The 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: 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: Arduous, complex and erudite.
Review: Here is William James' extraordinarily dispassionate and narrowly empirical and pragmatic examination of a topic that has rarely been treated dispassionately. The reading can be difficult, actually tedious, but James' language is persistently non-colonized (he had little respect for the popular psychobabble buzzwords and delusionally simplistic conclusions of his day [and one expects that this would hold true a century later!]). By standards of 'originality'* (a word that must be qualified) and reputation, he probably remains America's most famed philosopher of mind (which is something of an affliction to his dogmatic detractors, with their -- yes -- arrogantly simplistic 'conclusions'). It seems that he was/is America's most famed psychologist/neurologist as well.
*(James says, "Originality cannot be expected in a field like this, where all the attitudes and tempers that are possible have been exhibited in literature long ago, and where any new writer can immediately be classed under a familiar head." Yet, while no single consideration in this work is strictly 'original', the work in sum remains highly unique.)
A large sampling of varied religious experience and psychological temperament is scrutinized. Many readers will find the sampling too large (this reader did). As is quickly apparent, a large number of cited experiences are 'extreme' -- we might say nutty. One might think the material is becoming a mocking of religious experience per se, but James warns us not to leap to conveniently simplistic conclusions: ". . . it always leads to a better understanding of a thing's significance to consider its exaggerations and perversions, its equivalents and substitutes and nearest relatives elsewhere. Not that we may thereby swamp the thing in the wholesale condemnation which we pass on its inferior congeners, but rather that we may by contrast ascertain the more precisely in what its merits consist, by learning at the same time to what particular dangers of corruption it may also be exposed." James finds what might be called the "religious temperament" to embrace a broad range of opinions:
"'He believes in No-God, and he worships him,' said a colleague of mine of a student who was manifesting a fine atheistic ardor; and the more fervent opponents of Christian doctrine have often enough shown a temper which, psychologically considered, is indistinguishable from religious zeal."

As a scientist, James proceeds in this study as a strict empiricist. As a philosophical pragmatist (practicably and on the whole, "the true is what works well"), he finds that objects, after all, can only be considered and "known" subjectively. To 'experience' a material 'object' or phenomena is to be in an intellectual state that is essentially subjective. Thus, although science is the interrogation of the material world, the "truth" content of a dogmatic materialism is a pretension at best and a delusion at worst. James says, "The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely 'understandable' world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. . . we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong." To the extent that "religion" tends strongly to understand this while "science" today tends impulsively to deny it, religion may exhibit the clearer vision of reality (and of psychological 'healthy-mindedness'), regardless of science's impressive inventory of material 'facts'.

As the author instructs, the reader should patiently wade through these lectures. The conclusions toward which he labors are not generally apparent before they are reached. At points throughout the text, both the 'religionist' and the 'anti-religionist' may believe that James is given to championing their respective positions, only to soon understand him differently. While the study is one of empirical psychology, the conclusions are inescapably philosophical (conclusions always are). The author briefly considers the classic theological arguments (cosmological, teleological, etc) and finds them to be logically elegant, yet less than universally compelling. Where [psychological] temperament leads, thought tends to follow. More compelling to James is a theologic / religious / epistemic warrant that seems highly amenable to (perhaps identical to) so-called reformed epistemology. Dogmatic philosophical materialism is inherently an arbitrarily limited window to reality. For the naturalist and the supernaturalist alike, personal experience and 'temperament' are the arbiters of reality. The book is important, in large part, because it has no obvious partisan constituency. Empiricists and mystics alike may find certain aspects of this study to be of merit. Philosophical skeptics won't like it, but of course ultimately they won't like anything.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant; Actually, Beyond Brilliant
Review: I am always surprised when I am cruising around Amazon and take a look at a classic and find just 1 or 2 customer comments on a book such as James's masterful "Varieties". So, I just had to say something. This is one of the greatest and most readable books ever written on the subject of religion. Don't be surprised at what you find. WJ is not making a "case" for belief here, or any case for any particular religious "system". He is studying religious experience, trying to get to the bottom of what brings it about and what it means for human beings. Thus, he pays little attention to what we call "organized religion." He spends his time, rather, with the various ways that people have experienced God or the supernatural or the spiritual. James's style is very subtle, ornate, and powerful. Just let yourself soak in it for awhile and then try to learn. His metaphors are so stunning as to be memorable for the rest of your life. His discussion of the healthy-minded, the sick soul, and the mystic will entrall you and thrill you with his erudition, and they will become touchstones in your own religious experience and your own study of religion for the rest of your life. Religion is a living reality for WJ. He gives a powerful analysis of what it can, should, and does mean to men and women in the modern world. If you wish to understand modern thought on religion, by the way, you must read James, for much of it springs from his thought. Lastly, James is the kindest thinker who ever put pen to paper. For those of in the William james Society, this is why we love him so. He never chides or derides or condemns. He gently disagrees, looks for the best from every idea and every experience and every person, and lavishes praise on what he finds excellent and meaningful. His thought and writing and philosophical depth and style are an inspiration. Spend some time with one of the greatest thinkers ever. You won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: You have to take this book in context.
Review: I found this an extremely valuable book, but I don't claim that it's an easy read. First, you have to get through the academic writing style of the late 19th century: paragraph-length sentences with triply nested clauses and extensive quotes from other, equally opaque writers. You'll eventually get used to this style, but it will never flow easily.

