Mind the Shift Podcast

Independent researchers are putting together a puzzle that is beginning to reveal a vastly different history than the one we are told in school. Especially concerning how far back in time civilization actually goes.

One of those independent researchers is Brien Foerster.

His fascination with the history of human civilization and culture began when he grew up in western Canada. He later moved to Hawaii and eventually to Peru, where he now lives. His quest for the origins of civilization has taken him to a hundred countries, and he organizes tours to megalithic sites in the former Inca lands, Egypt, Turkey and other places.

”I have followed my passion”, he says.

Brien has written 37 books about megalithic sites and hidden history, and he is an avid youtuber.

He is convinced, like many other maverick researchers, that the advanced megalithic structures around the world were not built by the cultures mainstream scientists say did it, but by much earlier and technologically much more advanced civilizations that perished.

In official history, it was the dynastic Egyptians who built the great pyramids and the Inca who built the most impressive walls and other structures in Peru and Bolivia where gigantic blocks of hard stone were put in place with exquisite precision.

But even the mainstream acknowledges that neither the Inca nor the dynastic Egyptians knew how to use steel, and much less diamond reinforced drills or saw blades. They only utilized bronze tools, and you cannot cut granite with bronze.

”The evidence is staring you in the face”, Brien Foerster says.

There is also growing evidence that a series of cataclysms occurred roughly 12,000 to 13,000 years ago which – in the view of Foerster and others – wiped out the civilizations of the megalithic builders.

One compelling circumstance is that at least 200 cultures around the world are talking about the destruction of their world by a flood of some kind.

Brien Foerster’s foremost contribution to the understanding of our origins is probably his research on the mysterious elongated skulls in Paracas, Peru.

The mainstream researchers say they are merely the result of head binding and other forms of cranial deformation. But that doesn’t make sense when you study the oldest of them, which seem natural: their cranial volume is 25 percent larger than in a normal homo sapiens skull, a suture line is lacking, the eye sockets are larger and the foramen magnum, the hole connecting the skull with the neck, is placed two centimeters further back, presumably to balance the larger skulls.

Several of the skulls have been DNA analyzed, and it turns out they are related to other elongated skulls that have been found in the area of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea

This challenges the standard story of how America was populated.

”The enigma is that they suddenly appear, and then they disappear.”

Brien Foerster has probably investigated this enigma more profoundly than anybody else. Will he ever find the answer to who the people with the elongated skulls were?

”I haven’t given up on it yet.”

Foerster is facing increasing limitations around his research in Peru and Bolivia, but Egypt is slowly opening up more.

In ten years time, a lot more eyes will be looking at the signs of a hidden ancient human history, Brien thinks.

Here is Brien Foerster’s website.

Below are four Youtube channels dedicated to alternative history that Brien endorses:

Uncharted X

Bright Insight

Jahannah James

History with Kayleigh

One of the many planned questions I never ask in my pretty intense conversation with film director Ninja Thyberg is this:

To state that gender and sexuality are just social constructs is to me like throwing all intuitive capability in the trash. Don’t you sometimes feel we don’t let ourselves be human in this politicized society?

My guess is that Ninja would partly agree but also not quite understand what I mean.

The hot spots of our conversation have to do with our somewhat different views on the significance of biology (and/or nonphysical aspects) vs social structures.

But differences in points of view make for an interesting human encounter, right?

Ninja Thyberg is an intelligent, brave and curious person who very early in life began pondering sexuality and gender roles. She wanted to explore the drivers behind pornography, for instance.

After a series of acclaimed short movies, her first full length movie, ”Pleasure”, premieres in theaters across Europe this fall. It is about a 19-year-old Swedish girl who goes to Los Angeles to try to become the next big star in the porn industry. The film is partly brutally realistic. Although it does not show explicit sex (and the only full frontals are of men) it still contains several crude scenes.

”Pleasure” has many layers, and despite the rawness of the industry that is arguably what many viewers would expect, it also shows the friendship, drive and humor that exists among the female stars, and also an everydayness and kindness.

Ninja says she almost regrets that she portrayed the porn industry in such a multifaceted way. Because almost everybody seems to like the film!

”And that’s not only a good thing”, she says.

