The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James
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p. 125it had been the potent factor there, I never after this got any result at all as striking or as clearly marked as this which came when I made trial of it first, with little faith and doubtful expectation.
It is difficult to put all the evidence in such a matter into words, to gather up into a distinct statement all that one bases one's conclusions on, but I have always felt that I had abundant evidence to justify (to myself, at least) the conclusion that I came to then, and since have held to, that the physical change which came at that time was, first, the result of a change wrought within me by a change of mental state ; and, secondly, that that change of mental state was not, save in a very secondary way, brought about through the influence of an excited imagination, or a consciously received suggestion of an hypnotic sort.
Lastly, I believe that this change was the result of my receiving telepathically, and upon a mental stratum quite below the level of immediate consciousness, a healthier and more energetic attitude, receiving it from another person whose thought was directed upon me with the intention of impressing the idea of this attitude upon me.
In my case the disease was distinctly what would be classed as nervous, not organic ; but from such opportunities as I have had of observing, I have come to the conclusion that the dividing line that has been drawn is an arbitrary one, the nerves controlling the internal activities and the nutrition of the body throughout ; and I believe that the central nervous system, by starting and inhibiting local centres, can exercise a vast influence upon disease of any kind, if it can be brought to bear.
In my judgment the question is simply how to bring it to bear, and I think that the uncertainty and remarkable 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 p. 126of the normally wwconscious 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 discus- . sion, 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^f 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.'L„
LECTURES VI AND VII THE SICK SOUL AT our last meeting, we considered the healthy-minded J^jL temperament, the temperament which has a constitutional incapacity for prolonged suffering, and in which the tendency to see things optimistically is like a water of crystallization in which the individual's character is set.
We saw how this temperament may become the basis for a peculiar type of religion, a religion in which good, even the good of this world's life, is regarded as the essential thing for a rational being to attend to.
This relio:ion directs him to settle his scores with the more evil aspects of the universe by systematically declining to lay them to heart or make much of them, by ignoring them in his reflective calculations, or even, on occasion, by denying outright that they exist. Evil is a disease ; and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint.
Even repentance and remorse, affections which come in the character of ministers of good, may be but rsickly and relaxing impulses. The best repentance is to vup and_act for righteousness, and forget that you_eyer had relations with sin. Spinoza's philosophy has this sort of healthy-mindedness woven into the heart of it, and this has been one secret of its fascination.
He whom Reason leads, according to Spinoza, is led altogether by the influence over his mind of good. Knowledge of evil is an ' inadequate ' knowledge, fit only for slavish minds. So Spi-
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