June 11, 2025 5:00 PM UTC
Simon Critchley has written over twenty books, including studies of Greek tragedy, David Bowie, football, suicide, Shakespeare, how philosophers die, and a novella. He is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and a Director of the Onassis Foundation. As coeditor of The Stone at the New York Times, Critchley showed that philosophy plays a vital role in the public realm.
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Ruby co-founded Advaya in 2015 and Earthed in 2023. She is a community builder, curator, creator and lover of water fascinated by how we relate to the world around us.
Learn moreJoin philosopher Simon Critchley and advaya for a live conversation on mysticism as a radical, transformative force—bridging secular and sacred to inspire joy, justice, and deeper engagement with life.
Simon Critchely describes it as an ecstatic experience that follows deep engagement with the world — a transformation that can take you from “sin to salvation, from restlessness to rest, from misery to joy.” Yet in modern disciplines, mysticism is often dismissed as fanatical and detached from the questions and realities of today. But what if mysticism is precisely what we need right now for deep engagement with life, joy, justice, and the Earth?
In this live conversation, philosopher Simon Critchley joins advaya to discuss the thoughts that catalyzed his new book On Mysticism—which takes us through mystical consciousness, its rootedness in religious experiences, and ways of experiencing secular ecstasy. We will ground these teachings in advaya’s new course with Matthew Fox, which delves into the lives and legacies of radical Christian mystics like Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart and others who stood at the crossroads of contemplation and action.
With this talk, we seek to breathe new meaning into mysticism — reimagining it not just as a byproduct of religious devotion that can only happen with God, but unpacking the ecstatic experiences that mystics describe and how they got there. Indeed, through devoting ourselves to anything — nature, the arts — we may find that mysticism may be exactly what we need to help us live and act with greater awareness and aliveness now.
Together, we ask: Is it possible to live mystically today? Can mysticism offer a response to a world of ecological and spiritual disconnect? Can working towards these ecstatic experiences of joy and beauty be forms of resistance? Can mystical consciousness—what Critchley calls “experience in its most intense form”—lead us not away from the world, as philosophers often skepticize, but deeper into it?
Mystic’s prophetic voices, as Carl Jung suggests, embody “the best of humanity.” In times of upheaval, they have always emerged in ways that feel urgently relevant. This conversation will peel back the philosophical, poetic, and practical layers of mysticism as a transformative path towards a collective that is better equipped to face the times.
Join us for a discussion that bridges secular philosophy and sacred tradition, modern yearning and ancient wisdom, aesthetics and ethics.
Simon Critchley has written over twenty books, including studies of Greek tragedy, David Bowie, football, suicide, Shakespeare, how philosophers die, and a novella. He is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and a Director of the Onassis Foundation. As coeditor of The Stone at the New York Times, Critchley showed that philosophy plays a vital role in the public realm.
Learn moreSimon Critchley has written over twenty books, including studies of Greek tragedy, David Bowie, football, suicide, Shakespeare, how philosophers die, and a novella. He is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and a Director of the Onassis Foundation. As coeditor of The Stone at the New York Times, Critchley showed that philosophy plays a vital role in the public realm.
Ruby co-founded Advaya in 2015 and Earthed in 2023. She is a community builder, curator, creator and lover of water fascinated by how we relate to the world around us.
Learn moreRuby Reed is passionate about bringing people together in offline and online spaces that reframe how we see the world around us, and our role within it, so we recognise our ecological relationality, fall more in love with life, and actively participate in its ecological and spiritual regeneration. She is a community builder and a key figure in the UK alternative education space, where she takes an integrated and holistic approach with her work spanning a vast ecosystem and network from climate to psychedelics. Together with her sister Christabel Reed, Ruby has founded a number of organisations. Ruby is the co-founder of transformative education and experience platform Advaya (founded 2015), as well as the co-founder and Director of Initiative Earth Charity and its Ecosystem Restoration and nature skills platform Earthed (founded 2023) and climate action campaign EcoResolution (2018-2022). She is a core team member of Medicine Festival since its inception in 2019, where she curates and hosts the talks stage and speakers across site and part of Be The Earth Foundation’s Flow Funding network. In 2018-2020 she led wellbeing across environmental action protests in the UK, setting up marquees and programmes in key sites across London as well as retreats for activists and changemakers. Ruby has had the enormous privilege of learning directly from wisdom carriers, philosophers, indigenous leaders, academics, visionaries, economists and scientists from around the world. Her main interests are metaphysics and consciousness and how our relationship with these shapes our worldviews and cultures as a species. The idea of “transform your mind, transform your world” guides her work. She is passionate about the ocean and has been a yoga practitioner, diver and swimmer since childhood. Between 2014 and 2021 she taught yoga as a qualified yoga therapist, led nature-based retreats, and was also a competitive freediver. These days she simply enjoys swimming on the surface, which keeps her connected and happy. Before starting her own projects, Ruby was an advisor, researcher and writer for leading art collectors in the UK and completed two Masters degrees in History of Art at Edinburgh University (ideal beauty and the body in the dawning of the enlightenment c.17th) and The Courtauld Institute (Latin American countercultures c.20th). She was set on academia and due to start a PhD at Oxford before having a change of heart and took a role in Private Sales at the auction house Christie’s in Private Sales (2012-2015).