Varieties of Religious Experience

Rating:
Summary: A unique and fascinating book
Review: 1st Review: Important, illuminating, readable, though over-long. I regrettably felt it necessary to skip some of the later sections to get to the last couple, which are worth reading on their own. A necessary antidote to excessively "rationalist" views of religion. Atheists (of which I am one) need to read this book! Uniquely valuable and well worth reading again, at least in part. Read 9/16/90

2nd Review: Very worthwhile reading, insightful, almost consistently interesting and informative, and even persuasive that there is "something to" religious experience. The conclusion is useful in drawing science as far as possible in the direction of granting validity to religious experience. That is, he sort of equates the experience of communion with God with the awareness of the unconscious by the conscious mind. Worth reading, though a more recent treatment (psychology of religion, say) would help--if there is such a thing to compare with this. This time I read the whole thing. Read 4/25/99

Rating:
Summary: A Classic Worthy of the Word
Review: A hundred years after its first publication, James' "Varieties of Religious Experience" is still probably the best place to start a study of the psychology of religion. Based on lectures delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-2, it is supplemented with an astonishing wealth of extracts from religious writings. Although understandably biased toward Western, specifically Christian traditions, it is breathtaking in its scope. Nowhere else will you find such a wide ranging and thorough survey of all those experiences and attitudes - mystical, emotional, ethical, visionary - that we term 'religious'. You will never get around to reading all of the authors quoted in this book, so this is the place to sample them.

Some readers will approach this work as believers seeking clarification, others as skeptics seeking to understand. Their viewpoint may be philosophical or theological or psychological. All will be rewarded. Critics voted this among the best 100 books of the twentieth century. If you want insight into humanity's religious dimension, it should be your number one choice.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic Worthy of the Word
Review: A hundred years after its first publication, James' "Varieties of Religious Experience" is still probably the best place to start a study of the psychology of religion. Based on lectures delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-2, it is supplemented with an astonishing wealth of extracts from religious writings. Although understandably biased toward Western, specifically Christian traditions, it is breathtaking in its scope. Nowhere else will you find such a wide ranging and thorough survey of all those experiences and attitudes - mystical, emotional, ethical, visionary - that we term 'religious'. You will never get around to reading all of the authors quoted in this book, so this is the place to sample them.

Some readers will approach this work as believers seeking clarification, others as skeptics seeking to understand. Their viewpoint may be philosophical or theological or psychological. All will be rewarded. Critics voted this among the best 100 books of the twentieth century. If you want insight into humanity's religious dimension, it should be your number one choice.

Rating:
Summary: Pure Religious Experience
Review: A timeless and proufound book! Whatever you believe, there is much to be had in the Varieties. James weaves through the experiences of many different individuals, clarifying and illuminating both their inner and practical meaning. Decidedly, the book focuses on mystics, gnostics, the extremely devout and the chronically depressed at the exclusion of more mundane religious experiences. A very interesting bunch. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the book: One of the depressed characters James mentions is none other than James himself! Similar to his father, Henry Sr., William had a psychological breakdown at about the age of thirty. As James describes it in his memoirs and letters, the nature of the breakdown was such that he had lost faith in free-will. As he asks in his psychology, are we merely automaton slaves to our underlying biology, or do we have the ability to act independently and free? A quagmire any relentless self-examining philosopher could get hung up on. And James was just that - relentless in self-examination. Indeed, his quest for the truth was epic. You can never go wrong reading anything he wrote. Always well-thought-out, clear and penetrating. This man illuminates everything he touches.

Rating:
Summary: rich with spiritual experiences....
Review: A topnotch compilation, written in James's clear and humorous prose, of the unusual spiritual encounters he collected from many different people over a period of years. You may resonate to some of them and feel affirmed that 1. you weren't losing your mind after all, and 2. that there are indeed perfectly valid forms of spirituality even though they don't fit into the symbolic schema dictated by the organized religions. James does a good job of sticking to the accounts themselves instead of trying to squeeze them into a preconceived theory.

