Varieties of religious experience A study in human nature
Book - 2002
Saved in:
- Subjects
- Published
-
London ; New York :
Routledge
2002.
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Edition
- Centenary edition
- Physical Description
- 415 pages
- Audience
- 1360L
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN
- 9780415278096
- Introduction
- Author's Preface
- 1. Religion and Neurology
- Introduction: the course is not anthropological, but deals with personal documents
- Questions of fact and questions of value
- In point of fact, the religious are often neurotic
- Criticism of medical materialism, which condemns religion on that account
- Theory that religion has a sexual origin refuted
- All states of mind are neurally conditioned
- Their significance must be tested not by their origin but by the value of their fruits
- Three criteria of value; origin useless as a criterion
- Advantages of the psychopathic temperament when a superior intellect goes with it
- Especially for the religious life
- 2. Circumscription of the Topic
- Futility of simple definitions of religion
- No one specific "religious sentiment"
- Institutional and personal religion
- We confine ourselves to the personal branch
- Definition of religion for the purpose of these lectures
- Meaning of the term "divine"
- The divine is what prompts solemn reactions
- Impossible to make our definitions sharp
- We must study the more extreme cases
- Two ways of accepting the universe
- Religion is more enthusiastic than philosophy
- Its characteristic is enthusiasm in solemn emotion
- Its ability to overcome unhappiness
- Need of such a faculty from the biological point of view
- 3. The Reality of the Unseen
- Percepts versus abstract concepts
- Influence of the latter on belief
- Kant's theological Ideas
- We have a sense of reality other than that given by the special senses
- Examples of "sense of presence"
- The feeling of unreality
- Sense of a divine presence: examples
- Mystical experiences: examples
- Other cases of sense of God's presence
- Convincingness of unreasoned experience
- Inferiority of rationalism in establishing belief
- Either enthusiasm or solemnity may preponderate in the religious attitude of individuals
- 4 and 5. The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness
- Happiness is man's chief concern
- "Once-born" and "twice-born" characters
- Walt Whitman
- Mixed nature of Greek feeling
- Systematic healthy-mindedness
- Its reasonableness
- Liberal Christianity shows it
- Optimism as encouraged by Popular Science
- The "Mind-cure" movement
- Its creed
- Cases
- Its doctrine of evil
- Its analogy to Lutheran theology
- Salvation by relaxation
- Its methods: suggestion
- Meditation
- "Recollection"
- Verification
- Diversity of possible schemes of adaptation to the universe
- Appendix. Two mind-cure cases
- 6 and 7. The Sick Soul
- Healthy-mindedness and repentance
- Essential pluralism of the healthy-minded philosophy
- Morbid-mindedness: its two degrees
- The pain-threshold varies in individuals
- Insecurity of natural goods
- Failure, or vain success of every life
- Pessimism of all pure naturalism
- Hopelessness of Greek and Roman view
- Pathological unhappiness
- "Anhedonia"
- Querulous melancholy
- Vital zest is a pure gift
- Loss of it makes physical world look different
- Tolstoy
- Bunyan
- Alline
- Morbid fear
- Such cases need a supernatural religion for relief
- Antagonism of healthy-mindedness and morbidness
- The problem of evil cannot be escaped
- 8. The Divided Self, and the Process of Its Unification
- Heterogeneous personality
- Character gradually attains unity
- Examples of divided self
- The unity attained need not be religious
- "Counter conversion" cases
- Other cases
- Gradual and sudden unification
- Tolstoy's recovery
- Bunyan's
- 9. Conversion
- Case of Stephen Bradley
- The psychology of character-changes
- Emotional excitements make new centres of personal energy
- Schematic ways of representing this
- Starbuck likens conversion to normal moral ripening
- Leuba's ideas
- Seemingly unconvertible persons
- Two types of conversion
- Subconscious incubation of motives
- Self-surrender
- Its importance in religious history
- Cases
- 10. Conversion--Concluded
- Cases of sudden conversion
- Is suddenness essential?
