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   William James
www.mysticism.nl

res loquitur
William James was one of those rare individuals who fostered no prejudice either in favor of or against religion. As a phenomenological psychologist he was only interested in what actually occurred in the human psyche. He wanted to describe all the dynamics of human thinking and feeling, without any a W. Jamespriori´s, without any conceptions on forehand, but only with open eyes and open mind. Phenomenology says that we as scientists should look at ´what´s been given´, we should look at the phenomena of existence. Only later on, after we have collected the data, can we venture to decipher some meaning in the pile of data, but only to form ourselves some inferential hypotheses, that may serve for the time being.

In this methodological attitude James proved himself a true Anglo-Saxon thinker. The Anglo-Saxon world has always showed more common sense in dealing with science. She has always valued inferential, a posteriori thinking above deductive, a priori thinking. Anglo-Saxon philosophers have always stressed more the importance of experience as a way to gain knowledge. On the main continent of Europe philosophers tended to distrust our senses as a mean to gain knowledge, but overseas the attitude was more:´what you see is what you get´. This was the reason phenomenology became so popular in the New World. It appealed to the Anglo-Saxon way of thinking.

As it turned out to be, this common sense attitude, this phenomenology, became, in the case of James, to be the great savior of religion in the twentieth century, how paradoxically as this may seem to us now. For religion (in the sense of  ´religious feeling´) is not something ´out there´ that can easily be studied with our senses. It is a thing of the inner world.  It is perhaps the greatest ´a priori´ that you can imagine. It is something that in its depth and meaning escapes our senses. So how can we describe it as a phenomenon? We can not see it, taste it, touch it or smell it. It is something psychological, something spiritual, it is the a priori world of philosophy.

But James felt that the religious experience, even though it was not something ´out there´, laying open to the inquiry of our senses, could nevertheless be studied as a phenomenon. We can never be sure about the ontological status of the religious experience, he said, but it can not be denied that religion yields certain psychological and factual results in the life of the believer. These results, these psychological fruits, so to speak, we can study, he said. So he presented us a mass of biographical evidence meant to show that the religious experience was a psychological fact and that it resulted in deep psychological transformations in personality. People describing their religious experience always stated the fact that their lives had fundamentally been changed by it.


the religious experience is a psychological fact

Most of the biographies James presents us show us intelligent human beings thinking about the totality of their lives. Often they are burdened. They seek ways to be freed of their misery and loneliness. Often they are desperate and find no consolation in the mundane ways of the world. They are seeking for a higher life to offer them some meaning and significance. This they find in the religious experience. In their view such an experience, when it occurred, was not the result of wishful thinking or self-suggestion, but it was something that happened to them, sometimes literally ´out of the blue´ and even contrary to wishes or expectations, like it happened to st. Paul on the road to Damascus. It was something beyond their own self that momentarily took over control.

Such an experience always brings about a psychological transformation. In the course of his book James mentions the following alterations in the psychological status quo of the believer who undergoes such a spiritual experience:
These psychological transformations James documents by a wealth of biographical material. The result of this phenomenological approach is that even the very skeptical reader cannot fail to conclude thatW. James religious feelings are psychological facts and that they actually do something to the psyche. They seem to have the function of restoring balance to a wounded heart. They are the best way for regaining mental health.

Now the skeptic might say that it is the believer himself, who produces this restoration of balance. There is nothing supranatural about it. The religious experience is like a form of self-suggestion, self-deluding if you want, a tric used for tapping energy out of psychologically projecting a fantasy world of perfection, love and goodness. The religious world is not an existing reality. It is something that we want to exist. And it is this longing, this dreaming about such an ever receding utopia, that does the tric. We are lifted up and elevated by our own dreamworld. Yes, the skeptic might say, religious experiences are a psychological fact, but they are just that. It is a mechanism of the psyche itself for self-preservation in the face of hardship and danger.

