View source for Varieties of Religious Experience

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==Notes==

===Lecure I Religion and Neurology ===

Two types of religious folk: Those who follow blindly, and those whose attachment is based on "spiritual inwardness"  [[Connection Experience]]

<blockquote class="quotation">His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather.<ref>James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature (pp. 15-16). Kindle Edition.</ref> </blockquote>

Going to be examining mystical experience. 

Notes that "discordant inner life," "melancholy," "exalted emotional sensibility," even mental pathology as precedents of [[Connection Experience]]. Uses the example of [[George Fox]] and says he was a "psychopath or detraque of the deepest dye." <ref>James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature (p. 16). Kindle Edition. </ref> Spends some time arguing that, despite what some might think, these are "realities" that must be accepted, but that this shouldn't lead us to totally dismiss religion or religious experience as so much mental pathology, stupidity, or sexual/instinctual immaturity. Suggests we should move beyond the "simpleminded system" of though he calls [[Medical Materialism]] and focus not so much on the "origins of mystical experience" but on the outcomes of mystical experience.

Points out that just because there's an organic cause for a "religious state of mind" doesn't mean it doesn't have religious significance. Points out that just because sometimes there is madness, doesn't mean we should completely dismiss, because clearly it is more than just that.

<blockquote class="quotation">The plain truth is that to interpret religion one must in the end look at the immediate content of the religious consciousness. The moment one does this, one sees how wholly disconnected it is in the main from the content of the sexual consciousness. <ref>James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature. New York: Penguin, 1982.</ref>
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If we are going to examine religious/spiritual things, we should also have criteria beyond personal bias and insensitivity. He suggests "Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and "moral helpfulness" as "the only available criteria.:

Judge "religious life by its results exclusively" and not by the "bugaboo of morbid origin."

End by suggesting that we should still focus on pathology, if relevant because of a) curiosity and b) the expanded understanding examinatino of "insane conditions" would provide.

"If there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the requisite receptivity. And having said thus much, I think that I may let the matter of religion and neuroticism drop."

===Lecture II Circumscription of the Topic ===

The problem of defining what religion is. Its complex, hard to pin down, "the very fact that they are so many and so different from one another is enough to prove that the word “religion” cannot stand for any single principle or essence, but is rather a collective name." There is no "essence" but multiple characteristics

Divides religion into an [[Institutional Religion]] and a [[Personal Religion]]. James will focus on [[Personal Religion]].

Notes that some people might believe personal religion to be inferior to Institutional Religion, but suggests the opposite is in fact the case

<blockquote class="quotation"> Churches, when once established, live at second-hand upon tradition; but the FOUNDERS of every church owed their power originally to the fact of their direct personal communion with the divine. Not only the superhuman founders, the Christ, the Buddha, Mahomet, but all the originators of Christian sects have been in this case;—so personal religion should still seem the primordial thing, even to those who continue to esteem it incomplete. </blockquote>

Defines 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." Goes on to twiddle with the definition and understanding, the end result of which doesn't really contribute to our understanding of religion, but in fact, considerably muddies the waters. 

===Lecture III The Reality of the Unseen ===

An attempt to understand mystical experience, not to dismiss but to simply note these things exist and are a natural feature of the human body and human experience.

"This absolute determinability of our mind by abstractions is one of the cardinal facts in our human constitution."<ref>James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature (p. 56). Kindle Edition. </ref>

James recounts dozens of [[Connection Experiencess]] ranging from [[Intuitive Glimmerings]] to [[Illuminations]] through active [[Intramonadic Communication]]

===Lecture IV and V The Religion of Healthy Mindedness===


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==References==

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[[Is a book by::William James| ]]