this was a time when we look at that story of the tree, I used to think as a kid, what a horrible story, but didn’t know what to do with it.
Why would God not want us to be conscious? And so the earlier Sumerian myths there are seals. And when I discovered this, when I was teaching mythology, I loved it. And all the students loved it too. Here are these wonderful images of the God and the goddess sitting before the sacred tree of life that is hanging with fruit, and they are both putting out their hands to offer it- here it is. If you are ready to take it, take it. This was the tradition, the sacred tree. It was becoming conscious of who we are, what Jesus later would teach in the secret tradition, the hidden tradition that he taught, but think how pathological these Deuteronomists were because they made it a sin to eat it. They punished the man with all types of hardships. They punished the feminine so that she would have a horrible time in childbirth. Sexuality was original sin. Everyone is born out of sin. This is totally pathological and it’s a complete inversion of our true story.
Johnny Burke: Right. They literally did invert the story and disconnected us from the truth of who we were. This is actually right from the book.
Betty Kovacs: Yes, and the Roman Church continued that,
Johnny Burke: Yeah, they did, without question. Now, the Deuteronomists, did they have anything to do with the eradication of any mention of reincarnation in the Bible, or was that another council?
Betty Kovacs: Well, you know, many Christians, this is long after the first temple was gone, when Christianity came into being, and they still believed. They did believe in reincarnation, and I think in terms of Christianity, the Roman church had a lot to do with that. It with. And now of course, that knowledge is coming back. There is so much scientific, we’d have to call it scientific. It’s not just anecdotal, because when you put all of these anecdotal experiences together, they form a coherent system, a body of evidence. The evidence sometimes is just absolutely astounding. So, those who have read the evidence know that reincarnation does take place. But I think that in terms of Christianity the Roman Church had more to do with that.
Johnny Burke: This has been, a pretty incredible explanation of how the church did interfere with the natural course of things with our beliefs. Would you say they inverted the myths? Is that fair to say?
Betty Kovacs: Precisely, they did, and also Jesus is an inversion because the Nag Hammadi texts show us that Jesus wanted to give us the blueprint for our awakening, and the church inverted that into a God outside of us that we should worship. That means we’re not going to have that experience. If anybody said they had a direct experience, a gnostic experience, they were sinners. They were heretics and were pushed out of the church, and the great mystics of Christianity had a very difficult time staying within the church. The church wanted to get rid of all of them because that would reduce their power.
It is so sad to see that from 621 with the Deuteronomists and the continuation of the fourth century with the church, we have been suppressed. We’ve actually lived in a pathological culture since then. That may seem strong, but it isn’t because the right brain was suppressed, the heart, nobody knew anything about it, and you take the authorities’ word for things rather than going within and knowing for yourself.
Johnny Burke: When we talk about ascension and an emerging blueprint, the mystics will eventually convince and influence a lot of us to really see the light, to see who we really are. would you agree?
Betty Kovacs: Yes, and I think it’s important for us to remember; trust our hearts. Trust our intuition. Look at our dreams and awaken to our own ability. We are all potential mystics. And Jesus teaches that in the Nag Hammadi text; “you are light, and you come from the light.” I have this in the book, and I love this from, uh, the Nag Hammadi text: Jesus says, “If you bring that forth what is within you, it will save you. But if you don’t, it will destroy you.” And I think that’s what we see in Western culture. We have not brought forth, each one of us, what is within us that will save us. It’s always an outside power trying to control us. That’s as true today as it was then. And we need to know that.
I’ve always felt that those who’ve gone before me and have had these experiences, they guided me. They helped me. They helped me to keep open, but it was my own experience which I knew. And I didn’t care what anybody else said. I knew that, and this is something that’s very, very sad to me, is that I know people who are part of the church, and the church has been a great community for them. But what happened is that they had some experiences of their own and the church convinced them that it was of the devil. That is still being taught, that our own inner experience, mystical experiences of the devil.
JohnnyBurke: That’s a shame-
Betty Kovacs: Oh, that is heartbreaking. And yet there are people living that way today and ignoring their own experiences.
JohnnyBurke: So I think the underlying message is bring the light – that basically is the way. Betty, thanks so much for joining us. Really enjoyed this discussion. How can our listeners find out more about you?
Betty Kovacs: They can go to the Kamlak Center, kamlak.com