The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jamesthe means we should take to make them effective. That these resultsare not due to chance coincidences my observation of myself andothers makes me sure; that the conscious mind, the imagination,enters into them as a factor in many cases is doubtless true, but inmany others, and sometimes very extraordinary ones, it hardly seemsto enter in at all. On the whole I am inclined to think that as thehealing action, like the morbid one, springs from the plane of thenormally UNconscious mind, so the strongest and most effectiveimpressions are those which it receives, in some as yet unknownsubtle way, directly from a healthier mind whose state, through ahidden law of sympathy, it reproduces.”CASE II. “At the urgent request of friends, and with no faith andhardly any hope (possibly owing to a previous unsuccessful experiencewith a Christian Scientist), our little daughter was placed underthe care of a healer, and cured of a trouble about which thephysician had been very discouraging in his diagnosis. This interestedme, and I began studying earnestly the method and philosophyof this method of healing. Gradually an inner peace and tranquillitycame to me in so positive a way that my manner changedgreatly. My children and friends noticed the change and commentedupon it. All feelings of irritability disappeared. Even the expressionof my face changed noticeably.“I had been bigoted, aggressive, and intolerant in discussion, bothin public and private. I grew broadly tolerant and receptive towardthe views of others. I had been nervous and irritable, coming hometwo or three times a week with a sick headache induced, as I thensupposed, by dyspepsia and catarrh. I grew serene and gentle, andthe physical troubles entirely disappeared. I had been in the habit ofapproaching every business interview with an almost morbid dread.I now meet every one with confidence and inner calm.“I may say that the growth has all been toward the elimination ofselfishness. I do not mean simply the grosser, more sensual forms,but those subtler and generally unrecognized kinds, such as expressthemselves in sorrow, grief, regret, envy, etc. It has been in the directionof a practical, working realization of the immanence of Godand the Divinity of man’s true, inner self.119