#39. A Story Waiting to Pierce Us: What Now? Kristin Eggen (Norway) and the Wisdom of Ancient People

#39. April 5, 2020. Kristin Eggen is a high-school teacher from Oslo, Noway. She teaches law, religion and philosophy. Kristin and I spoke about her current experiences under a Covid-19 pandemic and self-isolation in her home in Oslo. What she is experiencing and her students? Can we imagine a new economic future? What do ancient cultures and civilizations have to teach us in this moment when all of us sit at home, our lives on pause, looking in the mirror of our own conscience? I start this special podcast show with a reading from a remarkable book by Peter Kingsley "A Story Waiting to Pierce You.' Peter, a Jungian and Greek scholar, reflects on the diaries of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC) who reveals that his inspirations for mathematics and philosophy that has shaped Western civilizations originated from the east, from an indigenous mystic named Abaris who came from Mongolia to teach Pythagoras ancient indigenous wisdom. Kingsley writes "Cultures (and civilizations) are created and destroyed in ecstasy" -- which in Greek means 'to drive out of one's mind' or used by 17c. mystical writers for "a state of rapture that stupefied the body while the soul contemplated divine things," Kingsley notes "For each moment in between (between cultures created or destroyed) there is nothing that keeps a world alive aside from the breath of ecstatics."