Description

‘Philosopher Simon Critchley’s painstaking attempt to explore transcendent experience provides a fascinating overview of Christianity’s great outliers’ ‘Book of the Day’, Guardian

‘A playful, profound new study of mysticism … generous and animated’ Brian Dillon

Mysticism is about existential ecstasy – an experience of heightening one’s senses and self into a sheer feeling of aliveness. Mystical experiences offer us a practical way to open our thoughts and deepen the sense of our lives, whether through a mainstream connection to God or by taking part in mind-altering experiences.

Here, Simon Critchley explores the history and practice of mysticism, from its origins in Eastern and Western religion, through its association with esoteric and occult knowledge, and up to the ecstatic modernism of T.S. Eliot and others. Through a discussion of the lives of famous mystics, like Julian of Norwich and Jesus Christ, Critchley reveals how embracing the spectrum of mystical experience can refresh our thinking and help us live deeper and freer lives.

Philosophical and playful, analytical and inventive, On Mysticism is a definitive account of humanity’s quest to understand the divine, and a call to thinkers everywhere to broaden our minds to life larger than our selves.

Publisher Review

Why mysticism? Evelyn Underhill, a fascinating and slightly forgotten figure, who did so much to popularize mysticism in the early 20th Century, defines it as ‘experience in its most intense form’. My offer to the reader in this book is simple: wouldn’t you like to have a taste of this intensity? Wouldn’t you like to be lifted up and out of yourself into a sheer feeling of aliveness, both your life and those of the creatures that surround you? If so, it might be well worthwhile trying to learn what is meant by mysticism and how it can shift, elevate and deepen the sense of our lives. — Simon Critchley * On Mysticism *