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The Miracle of Death: There Is Nothing But Life
The Miracle of Death is a narrative of one family's extraordinary grief experiences, including precognitive dreams, visions, after-death communications, out-of-body experiences, and synchronistic events surrounding multiple deaths in their family. The sole survivor and narrator is a Western-trained academic who initially struggled to accept realities that ultimately changed every aspect of her life. Weaving personal, historical, and mythic perspectives, Dr. Betty Kovacs shows us that such individual experiences, along with cutting-edge scientific research, support a radical change in the way we think about death and life.
- GenresSpirituality
200 pages, Hardcover
First published February 3, 2003
19 people are currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
Betty J. Kovacs
2 books10 followersPh.D., University of California, Irvine in Comparative Literature and Theory of Symbolic Language. Studied and taught literature, mythology, symbolic language in Europe & U.S. Studied spiritual traditions of prehistory and indigenous cultures and worked with shamans from the Amazon and the Andes in Peru. Board of Directors of the Jung Society of Claremont in California for many years. Author of The Miracle of Death and Journey of the Mothers in Earthwalking Sky Dancers. http://www.kamlak.com"
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 14, 2019
A transforming experience, beautifully articulated
I have known Dr. Kovacs--Betty, of course to all those who know and love her--for--it will be forty years this fall. She has been a teacher to me and a guide. She is a great teller of stories--that ancient form of human expression that, along with myth and ritual, poetry and song, dance and music, speaks to us on a level more immediate than the verbal. That she leaves out mention of this form in her delineation on page six is perhaps a slip of modesty.
She has found her voice here in this wonderful and amazing recollection of a miracle that she experienced, recorded, transcribed, and now relates to us as the wise shaman of old often did around the prehistoric campfire, night after night, our faces warm, our eyes dancing with the flames, and our ears tuned to the voice of wisdom, mystery, experience, awe and spirituality.
"The Bard," as Betty calls this speaker, this charmer, this weaver of words--words that skip past the rational mind, dodge ordinary consciousness, to light into the very soul of the listener, is none other than herself, an expert on myth and culture telling us what was, what is and what will be, for herself, for those she loved and for those who loved her, and now for readers of this book. (A beautifully presented book, by the way, meticulously edited and artfully designed, clearly written, every word weighed and weighed again, and every sentence polished.)
Sometimes it is the smallest thing, a sudden rustle in the trees, the fall of rain out of a cloudless sky that awakens us to a realization of the extraordinary depth of things. In Zen this is seen as Enlightenment, something that comes and goes and comes again until perhaps we are ready and then it stays. With Betty, the Enlightenment was a supernova of sudden experience, the likes of which few of us ever encounter: the death of her mother in a car accident; and then a year later the death of her only, and much beloved, most beautiful son, also in an automobile accident; and then sixteen months later the death--still again in an auto accident--of her husband of over thirty years, the central love of her life, a man of extraordinary vitality and quiet wisdom, also my friend and guide.
Most people would not only give way to despair and depression, anger and a justifiable self-pity if in swift succession such events rained down like molten lead upon them. But Betty, always a teacher and an example, a guide and a person aware of herself as a spiritual being, gave way not to any of that, but turned what seemed on the surface to be something beyond horror into the most amazing transformation of love and creativity. Working with dream, symbol and myth, she saw and lived and breathed what she calls "The Miracle of Death," an enlightenment that flung open the doors of perception (always made opaque by the ordinary mind) to reveal a depth of Being beyond any ordinary comprehension of it.
"We do not die," says the Gita, and in this book we learn that death and life are but different sides of the same coin, inseparable, miraculous features of a balanced and dynamic cosmology in which the peace that passeth understanding becomes immediate if only we are open to it.
Being does not exist without non-being. How could it? And life does not exist without death. That is clear. But what Betty wants us to know is that death is merely another aspect of life. As her son Pisti (wise beyond his years) said to his father, "Dad, there is nothing but life."