But, as James notes, the biographical facts speak otherwise. Practically all biographers stress the supranatural character of the experience. They mark it as something coming from the outside of their personal sphere. They feel that they themselves would never have been able to produce such far reaching effects in their psyche. It is far beyond their capacity. That´s why many biographers speak about ´the work of God´. The religious experience is supranatural, they say. It is literally coming from an other world. As the reality of the experience is concerned, they have never felt anything more real in their whole life. Now for he first time they have felt something really real, they all say. It feels like the reality of the mundane waking world is somesort of a second hand reality. A kind of spin off. The supranatural world where the religious experience originates from is far more real. But let´s later on in this article return to this dispute.


The suffering soul has a greater capacity for the religious experience

As a psychologist James was interested in investigating what kind of character was the best suited for developing religious feelings and beliefs. He found out that positive, optimistic characters could well develop a religion, that brought them healing and joy. But he stated that such a religion remained rather shallow and thin, because it did not account for the more serious aspects of life, such as suffering, disease, death, failure, bereavetment etc. He felt that the optimistic character closed its eyes for certain parts of reality. It did not include all there was in life. 

It was in the so called ´twice born´ or ´reborn´ believer that the religious experience had the greatest impact. For in this more pessimistic and more suffering soul life was seen in all of its depth, without the exclusion of certain aspects of it. Religion here was more deeply experienced, because the release and the unburdening religion offered were more in contrast with the agony and despair of the preceding life. The deep suffering in the life of the pessimistic character created a greater clash of energies, which resulted in a more deeply felt redemption. James noted that the pessimistic character (so aptly presented to us in eg. the books of Arthur Schopenhauer) was more serious. And it takes a serious character to truly appreciate a very serious and solemn experience.

But he also noted that a particular kind of the pessimistic and melancholic character, namely the one that responded to its own suffering and despair with wrath, ressentment and bitterness, was not very suited for experiencing a religious catharsis. In such cases the connection with life was too much weakened by hate and repulsion to make a restoration possible. Such a character felt too much indignation facing the facts of life. This indignation and self gratification in critizising the outcome of life´s course prevented a wholesome religious surrender to take place. According to James, surrender is the key word, when we talk about religious solutions to life´s riddles.

But when the melancholic character did not bolt out life with hate and ressentment, but deeply yearned for salvation and a restoration of life´s energies, then new psychological energies were likely to be drilled. The outcome of this whole process is called conversion. James called it a ´lasting shift of psychological focus´ from a secular to a more religious perspective. It has a regenerative purpose. In most cases it followed a deeply felt psychological crisis. The main condition for it to take place is the surrender of the personal will to a higher force. Final liberation will not take place

´if man doesn´t stop resisting or if he doesn´t give up his own attempts in the desired direction´ (Edwin D. Starbuck: Psychology of Religion). 

So for liberation to occur there must 1) be no resistence whatsoever to the higher force taking over control over one´s life and 2) the individual must give up the idea that he or she can cause her own salvation by her own doings. The keywords here are ´surrender´, ´relaxation´, ´passivity´ and ´humility´.

criticism: perhaps it is wise to warn against a full equation of the term ´conversion´ with the concept of ´liberation´or ´final redemption´. The stories James presents us may hint in that direction. But it seems more likely that the religious conversion is nothing more than a temporarily breakthrough of higher spiritual energies that, it´s true, can deeply affect and alter the structure of the personality, but nontheless do not last long enough to cause everlasting enlightenment in the sense of ´moksha´. I would more equate conversion with the Zen term ´satori´, a sudden, but momentarily, flash of luminous divine consciousness, that on occasions may break down the narrowness of  a personal outlook on life. But the convert is still a very long way off from final enlightenment. This fact is on to this day seldom stated in popular narrations of sometimes spectacular conversions. James was well aware of the temporarily nature of most religious conversions (Variaties: chapter viii par. 17), but did not well distinguish ´satori´ from´moksha´, nor did he discuss the conditions for final, everlasting enlightenment to occur. Perhaps he did not think the latter possible.


the fruits of spirituality

The satori-like experience and its resulting conversion may have such a tremendous impact on the psyche of the spiritual practitioner that his whole course of life is changed by it. These changes may or may not eventually result in final enlightenment. But whatever the outcome, in almost all cases we can detect an improvement, a betterment in actual life of intentions and actions. James gives the following list of the fruits of the religious life:

These are the positive consequences of the religious experience. But James also underscores the fact that these results can become annulled, when people start to organize the religious experience and try to make it cultic instead of personal:
When a religion has become orthodox, then the time of her spiritual value is over. The well is dried up, the believers live solely out of second hand and stone the prophets in their turn. (Varieties chapt. x par. 7).


