In his work, On Mysticism, philosopher Simon Critchley attempts to rehabilitate a term that has arguably been battered from two sides. To the religious dogmatist, it can smell suspiciously like heresy, a threat to institutional power; to the secular rationalist, it reeks of "woo woo" superstition—a consumerist spirituality of gems, crystals, and the distinct smells of incense and patchouli. However, Critchley argues that mysticism is not about magical thinking, obscure theology, or trendy "alternative" lifestyles misappropriating other cultures, but literally about ecstasy.
Critchley returns to the Greek root of ecstasy: ekstasis, meaning "to stand outside". Over the course of just over 300 pages, he posits that we live in an age of the "Buffered Self" (a term borrowed from Charles Taylor): a modern condition where we are trapped inside our own heads, disconnected from the vibrant reality of the world by a protective but isolating shell.
So On Mysticism, in Critchley’s hands, becomes a practical manual for breaking that buffer and returning to that unadulterated, released joy—like many may have felt in their childhoods, free from the burdens of adulting. It is the act of stepping out of the ego to experience a "sheer feeling of aliveness." This is not necessarily about finding God in the traditional, theistic sense but about losing the Self.
This brings to mind the very final episode of the original run of Neon Genesis Evangelion. In Evangelion, the Human Instrumentality Project seeks to dissolve the A.T. Fields (the barriers of the ego) that separate individuals, merging everyone into a single soup of consciousness (LCL). While Critchley focuses on living through this disintegration rather than dissolving into orange goo, the mechanism is the same: the annihilation of the Self. He often cites Simone Weil’s concept of decreation—the active undoing of the creaturely "I" to make space for something else. He suggests that the goal of life is not to build up a personality, but to dismantle it so that reality can flood in and the Godhead (the essence of divinity, rather than a personified God) can be achieved.
Critchley structures the book as a lineage of this unselfing, drawing a direct line from medieval anchorites to modern rock stars. He begins with Julian of Norwich, the 14th-century mystic who famously received a series of visions while on her deathbed. Critchley is fascinated not just by the visions, but by the intellectual rigor she applied to them. He focuses on her vision of a small object, "the size of a hazelnut," which she understands to be "all that is made." Critchley uses this to illustrate how the mystic sees the infinite within the finite. For him, Julian is a master technician of attention. She spent decades analyzing a fleeting moment of insight, proving that mysticism is not a passive wash of emotion but a rigorous discipline of looking and analyzing.
But Critchley’s most provocative move is to drag this discipline into the secular present. He argues that for many of us, the "church" where we practice this self-annihilation is the concert hall or the library. He reads T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm as mystical texts. Dillard, with her terrifying and violent observations of nature, serves as a modern counterpart to Julian, finding the sacred in the raw and often brutal matter of the world.
Perhaps the book's most spirited sections are dedicated to music. Critchley discusses Krautrock and Nick Cave as facilitators of secular mysticism. In the repetitive, trance-like rhythms of Can or Neu, or the emotional exorcism of a Nick Cave concert, we find a modern equivalent to the monastery. We lose ourselves in the noise to find something larger; it is a sonic liturgy that forces the mind to stop its constant chatter.
Mysticism is ultimately a refusal of the disenchanted world. Critchley rejects the idea that a secular age must be a dry, soulless one. By redefining mysticism as a state of heightened attention and self-forgetting, he democratizes the divine.
I enjoyed my time with the book as it is hopeful, suggesting that you do not need a theology to be a mystic; you simply need the courage to abandon your ego. Whether you find that release in a cathedral, a poem, or the drone of a synthesizer is secondary. The point, Critchley insists, is simply to leave the "house of the self" and step outside, where the air is clear and the world is terrifyingly alive.
Many seek this existential ecstasy through addictions like drugs, alcohol, or sex, but Critchley argues these are false exits—temporary numbings rather than true releases. True mysticism must come from within and move us from woe to WONDER. Mysticism is not a doctrine (what you believe) but a practice (how you relate to the world)—specifically, the practice of getting over yourself.
By embracing this, we return to Julian's ultimate consolation:
"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
Isn't that a wonderfully optimistic message to end on?