- No, it depends on psychological idiosyncrasy
- Proved existence of transmarginal, or subliminal, consciousness
- "Automatisms"
- Instantaneous conversions seem due to the possession of an active subconscious self by the subject
- The value of conversion depends not on the process, but on the fruits
- These are not superior in sudden conversion
- Professor Coe's views
- Sanctification as a result
- Our psychological account does not exclude direct presence of the Deity
- Sense of higher control
- Relations of the emotional "faith-state" to intellectual beliefs
- Leuba quoted
- Characteristics of the faith-state: sense of truth; the world appears new
- Sensory and motor automatisms
- Permanency of conversions
- 11, 12, and 13. Saintliness
- Sainte-Beuve on the State of Grace
- Types of character as due to the balance of impulses and inhibitions
- Sovereign excitements
- Irascibility
- Effects of higher excitement in general
- The saintly life is ruled by spiritual excitement
- This may annul sensual impulses permanently
- Probable subconscious influences involved
- Mechanical scheme for representing permanent alteration in character
- Characteristics of saintliness
- Sense of reality of a higher power
- Peace of mind, charity
- Equanimity, fortitude, etc.
- Connection of this with relaxation
- Purity of life
- Asceticism
- Obedience
- Poverty
- The sentiments of democracy and of humanity
- General effects of higher excitements
- 14 and 15. The Value of Saintliness
- It must be tested by the human value of its fruits
- The reality of the God must, however, also be judged
- "Unfit" religions get eliminated by "experience"
- Empiricism is not skepticism
- Individual and tribal religion
- Loneliness of religious originators
- Corruption follows success
- Extravagances
- Excessive devoutness, as fanaticism
- As theopathic absorption
- Excessive purity
- Excessive charity
- The perfect man is adapted only to the perfect environment
- Saints are leavens
- Excesses of asceticism
- Asceticism symbolically stands for the heroic life
- Militarism and voluntary poverty as possible equivalents
- Pros and cons of the saintly character
- Saints versus "strong" men
- Their social function must be considered
- Abstractly the saint is the highest type, but in the present environment it may fail, so we make ourselves saints at our peril
- The question of theological truth
- 16 and 17. Mysticism
- Mysticism defined
- Four marks of mystic states
- They form a distinct region of consciousness
- Examples of their lower grades
- Mysticism and alcohol
- "The anaesthetic revelation"
- Religious mysticism
- Aspects of Nature
- Consciousness of God
- "Cosmic consciousness"
- Yoga
- Buddhistic mysticism
- Sufism
- Christian mystics
- Their sense of revelation
- Tonic effects of mystic states
- They describe by negatives
- Sense of union with the Absolute
- Mysticism and music
- Three conclusions
- (1). Mystical states carry authority for him who has them
- (2). But for no one else
- (3). Nevertheless, they break down the exclusive authority of rationalistic states
- They strengthen monistic and optimistic hypotheses
- 18. Philosophy
- Primacy of feeling in religion, philosophy being a secondary function
- Intellectualism professes to escape subjective standards in her theological constructions
- "Dogmatic theology"
- Criticism of its account of God's attributes
- "Pragmatism" as a test of the value of conceptions
- God's metaphysical attributes have no practical significance
- His moral attributes are proved by bad arguments; collapse of systematic theology
- Does transcendental idealism fare better? Its principles
- Quotations from John Caird
- They are good as restatements of religious experience, but uncoercive as reasoned proof
- What philosophy can do for religion by transforming herself into "science of religions"
- 19. Other Characteristics
- AEsthetic elements in religion
- Contrast of Catholicism and Protestantism
- Sacrifice and Confession
- Prayer
- Religion holds that spiritual work is really effected in prayer
- Three degrees of opinion as to what is effected
- First degree
- Second degree
- Third degree
- Automatisms, their frequency among religious leaders
- Jewish cases
- Mohammed
- Joseph Smith
- Religion and the subconscious region in general
- 20. Conclusions
- Summary of religious characteristics
- Men's religions need not be identical
- "The science of religions" can only suggest, not proclaim, a religious creed
- Is religion a "survival" of primitive thought?
- Modern science rules out the concept of personality
- Anthropomorphism and belief in the personal characterized pre-scientific thought
- Personal forces are real, in spite of this
- Scientific objects are abstractions, only individualized experiences are concrete
- Religion holds by the concrete
- Primarily religion is a biological reaction
- Its simplest terms are an uneasiness and a deliverance; description of the deliverance
- Question of the reality of the higher power
- The author's hypotheses
- 1.. The subconscious self as intermediating between nature and the higher region
- 2.. The higher region, or "God"
- 3.. He produces real effects in nature
- Postscript
- Philosophic position of the present work defined as piecemeal supernaturalism
- Criticism of universalistic supernaturalism
- Different principles must occasion differences in fact
- What differences in fact can God's existence occasion?
- The question of immortality
- Question of God's uniqueness and infinity: religious experience does not settle this question in the affirmative
- The pluralistic hypothesis is more conformed to common sense
- Index