Everyday Ecstasy - Hardcover

Laski, Marghanita

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500012342 ISBN 13: 9780500012345

Publisher: Thames and Hudson, 1980

Synopsis

At one time or another, most if not all of us have what might be called a mystical experience, or a moment of ecstasy. This can be triggered off by the sudden apprehension of a beautiful landscape, by love of a person or an object, by the frightening or sublime aspects of a natural phenomenon, or indeed by a multitude of events or states of consciousness which seem to empty the mind of its usual preoccupations or thoughts and fill it instead with short-lived sensations of awe, fulfillment or joy. Most people shrug off such experiences once they have passed; others cling to them and try to repeat and to live by them. This dichotomy in people’s reactions to ecstasy leads to curious and controversial modes of social behavior, and can also be used as a mechanism for manipulating or directing people’s minds. Marghanita Laski published in 1961 a book called Ecstasy which was enthusiastically received and widely discussed. In it she assembled data gathered from a number of individuals on the ecstatic experience, its nature and its triggers. In the present work, she enlarges the scope of her investigation to examine the actual and potential results of a reliance on ecstasy or mystical experience as contrasted with conduct based on reason and analysis. This is very much a book of today, a book for today. It addresses itself wittily and gracefully to problems often subsumed under that cant term, ‘the generation gap’; it weighs the values of ‘the simple life’, the return to nature, as compared to the more sophisticated life of intellectual quest and attainment.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson
• Publication date: 1980
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0500012342
• ISBN 13: 9780500012345
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160