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
Their notion of man’s higher nature is hardly less divergent, being
decidedly pantheistic. The spiritual in man appears in the mind‐cure
philosophy as partly conscious, but chiefly subconscious; and through the
subconscious part of it we are already one with the Divine without any
miracle of grace, or abrupt creation of a new inner man. As this view is
variously expressed by different writers, we find in it traces of
Christian mysticism, of transcendental idealism, of vedantism, and of the
modern psychology of the subliminal self. A quotation or two will put us
at the central point of view:—
“The great central fact of the universe is that spirit of infinite
life and power that is back of all, that manifests itself in and
through all. This spirit of infinite life and power that is back
of all is what I call God. I care not what term you may use, be it
Kindly Light, Providence, the Over‐Soul, Omnipotence, or whatever
term may be most convenient, so long as we are agreed in regard to
the great central fact itself. God then fills the universe alone,
so that all is from Him and in Him, and there is nothing that is
outside. He is the life of our life, our very life itself. We are
partakers of the life of God; and though we differ from Him in
that we are individualized spirits, while He is the Infinite
Spirit, including us, as well as all else beside, yet in essence
the life of God and the life of man are identically the same, and
so are one. They differ not in essence or quality; they differ in
degree.
“The great central fact in human life is the coming into a
conscious vital realization of our oneness with this Infinite
Life, and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow. In
just the degree that we come into a conscious realization of our
oneness with the Infinite Life, and open ourselves to this divine
inflow, do we actualize in ourselves the qualities and powers of
the Infinite Life, do we make ourselves channels through which the
Infinite Intelligence and Power can work. In just the degree in
which you realize your oneness with the Infinite Spirit, you will
exchange dis‐ease for ease, inharmony for harmony, suffering and
pain for abounding health and strength. To recognize our own
divinity, and our intimate relation to the Universal, is to attach
the belts of our machinery to the powerhouse of the Universe. One
need remain in hell no longer than one chooses to; we can rise to
any heaven we ourselves choose; and when we choose so to rise, all
the higher powers of the Universe combine to help us
heavenward.”(51)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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