The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James
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p. 512as true as when it was first written : " Each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows — an individuality which can never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation.
The Self manifests through the organism ; but there is always some part of the Self unmanifested ; and always, as it seems, some power of organic expression in abeyance or reserve." ^ Much of the content of this larger background against which our conscious being stands out in relief is insignificant.
Imperfect memories, silly jingles, inhibitive timidities, ' dissolutive ' phenomena of various sorts, as Myers calls them, enter into it for a large part. But in it many of the performances of genius seem also to have their origin ; and in our study of conversion, of mystical experiences, and of prayer, we have seen how striking a part invasions from this region play in the religious life.
Let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that whatever it may be on its farther side, the ' more ' with which in religious experience we feel ourselves connected is on its hither side the subconscious continuation of our conscious life. Starting thus with a recognized psychological fact as our basis, we seem to preserve a contact with * science ' which the ordinary theologian lacks.
At the same time the theologian's contention that the religious man is moved by an external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of invasions from the tion of the subliminal region of consciousness throughout its whole extent, and made the first methodical steps in its topography by treating as a natural series a mass of subliminal facts hitherto considered only as curious isolated facts, and subjecting them to a systematized nomenclature.
How important this exploration will prove, future work upon the path which Myers has opened can alone show. Compare my paper : ' Frederic Myers's Services to Psychology,' in the said Proceedings, part xlii., May, 1901. 1 Compare the inventory given above on pp. 483-4, and also what is said of the subconscious self on pp. 233-236, 240-242.
p. 613subconscious region to take on objective appearances, and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In the religious life the control is felt as ' higher ' ; but since on our hypothesis it is primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are controlHng, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of something, not merely apparently, but literally true.
This doorway into the subject seems to me the best one for a science of religions, for it mediates between a number of different points of view. Yet it is only a doorway, and difficulties present themselves as soon as we step through it, and ask how far our transmarginal consciousness carries us if we follow it on its remoter side.
Here the over-beliefs begin : here mysticism and the conversion-rapture and Vedantism and transcendental idealism bring in their monistic interpretations ^ and tell us that the finite self rejoins the absolute self, for it was always one with God and identical with the soul of the world.^ Here the prophets of all the different religions ^ Compare above, pp. 419 ff.
2 One more expression of this belief, to increase the reader's familiarity with the notion of it : — " If this room is full of darkness for thousands of years, and you come in and begin to weep and wail, ' Oh, the darkness,' will the darkness vanish ? Bring the light in, strike a match, and light comes in a moment. So what good will it do you to think all your lives, * Oh, I have done evil, I have made many mistakes ' ?
It requires no ghost to tell us that. Bring in the light, and the evil goes in a moment. Strengthen the real nature, build up yourselves, the effulgent, the resplendent, the ever pure, call that up in every one whom you see.
I wish that every one of us had come to such a state that even when we see the vilest of human beings we can see the God within, and instead of condemning, say, ' Kise, thou effulgent One, rise thou who art always pure, rise thou birthless and deathless, rise almighty, and manifest your nature.' . . . This is the highest prayer that the Advaita teaches. This is the one prayer : remembering our nature." ...
Why does man go out to look for a God ? ... It is your own heart beating, and you did not know, you were mistaking it for something external. He, nearest of the near, my own self, the reality of my own life, my body and my p. 514come with their visions, voices, raptures, and other openings, supposed by each to authenticate his own pecuHar faitli. Those of us who are not personally favored with such specific revelations must stand outside of them altogether and, for the present at least, decide that, since they corroborate incompatible theological doctrines, they neutralize one another and leave no fixed result.
If we follow any one of them, or if we follow philosophical theory and embrace monistic pantheism on non-mystical grounds, we do so in the exercise of our individual freedom, and build out our religion in the way most congruous with our personal susceptibilities. Among these susceptibilities intellectual ones play a decisive part.
Although the rehgious question is primarily a question of life, of living or not hvin'g in the higher union which opens itself to us as a gift, yet the spiritual excitement in which the gift appears a real one will often fail to be aroused in an individual until certain particular intellectual beliefs or ideas which, as we say, come home to him, are touched.^ These ideas will thus be essential to soul. — I am Thee and Thou art Me.
That is your own nature. Assert it, manifest it. Not to become pure, you are pure already. You are not to be perfect, you are that already. Every good thought which you think or act upon is simply tearing the veil, as it were, and the purity, the Infinity, the God behind, manifests itself — the eternal Subject of everything, the eternal Witness in this universe, your own Self. Knowledge is, as it were, a lower step, a degradation.
We are It already ; how to know It ? " Swami ViVEKANANDA : Addresscs, No. XII., Practical Vedanta, part iv. pp. 172, 174, Loudon, 1897 ; and Lectures, The Real and the Apparent Man, p. 24, abridged. 1 For instance, here is a case where a person exposed from her birth to Christian ideas had to wait till they came to her clad in spiritistic formulas before the saving experience set tn : — " For myself I can say that spiritualism has saved me.
It was revealed to me at a critical moment of my life, and without it I don't know what I should have done. It has taught me to detach myself from worldly things and to place my hope in things to come. Through it I have learned to see ia
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