The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

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The Varieties of Religious ExperienceThe kinds of truth communicable in mystical ways, whether thesebe sensible or supersensible, are various. Some of them relate to thisworld—visions of the future, the reading of hearts, the sudden understandingof texts, the knowledge of distant events, for example;but the most important revelations are theological or metaphysical.“Saint Ignatius confessed one day to Father Laynez that a singlehour of meditation at Manresa had taught him more truths aboutheavenly things than all the teachings of all the doctors put togethercould have taught him… . One day in orison, on the steps of thechoir of the Dominican church, he saw in a distinct manner theplan of divine wisdom in the creation of the world. On anotheroccasion, during a procession, his spirit was ravished in God, and itwas given him to contemplate, in a form and images fitted to theweak understanding of a dweller on the earth, the deep mystery ofthe holy Trinity. This last vision flooded his heart with such sweetness,that the mere memory of it in after times made him shed abundanttears.”253253 Bartoli-Michel: vie de Saint Ignace de Loyola, i. 34-36. Others havehad illuminations about the created world, Jacob Boehme for instance. Atthe age of twenty-five he was “surrounded by the divine light, and replenishedwith the heavenly knowledge, insomuch as going abroad into thefields to a green, at Gorlitz, he there sat down and viewing the herbs andgrass of the field, in his inward light he saw into their essences, use, andproperties, which was discovered to him by their lineaments, figures, andsignatures.” Of a later period of experience he writes: “In one quarter ofan hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at anuniversity. For I saw and knew the being of all things, the Byss and theAbyss, and the eternal generation of the holy Trinity, the descent and originalof the world and of all creatures through the divine wisdom. I knew andsaw in myself all the three worlds, the external and visible world being ofa procreation or extern birth from both the internal and spiritual worlds;and I saw and knew the whole working essence, in the evil and in thegood, and the mutual original and existence, and likewise how the fruitfulbearing womb of eternity brought forth. So that I did not only greatlywonder at it, but did also exceedingly rejoice, albeit I could very hardlyapprehend the same in my external man and set it down with the pen. ForI had a thorough view of the universe as in a chaos, wherein all things are366
William JamesSimilarly with Saint Teresa. “One day, being in orison,” she writes,“it was granted me to perceive in one instant how all things are seenand contained in God. I did not perceive them in their proper form,and nevertheless the view I had of them was of a sovereign clearness,and has remained vividly impressed upon my soul. It is one of themost signal of all the graces which the Lord has granted me… . Theview was so subtile and delicate that the understanding cannot graspit.”254She goes on to tell how it was as if the Deity were an enormousand sovereignly limpid diamond, in which all our actions were containedin such a way that their full sinfulness appeared evident asnever before. On another day, she relates, while she was reciting theAthanasian Creed—“Our Lord made me comprehend in what way it is that one Godcan be in three persons. He made me see it so clearly that I remainedas extremely surprised as I was comforted, … and now,when I think of the holy Trinity, or hear It spoken of, I understandhow the three adorable Persons form only one God and I experiencean unspeakable happiness.”On still another occasion, it was given to Saint Teresa to see andunderstand in what wise the Mother of God had been assumed intoher place in Heaven.255couched and wrapt up, but it was impossible for me to explicate the same.”Jacob Behmen’s Theosophic Philosophy, etc., by Edward Taylor, London,1691, pp. 425, 427, abridged.So George Fox: “I was come up to the state of Adam in which he wasbefore he fell. The creation was opened to me; and it was showed me, howall things had their names given to them, according to their nature andvirtue. I was at a stand in my mind, whether I should practice physic forthe good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures wereso opened to me by the Lord.” Journal, Philadelphia, no date, p. 69.Contemporary “Clairvoyance” abounds in similar revelations. AndrewJackson Davis’s cosmogonies, for example, or certain experiences relatedin the delectable “Reminiscences and Memories of Henry ThomasButterworth,” Lebanon, Ohio, 1886.254 Vie, pp. 581, 582.255 Loc. cit., p. 574.367
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The Varieties ofReligiousExperience
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ContentsPREFACE....................
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William JamesLECTURE II CIRCUMSCRIP
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William JamesLECTURES XI, XII, AND
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William Jameseses: 1. The subconsci
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William Jamesmy colleague Dickinson
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William Jamesits heroic obligations
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William Jamesas a guide to life and
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William Jamespower. Yet from the po
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William Jamesthors are actually abl
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William Jamesin favor of the sexual
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William Jamesof our states of mind,
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William Jamesstrictly to the medica
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William Jamesment from origin has s
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William Jamesthe bugaboo of morbid
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William Jamesreligious evolution. T
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William JamesLecture e IICIRCUMSCRI
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