Mysticism and Embodiment

Cultivating the mystical experience and the contemplative traditions that underpin it can have profound ethical consequences. By taking this path, alongside or instead of the analytic post-enlightenment route more familiar in the West, mysticism can shape the way that we relate our consciousness to our lived experience. Contemporary society is a hostile place in which to hold onto ideas of hope, not least from an ethical standpoint. The anxiety that pervades this point in our shared history squeezes the opportunities to find escape or to reach a place beyond the immediate.Mysticism and Embodimentuses the body as a site from which to argue for a new understanding of this reality, framing transcendent experience in the context of existential phenomenology. In this context, the role of the mystical imagination comes to the fore, showing its immense value for individual and social healing, as well as our understanding of the other and how we can talk about new possibilities in ethical philosophy.