The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jamesing, but who labor nevertheless with the same eternal human difficulty.Things are wrong with them; and “What shall I do to be clear, right,sound, whole, well?” is the form of their question. And the answer is:“You are well, sound, and clear already, if you did but know it.” “Thewhole matter may be summed up in one sentence,” says one of theauthors whom I have already quoted, “God is well, and so are you. Youmust awaken to the knowledge of your real being.”The adequacy of their message to the mental needs of a large fractionof mankind is what gave force to those earlier gospels. Exactlythe same adequacy holds in the case of the mind-cure message, foolishas it may sound upon its surface; and seeing its rapid growth ininfluence, and its therapeutic triumphs, one is tempted to ask whetherit may not be destined (probably by very reason of the crudity andextravagance of many of its manifestations53) to play a part almostas great in the evolution of the popular religion of the future as didthose earlier movements in their day.But I here fear that I may begin to “jar upon the nerves” of some ofthe members of this academic audience. Such contemporary vagaries,you may think, should hardly take so large a place in dignified Giffordlectures. I can only beseech you to have patience. The whole outcomeof these lectures will, I imagine, be the emphasizing to your mind ofthe enormous diversities which the spiritual lives of different menexhibit. Their wants, their susceptibilities, and their capacities all varyand must be classed under different heads. The result is that we havereally different types of religious experience; and, seeking in theselectures closer acquaintance with the healthy-minded type, we musttake it where we find it in most radical form. The psychology of individualtypes of character has hardly begun even to be sketched asyet—our lectures may possibly serve as a crumb-like contribution tothe structure. The first thing to bear in mind (especially if we ourselvesbelong to the clerico-academic-scientific type, the officially andconventionally “correct” type, “the deadly respectable” type, for which53 It remains to be seen whether the school of Mr. Dresser, which assumesmore and more the form of mind-cure experience and academic philosophymutually impregnating each other, will score the practical triumphsof the less critical and rational sects.103