In reading this book you may find, as I did, a resonance in Betty's theme of "denied realities" (p. 33) or "realities beyond the rational" (p. 108) suppressed by the ordinary consciousness of the Western world. Or you may find an accord in her debunking of the "myth of empty materialism" (p. 42) clung to by Western culture. Professor Kovacs sees the "material myth" as the cause of our disassociation from our spiritual selves evidenced by, among other things, wide-spread pollution of all kinds. But she sees a transformation coming. Not a "new age" (she studiously avoids this overused phrase) but a planetary shift in consciousness.
Death is as Divine as Life.
Hold them in both hands, Kicsi.
Play with them.
Balance them.
This is the Divine Game.
--a found poem by Istvan Kovacs
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
I have known Dr. Kovacs--Betty, of course to all those who know and love her--for--it will be forty years this fall. She has been a teacher to me and a guide. She is a great teller of stories--that ancient form of human expression that, along with myth and ritual, poetry and song, dance and music, speaks to us on a level more immediate than the verbal. That she leaves out mention of this form in her delineation on page six is perhaps a slip of modesty.
She has found her voice here in this wonderful and amazing recollection of a miracle that she experienced, recorded, transcribed, and now relates to us as the wise shaman of old often did around the prehistoric campfire, night after night, our faces warm, our eyes dancing with the flames, and our ears tuned to the voice of wisdom, mystery, experience, awe and spirituality.
"The Bard," as Betty calls this speaker, this charmer, this weaver of words--words that skip past the rational mind, dodge ordinary consciousness, to light into the very soul of the listener, is none other than herself, an expert on myth and culture telling us what was, what is and what will be, for herself, for those she loved and for those who loved her, and now for readers of this book. (A beautifully presented book, by the way, meticulously edited and artfully designed, clearly written, every word weighed and weighed again, and every sentence polished.)
Sometimes it is the smallest thing, a sudden rustle in the trees, the fall of rain out of a cloudless sky that awakens us to a realization of the extraordinary depth of things. In Zen this is seen as Enlightenment, something that comes and goes and comes again until perhaps we are ready and then it stays. With Betty, the Enlightenment was a supernova of sudden experience, the likes of which few of us ever encounter: the death of her mother in a car accident; and then a year later the death of her only, and much beloved, most beautiful son, also in an automobile accident; and then sixteen months later the death--still again in an auto accident--of her husband of over thirty years, the central love of her life, a man of extraordinary vitality and quiet wisdom, also my friend and guide.
Most people would not only give way to despair and depression, anger and a justifiable self-pity if in swift succession such events rained down like molten lead upon them. But Betty, always a teacher and an example, a guide and a person aware of herself as a spiritual being, gave way not to any of that, but turned what seemed on the surface to be something beyond horror into the most amazing transformation of love and creativity. Working with dream, symbol and myth, she saw and lived and breathed what she calls "The Miracle of Death," an enlightenment that flung open the doors of perception (always made opaque by the ordinary mind) to reveal a depth of Being beyond any ordinary comprehension of it.
"We do not die," says the Gita, and in this book we learn that death and life are but different sides of the same coin, inseparable, miraculous features of a balanced and dynamic cosmology in which the peace that passeth understanding becomes immediate if only we are open to it.
Being does not exist without non-being. How could it? And life does not exist without death. That is clear. But what Betty wants us to know is that death is merely another aspect of life. As her son Pisti (wise beyond his years) said to his father, "Dad, there is nothing but life."
In reading this book you may find, as I did, a resonance in Betty's theme of "denied realities" (p. 33) or "realities beyond the rational" (p. 108) suppressed by the ordinary consciousness of the Western world. Or you may find an accord in her debunking of the "myth of empty materialism" (p. 42) clung to by Western culture. Professor Kovacs sees the "material myth" as the cause of our disassociation from our spiritual selves evidenced by, among other things, wide-spread pollution of all kinds. But she sees a transformation coming. Not a "new age" (she studiously avoids this overused phrase) but a planetary shift in consciousness.
Death is as Divine as Life.
Hold them in both hands, Kicsi.
Play with them.
Balance them.
This is the Divine Game.
