Living with a wild god
Subtitle: a non-believer's search for the truth about everything
By: Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher: Granta; Granta Books
Published: 2014
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 237
ISBN-13: 9781847084095; 9781783780136; 9781847087393
Copyright date: 2014
Subjects: Self-actualization (Psychology); Philosophy and religion; Literature
Description: As a teenager Barbara Ehrenreich was an atheist and a rationalist, determined to understand the meaning of life. During this time she would regularly have minor experiences of dissociation, of seeing the world in a strange light. Then when she was 17, while on a skiing trip, she had an overwhelming, cataclysmic 'mystical' experience, far more rapturous and ecstatic than anything she had had before. The rapture would return later in life, but never with the same intensity. These episodes, and the rational Ehrenreich's ongoing argument with them, are at the core of this unique book. To try to understand the experience of some sort of force, 'out there', trying to communicate with her, Ehrenreich, a renowned investigative writer and self-described myth-buster, reads neurology, theology, philosophy, and accounts of other people's mystical experiences. Interwoven with her research is the story of the precocious adolescent that she once was, and a moving memoir of the life that shaped her.
Notes: Also issued online.
Table of contents: title: The situation; title: Typing practice; title: The trees step out of the forest; title: A land without details; title: All, all alone; title: Encounter in Lone Pine; title: Breakdown; title: Anomalous oscillations; title: Suicide and guilt; title: Joining the species; title: Return to the quest; title: The nature of the other.