Curated playlist
20th-century mystics
- Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Luis Borges directed Argentina's National Library while completely blind.
- Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle once bowled out the famous cricketer W. G. Grace and wrote a poem about it.
- Philip K. DickPhilip K. Dick died four months before Blade Runner opened. He never saw the film that made his name famous.
- Hermann HesseHermann Hesse's biggest audience came after he died. His novels became U.S. paperback bestsellers by the mid-1960s.
- Erwin SchrödingerErwin Schrödinger formulated his wave equation at a Swiss sanatorium in Arosa. He was ill with tuberculosis.
- Aldous HuxleyAldous Huxley died the same day as John F. Kennedy, and almost nobody noticed. C. S. Lewis died that afternoon too.
- Alexander ScriabinComposer Alexander Scriabin died in 1915 from a pimple on his lip. It turned septic within days, and he was 43.
- Deepak ChopraDeepak Chopra sold 137,000 copies of one book within 24 hours of appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show in July 1993. That figure comes from the physician and author Paul Offit, who adds that sales reached 400,000 by the end of the week.…
- Colin WilsonColin Wilson finished his book The Outsider while sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath.
- Eric GutkindEinstein told philosopher Eric Gutkind the Bible was "a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends."
- Alan WattsAlan Watts resigned as an Episcopal priest in August 1950. He later became a leading voice of Zen in America.