William James (1842 -1910)

[KALKI]

William James - summarized biography

William James (January 11, 1842 - August 26, 1910) was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher trained as a medical doctor. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. He was the brother of novelist Henry James and of diarist Alice James.

William James was born at the Astor House in New York City, He was the 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 made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.
James interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Peirce, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, Ernst Mach, John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, Horatio Alger, Jr., James George Frazer, Henri Bergson, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, Sigmund Freud, Gertrude Stein, Carl Jung and Benito Mussolini.

William James wrote voluminously throughout his life. A fairly complete bibliography of his writings by John McDermott is 47 pages long.

He gained widespread recognition with his monumental Principles of Psychology (1890), twelve hundred pages in two volumes which took twelve years to complete. Psychology: The Briefer Course, was an 1892 abridgement designed as a less rigorous introduction to the field. These works criticized both the English associationist school and the Hegelianism of his day as competing dogmatisms of little explanatory value, and sought to re-conceive of the human mind as inherently purposive and selective.

Influential in the young sciences of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. He was the brother of novelist Henry James and of diarist Alice James.


Without ignoring James' contributions to psychology and philosophy, this page focuses mostly on his work in the field of religion.

http://www.katinkahesselink.net/scie...iam-james.html


William James (1842-1910) was a distinguished American psychologist. In his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, he wrote: “One may say, truly, I think, that personal religious experience has its root and center in mystical states of consciousness.”

What is a “mystical state of consciousness?” James notes that the words “mysticism” and “mystical” are often used as pejorative referencing things regarded as vague, overly-sentimental and/or wooly-minded.

But “mystical state of consciousness,” he believes, can usefully refer to a precise state of mind and an experience which he finds to have 4 characteristics:

1. Ineffability. A mystical experience defies expression and words cannot fully relate it to others. It must be experienced directly to be fully understood, and the mystical experience cannot be directly transferred to others. Can a person who cannot see understand blue? he asks.

2. A Noetic Quality. Although mystical states are similar to states of feeling, they also seem to those who experience them to be states of knowledge, too. They are experienced as states that allow direct insight into depths of truth that are unplumbed by our mere intellects. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, and they carry with them what James describes as “a curious sense of authority.”

“These two characteristics will entitle any state to be called mystical in the sense in which I use the word. Two other qualities are less sharply marked, but are usually found,” he writes. These two additional characteristics are:

3. Transiency. Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half and hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Memory of them is imperfect, but when they recur they are immediately recognized, and from one recurrence to another there is a development in the mystic of a deepening and increasingly rich inner life.

4. Passivity. James writes that in mystical states of consciousness, “the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.” Mystical experience is a form of self-transcendance, and the mystic will often say that she or he has merged with something greater and that what we experience as “will” is also merged with that greater One. St. Teresa of Avila: a drop of rain falling into a great ocean (fresh water into salt water, but once merged, how can they be distinguished?)

[KALKI]

Continued from chapter (G) “The Varieties of Religious Experience” by William James – Part II

http://miraclesforall.com/the-variet...ames-part-iii/

Lectures XI, XII and XIII – The Value of Saintliness (continued)

The author here points out that as ascetic saints have grown older they usually have shown a tendency to lay less importance on bodily mortifications. Catholic teachers have always professed that, since health is needed for efficiency in God’s service, health must not be sacrificed to mortifications. Today, the general optimism of Protestants and healthy-minded sects consider mortification for mortification’s sake repugnant.

Yet, James continues, he believes that upon a more careful consideration of the whole of the matter, distinguishing between the general good intentions of asceticism and the uselessness of some of the particular acts, of which it may be guilty, may improve it in our esteem. It symbolizes, lamely enough no doubt, but sincerely, the belief that there is an element of real wrongness in the world which is neither to be ignored nor evaded, but which must be squarely met and overcome by an appeal to the soul’s heroic resources and neutralized and cleansed away by suffering. Pain and wrong and death must be fairly met and overcome in the higher religious excitement, or else their sting remains unbroken.

