Rating: 
Summary: relativist twaddle
Review: William James' masterwork is based on a series of lectures on "natural religion" that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1901. He defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." He is the great enunciator of the idea that all religions are equally valid and valuable, that since they can contain no animating truths, they should be measured merely by their effects on individuals. He is profoundly wrong.He is wrong in the way that all of the great artists of the Romantic period, from Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats to Picasso, are wrong, in his emphasis on the individual and his denial of the universal and the absolute. James offers a view of religion as a wholly personal matter, the utility of which lies in its benefits for each person. Like all of his intellectual cohorts, he had lost faith in universal truth. Indeed, one biographer has suggested that the succession of short term jobs that he held lead him to posit the equal value of all experiences. Because of this crisis of faith, he was unable to make judgments about the truth or value of different religious beliefs or ultimately to believe that any belief system had value beyond the effects on individual believers. The great challenge that confronts Western man is to reclaim the primacy of Judeo-Christianity from James and his ilk. Genesis, the Ten Commandments and the Gospels are not merely inspirational for individuals, taken together they express the aspirations of the species. Mankinds struggle to rise from the sheeplike state of Adam (before the fall) towards eventual Godhood, is the organizing story that has produced most of our greatest achievements. We should not surrender the centrality of these beliefs to the multiculturalists and moral relativists, no matter how gracefully they write. GRADE: F
Rating: 
Summary: A Masterpiece for Everyone
Review: William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience" is a must read for everyone. If one is interested in spirituality, no matter which belief system one has, it brings a serene and well-balanced support to one's creed. To those that still dwell in a materialistic position due to lack of understanding of the religious reality it serves as an extremely well argued explanation. In any case, the work shows its value as a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: The religious temperament
Review: William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience" is about the psychology of religion, two subjects which under normal circumstances hardly interest me, but its appeal for readers who have no interest in the psychology of religion is literary rather than scholarly. Transcribed from a series of lectures, James's book investigates man's need for religion -- the stimuli, besides institutional or parental influences, that compel a person to be truly religious, to have a deep spiritual communication with a higher power that surpasses in significance the mindless attendance of prayer services and recitation of liturgies by rote at the prompting of some guy in a robe standing behind a pulpit. James discloses that he is neither a theologian nor a religious person himself, which gives him two advantages -- first, that he presents his subject as an empirical science rather than groundless philosophy or internal speculation, and second, that he is free of bias, for how could a religious person be trusted not to sway the study exclusively towards his own experiences? Variety is the key, and religious experiences are necessarily as various as fingerprints; James's purpose is not to identify the commonalities that group a certain selection of people into a single organized religion but to highlight their differences. The religious phenomena discussed in the book cover a wide range of concepts like conversion, fanaticism, asceticism, sacrifice, saintliness, and mysticism, which James defines more or less as a state of consciousness invoked by a transient surge of sensation rather than by mental effort. The religious urge, James concludes, comes from an inherent sense of "wrongness": Man, being imperfect or aware of imperfections in himself, needs God or a higher power to represent perfection and to save him from his wrongness. One thesis is on the happiness that results from religious satisfaction, to which "mind cures," involving the association of a healthy body with a healthy mind, are related. James then introduces the idea of the "sick soul," in which he asserts that evil, by which he means hopelessness and pessimism, is a disease -- a notion, incidentally, that had been satirized by Samuel Butler in "Erewhon." Another interesting insight, reminiscent of the theme of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood," is the observation that the atheistic denial of God has a religiously zealous temperament of its own. Even though these are lectures, James doesn't do all the talking. He frequently relates people's religious experiences in their own words; in fact, I estimate that quotations and footnotes constitute more than half of the text. The recipient of a thorough education, James was one of the great American intellectual voices of his century but is never pedantic; his fluent prose bears strangely little resemblance to the garish constructions of his novelist brother Henry. The book's emphasis on psychology may surprise a reader who expects a work on traditional theology, and its impartiality may offend one who insists on the absolute sovereignty of his own religion, but James deserves credit for a perspective that is original and intelligent without intending to be controversial.
