the varieties of religious experience review

These testimonies cover sudden conversion (“I only felt myself changed and believed myself another me”) and despair (“O God! What a misfortune to be born! Born like a mushroom, doubtless between an evening and a morning”) and mysticism (“I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence”).įour of the most memorable lectures in the book - two each on the subjects of “healthy-mindedness” and the “sick soul” - consider these two categories of people at length: those whose disposition is “organically weighted on the side of cheer” and those who are depressive or congenitally pessimistic, to be brief. His sensitivity was to the reasons we feel compelled to believe - among them our “conscience,” “helplessness” and “incompleteness” - and how belief might reward those reasons.Ī substantial percentage of the book is given over to personal testimonies, sometimes quoted at length, taken from memoirs, pamphlets and other researchers’ work. James’s subject was not theories of heaven nor different types of congregations it was each congregant at 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling, alone. The subtitle, “A Study in Human Nature,” is perhaps a more accurate reflection of its contents. James cataloged one type of experience: the personal the intimate. “Varieties” in the book’s title is a bit misleading.

A psychologist and philosopher (and oldest brother of the novelist Henry), James was not a follower of any church, and had little academic interest in institutional religion, but he was obsessively curious about the inner experiences of believers. It’s a cliché for people unswayed by religion to still believe in William James, to allow him access to their souls because of the way he sneaks in through their brains. I began to verbally annotate everyday life to friends by referring to things he had done or said, with the same frequency with which I had once (no less annoyingly, I’m sure) called on scenes from “The Simpsons.” He was a Swiss Army knife of psychological and emotional insight. I immediately read more work by and about James.

When I picked up “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” an edited version of 20 lectures that James delivered in Edinburgh in 19, I wasn’t expecting it to be a profound balm, but that’s what it was. Yet I can’t help feeling that I was saved, for a while, by William James.Ībout 10 years ago I was hurting not from a broken heart so much as an exhausted one, having spent several of the previous years caring about people whose own hearts and minds were in states of distress.

I’ve devoted a significant chunk of this one life I have to reading, though I really don’t believe that books offer any greater chance of salvation than, say, windsurfing.

The varieties of religious experience review