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
Let me now pass from these abstracter statements to some more concrete
accounts of experience with the mind‐cure religion. I have many answers
from correspondents—the only difficulty is to choose. The first two whom I
shall quote are my personal friends. One of them, a woman, writing as
follows, expresses well the feeling of continuity with the Infinite Power,
by which all mind‐cure disciples are inspired.
“The first underlying cause of all sickness, weakness, or
depression is the _human sense of separateness_ from that Divine
Energy which we call God. The soul which can feel and affirm in
serene but jubilant confidence, as did the Nazarene: ‘I and my
Father are one,’ has no further need of healer, or of healing.
This is the whole truth in a nutshell, and other foundation for
wholeness can no man lay than this fact of impregnable divine
union. Disease can no longer attack one whose feet are planted on
this rock, who feels hourly, momently, the influx of the Deific
Breath. If one with Omnipotence, how can weariness enter the
consciousness, how illness assail that indomitable spark?
“This possibility of annulling forever the law of fatigue has been
abundantly proven in my own case; for my earlier life bears a
record of many, many years of bedridden invalidism, with spine and
lower limbs paralyzed. My thoughts were no more impure than they
are to‐day, although my belief in the necessity of illness was
dense and unenlightened; but since my resurrection in the flesh, I
have worked as a healer unceasingly for fourteen years without a
vacation, and can truthfully assert that I have never known a
moment of fatigue or pain, although coming in touch constantly
with excessive weakness, illness, and disease of all kinds. For
how can a conscious part of Deity be sick?—since ‘Greater is he
that is _with_ us than all that can strive against us.’ ”
My second correspondent, also a woman, sends me the following statement:—
“Life seemed difficult to me at one time. I was always breaking
down, and had several attacks of what is called nervous
prostration, with terrible insomnia, being on the verge of
insanity; besides having many other troubles, especially of the
digestive organs. I had been sent away from home in charge of
doctors, had taken all the narcotics, stopped all work, been fed
up, and in fact knew all the doctors within reach. But I never
recovered permanently till this New Thought took possession of me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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