'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.

'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.

'A significant and courageous invitation to think again about the kinds of thinking that matter; the kinds of thinking that keep us awake' Rowan Williams

Mysticism has been called 'experience at its most intense form', and here philosopher Simon Critchley asks: wouldn't you like to taste this intensity? Wouldn't you like to be lifted up and out of yourself?

Mysticism is not a question of religious belief but of felt experience and daily practice. It is a way of freeing yourself of your standard habits, fancies and imagining so as to see what is there and stand with what is there ecstatically. It is the achievement of a fluid openness between thought and existence.

This is a book about Julian of Norwich and medieval mystics that also ranges through the work of Anne Carson, Annie Dillard and T.S. Eliot. It looks at Nick Cave and German krautrock and shows how music can be secular worship. It opens the door to mysticism not as something unworldly and unimaginable, but as a way of life.

'A significant and courageous invitation to think again about the kinds of thinking that matter; the kinds of thinking that keep us awake' Rowan Williams

Mysticism has been called 'experience at its most intense form', and here philosopher Simon Critchley asks: wouldn't you like to taste this intensity? Wouldn't you like to be lifted up and out of yourself?

Mysticism is not a question of religious belief but of felt experience and daily practice. It is a way of freeing yourself of your standard habits, fancies and imagining so as to see what is there and stand with what is there ecstatically. It is the achievement of a fluid openness between thought and existence.

This is a book about Julian of Norwich and medieval mystics that also ranges through the work of Anne Carson, Annie Dillard and T.S. Eliot. It looks at Nick Cave and German krautrock and shows how music can be secular worship. It opens the door to mysticism not as something unworldly and unimaginable, but as a way of life.