Chosen by Andrew Miller as a Book of the Year in the Daily Mail '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.

Interesting and intelligent ... Witty and fresh ... 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 * New Statesman *
Critchley displays strong scholarship ... the book's power is that it treats the topic with rigour and rationality' * Economist *
On Mysticism is a meandering delight, as quietly soul-nourishing as it is brain-stretching... Critchley is a generous enthusiast, as unpretentious as he is distinguished....For all his readability, he is a serious academic. You have to pay careful attention. But it pays off: this book is a real intellectual adventure. * Financial Times *
Insightful and imaginative ... remarkable ... [Critchley] hopes to instil a healthy dose of mystical weirdness in mainstream philosophy * Times Literary Supplement *
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 joyous book ... [an] engaging study of mysticism [that's] well worth reading * Scotsman *
Ambitious * Washington Post *
[A] playful and profound new study of mysticism ... A lucid, genial guide -- Brian Dillon * 4Columns *
Highly original and enjoyable ... Critchley is determined to strip himself of both scepticism and irony in order to plainly ask how we can all increase our daily "capacity for belief and for joy." * BookForum *
Critchley, who respects mystics not just as visionaries but as excellent writers, argues that they can show us sad moderns how to pass out of yourself and into some wider unity * UnHerd *
What [On Mysticism] does more than anything is to turn us back to the original writing and images and our own thinking. Simon Critchley should be thanked for that. He is a writer but the best kind of teacher too * Bookmunch *
Exceptional and riveting to read ... On Mysticism takes seriously a subject most secular philosophers have dismissed out of hand * Buzz Magazine *
Critchley's inquiry spans centuries and sensibilities; it is ancient and fiercely contemporary; it is practical and existential; it is high and low ... He questions and reiterates, plumbing deeper into the great beating heart of the world ... Critchley's offer to the reader is simple: Wouldn't you like to feel the transfigurative power of self-annihilation? The rapturous ecstasy of love? Wouldn't you like to glimpse the ravishing far-near * Chicago Review of Books *

Simon Critchley has written over twenty books, including studies of Greek tragedy, David Bowie, football, suicide, Shakespeare, how philosophers die, and a novella. He is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and a Director of the Onassis Foundation. As co-editor of The Stone at The New York Times, Critchley showed that philosophy plays a vital role in the public realm.