For the society as a whole these fruits of the religious experience are exetremely useful. The person who has realized these fruits is theoretically speaking the highest model posssible. When we compare such a so called ´saint´ with the Nietzschian model of  the ´aristocratic conquerer´, the scale undoubtly W. Jamesturns in favor of the former, as far as social utility is concerned. For the saint more represents the unitive and cohesive factors at work in society. His ideal model of brotherly love, non-violence and cooperation is better suited to lift culture (and not a culture, but all culture) up to higher forms of evolution, while the egotism of the so called aristocratic character can only be a hindrance in that direction. But as James remarks, this is, for the time being, only theoretically the case, since as the world stands right now, the saint is maladapted to the world of today. So one could say that the saint represents more a promise than an actuality of human life. But a promise worth striving at.



mysticism

As a psychologist James was interested in the ground cause of the religious belief. Where did belief in God, in a higher ideal power or in the existence of another, a spiritual, world originate from? Being a psychological reality it must have its roots in some sort of overwhelming psychological experience, since the consequences were, again psychologically speaking, so far reaching. Something very profound happened to the psyche. For how otherwise is this total shift in world view and self awareness, that affected the whole life of the individual undergoing such an experience, to be explained? And what happened must have been incredibly real, for the psychological (and not only that) consequences were so incredibly real. Just ask the person who has gone through the experience.

The answer to these questions James found in the mystical experience, so eloquently described by the all the mystics of world history. But not only by them. Also by innumerable of laymen who would not label themselves mystic. For the mystical experience lies dormant in every psyche and is for everybody a living possibility. Everyone is a mystic by nature. It only needs certain techniques and a certain framework of mind to kindle the mystic flame. It can even be aroused by drugs and anaesthesia like chloroform and nitrous oxide, as James himself has tested. Or it may overtake you on sudden moments, out of the blue, with nothing, as it seems, to trigger it.

But what exactly is a mystical experience? What are its characteristics? Though James doesn´t give us a clear cut definition, apart from adumbrating it as a personal integration of higher and lower psychological dynamics following the sudden revelation of a higher transcendental order, he has tried to describe its characteristics:

1. ineffability
A (sudden) presence of transcendent reality is experienced. The mind and soul are overwhelmed by a tremendous light. There is a great feeling of awe before the divine presence revealing itself . The feeling is so vast and enormous that it looks like the mind and the soul are bathed in an enormous ocean of consciousness. You can call it an ´oceanic´ experience. But it is the experience of something hitherto unknown. It is something inconceivable. So the mind cannot find words to describe such an overwhelming experience. In a sense it defies direct communication, which in its turn can lead to feelings of disappointment and failure, because more than anything in the world one wants to share this feeling. But the feeeling is ´beyond words´. It resembles the profound esthetic or amorous experience in defying all verbal expression.

2. intellectual quality
Though the experience is ´beyond words´, it still gives somesort of knowledge. But it is knowledge of an immediate type, like intuitive insight into the solution of, say, a mathematical problem. It is more like an ´Aha-erlebnis´, a sudden flash through the mind of  a solution you never thought was possible, but nevertheless was there all along, slumbering deep down in consciousness, waiting for the moment to come to surface. You experience somesort of truth (and some eager and rash believers will all too easily be seduced into thinking that it is the Truth), but how to describe, to argue and to methodize this truth, seems to be beyond all means either. But the experience nevertheless is extremely meaningful and for the experiencer authoritative also.

3. temporality
The satori kind of mystical experience doesn´t last long, in most cases no more than half an hour. But the impact lasts a life time and totally affects the psychological status quo. In most cases the person, through the working of the mystical experience, becomes another person.

criticism: as James doesn´t differentiate between satori and sahaja samadhi nirvikalpa, it is difficult for him to conceive of a mystical experience that lasts a life time, since he does not believe in or cannot conceive of final enlightenment. But there are records of mystics who tell us that they live for considerable long periods of time in samadhi, being blissful and ecstatic all the time, this being the result of their trainings in mysticism. These trainings seem to widen the scope and lengthen the period of the experience. But this will remain open to dispute till the moment we ourselves reach this final condition. James does not deem, as it seems, such a state of being possible.