Rating:
Summary: The religious temperament
Review: William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience" is about the psychology of religion, two subjects which under normal circumstances hardly interest me, but its appeal for readers who have no interest in the psychology of religion is literary rather than scholarly. Transcribed from a series of lectures, James's book investigates man's need for religion -- the stimuli, besides institutional or parental influences, that compel a person to be truly religious, to have a deep spiritual communication with a higher power that surpasses in significance the mindless attendance of prayer services and recitation of liturgies by rote at the prompting of some guy in a robe standing behind a pulpit. James discloses that he is neither a theologian nor a religious person himself, which gives him two advantages -- first, that he presents his subject as an empirical science rather than groundless philosophy or internal speculation, and second, that he is free of bias, for how could a religious person be trusted not to sway the study exclusively towards his own experiences? Variety is the key, and religious experiences are necessarily as various as fingerprints; James's purpose is not to identify the commonalities that group a certain selection of people into a single organized religion but to highlight their differences. The religious phenomena discussed in the book cover a wide range of concepts like conversion, fanaticism, asceticism, sacrifice, saintliness, and mysticism, which James defines more or less as a state of consciousness invoked by a transient surge of sensation rather than by mental effort. The religious urge, James concludes, comes from an inherent sense of "wrongness": Man, being imperfect or aware of imperfections in himself, needs God or a higher power to represent perfection and to save him from his wrongness. One thesis is on the happiness that results from religious satisfaction, to which "mind cures," involving the association of a healthy body with a healthy mind, are related. James then introduces the idea of the "sick soul," in which he asserts that evil, by which he means hopelessness and pessimism, is a disease -- a notion, incidentally, that had been satirized by Samuel Butler in "Erewhon." Another interesting insight, reminiscent of the theme of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood," is the observation that the atheistic denial of God has a religiously zealous temperament of its own. Even though these are lectures, James doesn't do all the talking. He frequently relates people's religious experiences in their own words; in fact, I estimate that quotations and footnotes constitute more than half of the text. The recipient of a thorough education, James was one of the great American intellectual voices of his century but is never pedantic; his fluent prose bears strangely little resemblance to the garish constructions of his novelist brother Henry. The book's emphasis on psychology may surprise a reader who expects a work on traditional theology, and its impartiality may offend one who insists on the absolute sovereignty of his own religion, but James deserves credit for a perspective that is original and intelligent without intending to be controversial.
Rating:
Summary: a serious and beautiful and comprehensive study.
Review: William James's approach to the varieties of religious experience shows such an incredible understanding and willingness to believe. And compassion. Having had many religious experiences myself, It was the first book I read that seriously studied these mysteries. Making them a whole lot less mysterious to me. James brings in powerful and beautiful excerpts, and quotes for case studies, and shows the reader the spiritual progression of the soul as it moves from Oneness, the Mystical and 'happy soul', through to the Compassionate and 'sick soul' to the martyr, prophet and saint. Anyone who has felt the tug of the Divine Will and the Spirit of Unity will find this book a treasure.
Rating:
Summary: An attempt at making it all
Review: William James's personal bias is perfectly obvious. James is enamored religion, but somehow he can't hand over himself to the practice of religion. James has doubts about the rumblings of tradition. James, to his credit, has a strong appreciation for the mystical as revealed but he is always uncomfortable with it. James does try to stand removed from his subject - as if saying that there is a distinction between the observer and the observed. In this sense, James is almost akin to the Phenomenologist. On p. 23 James begins by asking "What is their philosophical significance?" [...] "The answer to one question is given in an existential judgment or proposition. The answer to the other is a proposition of value, what the Germans call a Werthurtheil, or what we may, if we like, denominate a spiritual judgment." [...] "derivation from natural antecedents." [...] "with its manner of coming into existence so defined, be to us a guide to life and a revelation?" James is a self proclaimed defender of religious experience against the theorizing that reduce it to the invention of this or that cold-hearted "Phenomenon." James, however, is as phenomenological as it gets. Having said that, James stand as someone trying to make sense of it all - from a materialist perspective. James, moreover, argues that the gist of a religious experience should be revealed in its "fruits for life" instead of through "mind-bending drugs" or "a brush with death" that may have set it off. James insists on "Immediate luminousness, philosophical reasonableness, moral helpfulness" within this framework one find true religious experience. James truly sees his roots (and even his analysis) from a Christian perspective. Despite attempts at changing all this, James is still stuck on the likes of Padre Pio and Teresa of Avila. Pragmatism as James practices it is a sort of "practical wisdom" - the wisdom experienced by the luminaries of spiritual sensitivity these range again from Cassian to Teresa of Avila to Jonathan Edwards. For James, these are folks who "understand" that one must put everything to the test as well as cling to what is "good." James also understood that we as a group and as individuals seek solace in a higher power specially when burdened by things like depression and "panic fear," and he also realized that such an occurrence was not enough to really create "lasting faith." The danger that James has to be cognizant of is not losing sight of the "unknowable" while trying to keep things "real" by relegating things as study of science. The Varieties of Religious Experience looks like its author tried to make it the death knell of reductionism. James verified "beyond reasonable doubt" that there is "a wider self" and that is where "God is." But.... The science of nature knows nothing of spiritual presences, and on the whole hold no practical commerce whatever with the idealistic conceptions towards which general philosophy inclines. The scientist, so-called, is, during his scientific hours at least, so materialistic that one may well say that on the whole the influence of science goes against the notion that religion should be recognized at all. And this antipathy to religion finds an echo within the very science of religions itself. The cultivator of this science has to become acquainted with so many groveling and horrible superstitions that a presumption easily arises in his mind that any belief that is religious is probably false. (James 380-1). In the end, James reverts to the traditional "God is real since he produces real effects" (James 400). What are we to make of all this? Miguel Llora
Rating:
Summary: Sift out from midst of discrepancy a common body of belief
Review: William James's position is simple: he claimed to have no living sense of commerce with a God, deity, and the Divine for his life was limited to impersonal and abstract concepts which, as ideals, interested and determined him. The Varieties of Religious Experience, therefore, in apropos to his living philosophy, is not a pedagogy of religious doctrines, creeds, and channel to salvation. It is rather an objective treatment of the various phenomena encountered in religions at a psychological perspective. James disclaimed to emphasize readers' mind of the enormous diversities which the spiritual lives of different men exhibit. Each of the subtopics (i.e. healthy-mindedness, sick soul, conversion, saintliness, mysticism, and philosophy) contributes an extraction from the privacies of religious experience some general facts which can be defined in formulas upon which everyone may agree.
