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

298

THE  VARIETIES  OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE

Sir James Crichton-Browne has given the technical name of “dreamy

states” to these sudden invasions of vaguely reminiscent conscious-

ness.

1

 They bring a sense of mystery and of the metaphysical duality

of  things,  and  the  feeling  of  an  enlargement  of  perception  which

seems imminent but which never completes itself. In Dr. Crichton-

Browne’s opinion they connect themselves with the perplexed and

scared disturbances of self-consciousness which occasionally precede

epileptic  attacks.  I  think  that  this  learned  alienist  takes  a  rather

absurdly alarmist view of an intrinsically insignificant phenomenon.

He  follows  it  along  the  downward  ladder,  to  insanity;  our  path

pursues the upward ladder chiefly. The divergence shows how import-

ant it is to neglect no part of a phenomenon’s connections, for we

make  it  appear  admirable  or  dreadful  according  to  the  context  by

which we set it off.

Somewhat  deeper  plunges  into  mystical  consciousness  are  met

with in yet other dreamy states. Such feelings as these which Charles

Kingsley describes are surely far from being uncommon, especially

in youth: —

“When I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with an innate

feeling  that  everything  I  see  has  a  meaning,  if  I  could  but  understand

it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths which I cannot grasp

amounts to indescribable awe sometimes. . . . Have you not felt that your

real soul was imperceptible to your mental vision, except in a few hallowed

moments?”

2

A much more extreme state of mystical consciousness is described

by J. A. Symonds; and probably more persons than we suspect could

give parallels to it from their own experience.

“Suddenly,”  writes  Symonds,  “at  church,  or  in  company,  or  when  I

was reading, and always, I think, when my muscles were at rest, I felt the

approach of the mood. Irresistibly it took possession of my mind and will,

lasted what seemed an eternity, and disappeared in a series of rapid sensa-

tions  which  resembled  the  awakening  from  anæsthetic  influence.  One

reason why I disliked this kind of trance was that I could not describe it to

1

The Lancet, July 6 and 13, 1895, reprinted as the Cavendish Lecture, on Dreamy Mental

States, London, Baillière, 1895. They have been a good deal discussed of late by psychologists.

See, for example, B

ERNARD

-L

EROY

: L’Illusion de Fausse Reconnaissance, Paris, 1898.

2

Charles  Kingsley’s  Life,  i.  55,  quoted  by  I

NGE

:  Christian  Mysticism,  London,  1899,

p. 341.

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MYSTICISM

299

myself. I cannot even now find words to render it intelligible. It consisted

in a gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space, time, sensation,

and  the  multitudinous  factors  of  experience  which  seem  to  qualify  what

we are pleased to call our Self. In proportion as these conditions of ordinary

consciousness were subtracted, the sense of an underlying or essential con-

sciousness acquired intensity. At last nothing remained but a pure, absolute,

abstract Self. The universe became without form and void of content. But

Self persisted, formidable in its vivid keenness, feeling the most poignant

doubt about reality, ready, as it seemed, to find existence break as breaks

a bubble round about it. And what then? The apprehension of a coming

dissolution, the grim conviction that this state was the last state of the con-

scious  Self,  the  sense  that  I  had  followed  the  last  thread  of  being  to  the

verge  of  the  abyss,  and  had  arrived  at  demonstration  of  eternal  Maya  or

illusion, stirred or seemed to stir me up again. The return to ordinary condi-

tions of sentient existence began by my first recovering the power of touch,

and  then  by  the  gradual  though  rapid  influx  of  familiar  impressions  and

diurnal interests. At last I felt myself once more a human being; and though

the riddle of what is meant by life remained unsolved, I was thankful for

this return from the abyss — this deliverance from so awful an initiation

into the mysteries of skepticism.

“This  trance  recurred  with  diminishing  frequency  until  I  reached  the

age  of  twenty-eight.  It  served  to  impress  upon  my  growing  nature  the

phantasmal unreality of all the circumstances which contribute to a merely

phenomenal  consciousness.  Often  have  I  asked  myself  with  anguish,  on

waking from that formless state of denuded, keenly sentient being, Which

is the unreality? — the trance of fiery, vacant, apprehensive, skeptical Self

from  which  I  issue,  or  these  surrounding  phenomena  and  habits  which

veil  that  inner  Self  and  build  a  self  of  flesh-and-blood  conventionality?

Again, are men the factors of some dream, the dream-like unsubstantiality

of which they comprehend at such eventful moments? What would happen

if the final stage of the trance were reached?”

1

In  a  recital  like  this  there  is  certainly  something  suggestive  of

pathology.

2

 The next step into mystical states carries us into a realm

that public opinion and ethical philosophy have long since branded

1

H. F. B

ROWN

: J. A. Symonds, a Biography, London, 1895, pp. 29–31, abridged.

2

Crichton-Browne  expressly  says  that  Symonds’s  “highest  nerve  centres  were  in  some

degree  enfeebled  or  damaged  by  these  dreamy  mental  states  which  afflicted  him  so  griev-

ously.”  Symonds  was,  however,  a  perfect  monster  of  many-sided  cerebral  efficiency,  and

his  critic  gives  no  objective  grounds  whatever  for  his  strange  opinion,  save  that  Symonds

complained  occasionally,  as  all  susceptible  and  ambitious  men  complain,  of  lassitude  and

uncertainty as to his life’s mission.

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