4. passivity
Most mystics seem to agree that it is not the person himself who causes the experience to take place, but that it is something beyond his control. The trainings are only meant to ripen the soil and get rid of all impediments. The experience itself cannot be called for. It always comes unexpected and uncaused. This the mystics call ´the act of Grace´. They feel as if God is taking over their lives and is working Its mysterious ways. All that can be done is to remain passive, humble and receptive. The personal will must be set aside for the higher will to take over control.

James believes in the reality of the mystical experience. Probably it is the psyche´s own capacity of taking a higher view, a transcendence. From this higher vantage point a greater perspective is gained and everything, even the puzzeling and the suffering, falls in place. A wider and more encompassing world is seen. From such a perspective the totality of life is accepted, aye, welcomed.


Philosophy and theology

All thought about the religious experience is secondary and must be judged accordingly. Reason is necessary in evaluating the feelings of the soul and giving meaning to them, but reasoning is always an a posteriori act. It may strengthen and dignify our belief, but reason alone cannot generate religious experiences. Compared to the deep emotionality and also the deep spiritual insight and understanding of the religious experience, mere philosophizing seems rather jejune and shallow.

James is rather sceptical about the outcome of dogmatic theology. In his view it is an impossible task to determine the nature and the qualities of God, let alone give intellectually convincing arguments for His existence. In the history of philosophy all proofs for the existence of God (either kosmological, ontological, ethical, teleological or ex consensu gentium) have met with considerable difficulties. There is no compelling rational argument to be found either against or in favor of the existence of God. If we see order in the universe we as thinking subjects project our own preference for order onto the scheme of things. If we see tragedy and disorder we do likewise with our more gloomy feelings. Homo mensura est, as the true skeptic underlines. We as humans make our own selection in what we want to see and label as true and what not. It is important to note that reason only confirms what we already feel is true. (This makes one wonder about the freedom of reasoning).

So the mystical experience is a priori and reason can only be a posteriori. This we humbly need to accept if we do not want our intellectual claims run too high. James believes that the question whether religion is true or not is only relevant in view of her pragmatism, ie. in view of the question whether it changes the life of the individual and its society for the best or not. In this philosophical attitude he followed the American founder of pragmatism, Charles S. Pierce.

criticism: but this is all a bit intellectually unsatisfying, isn´t it? Belief in the existence of fairies make some individuals very happy and can even alter their way of life and change their conduct for the best, if they belief that fairies are benevolent powers that offer guidance and support throughout their lives. But the thing we want to know is: do fairies really exist? For, though the belief in fairies may be very pragmatic, one needs to have some proof of their existence to begin with. Otherwise one can not in the end reap the fruits of their existence. Reason also must first give its fiat to belief.

So the very fundamental question remains whether religion is only a psychological reality or if it really does refer to some other existing reality, outside the psyche. For in the former case one can argue that it is indifferent were to believe in, provided it is positive and life affirming. One may as easily substitute God or final Reality for fairies, if the outcome is the same. There is no compulsory argument in favor of one or the other. It´s all ´between our ears´. If fairies are a psychological reality to the believer, they will do the trick also.

So I do think the exigencies of reason are legitimate, though I also, with James, know that reason is limited and not well equipped for knowing our final Reality. But some of the questions of metaphysics are interesting and ask for addressing. I hesitate to conclude that religion is only psychological. I do think that like mathematics the intuitive findings of religion point to the existence of another world, other worlds maybe, beyond, or perhaps at another level from, this existing world of phenomena. Recent findings in physics have lifted the veil a bit concerning the existence of these more subtle and parallel worlds.

