The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature — John Shaqi
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human NatureJames, William
ReligionComparative
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
James, William
Conversion; Experience (Religion); Philosophy and religion; Psychology, Religious; Religion
“I have on a number of occasions felt that I had enjoyed a period
of intimate communion with the divine. These meetings came unasked
and unexpected, and seemed to consist merely in the temporary
obliteration of the conventionalities which usually surround and
cover my life.... Once it was when from the summit of a high
mountain I looked over a gashed and corrugated landscape extending
to a long convex of ocean that ascended to the horizon, and again
from the same point when I could see nothing beneath me but a
boundless expanse of white cloud, on the blown surface of which a
few high peaks, including the one I was on, seemed plunging about
as if they were dragging their anchors. What I felt on these
occasions was a temporary loss of my own identity, accompanied by
an illumination which revealed to me a deeper significance than I
had been wont to attach to life. It is in this that I find my
justification for saying that I have enjoyed communication with
God. Of course the absence of such a being as this would be chaos.
I cannot conceive of life without its presence.”
Of the more habitual and so to speak chronic sense of God’s presence the
following sample from Professor Starbuck’s manuscript collection may serve
to give an idea. It is from a man aged forty‐nine,—probably thousands of
unpretending Christians would write an almost identical account.
“God is more real to me than any thought or thing or person. I
feel his presence positively, and the more as I live in closer
harmony with his laws as written in my body and mind. I feel him
in the sunshine or rain; and awe mingled with a delicious
restfulness most nearly describes my feelings. I talk to him as to
a companion in prayer and praise, and our communion is delightful.
He answers me again and again, often in words so clearly spoken
that it seems my outer ear must have carried the tone, but
generally in strong mental impressions. Usually a text of
Scripture, unfolding some new view of him and his love for me, and
care for my safety. I could give hundreds of instances, in school
matters, social problems, financial difficulties, etc. That he is
mine and I am his never leaves me, it is an abiding joy. Without
it life would be a blank, a desert, a shoreless, trackless waste.”
I subjoin some more examples from writers of different ages and sexes.
They are also from Professor Starbuck’s collection, and their number might
be greatly multiplied. The first is from a man twenty‐seven years old:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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