--a found poem by Istvan Kovacs
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
January 15, 2012
I was talking with a PP friend about life after death and the visions I have had with the deceased. She told me about this book. The author lives in Claremont. It was a most interesting book. Betty Kovacs mother, only child(son) and husband all died in car accidents within a period of three years. The author shares precognitive dreams, visions, and synchronistic events surrounding death that opened her family to multiple levels of reality, the interconnectedness of all life, and the evidence all around us that a planetary shift in consciousness is under way. Kovacs brings scientific evidence to her beliefs that "THERE IS NOTHING BUT LIFE". This book was a challenge reading and realized how few people there are to talk about these mysteries even though life after death is a theological belief of my faith.
November 7, 2024
Beautiful!
I've read both of Betty Kovacs books, Merchant Of Light and The Miracle Of Death, Betty take us on a journey of what most would be pure devastation, she shows us of what life's journey and it's lessons should be about and the tremendous love of a connected family. Thank you Dr. Kovacs for helping to strengthen my spiritual journey.
I've read both of Betty Kovacs books, Merchant Of Light and The Miracle Of Death, Betty take us on a journey of what most would be pure devastation, she shows us of what life's journey and it's lessons should be about and the tremendous love of a connected family. Thank you Dr. Kovacs for helping to strengthen my spiritual journey.
January 23, 2023
I am grateful to Gloria Coelho at Caritas Consciousness Project for recommending this author. A few favorite passages:
Over the years of working with personal symbolic material I have become convinced that only the mind that experiences the dream or vision holds the actual key to its power, for that mind is connected to the feelings and experiences that gave birth to the symbols. While there can be great value in reflecting on the dream or vision with others, ultimately we need to trust the mind that perceived the symbols to “transform them into a world full of meaning and purpose.”
Kerenyi says...the root aspect of all being is in nonbeing. This obviously could not be understood within a linear thought system. The secret could be stated conceptually, but it remained forever what the German poet Goethe would later call the “Holy open secret”; it could be talked about openly, it could be taught, but it could never be “known” until the individual experienced it for one’s self. The healing circle could not be formed by institutional knowledge. It could only be formed by individual experience. It was the knowledge beyond books that had been promised by the jackal.
For example, now when the Imagination presents my consciousness with an image, a feeling, an intuition, a word -- whatever -- I acknowledge and observe it. I allow it to fill my mind, and I wait. Sometimes the communication is fast, but at other times it emerges over a period of time.
Dustin (friend of Pisti’s): “Death is the one big mystery that solves everything else.”
Over the years of working with personal symbolic material I have become convinced that only the mind that experiences the dream or vision holds the actual key to its power, for that mind is connected to the feelings and experiences that gave birth to the symbols. While there can be great value in reflecting on the dream or vision with others, ultimately we need to trust the mind that perceived the symbols to “transform them into a world full of meaning and purpose.”
Kerenyi says...the root aspect of all being is in nonbeing. This obviously could not be understood within a linear thought system. The secret could be stated conceptually, but it remained forever what the German poet Goethe would later call the “Holy open secret”; it could be talked about openly, it could be taught, but it could never be “known” until the individual experienced it for one’s self. The healing circle could not be formed by institutional knowledge. It could only be formed by individual experience. It was the knowledge beyond books that had been promised by the jackal.
For example, now when the Imagination presents my consciousness with an image, a feeling, an intuition, a word -- whatever -- I acknowledge and observe it. I allow it to fill my mind, and I wait. Sometimes the communication is fast, but at other times it emerges over a period of time.
Dustin (friend of Pisti’s): “Death is the one big mystery that solves everything else.”
August 17, 2025
Don't take my word for it, read it yourself. However, listen to a few podcasts of Ms Kovacs being interviewed. Anthony Chene? is a good start. Podcasts will give you the whole picture of what is happening whereas this book is about what has happened personally to Betty and family. It is autobiographical not academic. Ultimately it is an account of developing consciousness. Ye old subject from one person's attempt to make sense of our history from within our culture and one sided brain to both sides of the brain and the limitless. However, a big part of the book is that our planet is not limitless, our minds have been captured and its time to break free. Another book about Love.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews