This morning I finished reading The Varieties of Religious Experience. Again. The book – a series of lectures given by William James, a psychologist and physician, in 1902 – is a classic for good reason. I knew of the book long before I read it for the first time last year. I found it so deep and so powerful that I simply read it again.[*]
The author applies the scientific method rigorously to the study of matters of a spiritual nature in the human psyche, their importance to the individuals who experience them and, through those people, to human society.
The author asserts that human experiences – religious experiences in particular – though unverifiable by ruler, scale, EKG, microscope or camera, are objectively real in that they have real effects on the people who have them and, by the individual and collective actions produced by spiritual experiences, real effects on humanity as a whole. The fact that one learning of such an experience has never had a similar experience does not entitle a person of intellect and integrity to deny or discredit the described experience.
James measures the value of such experiences by the degree of benefit to the person who has them, such as joy, discipline, and wholesome qualities and actions; and by the degree of benefit to humanity when such experiences motivate an individual to a higher state of integrity, wisdom and exemplary behavior. Acknowledging the existence of extremism and psychopathy, James opines that, by and large, religious experiences serve the people who have them – and humanity as a whole.
In the end – spoiler alert – James notes that anyone who at least respects human states of consciousness that are not limited to perceptions and knowledge of the physical world may come to recognize that such higher, spiritual states have a role in the evolution of the better world such states generally envision.
* The Penguin Classics edition is much better than the one I read first.