Next, you have to contend with James' model of psychology, which is different in many ways from our own. He wrote this book when the notion of the subconscious was a bleeding edge concept, Pavlov had yet to identify learned behavior, and experimental psychology was just starting up. So, although his psychology is sound, you'll have to mentally translate it into the more modern models.

But, if you can get through these barriers, it is a seminal book. James finds it natural to unite the notions of personal psychology and religious revelation without conflict (or at least not much conflict), while honoring both traditions.

Rating:
Summary: Good God, it's Brilliant!
Review: Objective and to the point, William James creates a framework for understanding. He explains the logic behind various ways of thinking without entirely condemning any of these views. James dips into sixth sense experiences and discusses the validity of these experiences based on their unanimity as well as the insignificance of unanimity and more importantly the changes personal experiences can cause in someone's life. Touching on various topics James leaves little unexplained and at the same time stresses the lack of scientific knowledge on many of these subjects and therefore our inability to draw specific conclusions. This book is carefully constructed and can be enlightening for those of us who lack in-depth knowledge of the subject or for the most seasoned researchers.

Rating:
Summary: Truly - The 'Varieties' of Religious Experience
Review: This is a work of research. James gathers together accounts of the mystical meeting with God from the panoply of the world's religious traditions. One of his conclusions not surprisingly is that people often come to meet the conception or intellectual construct or content in regard to God that they have brought with them.
James in collecting the evidence and analyzes and attempts to give an overall definition of the structure of the mystical religious experience. The case- histories are the evidence upon which the empiricist James will draw his conclusions.
Among the famous distinctions that do make a difference in the work is the distinction between first- born and twice- born souls. The first born are those who are alright and happy in their lives. The twice- born are those upon whom James places the emphasis. These are the people who go through some 'dark night of the soul' in which they seem to lose themselves and their world, live in a blackness of Nothingness, until the miraculous transformation comes and they are born again as new beings. This being born again comes through their meeting with God. And again the God they discover is often the God of the religious tradition which they take in.
It is interesting that in many of the accounts there is talk of merger with and fusion with God, of being absorbed by God. This is somewhat different from the Jewish mystical conception in which one can only approach G-d closer and closer but never really hope to be identical with the One and Only One.
One interesting aspect of the work is James' use of his own experience, his own personal depression as one of the case - histories. In his case it was not the encounter with God which saved him, but ' the will to freedom' which he learned from the French thinker Renouvier. Paralyzed and loss his act of will to freedom would constitute in a deep psychological way a repudiation of the life of his own Swedenborgian mystical father, and lead to his own supremely active life.
James summary conclusions about these experiences and about the mystical encounter lead him not to one definite conclusion, but rather to something like Wittgenstein's family resemblance of overlapping categories of classification.In these he tries too to use pragmatic categories of judgment and understand what he calls the ' cash value ' of the experience i.e. its real benefit in the person's future life. James also talks about something which is certainly not the God most of the mystics have found. They believe and connect with an Infinite Power, but James in his own life and thought seeing the force of Evil in the world held on to the idea of a ' finite God ' who aims at good and needs the help of humanity to realize the right goals in history .This idea in someway parallels the Jewish religious idea of covenant partnership with God, in Tikkun Olam the transformation of the world for good.
It is impossible in a review like this to do justice to this great work, and the great mind and human being who compiled and composed it. It is a must for anyone who cares to better know and understand the religious life. The conclusions they draw may not be James' but they will be helped in understanding religious life better, nonetheless.

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: 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.