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
“The time will come when in the busy office or on the noisy street
you can enter into the silence by simply drawing the mantle of
your own thoughts about you and realizing that there and
everywhere the Spirit of Infinite Life, Love, Wisdom, Peace,
Power, and Plenty is guiding, keeping, protecting, leading you.
This is the spirit of continual prayer.(60) One of the most
intuitive men we ever met had a desk at a city office where
several other gentlemen were doing business constantly, and often
talking loudly. Entirely undisturbed by the many various sounds
about him, this self‐centred faithful man would, in any moment of
perplexity, draw the curtains of privacy so completely about him
that he would be as fully inclosed in his own psychic aura, and
thereby as effectually removed from all distractions, as though he
were alone in some primeval wood. Taking his difficulty with him
into the mystic silence in the form of a direct question, to which
he expected a certain answer, he would remain utterly passive
until the reply came, and never once through many years’
experience did he find himself disappointed or misled.”(61)
Wherein, I should like to know, does this _intrinsically_ differ from the
practice of “recollection” which plays so great a part in Catholic
discipline? Otherwise called the practice of the presence of God (and so
known among ourselves, as for instance in Jeremy Taylor), it is thus
defined by the eminent teacher Alvarez de Paz in his work on
Contemplation.
“It is the recollection of God, the thought of God, which in all
places and circumstances makes us see him present, lets us commune
respectfully and lovingly with him, and fills us with desire and
affection for him.... Would you escape from every ill? Never lose
this recollection of God, neither in prosperity nor in adversity,
nor on any occasion whichsoever it be. Invoke not, to excuse
yourself from this duty, either the difficulty or the importance
of your business, for you can always remember that God sees you,
that you are under his eye. If a thousand times an hour you forget
him, reanimate a thousand times the recollection. If you cannot
practice this exercise continuously, at least make yourself as
familiar with it as possible; and, like unto those who in a
rigorous winter draw near the fire as often as they can, go as
often as you can to that ardent fire which will warm your
soul.”(62)
All the external associations of the Catholic discipline are of course
unlike anything in mind‐cure thought, but the purely spiritual part of the
exercise is identical in both communions, and in both communions those who
urge it write with authority, for they have evidently experienced in their
own persons that whereof they tell. Compare again some mind‐cure
utterances:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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