Be Mythical

This week's show is with Terje Simonsen. Terje G. Simonsen is a Norwegian Historian of Ideas and non-fiction author, specializing in the esoteric and occult. He is educated at the University of Oslo, where he also has taught introductory courses on philosophical and literary works.

His dissertation on the anthroposophical journal Janus received much acclaim and was released as a book in 2001. In the prestigious series The Cultural Library and The World’s Holy Scriptures, Simonsen has published essays on I and Thou, the mystically inspired main work by the dialogue philosopher Martin Buber, and The First Book of Enoch, an esoteric text from antiquity. Simonsen has received several grants, and is a full member of ESSWE, the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. - In addition, Simonsen is educated in gestalt therapy and psychosynthesis, and his varied career has also included stints in psychiatry, kindergarten, museums, security, catering etc. Today he works as a freelance writer. Simonsen is also a café aficionado, salsa dancer, amateur pianist and chess player.

Since childhood Simonsen has been fascinated by ‘magical’ phenomena as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and healing—an interest based on some peculiar experiences of his own as well as strange stories told by friends and family. Later, this fascination led to extensive forays into esoteric and occult traditions, where such phenomena are not seen as chimera but as part of an expanded consciousness, and also into the science about such phenomena, i.e. parapsychology. The result is the present book, an entertaining, colorful and multifaceted good read, endorsed by several of the world’s foremost experts in the field as well as a number of other authors and critics.

In this conversation, a part two to our last conversation which was about the mental internet - Terje’s metaphor for the collective unconsciousness, Terje and I explored how we can actually use it! We spoke about several of the powerful and also practical uses of the mental internet and went deep into military use and then what we might call personal growth or soul work in the ways described by Jung.

We’d love to know what YOU think about this week's show. Let’s carry on the conversation… please leave a comment below or share in our fb group.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • Just like with the actual internet, we can use the mental internet in so many ways to download, transmit and receive important information

  • Understanding how such vastly different field as the military and Jungian depth psychology have both harnessed the mental internet for profoundly efficacious purposes, really helps to ground it into something way beyond something that’s just fun or nonsense

  • I love Terje’s description of “Finger tip feeling’, we need to learn how to resensitise and open to receive the sometimes subtle ways the mental internet transmits

Resources and stuff that we spoke about:

Thank you for listening!

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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan

Direct download: Terje_2_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:57am EST