394
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
embedded in the eternal structure of the world. They all agree,
moreover, that it acts as well as exists, and that something really
is effected for the better when you throw your life into its hands.
It is when they treat of the experience of “union” with it that
their speculative differences appear most clearly. Over this point
pantheism and theism, nature and second birth, works and grace
and karma, immortality and reincarnation, rationalism and mysti-
cism, carry on inveterate disputes.
At the end of my lecture on Philosophy
1
I held out the notion
that an impartial science of religions might sift out from the midst
of their discrepancies a common body of doctrine which she might
also formulate in terms to which physical science need not object.
This, I said, she might adopt as her own reconciling hypothesis,
and recommend it for general belief. I also said that in my last
lecture I should have to try my own hand at framing such an
hypothesis.
The time has now come for this attempt. Who says “hypothesis”
renounces the ambition to be coercive in his arguments. The most
I can do is, accordingly, to offer something that may fit the facts so
easily that your scientific logic will find no plausible pretext for
vetoing your impulse to welcome it as true.
The “more,” as we called it, and the meaning of our “union”
with it, form the nucleus of our inquiry. Into what definite descrip-
tion can these words be translated, and for what definite facts do
they stand? It would never do for us to place ourselves offhand
at the position of a particular theology, the Christian theology, for
example, and proceed immediately to define the “more” as Jehovah,
and the “union” as his imputation to us of the righteousness of
Christ. That would be unfair to other religions, and, from our present
standpoint at least, would be an over-belief.
We must begin by using less particularized terms; and, since
one of the duties of the science of religions is to keep religion in
connection with the rest of science, we shall do well to seek first
of all a way of describing the “more,” which psychologists may
also recognize as real. The subconscious self is nowadays a well-
accredited psychological entity; and I believe that in it we have
1
Above, p. 352.
CONCLUSIONS
395
exactly the mediating term required. Apart from all religious con-
siderations, there is actually and literally more life in our total soul
than we are at any time aware of. The exploration of the trans-
marginal field has hardly yet been seriously undertaken, but what
Mr. Myers said in 1892 in his essay on the Subliminal Conscious-
ness
1
is as true as when it was first written: “Each of as is in reality
an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows —
an individuality which can never express itself completely through
any corporeal manifestation. The Self manifests through the organ-
ism; but there is always some part of the Self unmanifested; and
always, as it seems, some power of organic expression in abeyance
or reserve.”
2
Much of the content of this larger background against
which our conscious being stands out in relief is insignificant.
Imperfect memories, silly jingles, inhibitive timidities, “dissolutive”
phenomena of various sorts, as Myers calls them, enter into it for a
large part. But in it many of the performances of genius seem also
to have their origin; and in our study of conversion, of mystical
experiences, and of prayer, we have seen how striking a part inva-
sions from this region play in the religious life.
Let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that whatever it may be
on its farther side, the “more” with which in religious experience
we feel ourselves connected is on its hither side the subconscious
continuation of our conscious life. Starting thus with a recognized
psychological fact as our basis, we seem to preserve a contact with
“science” which the ordinary theologian lacks. At the same time
the theologian’s contention that the religious man is moved by an
external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of
invasions from the subconscious region to take on objective appear-
ances, and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In the
1
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. vii. p. 305. For a full statement
of Mr. Myers’s views, I may refer to his posthumous work, “Human Personality in the Light
of Recent Research,” which is already announced by Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. as
being in press. Mr. Myers for the first time proposed as a general psychological problem
the exploration of the subliminal region of consciousness throughout its whole extent, and
made the first methodical steps in its topography by treating as a natural series a mass of
subliminal facts hitherto considered only as curious isolated facts, and subjecting them to
a systematized nomenclature. How important this exploration will prove, future work upon
the path which Myers has opened can alone show. Compare my paper: “Frederic Myers’s
Services to Psychology,” in the said Proceedings, part xlii., May, 1901.
2
Compare the inventory given above on pp. 373–4, and also what is said of the sub-
conscious self on pp. 183–186, 188–189.