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
differences in the results obtained through mental healing do but
show how ignorant we are as yet of the forces at work and of the
means we should take to make them effective. That these results
are not due to chance coincidences my observation of myself and
others makes me sure; that the conscious mind, the imagination,
enters into them as a factor in many cases is doubtless true, but
in many others, and sometimes very extraordinary ones, it hardly
seems to enter in at all. On the whole I am inclined to think that
as the healing action, like the morbid one, springs from the plane
of the normally _un_conscious mind, so the strongest and most
effective impressions are those which _it_ receives, in some as
yet unknown, subtle way, _directly_ from a healthier mind whose
state, through a hidden law of sympathy, it reproduces.”
CASE II. “At the urgent request of friends, and with no faith and
hardly any hope (possibly owing to a previous unsuccessful
experience with a Christian Scientist), our little daughter was
placed under the care of a healer, and cured of a trouble about
which the physician had been very discouraging in his diagnosis.
This interested me, and I began studying earnestly the method and
philosophy of this method of healing. Gradually an inner peace and
tranquillity came to me in so positive a way that my manner
changed greatly. My children and friends noticed the change and
commented upon it. All feelings of irritability disappeared. Even
the expression of my face changed noticeably.
“I had been bigoted, aggressive, and intolerant in discussion,
both in public and private. I grew broadly tolerant and receptive
toward the views of others. I had been nervous and irritable,
coming home two or three times a week with a sick headache
induced, as I then supposed, by dyspepsia and catarrh. I grew
serene and gentle, and the physical troubles entirely disappeared.
I had been in the habit of approaching every business interview
with an almost morbid dread. I now meet every one with confidence
and inner calm.
“I may say that the growth has all been toward the elimination of
selfishness. I do not mean simply the grosser, more sensual forms,
but those subtler and generally unrecognized kinds, such as
express themselves in sorrow, grief, regret, envy, etc. It has
been in the direction of a practical, working realization of the
immanence of God and the Divinity of man’s true, inner self.”
LECTURES VI AND VII. THE SICK SOUL.
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