”I wanted to be nuanced, and maybe the film is too nuanced, so nobody is really provoked. Right now I’m just afraid it’s going to be forgotten, like ’yeah, great film, very nuanced’, and that’s that”, Ninja says.

I hardly think her worry is warranted.

Thyberg was always drawn to the topic of pornography because it is taboo and nobody wants to talk about it.

”I have been provoked by the hypocrisy in our culture, where people watch so much porn and no one admits it. It takes place in kind of a parallel universe. It’s like something that itches and the doctor says don’t scratch, that makes me want to scratch it even more.”

From there we venture into a more general gender discussion.

”Sexuality is built from the cultural context and that is constantly changing”, Ninja says.

”I know from my own experience that it is possible to change your sexuality. It is what your brain is used to.”

I ask about some differences in sexuality that seem to be there, according to studies, like the ability to switch it off and on and how much it is visually oriented. Ninja modifies her view a bit and says we might be born with some differences on a group level.

”Fifteen years ago I thought everything was a social construct and that there were no biological differences. Now I realize it is a combination.”

But she also says:

”Of course men are more visually oriented, because they are triggered visually by the male gaze everywhere.”

Delving a bit deeper into this aspect, Ninja says that men who want sex but don’t get it are more vulnerable than women who want sex but don’t get it, and she has an interesting reasoning behind that.

”There are some privileges in being a woman in this culture that are seldom talked about in feminism”, she says.

”Things that male losers in the system don’t have. If the feminist movement doesn’t recognize this, the counter reactions from these men are just going to increase.”

The near-death experience of Dr Eben Alexander is astonishing in its depth, and it is especially interesting since Dr Alexander was part of the mainstream scientific community. He was in a week-long coma, and his brain was all but destroyed. He shouldn’t have been able to experience anything. Yet he visited realms that he describes as far more real than this physical plane. Against all odds he recovered to tell about it. His story has been the key for many other scientists to open the door to a non-physical reality.

”The reason the scientific community has taken my experience so seriously has to do with the documentation of the damage to my neocortex. It should have, by all principles of modern neuroscience, eliminated all but the most rudimentary forms of consciousness. But what I experienced was an extraordinary expansion of consciousness”, says Dr Eben Alexander in this episode.

”And my recovery has no explanation in modern Western science.”

Alexander tells about a timeless existence, first in what he describes as the realm of the earthworm’s eye view. Later a light which served as a portal ushered him into an ”ultra-real gateway valley”. ”I was merely a speck of awareness on a butterfly wing. There were millions of other butterflies. The valley was fertile and lush, no sign of death or decay, there was a crystal clear pool, sparkling waterfalls. It was a real paradise. I had no memory of Eben Alexander’s life. I had no language. I just had this phenomenal experience, which is sharp and clear in my memory even to this day, twelve years later.”

In the gateway valley Eben Alexander was accompanied by a soul who conveyed a profound message: ”You are deeply loved and cherished forever, you have nothing to fear, you will be taken care of.”

”I cannot tell you how comforting and validating that message was. It basically welcomed me home.”

When he reached what he describes as the core realm, language fails almost completely. ”I often use analogies. It was like standing on the edge of a black hole, on the event horizon, where time has stopped and the universe has crystalized.”

Couldn’t it have been a vivid dream? No, says Dr Eben Alexander:

”This existence is dreamlike compared to that. That is far crisper, far more alive, far more real. And modern neuroscience will tell you that if we are to have a dream or hallucination, the details of that experience must be assembled in some part of the neocortex. My neocortex was off, that’s documented.”

For all of this to make sense, says Dr Alexander, you must realize that a huge part of how it all works is reincarnation. ”The scientific support for reincarnation is overwhelming. At the University of Virginia, over 2.500 children’s memories of past lives have been discerned objectively. It completely violates conventional materialistic neuroscience, but that’s because conventional materialistic neuroscience is completely wrong.”

”The scientific community is shifting very rapidly. Interviewers used to try to set me up with a materialist scientist that represented ’the other side’, but it got harder and harder to find anybody that had anything meaningful to say from that camp.”

Dr Alexander’s website features his books Proof of Heaven, The Map of Heaven and Living in a Mindful Universe (with Karen Newell).

He is an adviser to the Galileo Commisson, which advocates ”exploring and expanding the frontiers of science, medicine and spirituality”.