Mysticism Mysticism

Mysticism

    • Pre-Order
    • Expected Oct 29, 2024
    • $11.99
    • Pre-Order
    • $11.99

Publisher Description

A probing, inspiring exploration of mysticism not as religious practice but as a mode of experience and way of life by one of the most provocative philosophical thinkers of our time.

Why mysticism? It has been called “experience in its most intense form,” and in his new book the philosopher Simon Critchley poses a simple question to the reader: Wouldn’t you like to taste 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. 

Mysticism is not primarily a theoretical issue. It's not a question of religious belief but of felt experience and daily practice. A rough and ready definition of mysticism is that it is a way of systematically freeing yourself of your standard habits, your usual fancies and imaginings so as to see what is there and stand with what is there ecstatically. Mysticism is the practical possibility of the achievement of a fluid openness between thought and existence. 

This is a book about trying to get outside oneself, to lose oneself, while knowing that the self is not something that can ever be fully lost. It is also a book about Julian of Norwich, Anne Carson, Annie Dillard, T.S. Eliot, and Nick Cave. It shows how listening to music can be secular worship. It is a book full of learning, puzzlement, pleasure, and wonder. It opens the door to mysticism not as something unworldly and unimaginable, but as a way of life.

GENRE
Nonfiction
AVAILABLE
2024
October 29
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
336
Pages
PUBLISHER
New York Review Books
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
Suicide Suicide
2015
The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments
2015
The Book of Dead Philosophers The Book of Dead Philosophers
2009
Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments: A Stone Reader Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments: A Stone Reader
2017
Question Everything: A Stone Reader Question Everything: A Stone Reader
2022
Stay, Illusion! Stay, Illusion!
2013