Rating:
Summary: Classic wisdom text
Review: As mentioned in one of the editorial reviews, it has been said that Henry James wrote his novels as philosophical treatises while his brother William wrote his philosophical works as novels. This 1902 publication is justifiably considered as one of the 20th century's most influential books on psychology and spirituality.

James considers the feelings, actions and experiences of individuals, insofar as they understand themselves to be in a relationship with whatever they consuider the divine. It is thus about the religion of everyday life and has nothing to do with churches and dogma.

He writes objectively about a wide spectrum of religious experiences and quotes from the autobiographical writings of famous mystics from many traditions and of people like Whitman, Luther, Voltaire, Emerson, Tolstoy and many others. No religions are compared, only the experiences of the individual, and his arguments are well-reasoned.

In his own words: "Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or thought. When we survey the whole field of religion, we find a great variety in the thoughts that have prevailed there; but the feelings on the one hand and the conduct on the other are almost always the same, for Stoic, Christian and Buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives. The theories which religion generates, being thus variable, are secondary. If you wish to grasp its essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct as being the more constant elements."

This book is a treasure trove of insights and collected wisdom that simultaneously serves as a trenchant plea for religious tolerance. And yes, it does sometimes read like a gripping novel, especially the chapters on the religion of healthy-mindedness, the sick soul, and mysticism.

The reader should be patient though. Although it is not a difficult text to grasp, every sentence is loaded with so much meaning that one has to return regularly to previous paragraphs in order to fully understand and process the arguments and insights. A thorough, patient study of the text will richly reward the reader.

An even more rewarding experience can be had by studying Richard Maurice Bucke's "Cosmic Consciousness" and Stephan A. Hoeller's "The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead" at the same time. These three classic works complement one another in a most marvelous way.

Rating:
Summary: A classic study of personal religious experience
Review: Coming from an essentially secular upbringing, I thought religion was something I should learn about as part of a well-rounded liberal arts education. This book helped me to see that religion might also have something to say to me personally (as did Thomas Merton's "Seven Storey Mountain").

"Varieties" is a wonderfully written exploration of the psychology of individual religious experience--whether within or without organized religion--by one of America's greatest philosophers and psychologists. It includes lots of interesting case studies and lots of insight. Major topics: conversion, saintliness, mysticism, and James's illuminating distinction between "healthy-minded" religion and that of the "sick soul." Fun fact: the panicky, melancholic "Frenchman" near the end of the "Sick Soul" section is actually William James. Also noteworthy: this book was an important influence on "Bill W.," co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

(Another book I highly recommend on the psychology of religion: Gerald May's "Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology.")

Rating:
Summary: Demystifying mysticism and religion
Review: Contrary to many authors who either deride the beliefs of others
or promote their own beliefs, W. James does a fairly good job at
presenting an objective account of religious experience. W. James
tries to present experience as it is: subjective. So basically W.
James provides here factual accounts to various aspects involved
with the subjectivity of religious experience. W. James judges not
what he sees, but tries to understand and explain from the
standpoint of psychology to which type of subjective phenomenon
each experience can be seen to belong, without partiality in his
classification. So the interest of such a book is to give the
reader an opportunity to undo some of his personal beliefs about
religion, as we too often hear that "religion transcends the realm
of usual experience" so that nobody would be allowed to say
anything about it. W. James argues, but judges not.

Rating:
Summary: here's where the new age starts: back in 1904
Review: For years, I have seen this book referenced by other authors and was curious to read the original. I'm wading through James' early twentieth century prose now, and it's worth the effort. He builds his case masterfully, with an attention to detail and logic that refreshes someone raised in an age of sound bites. And many of his ideas about the mystical experience seem to have caused echoes in contemporary works by michael rich and Caroline Myss, to name two. It's definitely worth the effort to bridge the generation gap.

Rating:
Summary: The Varieties of Religious Experience
Review: Great book for people in recovery.