In an episode titled "Episode #215 ... How Mysticism is missing from our modern lives," Stephen West—hosting the Philosophies podcast—takes on one of the most loaded words in contemporary discourse: mysticism. His central claim is striking and counterintuitive: we've been told mysticism is irrational, delusional, the opposite of philosophy—but that framing itself is a historical misunderstanding created by Enlightenment thinkers like Kant who saw themselves as "the policemen of thinking." West, drawing heavily from Simon Critchley's new book, wants to open our minds to what we might be missing when we dismiss mystical experience as merely religious nonsense.
The Framing We Never Questioned
West begins by exploring Heidegger's later work after Being and Time—what he calls "releasement" or "letting be." This isn't about willing ourselves onto reality in the traditional philosophical sense. It's about freedom from the will. He paints a picture of modern life as fundamentally transactional: we frame everything in terms of subjects and objects, optimizing and manipulating people to produce the most efficient outcomes. Then he poses the question that animates this entire episode:
"What would happen if someone decided there was more to life than doing that all the time?"
This is the heart of what West is exploring—specifically, whether there's something meaningful in modern existence that we've lost by reducing everything to efficiency metrics and utilitarian self-improvement. He's not making a case for mysticism through faith or theology; he's asking whether our current technological framing of reality has buried an entire category of human experience.
The Historical Misunderstanding
The most revelatory part of this episode involves how the term "mystic" came into existence. West writes:
"Simon critchley says in the book Mystic is a word that was actually created fairly recently around the 17 1900s it is created in a very specific cultural climate that was hostile towards the more religious approach that many of these Mystics were immersed in."
Critchley's argument is that philosophers like Kant positioned themselves as guardians against "dogma and fanaticism," effectively casting anyone who reported mystical experiences as irrational charlatans. The term became almost an insult in philosophy circles—something West describes as a fundamental historical accident rather than an accurate description of what mysticism actually involves.
The episode's strongest move is dispelling this misconception by showing who mystics actually were:
"Most of these people throughout history that we would call Mystics today didn't in fact think of themselves as Mystics... none of these people were irrational like they weren't born you know looked around them."
Instead, West presents medieval Christian mystics like St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross as people who devoted "multiple hours every day of their life to contemplative prayer and rational meditation"—cabalists spending years decoding Hebrew scripture with deep rational engagement, Sufis using structured repetitive practices to cultivate stillness. This isn't the picture of irrational people hiding behind Flowery words.
What Is Mysticism Actually?
West introduces a working definition from theologian Bernard Mcin , distinguishing two types of mystical experience: one where someone "transcends the self and experiences a feeling of unity or communion with the Divine" and another where "the self dissolves or is pushed aside similarly making room for an experience where the normal lines are blurred between ourselves and something greater that we're all a part of."
He then describes what these experiences actually feel like in practice—from deep peace to ecstasy, love, awe, connection. Most significantly:
"Significant in a way that feels impossible to fully put into words now after getting to he Mystics will often report all sorts of emotions that then flood over them from a deep feeling of peace to ecstasy to love to awe and connection to even fear as they're hit with something that feels on one hand so alien to their normal everyday experience but deeply real most of them say it feels more real than reality."
This is the phenomenological core—experiences reported as "more real than reality" itself. West uses this to push back against the skeptic's framing: are we going to file these reports under "delusional monkey category" or acknowledge they might be describing something genuinely transformative?
The Secular Question
The episode pivots to what matters most for secular, scientifically-minded listeners: is this type of experience available to you? Not as religious belief, but as aesthetic transformation. Critchley asks:
"Using secular language here to start out if this was a type of aesthetic experience that was available to you as a person in theory would you be interested in experiencing it if you could would you want to feel an utterly transformative connection to the Divine if that was something that was possible."
West anticipates the objection—that there's no evidence for any Divine being—and uses it against itself. The problem isn't whether someone can "show me the man in the sky with a staff"—it's whether we're willing to acknowledge that when experiences are described as phenomenologically more real than ordinary reality, we might be missing something crucial about what experience actually is.
Counterarguments
A fair critique: West leans heavily on Critchley's interpretation without independently verifying how actual mystics across different traditions describe their experiences. The episode also moves fast—jumping from Heidegger to medieval Christian mystics to Jewish cabbalists to Sufi practices—but doesn't fully explore whether these traditions genuinely share common ground or whether we're grouping disparate phenomena under one label for convenience.
"What if somebody didn't buy the whole sales pitch that you're aad bad person if you aren't constantly trying to educate yourself about the problems of 7 and A2 billion people"
This is West's rhetorical challenge: what if meaning isn't reducible to activism? What if there's something richer in direct experience than optimization frameworks?
Bottom Line
West makes a compelling case that mysticism has been unfairly caricatured—not as irrationalism, but as a category we can finally approach without the Enlightenment's baggage. His strongest point is simple and devastating: the people we call mystics weren't mystical at all—they were highly disciplined rationalists who devoted themselves to contemplative practice with everything they had. The weakest element is that he moves fast across traditions without fully demonstrating what unifies them beyond language about "unity" and "dissolution." But for readers willing to question whether modern life has lost something essential through its own efficiency framing, this episode provides a genuinely different angle on what we might be missing.