The Concept of Anxiety
All of Kierkegaard's books have either a preface, dedication, or prayer at the beginning. This book includes a lengthy introduction. "The Concept of Anxiety" was published on exactly the same date as "Prefaces", June 17, 1844. Both books deal with Hegel’s idea of mediation. Mediation is a common thread throughout Kierkegaard’s works. His work up to this point was to show that faith was being mediated by knowledge. Here he takes up the questions of sin and guilt.
Ego death
Concepts and ideas from mysticism and bohemianism were inherited by the Beat Generation. When Aldous Huxley helped popularize the use of psychedelics, starting with "The Doors of Perception", published in 1954, Huxley also promoted a set of analogies with eastern religions, as described in "The Perennial Philosophy." This book helped inspire the 1960s belief in a revolution in western consciousness and included the "Tibetan Book of the Dead" was one of the sources. Similarly, Alan Watts, in his opening statement on mystical experiences in "This Is It," draws parallels with Richard Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, describing the "central core" of the experience as