The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James
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p. 615that individual's religion ; — which is as much as to say that over-beliefs in various directions are absolutely indispensable, and that we should treat them with tenderness and tolerance so long as they are not intolerant themselves. As I have elsewhere written, the most interesting and valuable things about a man are usually his overbeliefs.
Disregarding the over-beliefs, and confining ourselves to what is common and generic, we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self , through which saving experiences come,^ a positive content of religious experience which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes.
If I now proceed to state my own hypothesis about the farther limits of this extension of our personality, I shall be offering my own over-belief — though I know it will appear a sorry under-belief to some of you — for which I can only bespeak the same indulgence which in a converse case I should accord to yours.
The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely ' understandable ' world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you all men, even in those most criminal, even in those from whom I have most suffered, undeveloped brothers to whom I owed assistance, love, and forgiveness.
I have learned that I must lose my temper over nothing, despise no one, and pray for all. Most of all I have learned to pray ! And although I have still much to learn in this domain, prayer ever brings me more strength, consolation, and comfort.
I feel more than ever that I have only made a few steps on the long road of progress ; but I look at its length without dismay, for I have confidence that the day will come when all my efforts shall be rewarded. So Spiritualism has a great place in my life, indeed it holds the first place there.
Flournoy Collection. ^ " The influence of the Holy Spirit, exquisitely called the Comforter, is a matter of actual experience, as solid a reality as that of electro-magnetism. W. C. Brownell, Scribner's Magazine, vol. xxx. p. 112.
p. 516choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong.
Yet the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world.
When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change.^ But that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic ) excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world imreal.
God is the natural appellation, for us Christians at least, for the supreme reality, so I wiU call this higher part of the universe by the name of God.^ We and God 1 That the transaction of opening ourselves, otherwise called prayer, is a perfectly definite one for certain persons, appears abundantly in the preceding lectures.
I append another concrete example to reinforce the impression on the reader's mind : — " Man can learn to transcend these limitations [of finite thought] and draw power and wisdom at will. . . . The divine presence is known through experience. The turning to a higher plane is a distinct act of consciousness. It is not a vague, twilight or semi-conscious experience. It is not an ecstasy ; it is not a trance.
It is not super-consciousness in the Vedantic sense. It is not due to self-hypnotization. It is a perfectly calm, sane, sound, rational, common-sense shifting of consciousness from the phenomena of sense-perception to the phenomena of seership, from the thought of self to a distinctively higher realm. . . . For example, if the lower self be nervous, anxious, tense, one can in a few moments compel it to be calm. This is not done by a word simply.
Again I say, it is not hypnotism. It is by the exercise of power. One feels the spirit of peace as definitely as heat is perceived on a hot summer day. The power can be as surely used as the sun's rays can be focused and made to do work, to set fire to wood. The Higher Law, vol. iv. pp. 4, 6, Boston, August, 1901. 2 Transcendentalists are fond of the term ' Over-soul,' but as a rule they p. 517have business with each other ; and in opening ourselves to his influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled. The universe, at those parts of it which our personal being constitutes, takes a turn genuinely for the worse or for the better in proportion as each one of us fulfills or evades God's demands.
As far as this goes I probably have you with me, for I only translate into schematic language what I may call the instinctive belief of mankind : God is real since he produces real effects. The real effects in question, so far as I have as yet admitted them, are exerted on the personal centres of energy of the various subjects, but the spontaneous faith of most of the subjects is that they embrace a wider sphere than this.
Most rehgious men believe (or ' know,' if they be mystical) that not only they themselves, but the whole universe of beings to whom the God is present, are secure in his parental hands. There is a sense, a dimension, they are sure, in which we are all saved, in spite of the gates of hell and all adverse terrestrial appearances. God's existence is the guarantee of an ideal order that shall be permanently preserved.
This world may indeed, as science assures us, some day burn up or freeze ; but if it is part of his order, the old ideals are sure to be brought elsewhere to fruition, so that where God is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution are not the absolutely final things.
Only when this farther step of faith concerning God is taken, and remote objective consequences are predicted, does religion, as it seems to me, get wholly free from the first immediate subjective experience, and bring a real hyjwthesis into play. A good hypothesis in science must have use it in an intellectualist sense, as meaning only a medium of communion. ' God ' is a causal agent as well as a medium of communion, and that is the aspect which I wish to emphasize.
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