The Varieties of Religious Experience – A Study of Human Nature by William James




“Religion, therefore, as I shall ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they consider the divine.”

“The best fruits of religious experience are the best things history has to show . . . . The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves have been flown for religious ideals . . . . The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse.”

“No matter what a man’s frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever . . . . Many of you would point to athletics, militarism, enterprise and adventure as the remedies. What we need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war (without the irrationality and violence of war) . . . . We English-speaking peoples have grown to despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. Yet there are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman. Think of the strength which personal indifference to poverty would give us if we were devoted to unpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues or fear to vote the revolutionary or reformatory ticket. Our stocks might fall, our hopes of promotion vanish; yet, while we lived our example would help to set free our generation. I recommend this matter to your serious pondering, for it is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.”

“Summing up the characteristics of the religious life, it includes the following beliefs :

  • That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance.
  • That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end.
  • That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof – be that spirit “God” or “law” – is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.

“Religion includes also the following psychological characteristics :

  • A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism.
  • An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.

Full Text of The Varieties of Religious Experience

Condensed Version (16.000 words) of The Varieties of Religious Experience

Marc Fonda’s Notes on The Varieties of Religious Experience : Part 1 & Part 2

Keywords : religion, mysticism, spirituality, love, life, nature, history, peace, unity in diversity, resilience, ecosocial crisis, civilization
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[tags]religion, mysticism, spirituality, love, life, nature, history, peace, unity in diversity, civilization, environmental crisis, social crisis[/tags]

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January 15, 2003
The Book of James: William James’s lectures on religion, a century later
by Joseph Loconte

“The scientific mind, he reasoned, fears believing something that may be false; the spiritual seeker longs for a reality that transcends science. Thus, scientific belief was no less a product of emotional commitment than religious belief. “Rationality does not lie on one side or the other,” he wrote. “It is a contest between our fears and our hopes, and both the scientist and the religious believer take a gamble.”

“James showed little patience for what he considered self-absorbed piety: He was most impressed by believers whose experience of God rescued them from destructive lifestyles and launched them into acts of service. “To call to mind a succession of such examples,” he wrote, “is to feel encouraged and uplifted and washed in better moral air.”

“Columbia University researchers, for example, recently found that people who consider religion important are significantly less likely to abuse drugs ["People With Faith Are Less Likely to Abuse Alcohol and Illegal Drugs," Associated Press, Nov. 18, 2001]. At the University of Pennsylvania, scholars reviewed nearly 800 studies of the relationship between faith and positive social outcomes. Their conclusion: Strong religious commitment is directly linked to greater social well-being – whether it’s battling teen pregnancy, depression or juvenile delinquency [Byron R. Johnson, "Objective Hope: Assessing the Effectiveness of Faith-Based Organizations--A Review of the Literature," University of Pennsylvania's Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, spring 2002].”

Read the full commentary

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Other quotations :

“If merely ‘feeling good’ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience . . . . Things for which organized religion is blamed are actually due to man’s character: spirit of corporate dominion and spirit of dogmatic dominion.”

“Knowledge of a thing is not the thing itself. For this reason, the science of religions may not be an equivalent for living religions.”

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Published::
4.9.07 / 9am
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Learning for Life, Man, Spirituality, Unity in Diversity
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