The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

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The Varieties of Religious Experiencemy heart… . Formerly the day was dulled by the absence of the Lord.I used to wake invaded by all sorts of sad impressions, and I did notfind him on my path. To-day he is with me; and the light cloudinesswhich covers things is not an obstacle to my communion with him. Ifeel the pressure of his hand, I feel something else which fills me witha serene joy; shall I dare to speak it out? Yes, for it is the true expressionof what I experience. The Holy Spirit is not merely making me avisit; it is no mere dazzling apparition which may from one momentto another spread its wings and leave me in my night, it is a permanenthabitation. He can depart only if he takes me with him. Morethan that; he is not other than myself: he is one with me. It is not ajuxtaposition, it is a penetration, a profound modification of my nature,a new manner of my being.” Quoted from the ms. of an oldman by Wilfred Monod: II Vit: six meditations sur le mystere chretien,pp. 280-283.This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individualand the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic stateswe both become one with the Absolute and we become aware ofour oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition,hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism,in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism,we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mysticalutterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stopand think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have,as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually tellingof the unity of man with God, their speech antedates languages,and they do not grow old.269“That art Thou!” say the Upanishads, and the Vedantists add:“Not a part, not a mode of That, but identically That, that absoluteSpirit of the World.” “As pure water poured into pure water remainsthe same, thus, O Gautama, is the Self of a thinker who knows.Water in water, fire in fire, ether in ether, no one can distinguishthem: likewise a man whose mind has entered into the Self.”270269 Compare M. Maeterlinck: L’Ornement des Noces spirituelles deRuysbroeck, Bruxelles, 1891, Introduction, p. xix.270 Upanishads, M. Muller’s translation, ii. 17, 334.374
William James“‘Every man,’ says the Sufi Gulshan-Raz, whose heart is no longershaken by any doubt, knows with certainty that there is no beingsave only One… . In his divine majesty the me, and we, the thou,are not found, for in the One there can be no distinction. Everybeing who is annulled and entirely separated from himself, hearsresound outside of him this voice and this echo: I am God: he has aneternal way of existing, and is no longer subject to death.’”271 Inthe vision of God, says Plotinus, “what sees is not our reason, butsomething prior and superior to our reason… . He who thus seesdoes not properly see, does not distinguish or imagine two things.He changes, he ceases to be himself, preserves nothing of himself.Absorbed in God, he makes but one with him, like a centre of acircle coinciding with another centre.”272 “Here,” writes Suso, “thespirit dies, and yet is all alive in the marvels of the Godhead … andis lost in the stillness of the glorious dazzling obscurity and of thenaked simple unity. It is in this modeless where that the highest blissis to be found.”273 “Ich bin so gross als Gott,” sings Angelus Silesiusagain, “Er ist als ich so klein; Er kann nicht uber mich, ich unterihm nicht sein.”274In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as “dazzlingobscurity,” “whispering silence,” “teeming desert,” are continuallymet with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather,is the element through which we are best spoken to by mysticaltruth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musicalcompositions.“He who would hear the voice of Nada, ‘the Soundless Sound,’and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dharana… .When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all theforms he sees in dreams, when he has ceased to hear the many, hemay discern the one—the inner sound which kills the outer… .For then the soul will hear, and will remember. And then to the271 Schmolders: Op. cit., p. 210.272 Enneads, Bouillier’s translation. Paris, 1861, iii. 561. Compare pp.473-477, and vol. i. p. 27.273 Autobiography, pp. 309, 310.274 Op. cit., Strophe 10.375
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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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William Jamesnot prevent me from ta
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