My findings as a mystic prompt me to believe that these more subtle worlds (´layers´ if you want) are not only existent in everything material and immaterial around us, but that our psyche is also made up out of different layers, just like the world outside (if one can say that there is something like ´a world outside of me´; such a statement is problematic in mysticism). In that case the proposition ´religion is only psychological´ is both true and untrue. For in the mystical conception of the psyche, the psyche is not only psychological, but metaphysical and physical as well. So in a sense it is true to say that higher spiritual energies are tapped only within the psyche itself (here we use the term psyche in a limited sense), but it is also true to say that these energies come from out of the psyche, since the psyche is constructed out of different, metaphysical, physical or whatever, layers, that have connections with visible and invisible realities outside of the psyche.

James himself was more inclined to explain religion in psychological terms, in the strict sense of the word. He believed that a very large portion of the content of our psyche was unaware and subconscious, which he called the B-sphere, to set it apart from the A-sphere of our daily waking consciousness. Religious feelings were stored in this subconscious B-sphere. They had the function of harmonizing an imbalanced and disjected self. So the function of religion was strictly psychological. ´Higher energies`, ´deeper dynamics´, they were all part of hitherto unknown regions of the human soul and spirit.

James thought that religion had a psychological function in establishing a personal connection with the world we live in, something science is never able to give, because of her objective nature and her dealings in generalizations and abstractions. Science is too cold for us. We are in need of a personal and a warm relation with the world. We want something that gives meaning to us, as individuals. That´s the reason religion appeals to so many millions all over the world, despite the fact that her precise modus operandi is fairly unknown and her more theoretical claims are unprovable.

But, to conclude, we might wonder if religion is something personal or impersonal. She may start as something personal and initially her drives may be the most personal, but true religion always ends in the abolishment of all things personal. The mystic strives to overcome the personal and the limited by lifting his life up to the objective unity of all life. This unity of life is also the object of science. But he does so by taking the subjective stance and not, like science, the objective. He addresses reality by putting himself at the other side of the telescope, not looking without, but looking within, from within. ThisW. James subjective stance may be individual -it cannot be otherwise- but it is not personal, because it is a stance everyone would arrive at, if he or she were able to leave behind the very personal and come to Subjectivity itself. True religion is concerned with the Self. But this self with a capital is everyone´s, aye, everything's Self. There is nothing personal about it, but it is the greatest abstraction possible. It is in fact this abolishment of the personal that makes religion such a scary business.

But, and here James is right, the soul cannot be but individual. The fruits of ´the greatest abstraction possible´ can only be individual. What religion does can only be felt individually. This is because religion generates feelings. Feelings are always personal. We can compare this with the work of a scientist. His scientific work and his ultimate findings are abstract and deal with abstract reality. There is nothing personal about it. It would in fact be detrimental to his scientific work if he would bring the personal in (say, his own wishes or his own predilections). But after he has found the solution, after he has discovered abstract reality, his ecstatic feelings about the discovery are personal, because feelings, due to their close connection with the body, can only be felt personally and never in abstracto.

But religion as such, apart from the feelings it generates, is, just like science, an impersonal affair. James might respond to these remarks with the objection that there is no religion without generated feelings. For him an abstract religion divorced from all personal implications was not conceivable. But then again, James was a psychologist and not a mystic. Probably this is the difference between the two.


Amsterdam, September 9 2005
William James

(January 11, 1842, New York - August 26, 1910, Chocorua, New Hampshire). Philosopher and psychologist. William James was born in New York, son of Henry James, Sr., an independently wealthy and notoriously eccentric Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have, since the 1930s, made it a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.

James studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and began to teach in those subjects, but was drawn to the scientific study of the human mind at a time when psychology was constituting itself as a science. James's acquaintance with the work of figures like Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and Pierre Janet in France facilitated his introduction of courses in scientific psychology at Harvard University. He established one of the first -- he believed it to be the first -- laboratory of experimental psychology in the United States in Boylston Hall in 1875.

William James spent his entire academic career at Harvard. He was appointed instructor in physiology in 1872, instructor in anatomy and physiology in 1873, assistant professor of psychology in 1876, assistant professor of philosophy in 1881, professor of psychology in 1889, professor of philosophy in 1897, and emeritus professor of philosophy in 1907.

From: www.wikipedia.org

 



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