This October, a remarkable true story comes to the big screen. I have Tourette syndrome and it makes me tick. Bail! In the film, critics are calling powerful and life affirming. The problem is that people don't know enough about Tourette's. I can sit here, but I can help this lad. Laugh out loud funny and uplifting. That young man would not harm a fly and he makes a damn fine cup of tea. With a brilliant lead performance, it's unmissable.

Hey!

Starring Robert Arameo, Maxine P, Peter Mullen and Shirley Henderson, I swear in Cinemas October 10.

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine.

From medieval mystic Julian of Norwich to countercultural figures of the 1960s, across history, various individuals have felt that they have access to spiritual forces beyond human understanding.

But what drives these transcendent and often ecstatic sensations?

And how are people with a deep connection to the divine, regarded by wider society.

In today's episode, philosopher and author Simon Critchley speaks to Charlotte Hodgman

about his new book, On Mysticism, The Experience of Ecstasy.

Pat's first of all just to set the scene for listeners.

How would you actually explain

what mysticism is? A short definition given by a woman called Evelyn Underhill, who was very

famous in the early 20th century. She wrote a book in 1911 called mysticism, and she defines it as

experience in its most intense form. So it's a kind of experiential

intensity of being lifted up and outside yourself into an experience of ecstasy. There are

much more sort of complex ways of defining it. But that's a neat, short definition.

And is it exclusively a neat, short definition.

And is it exclusively a religious experience?

No. It is an experience which we can associate historically with religion.

I think it's a tendency within religion. It's not a religion. Sometimes people think of mysticism as its own thing.

Mysticism is a tendency within religion, and every religion that I'm aware of that I can think of has a mystical tendency.

And so to that extent, for as long as there have been humans, there's been religion, and there's been something like mysticism at the core of that.

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