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
But here we have mind‐cure, with her diametrically opposite philosophy,
setting up an exactly identical claim. Live as if I were true, she says,
and every day will practically prove you right. That the controlling
energies of nature are personal, that your own personal thoughts are
forces, that the powers of the universe will directly respond to your
individual appeals and needs, are propositions which your whole bodily and
mental experience will verify. And that experience does largely verify
these primeval religious ideas is proved by the fact that the mind‐cure
movement spreads as it does, not by proclamation and assertion simply, but
by palpable experiential results. Here, in the very heyday of science’s
authority, it carries on an aggressive warfare against the scientific
philosophy, and succeeds by using science’s own peculiar methods and
weapons. Believing that a higher power will take care of us in certain
ways better than we can take care of ourselves, if we only genuinely throw
ourselves upon it and consent to use it, it finds the belief, not only not
impugned, but corroborated by its observation.
How conversions are thus made, and converts confirmed, is evident enough
from the narratives which I have quoted. I will quote yet another couple
of shorter ones to give the matter a perfectly concrete turn. Here is
one:—
“One of my first experiences in applying my teaching was two
months after I first saw the healer. I fell, spraining my right
ankle, which I had done once four years before, having then had to
use a crutch and elastic anklet for some months, and carefully
guarding it ever since. As soon as I was on my feet I made the
positive suggestion (and felt it through all my being): ‘There is
nothing but God, all life comes from him perfectly. I cannot be
sprained or hurt, I will let him take care of it.’ Well, I never
had a sensation in it, and I walked two miles that day.”
The next case not only illustrates experiment and verification, but also
the element of passivity and surrender of which awhile ago I made such
account.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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