Varieties of Religious Experience: a study in Human Nature, Centenary Edition

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INTRODUCTION:  SECTION  ONE

knowing  the  bad  could  become  actualized,  by  making  the  wrong

choice, or simply by not choosing at all. Similarly, health is defined

by  our  continued  efforts  to  appeal  to  the  growth-oriented  dimen-

sion  of  personality  rather  than  to  the  deficiency-oriented  side  of

the equation. Some are born into an immediate experience of higher

states of spiritual consciousness, while others have to awaken to it

at  some  point  along  the  chronological  life  span.  James  even  com-

mented on Emerson in The Varieties as an example of a once-born

personality  —  someone  who  was  born  with  the  sense  for  what  a

transcendent awakening already was, someone who did not have to

struggle and go through some dark night of the soul before arriving

at  such an  awakening.  Both  he  himself, as well as his own father,

on the other hand, William would count among the twice-born.

William  James  delivered  the  Gifford  Lectures  at  Edinburgh  in

two parts; ten lectures in the late spring of 1901 and ten in the late

spring of 1902. The first printing of The Varieties appeared in June,

1902.  He  established  that  religion  focused  on  the  experience  of

the individual; he highlighted the life of the sick-soul and reviewed

the  religion  of  healthy-mindedness;  he  explored  conversion  and

saintliness. But his primary focus was on the ultimately transforming

power of the mystical experience.

James  anticipates  the  arguments  of  his  detractors  when  he

takes up the point of view of those reductionists who deny mystical

states, because they believe all such reports by others to be hysteria,

shamming, and superstition. To these skeptics James said that the

most important way to discern the real from the unreal — to differ-

entiate  the  pathological  from  the  truly  divine  states  of  mystical

consciousness, is to examine their fruits. Borrowing from the Sermon

on the Mount, he said, it is not by their roots, but “by their fruits ye

shall know them.”

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The  Varieties  was  thus  also  a  seminal  moment  in  the  evolution

of  his  philosophy  of  pragmatism.  If  beliefs  lead  to  erroneous  con-

sequences  then  they  prove  themselves  false;  if  they  lead  to  an

increase  in  the  moral  and  aesthetic  quality  of  our  lives,  then  we

may judge them as true. And in general, he says, mystic states lead

to  such  consequences.  He  enumerates  their  superlative  quality,

insofar as they lead us to such heights that we are forced to describe

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Matthew, 7:16.

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INTRODUCTION:  SECTION  ONE

xxxiii

the  most  positive  qualities  as  well  as  outcomes  in  negative  terms

— none higher, nonpareil, and superlucent. They tend toward self-

abnegation, in the sense of a loss of egotistical self-centeredness, and

they  tend  to  promote  a  life  of  selfless  service  toward  others.  They

increase our appreciation for poetry, music, and the arts. They affirm

the idiosyncratic life of the individual regardless of the evolutionary

direction of the group. And because they inspire such faith, by their

very  existence  they  overthrow  the  pretensions  of  the  rationalists

who claim to have absolutely explained all of reality by some newest

theory of the intellect.

They  also  tend  to  affirm  an  optimistic  monism  —  that  all  in

the universe is One, except that James himself remained a pluralist

with regard to the ultimate nature of reality. Individuals may have

unitive experiences, he said, but they might not exactly be the same

from  person  to  person.  In  the  end,  he  detached  himself  from  the

discussion of subjective experience, however, and took the position

of the psychologist, maintaining that psychology’s true contribution

to the religious sphere is to approach the study of religion scientific-

ally  and  to  construct  what  he  called  a  cross-cultural  comparative

psychology of the subconscious. Such a psychology would emphasize

not the creedal differences between people, but rather a comparison

of  how  people  describe  their  experiences  across  cultures  and  what

they subsequently do with them.

In  this  vein,  The  Varieties  was  important  for  several  reasons.

First, James lectured, he told his audience, from the standpoint of a

psychologist of religion. This was a self-conscious attempt to launch

such  a  field  within  psychology  that  would  build  a  bridge  between

science and theology, although before 1902 James had not yet been

recognized  as  a  pioneer  in  this  discussion.  The  Gifford  Lectures

were meant to launch such a discussion within psychology.

Second,  James  also  intended  to  express  the  importance  of  the

phenomenological point of view when he declared that his method

would  be  an  examination  of  the  living  human  documents  —

people’s  first  person  accounts  in  which  they  described  religious

experience and what it meant to them personally. Phenomenology

in  the  psychology  of  religion  continues  to  be  discredited  by  the

scientific reductionists, however.

The  most  important  function  of  the  work,  however,  was  for

William James a reconciliation with his father’s Swedenborgianism

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INTRODUCTION:  SECTION  ONE

and his God-father Emerson’s monistic transcendentalism. We know

this through James’s correspondence with the Rev. Henry William

Rankin,  who  had  provided  numerous  first  person  accounts  of  reli-

gious awakening for James, for which James was grateful enough to

acknowledge in the preface.

For  his  part,  Rankin  took  the  opportunity  in  the  years  of  prep-

aration  that  ensued  before  the  actual  lectures  to  convert  James

to  Presbyterian  missionary  Christianity.  James  countered  in  his

many  letters  with  the  claim  that  he  still  adhered  to  his  father’s

Swedenborgian  metaphysics,  and  anyway  felt  himself  function-

ally  incapable  of  believing  exclusively  in  the  Christian  scheme  of

salvation.

Finally,  on  June  16,  1901,  just  as  James  was  about  to  deliver

the first half of his lectures in Scotland, he wrote to Rankin, telling

him  that  at  last  he  had  gotten  his  theological  feet  on  the  ground

and found his own voice independent of his father’s. It was a natural-

istic theism which posited the existence of God, but coming to us

through  the  interior  life  of  the  individual.  Here  was  the  origin

of that oft quoted phrase of James’s; he was now absolutely certain

that “the mother sea and fountain-head of all religions lies in the

mystical experiences of the individual,” and that whatever the nature

of God or Allah or the transcendent was, it came from within, from

the deepest reaches of each individual’s being. He writes:

I have given nine of my lectures and am to give the tenth tomorrow. They

have been a success, to judge by the numbers of the audience (300-odd)

and  their  non-diminution  towards  the  end.  No  previous  “Giffords”  have

drawn  near  so  many.  It  will  please  you  to  know  that  I  am  stronger and

tougher than when I began, too; so great a load is off my mind. You have

been  so  extraordinarily  brotherly  to  me  in  writing  of  your  convictions

and in furnishing me ideas, that I feel ashamed of my churlish and chary

replies. You, however, have forgiven me. Now at the end of this first course,

I feel my “matter” taking firmer shape, and it will please you less to hear

me  say  that  I  believe  myself  to  be  (probably)  permanently  incapable  of

believing  the  Christian  scheme  of  vicarious  salvation,  and  wedded  to  a

more  continuously  evolutionary  mode  of  thought.  The  reasons  you  from

time  to  time  have  given  me,  never  better  expressed  than  in  your  letter

before  the  last,  have  somehow  failed  to  convince.  In  these  lectures  the

ground  I  am  taking  is  this:  The  mother  sea  and  fountain-head  of  all

religions lie in the mystical experiences of the individual, taking the word

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