The Religious Experience Again

Some time ago I announced with some fanfare that I had undertaken to read the book The Varieties of Religious Experience by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. It has taken some time, but I have made my way through it, and wanted to summarize my impressions taken from the great professor.

But first, some essential humility. My intelligence is often called into question here, but the most important criticism is often missed by my critics, though Budge hits on it now and then – I dabble. I am the accountant who always wanted to be a lion tamer. I do have an IQ that is above the average, but this is a source of frustration, as all it does is introduce me to the higher realms of those who have real and startling intelligence, whose depth I can only observe but not hope to experience. So reading William James is like watching a train go by – there’s no way I can run fast enough to get on board.

That said, as soon as I put up my thoughts on the opening passages of the books, Ed Kemmick offered his own thoughts, having long ago read the book, and it kept me in suspense the entire time. Here’s what he said:

Mark: You’re in for one of the world’s great reads. I don’t want to ruin the ending for you, but James concludes that people throughout history who claim to have had religious, transcendent experiences actually did have them. He concludes this on the basis of having examined the experiences of thousands of believers from widely divergent times and places and having found similarities that couldn’t be explained in any other way but to conclude that they had experienced something divine or transcendent.

I most admire James for coming to this conclusion without himself being able to feel any religious impulse. It’s a wonderful idea, painstakingly arrived at: that there is something out there, but that given the “varieties of religious experience,” it appears unlikely that any given sect or individual has yet been given any clear instructions from God. He makes dogmatists and atheists both look close-minded.

So I embarked. James was systematic in his analysis of the religious experiences we have all read about, that some of us have encountered. He examines the testimony of those who have had personal experiences with the unseen, and concludes that these experiences, while being real to the beholder, are not necessarily “real” in any scientific sense – that is, they are subjective and unique to the one that experiences them. But they have something in common, in that they answer a personal crisis, and almost always lead the person to a higher quality of life, a better and kinder existence, allowing people to forsake drink and tobacco and cease to pursue wealth, for example.

Often people who undergo mystical transformation do so only in benefit for themselves, living out their lives in monasteries, ceasing to be useful for the rest of humanity. As such, James seems to discount the mystical experience as having any terrible significance. Such experiences are perhaps nothing more than a manifestation of some individual’s need for meaning in life. That does not give life meaning, however.

Then there is the conversion experience – Paul being blinded by light and having an immediate and significant change in personality. Such people – I have known one or two – often become engines of transformation for others. The process is generally brought about by suffering – deep suffering that most of us don’t experience – psychological torment of one form or another that cries out for immediate relief. Otherwise, the person might retreat into insanity. The conversion experience again seems to be set aside as a psychological phenomenon. Most who experience it go on to become more satisfied, but not exceptional people.

James then examines the saintly personality – those among us so dedicated to charity, simplicity and purity as to lead exemplary lives worthy of biography and (seemingly only in Western Civilization) autobiography. James notes a common characteristic among saints – the complete sacrifice of self.

“One of the great consolations of monastic life,” says a Jesuit authority, is the assurance that we have that in obeying we can commit no fault. The Superior may commit a fault in commanding you to do this thing or that, but you are certain that you commit no fault so long as you only, because God will only ask you if you have duly performed what orders you received, and if you furnish a clear account in that respect, you are absolved entirely.”

Later in the Twentieth Century, this would be called the Nuremberg Defense. It is most likely my own ‘getting-off’ point with religion. I cherish my ego, cannot let go of it. I derive too much joy from it to sacrifice it to some higher power that never saw fit to give me a personal visit.

Saints are indeed among us and do live according to higher virtues and leave more positive impact on us that ordinary people. They are worthy of note, but this does not testify to the reality of their personal interaction with a deity.

We have to pass judgment on the whole notion of saintship based on merits. Any God who, on the one hand, can care to keep pedantically minute account of individual shortcomings, and who on the other hand can feel such partialities, and load particular creatures with such insipid marks of favor, is too small-minded a God for our credence.

James then examines mysticism – the apparent union with a higher power after the dark night of the soul. James lived in the time of the Transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau and Whitman, and observes that mystical experiences are often in tune with nature. The experience is real to the beholder, but, concludes James, should have no particular hold over the rest of us. The observations of mystics can only be experienced, and not well described, and since that experience is limited but a few of us, can be taken less seriously than the work of serious philosophers. But the experience points to something valuable, as he later concludes.

James then attacks theology itself. He is one of those who was behind the development of the philosophy of pragmatism, along with Charles Peirce, the idea that the meaning of thought is only valid in the actions it produces. (Read sometime, for the sheer fun of it, The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand)

If, namely, we apply the principle of pragmatism to God’s metaphysical attributes, strictly so-called, as distinguished from his moral attributes, I think that, even were we forced by coercive logic to believe them, we we still should have to confess them to be destitute of all intelligible significance.

Richard Dawkins, the annoying atheist, comes to a similar conclusion – theology is not of much use, and can be set aside. In Dawkins’ case, it is not to be set aside lightly, but in Dorothy Parker’s words, should be “thrown with great force.”

Prayer – what good is it? James may seem to have dismissed much of the religious experience at this point, but he takes prayer seriously. He gives credit to the unconscious being, and concludes that there is a flow of energy from there to our conscious life, and that those ideas that thus flow are healthy. From prayer we receive inspiration, strength, wisdom, and virtue. Whatever the mystical nature of the prayerful experience, it is a positive value.

James concludes that religion starts with “an uneasiness”, and its solution. The conclusion is that “we are saved from wrongness by making proper connection with higher powers.” This experience takes us into the realm of the mystical, and indeed many among us have had real experiences with the mystical life.

The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in.”

There is “over-belief” – conclusions drawn from conversion, prayer, mysticism and saintliness that are not supported by unique individual experiences or objective inquiry into them, but whatever it is that these people experience, it is indeed real, and there is far more to our existence than our conscious minds can absorb. James, the psychologist, would put in the realm of the unconscious overlapping with the conscious, with the unconscious not yet fully explored and with much to tell us about our lives and existence.

It’s a book that needs to be re-read – I hope to have that time. In the meantime, I hope I have done him justice; I know I have not.