Gregory Shushan, Ph.D. author of Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions and Conceptions of the Afterlife in Early Civilizations.
On November 26, 2019, Fahrusha welcomed Dr. Gregory Shushan to “Shattered Reality Podcast”. He is an expert on the subject of NDEs (Near-Death Experiences) over time and cultures. He is the author of two books, Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions and Conceptions of the Afterlife in Early Civilizations. You can find out more about Dr. Shushan’s work at: https://www.gregoryshushan.com/
Fahrusha has been dismayed over the narrow view of near-death experiences which are held by certain religious groups. In speaking with Dr. Shushan she hoped to uncover what features of NDEs are common over cultures and over time, thinking perhaps there could be some ecumenical agreement. Dr. Shushan rose to the occasion explaining how although there are cultural differences, often experiencers return to life having been healed, with new abilities, or bringing comfort to their communities.
At the end of the podcast, Fahrusha briefly shared an orb experience from listener Jaime and also one of her own orb experiences. Listeners are invited to share their experiences by sending a comment or emailing Fahrusha at fahrusha@fahrusha.com.
On March 12, 2019 Fahrusha welcomed Mike Clelland, an avid outdoorsman, illustrator and UFO researcher, to “Shattered Reality Podcast”. He has written extensively on the subject of owls, UFOs, and synchronicity. This episode was particularly conversational, with Fahrusha contributing some of her experiences to the mix. The short take-away from this is that people who have experiences with owls in the wild often also have UFO experiences and many of them may be abductees as well. Some folks see owls that are impossibly big to be flesh and blood owls. Under hypnosis these people sometimes find that what they saw were actually small grey aliens.
Though Mike’s research centers around the owl/UFO connection, Fahrusha drew parallels to other animal/UFO connections involving raccoons, cats and opossums among others. Fahrusha is a city chick, but she is a good spotter of birds and mammals in the wild. Owls have the best hearing of all birds and excellent night vision as well. Their feathers are specially equipped for silent flight. Cats and dogs also see more than the spectrum visible to humans, and may be sensitive to invisible intruders. All human companions of cats have been unnerved by the felines staring intently at something the human cannot see.
Fahrusha was pleased to welcome Laird Scranton to “Shattered Reality Podcast” to discuss an overview of his work in eight books listed below. He is an independent software designer who became interested in Dogon mythology and symbolism in the early 1990s through the works of Jerome Clark and Robert Temple. He has studied ancient myth, language, and cosmology since 1997 and has been a lecturer at Colgate University. He also appears in the late John Anthony West’s Magical Egypt DVD series.
He has written the following books:
The Science of the Dogon: Decoding the African Mystery Tradition;
Sacred Symbols of the Dogon: The Key to Advanced Science in the Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs;
Seeking the Primordial: Exploring Root Concepts of Cosmological Creation;
The Cosmological Origins of Myth and Symbol: From the Dogon and Ancient Egypt to India, Tibet, and China;
Point of Origin: Gobekli Tepe and the Spiritual Matrix for the World’s Cosmologies;
The Velikovsky Heresies: Worlds in Collision and Ancient Catastrophes Revisited;
The Mystery of Skara Brae: Neolithic Scotland and the Origins of Ancient Egypt;
Decoding Maori Cosmology: The Ancient Origins of New Zealand’s Indigenous Culture.
Laird Scranton has been a contributor to several other books.
Cosmology as defined by Miriam Webster dictionary: 1 a: a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe, b: a theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe. 2: a branch of astronomy that deals with the origin, structure, and space-time relationships of the universe; also : a theory dealing with these.
On this episode we will look at development of our cultural cosmologies from the end of the Ice Age 12000 plus years ago to today, with nearly religious fixation on UFOs by some, and the worldwide cultural mythos of aliens from space via films to an idea of ‘others” as ‘interdimensional ‘ beings. Our guest’s work is rich and complex. He uses the languages and symbols of preliterate cultures and early literate cultures to decode what the ancients thought and finds coherence between cultures geographically dispersed. For instance, the word “etymology” itself has Greek roots: “etymos,” which means, “true sense,” and “logia,” which means, “study of.” Besides helping one to understand the origin of a word, knowing its roots can help one understand other words with similar roots, and can lead the astute to discover amazing mysteries through time.
Lynne Kelly, Ph.D., author of The Memory Code, joined Fahrusha and Kate Valentine on Shattered Reality Podcast to discuss memory devices used by oral cultures from the Stone Age to the present day. A native of Australia she was drawn into this study whilst working on her doctorate. What she discovered really surprised her.
She started by researching Australian Aboriginal songlines. The elders of these groups knew all of the plants and animals from memory and often generations of lineage back into time. She discovered the mechanism by which they accomplished this feat. Much of the knowledge was restricted to elders or shamans. They would trek to areas that held significance and repeat dances and songs which held enormous amounts of related knowledge. There were also objects with inscrutable (to the uninitiated) marks which held mountains of knowledge and were portable. Preliterate cultures around the world used these memory palaces and memory devices and some cultures still do. Among those that still employ these devices are many Aboriginal groups in Australia, some African tribes as well as cultures in Oceana. Memory champions in the literate world have learned some of these techniques from writings of the ancient Greeks and use them to win contests today. The Memory Code gives us amazing insight into the mysteries of ancient places like Stonehenge, the Nasca Lines and Easter Island to name a few.
