William James
Psychologists who studied mystical experience. Wrote the influential book The Varieties of Religious Experience[1]
Notes
Quotes
Definition of Religion
...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. (James, p. 31)
"Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto."[2]
...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 (James 1903, 30).
"Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation...[3]"
Methods
Study the individual mystics, the founders.
In one sense at least the personal religion will prove itself more fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism. 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....[4]
==Footnotes==
- ↑ James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature. New York: Penguin, 1982. https://archive.org/details/varietiesreligi03jamegoog/page/n6/mode/2up
- ↑ James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature (p. 53). Kindle Edition.
- ↑ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature (New York: Penguin, 1903), 292–93, https://archive.org/details/varietiesreligi03jamegoog/page/n6/mode/2up.
- ↑ James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature. New York: Penguin, 1982. https://archive.org/details/varietiesreligi03jamegoog/page/n6/mode/2up. p. 30