James has laid out the ultimate goal of the book in the first chapter: The quest for a mandatory general theory as to what the peculiarities in an entity should be which give it value for purposes of revelation. Such a theory, James throughout the book reminds and contends, should be a spiritual judgment according which an entity lays its foundation of values. Whatever conclusions one might arrive regarding religion, which is, after all, a private collection of a person's thoughts, emotions, and feelings, can be reached only by spiritual judgments which prompts sobriety. James concerns religion only at a personal level for religion is nothing more than the inner dispositions of man himself which form the center of interest, his conscience, his virtues, his vices, his helplessness, and his incompleteness - aspects that are at complete contrariety to the ecclesiastical organization. Religion appeals more like man's conscience or morality.
James for the purpose of better illustrating his points on many occasions throughout the book uses very extreme examples. For example, ascetism practiced by saints could be self-mortifying and pathological. But James constantly reminds us that only through the most eccentric and extreme case studies are we able to see the more profound and distinguishing information. The plethora of examples also safeguard the book from the common downfall of over-simplification in defining religion, which is the root of all absolution and one-sided dogmatism by which both philosophy and religion have been infested. The examples also demonstrate the reason for a variety of religions and the need of different religions. Lives of all men should not show identical religious elements because it is impossible that human beings in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are should have exactly the same functions and the same duties. Each from his peculiar angle of observation should take in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, challenges and goals, which each must deal with in a unique manner at the appropriate time.
Another battleground is the conflict between science and religion. Knowledge about life (which is usually corroborated by religion) is one thing, effective occupation of a place in life, James contends, with its "dynamic currents passing through" one's being, is another. For this very reason, the science of religion may never be an equivalent of a living religion, which primarily concerns the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny and the thoughts that are carried on in terms of personality; and if one obdurately turns to the inner difficulties of such a science, one sees that a point comes when science must drop the purely theoretic attitude. Metaphysical attributes of God, so much as they are merited by the intellectuals, must go because the meaning of any thought that finds its rest in belief is only determined by the conduct it is fitted to produce. James believes feeling is the deeper source of religion, and philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products. Philosophy therefore can act as a mediator to redeem religion from unwholesome privacy and to give public status and universal right of way to its deliverances. For in theology, verbality has stepped into the place of vision and professionalism into that of life, resulting in a conglomeration of abstract, pedantic terms that have given the gist of one's knowledge of deity. After all, what really sustain religion are the private emotions, feelings, and sentiment.
James also devotes a great deal of his book on mysticism and sub consciousness. Human beings are alive or dead to the eternal inner message of the arts according as they have kept or lost the mystical susceptibility. Mystical experiences are ineffable, transient and passive. They are like sudden invasions of vaguely reminiscent consciousness. The conviction that "something" is genuinely transacted in this consciousness is the very core of living religion. James explains that this subliminal region is a continuation of the ordinary consciousness and manifests in the shape of a set of thoughts, feelings, and memories which are extra-marginal and outside of the primary consciousness altogether, but yet must be classified as conscious facts of some sort. And this is the central idea with which James pieces everything together: In religion we have a department of human nature with unusually close relations to the transmarginal or subliminal region. This religion, which is obviously the larger, unplumbed part of each of us in regard to among all states of consciousness, is the abode of everything that is latent and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded or unobserved. It harbors the spring of all our obscurely motived passions, impulses, likes, dislikes, and prejudices. Our limitations, hypotheses, fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions and in general all our non-rational operations come from this region. People, regardless of what religions they belong, share this common trait in the subliminal region. In persons deep in the religious life, the door into this region seems unusually wide open.