Kate Valentine and Fahrusha were very pleased to welcome Dr. John B. Alexander back to Shattered Reality Podcast to discuss his new book Reality Denied, Firsthand Experiences with Things That Can’t Happen- But Did. This book is an autobiography of many of Alexander’s paranormal experiences and extraordinary events. He is the author of a number of other books and articles including UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies and Realities and is the recipient of awards too numerous to mention.
We spoke about UFOs, trans-species communication with dolphins and unusual human skills including metal bending. The book is filled with fascinating and mind-bending experiences, exotic places visited, and extraordinary people met, but the takeaway is the lifelong quest and metamorphosis of a curious individual who began his career as an infantry private who rose to Army colonel, received a PhD, became a non-lethal weapons expert and more recently delved into shamanism. He calls for more research into the nature of consciousness and these things that can’t happen but do. He fears that today’s paradigm of materialism precludes young scientists from researching the true nature of consciousness. He encourages more open-mindedness in science and hopes that young researchers will have the courage to explore areas beyond the soul-crushing confines of mechanistic materialism as have many quantum physicists.
Author John B. Alexander PhD at Machu Picchu, Peru.
On July 11, 2017 Kate Valentine and Fahrusha welcomed Dr. Michael J. Reddy to “Shattered Reality Podcast.” We started the show with two of the entertaining “Keynoter” songs that Michael has written and sung at several professional conferences to help set themes and introduce main speakers. They are both about current changing paradigms.
Then we turned to Michael’s practice of Family Constellation Work. As he says, “there are two kinds of trauma—the one you experience yourself, and the sort you inherit from parents and ancestors who could not clear it themselves.” This heritable form of trauma is supported increasingly now by epigentics, but it remains present in and passes down through a psychic, transgenerational family system. He maintains that left over loyalties to unresolved issues in your birth family’s past can shape your life for the worse and that constellation work clears these. Michael credits the work with saving his life in 2008.
Finally we discussed Michael’s 7 year apprenticeship with native and mixed blood indigenous teachers from 1986-93. One of these teachers was the late Sun Bear, a controversial Ojibwe elder who espoused sharing the traditional medicine with all races. Our co-host Fahrusha also had an interesting experience with Sun Bear when he visited the yoga studio she attended. In shamanic terms, successful constellations start to look like divination followed by sympathetic magic. Michael can be contacted through www.reddyworks.com, michael@reddyworks.com.
Kate Valentine and Fahrusha welcome Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke to Shattered Reality Podcast. She has written three books on American Indians and their experiences with Star People and Sky People. They are Encounters With Star People: Untold Stories of American Indians, Sky People: Untold Stories of Alien Encounters in Mesoamerica and More Encounters with Star People: Urban American Indians Tell Their Stories.She is also the author of twelve charming children’s’ books and the best-selling academic text: Sisters in the Blood: The Education of Women in Native America.
It was a pleasure to speak with Dr. Clark about the many experiences she has personally chronicled through direct meetings with American Indians of many different tribes. Star People are part of the oral history of many indigenous peoples in North America and around the world. Those who are interested in ufology from a Euro-Centric point of view would be well advised to consider a slightly different perspective. It is fascinating how the actual experiences are quite similar but sometimes the experiencer’s frame of reference and cultural context molds what he or she takes away from the contact with the Star People.
We cover Groundhog’s Day, the meaning of Shamanism, herbal medicines, symbolic practices, and bringing Shamanism into your daily life through mindful traditions. Michael Peter tells us of how he entered this field through his family history and business of undertaking and his first trip to Macchu Picchu. The importance of Nature and its creatures is discussed as is the use of hallucinogenic plants and trance states.
February 2, the day this show was recorded, is Groundhog’s Day, Candlemas and Imbolc. It is also known as a cross-quarters as it is half way between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. At this time of year one can clearly see that the days are getting a bit longer.
Kate Valentine and Fahrusha are pleased and excited to welcome John B. Alexander, Ph.D. to “Shattered Reality”. In the intro to our podcast “paradigm shifting” is prominently mentioned and Dr. Alexander is nothing if not a paradigm shifting individual! His life is so varied and fascinating that it would have taken many more hours to ask him about all of his interests.
Dr. Alexander has written an engrossing book, UFOs, Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities dealing with his adventures in attempting to find out from the inside what the government knows about UFOs. He contends that disclosure has already taken place, UFOs are unarguably real but humanity is asking the wrong questions. His book is comprehensive and well written with a great many dates and details. Dr. Alexander has written a number of other engaging books which can be accessed at his website.
Born in New York, Dr. Alexander entered the army in 1956. He commanded a Special Forces A team in Viet Nam and Thailand and started the Advanced Theoretical Physics Project studying UFOs while still in the Army. After he retired from the Service with the rank of Colonel of Infantry, he worked in the field of non-lethal weaponry at Los Alamos National Labs. He has a Ph.D. in Thanatology, the scientific study of death and the practices associated with it, including the study of the needs of the terminally ill and their families. He is also involved with studying shamanism around the world. There is so much more we would have liked to ask Dr. Alexander. Hopefully he will come back to speak with us again.
Shattered Reality! 