The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencesis. “Sanctification” is the technical name of this result; and erelongexamples of it shall be brought before you. In this lecture I have stillonly to add a few remarks on the assurance and peace which fill thehour of change itself.One word more, though, before proceeding to that point, lest thefinal purpose of my explanation of suddenness by subliminal activitybe misunderstood. I do indeed believe that if the Subject haveno liability to such subconscious activity, or if his conscious fieldshave a hard rind of a margin that resists incursions from beyond it,his conversion must he gradual if it occur, and must resemble anysimple growth into new habits. His possession of a developed subliminalself, and of a leaky or pervious margin, is thus a conditiosine qua non of the Subject’s becoming converted in the instantaneousway. But if you, being orthodox Christians, ask me as a psychologistwhether the reference of a phenomenon to a subliminalself does not exclude the notion of the direct presence of the Deityaltogether, I have to say frankly that as a psychologist I do not seewhy it necessarily should. The lower manifestations of the Subliminal,indeed, fall within the resources of the personal subject: hisordinary sense-material, inattentively taken in and subconsciously rememberedand combined, will account for all his usual automatisms.But just as our primary wide-awake consciousness throws open oursenses to the touch of things material so it is logically conceivable thatif there be higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us, thepsychological condition of their doing so might be our possession of asubconscious region which alone should yield access to them. Thehubbub of the waking life might close a door which in the dreamySubliminal might remain ajar or open.Thus that perception of external control which is so essential afeature in conversion might, in some cases at any rate, be interpretedas the orthodox interpret it: forces transcending the finiteindividual might impress him, on condition of his being what wemay call a subliminal human specimen. But in any case the value ofthese forces would have to be determined by their effects, and themere fact of their transcendency would of itself establish no presumptionthat they were more divine than diabolical.I confess that this is the way in which I should rather see the topic220