The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experience“You must undo the wrappings, not case yourself in fresh ones;“Not by multiplying clothes shall you make your body sound andhealthy, but rather by discarding them …“For a soldier who is going on a campaign does not seek whatfresh furniture he can carry on his back, but rather what he canleave behind;“Knowing well that every additional thing which he cannot freelyuse and handle is an impediment.”194In short, lives based on having are less free than lives based eitheron doing or on being, and in the interest of action people subject tospiritual excitement throw away possessions as so many clogs. Onlythose who have no private interests can follow an ideal straight away.Sloth and cowardice creep in with every dollar or guinea we have toguard. When a brother novice came to Saint Francis, saying: “Father,it would be a great consolation to me to own a psalter, but evensupposing that our general should concede to me this indulgence,still I should like also to have your consent,” Francis put him offwith the examples of Charlemagne, Roland, and Oliver, pursuingthe infidels in sweat and labor, and finally dying on the field ofbattle. “So care not,” he said, “for owning books and knowledge,but care rather for works of goodness.” And when some weeks laterthe novice came again to talk of his craving for the psalter, Francissaid: “After you have got your psalter you will crave a breviary; andafter you have got your breviary you will sit in your stall like a grandprelate, and will say to your brother: “Hand me my breviary.”…And thenceforward he denied all such requests, saying: A man possessesof learning only so much as comes out of him in action, anda monk is a good preacher only so far as his deeds proclaim himsuch, for every tree is known by its fruits.”195But beyond this more worthily athletic attitude involved in doingand being, there is, in the desire of not having, something profounderstill, something related to that fundamental mystery of religious experience,the satisfaction found in absolute surrender to the largerpower. So long as any secular safeguard is retained, so long as any194 Edward Carpenter: Towards Democracy, p. 362, abridged.195 Speculum Perfectionis, ed. P. Sabatier, Paris, 1898, pp. 10, 13.288