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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.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
October 29, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781681378251
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781681378251
- File size: 31630 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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September 15, 2024
The quest for illumination, examined by an English philosopher. Critchley, who admits to being "temperamentally a mystic," celebrates the "cultivation of practices which allow you to free yourself of your standard habits...and stand with what is thereecstatically," a process that has come to be known, sometimes pejoratively, as mysticism. The word itself, he reveals, emerged from the 17th century's "modern, enlightened worldview" to describe "an existential ecstasy that is outside and more than the conscious self." This feeling of ecstasy, Critchley asserts, has the potential of liberating us "from misery, from melancholy, from heaviness of soul, from the slough of despond, from mental leadenness." Although mystics report intense experiences of what they call God, Critchley argues that mysticism can transcend religion to be primarily aesthetic: joy and rapture can be inspired by art, poetry, and, especially for him, music. In his journey into mysticism, Critchley draws on the writings of mystics, including Julian of Norwich, Bernard of Clairvaux, Margery Kempe, Meister Eckhart, and contemporary writers such as Annie Dillard and T.S. Eliot. For Critchley, Dillard'sHoly the Firm and Eliot'sFour Quartets explore "the relation between art and the divine." Both writers struggle to convey "some dimension of experience that cannot be expressed verbally and is perhaps closer to music." Critchley is moved by any music that "triggers the energy of religious conversion": the post-punk band the Teardrop Explodes, for example, and the Krautrock group Neu! "We know that the modern world is a violently disenchanted swirl shaped by the speculative flux of money that presses in on all sides," Critchley writes. "Yet, when we listen to the music that we love, it is as if the world were reanimated, bursting with sense, and utterly alive." Erudite and impassioned, Critchley's intimate examination of mysticism speaks to a yearning for personal transformation and nothing less than enchantment. A stirring, lyrical meditation on transfiguration.COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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