Overview

The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear, is a dead man. - Albert Einstein For millennia, mystics' explorations of reality were considered a religious quest. This changed during the Victorian era, when researchers began redefining mystical experiences as psychological phenomena. No longer strictly religious, mystical experiences came to be seen as grounded in anomalous perceptions, involving experiences or events that provide a breakthrough from our everyday view of reality to another more insightful level. Keith Hill proposes that anomalous experiences lie at the heart of the new mysticism. In this illuminating study, he examines the historical and cultural developments that have contributed to a radical shift in mystical practice. He also weighs what is required for the fostering of what Einstein called ""mystical wonderment"" to be sustained. Keith Hill is a New Zealand writer whose work explores the boundaries between mysticism, history, science, religion and psychology. He is a three-time winner of the Ahston Wylie Award, New Zealand's premiere prize for spiritual writing.

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Every culture has stories of saints meeting angels and devils, the author writes in his latest nonfiction work, sages rising into heaven, shamans transforming into animals, and mystics entering transcendental trance states in which their awareness expands beyond the usual body-centered limits. What lies beyond those limits is the main subject of Hill's (The Kosmic Web, 2015, etc.) volume, in which he attempts to present a more balanced view of both the materialist, verifiable reality all around his readers and the immaterial, subjective experiences they feel every day--what he refers to as the sound of two hands clapping. The book explores typical New Age phenomena like remote viewing and out-of-body experiences--both the author's own and those of others--regularly reminding readers that openness to enchantment drives the mystical outlook. He focuses on personal perceptions during heightened states of awareness. Hill also takes readers on a cogent and inviting tour of mysticism throughout the last 3,000 years and its intricate connections with the births of both philosophy and science--including the long pursuit of alchemy, which preoccupied a number of great scientists, such as Isaac Newton. The author's goal in all of this is to encourage his readers to acknowledge subjectivity equally with objectivity, insisting that only when the spooky is normalised as just another way to experience reality, will we be able to accept that our existence encompasses two hands clapping. ... An upbeat but uneven treatise that tries to create a level playing field for science and spirituality. - Kirkus Reviews

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