The Varieties of Religious Experience gives a closer look in the behaviors evoked from the various religions. It is not meant to discredit any religions nor promotes specific faiths; it aims to map out how far certain attributes, be they metaphysical or moral, can be considered true.
Rating:
Summary: Good God, it's Brilliant!
Review: You will go through the book, and you will ask yourself what you just read! What the heck was this? I remember reading this years and years ago. It is a book that weaned me off the materialistic bent, that I now find laughably inadequate. But that's not all. Willam James knew all this a _century_ ago. Brilliant, this should not be confused with religious doctorine. It transcends this. One of the few rare books that will make you feel absolutely drunk after each topic!
Rating:
Summary: Total nectar.
Review: You will not draw the nectar out of this book unless you are aware (the earlier the better) of James' premise that the stronghold of religion lies in individuality. These lectures are not a study of "religion" nor even a study of religious "experiences" in toto, but a study of "individual" religious experience. Singular. It sounds narrow only until you add the other word of the title... "varieties." Why such an emphasis upon the individual? Because, as James states, the pivot around which the religious life revolves "is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny." All proper "religion" by such a definition must consist in an individual experiencing connection with that which he considers to be the higher power(s). In fact, at one point James states that "prayer is real religion." And further, "Wherever this interior prayer is lacking, there is no religion; wherever, on the other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the soul, even in the absence of forms or of doctrines, we have living religion." A thought-provoking principle. You will never appease your hunger by staring at a menu. You have to actually open your mouth and "experience" the eating of some food. Similarly, we can only learn about religious experience by recounting the experiences of those who've done some profound religious eating (so to say). This is James' method. He renounces the ambition to be coercive in his arguments (this is not an apologetic work) and simply focuses on "rehabilitating the element of feeling in religion and subordinating its intellectual part." He does this by the examination of diverse case histories. And he uses the "extremer examples" because these yield the profounder information. He called these types "theopathic" characters; those who tend to display excess of devotion. His reasoning is thus: "To learn the secrets of any science, we go to expert specialists, even though they may be eccentric persons, and not to commonplace pupils. We combine what they tell us with the rest of our wisdom, and form our final judgment independently." Concerning this "final judgment" I found the following principle in the lecture entitled "Mysticism" to be particular liberating. As regards the extremely theopathic: "No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically." A good word to hide in your heart against the next time some well-intentioned saint feels that their eccentricities should be yours. To be honest, I found the lecture entitled "Philosophy" to be fairly technical and daunting, but such criticism I charge to my own lack of knowledge in this area rather than to any deficiency in the book itself. Upon closing its covers, I was a satiated bee. The book is total nectar.
Rating:
Summary: Total nectar.
Review: You will not draw the nectar out of this book unless you are aware (the earlier the better) of James' premise that the stronghold of religion lies in individuality. These lectures are not a study of "religion" nor even a study of religious "experiences" in toto, but a study of "individual" religious experience. Singular. It sounds narrow only until you add the other word of the title... "varieties." Why such an emphasis upon the individual? Because, as James states, the pivot around which the religious life revolves "is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny." All proper "religion" by such a definition must consist in an individual experiencing connection with that which he considers to be the higher power(s). In fact, at one point James states that "prayer is real religion." And further, "Wherever this interior prayer is lacking, there is no religion; wherever, on the other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the soul, even in the absence of forms or of doctrines, we have living religion." A thought-provoking principle. You will never appease your hunger by staring at a menu. You have to actually open your mouth and "experience" the eating of some food. Similarly, we can only learn about religious experience by recounting the experiences of those who've done some profound religious eating (so to say). This is James' method. He renounces the ambition to be coercive in his arguments (this is not an apologetic work) and simply focuses on "rehabilitating the element of feeling in religion and subordinating its intellectual part." He does this by the examination of diverse case histories. And he uses the "extremer examples" because these yield the profounder information. He called these types "theopathic" characters; those who tend to display excess of devotion. His reasoning is thus: "To learn the secrets of any science, we go to expert specialists, even though they may be eccentric persons, and not to commonplace pupils. We combine what they tell us with the rest of our wisdom, and form our final judgment independently." Concerning this "final judgment" I found the following principle in the lecture entitled "Mysticism" to be particular liberating. As regards the extremely theopathic: "No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically." A good word to hide in your heart against the next time some well-intentioned saint feels that their eccentricities should be yours. To be honest, I found the lecture entitled "Philosophy" to be fairly technical and daunting, but such criticism I charge to my own lack of knowledge in this area rather than to any deficiency in the book itself. Upon closing its covers, I was a satiated bee. The book is total nectar.
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