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The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a series of 20 lectures on 'natural religion' that psychologist William James conducted at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland from
Table of contents

The most complete religions seem to be those in which pessimistic elements are best developed, they are religions of deliverance — a man must die to an unreal life before he can be born into the real life.

The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

Evil is a pervasive element in the world we live in. Buddhism and Christianity are the best known of these religions of deliverance.

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

The psychological basis of the twice-born character seems to be a certain discordancy or heterogeneity in the native temperament of the subject, an incompletely unified moral and intellectual constitution. Conversion is the matter of receiving grace, experiencing religion, being regenerated, gaining assurance.

The process is often gradual, often sudden. It is the process by which a self divided and consciously wrong, inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right, superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities. Is the whole phenomenon of regeneration, even in these startling instantaneous examples, possibly a strictly natural process?


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It is divine in its fruits, of course, but is it in one case more and in another less so? What are the practical outcomes for life from such movingly happy conversions as those discussed in the previous lectures?

Lecture II

Do the fruits of religion give absolute value to what it adds to human life? At least the great saints are immediate successes, as are the smaller ones. Let us, then, all be saints whether or not we succeed visibly and temporally. Personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness. The supernaturalism and optimism to which these mystical states would persuade us may, interpreted in one way or another, be after all the truest of insights into the meaning of this life.

Human Nature and the Fruits of Faith

Is the sense of divine presence a sense of anything objectively true? Feeling is the deeper source of religion, and philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products. All such formulas are misleading from their brevity, for belief that formulas are true can never wholly take the place of personal experience. The door into the subliminal region seems unusually wide open. Experiences making their entrance through that door have had emphatic influence in shaping religious history.

The pragmatic way of taking religion is the deeper way.

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It gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything real must claim, some characteristic realm of fact as its very own. Skip to content by William James William James , became one of the most eminent of American philosophers and psychologists. Cases of sudden conversion, Is suddenness essential?


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No, it depends on psychological idiosyncrasy, Proved existence of transmarginal, or subliminal, consciousness, 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, 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, It must be tested by the human value of its fruits, The reality of the God must, however, also be judged, 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, Mysticism defined, Four marks of mystic states, They form a distinct region of consciousness, Examples of their lower grades, Mysticism and alcohol.

The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James | Penguin Random House Canada

Religious mysticism, Aspects of Nature, Consciousness of God, 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, They strengthen monistic and optimistic hypotheses, Primacy of feeling in religion, philosophy being a secondary function, Intellectualism professes to escape subjective standards in her theological constructions, Criticism of its account of God's attributes, 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,' 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, Summary of religious characteristics, Men's religions need not be identical, 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, Philosophic position of the present work defined as piecemeal supernaturalism, Criticism of universalistic supernaturalism,