If one has ever taken in the fact of the prevalence of tragic death in this world’s history: freezing, drowning, wild beasts, worse men, hideous diseases, etc., one can with difficulty, continue in their own career of worldly prosperity suspecting that they are somehow outside the game and thus, may then lack the “great initiation.” This is exactly what the ascetic thinks anyway, James alleges, and it therefore voluntarily takes on the initiation. And, healthy-mindedness with its sentimental optimism can hardly be regarded as a serious solution. Phrases of neatness, coziness, and comfort can never give the answer to the sphinx’s riddle [“What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs at night?”].

James states that here he is leaning only upon mankind’s common instinct for reality which has always held that the world is a theater for heroism. For, in heroism we confront life’s supreme mystery [death] and, we tolerate no one who has no capacity for heroism in any way whatsoever. If on the other hand, regardless of what a man’s frailties may otherwise be, he be willing to risk death, and still more so if he suffers it heroically in the service he has chosen, this fact consecrates him forever. The metaphysical mystery we can logically suppose, says James, of he who feeds on [the] death that feeds upon men possesses life super eminently [exceptionally] and thus best meets with the secret demands of the universe. Asceticism faithfully champions this as a legitimate truth.

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The older monastic asceticism occupied itself with pathetic futilities or terminated in the mere egotism of the individual increasing his own perfection. But, James inquires, is it not possible for us to discard most of these older forms of mortification and yet find saner channels for the heroism which inspired them?

In a footnote at the bottom of page 357 of his book James adds a quote from the book “Ramakrishna, His Life and Sayings”: “The vanities of all others may die out, but the vanity of a saint in regards to his sainthood is hard indeed to wear away.”

Does not, James questions, the worship of material luxury and wealth which constitutes so large a portion of the “spirit” of our age [quite true today 100 years later] make somewhat for effeminacy and unmanliness? Is not the commiserating and facetious [frivolous] way in which most children are brought up today – so different from the education of a hundred years ago – in danger, despite its many advantages, of developing a certain trashiness of fiber? [Prophetic perhaps? As is exemplified during sleazy NFL Super Bowl half-time performances, repulsive pornography, tawdry movies, music videos, etc.]. Are there not some points of application for a renovated and revised form of ascetic training the author wonders?

Here James takes us in another direction yet, along the same lines: War and adventure assuredly keeps all who engage in them from treating themselves too tenderly. They demand such incredible efforts, both in degree and in duration, such that the whole scale of motivation alters.

Discomfort and annoyance, hunger and wet, pain and cold, squalor and filth, cease to have any deterrent effect whatsoever. Death turns into the commonplace and its usual power to check [unscrupulous] actions vanish. The beauty of war in this respect is that it is so congruous with ordinary human nature, James contends. Ancestral evolution has made us all potential warriors so that the most insignificant individual, when thrown into an army in the field, is weaned from whatever excess of tenderness towards his precious person he may bring with him and may easily develop into a monster of insensibility. Yet, when the military type of self-severity is compared with that of the ascetic saint, we find a world of differences in their spiritual attributes. James here gives us an example:

(92)

“To live and let live,” writes an Austrian officer, “is no devise for an army. Contempt for one’s own comrades, for the troops of the enemy and, above all, fierce contempt for one’s own person, are what war demands of everyone. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness. If the soldier is to be good for anything as a soldier, he must be exactly the opposite of a reasoning and thinking man. War, and even peace, require of the soldier absolutely peculiar standards of morality. The recruit brings with him common moral notions of which he must immediately seek to get rid of. For him, victory, success, must be everything. The most barbaric tendencies in men again come to life in war, and for war’s uses they are incommensurably good.”

The fact is, James professes, that war is a school of strenuous life and heroism; and, being in the line of the savage instinct, it is the only school that, as of yet, is universally available. Therefore, when we gravely ask ourselves whether this wholesale organization of irrationality and crime be our only bulwark against effeminacy, we stand aghast at the thought and think more kindly of ascetic religion.

L.T. – What’s wrong with effeminacy? I think we should somehow infuse estrogen into the brutes’ bodies at the very first signs of their chest-thumping and war bellowing.

Poverty, James suggests, is the strenuous life – without the brass bands or uniforms or hysterical popular applause.

L.T. – Next, wipe out their bank accounts leaving them to sleep in sleeping bags in tents in the park and stand in soup kitchen lines; just as they would in the military. Once the estrogen kicks in, believe me, they will want nothing to do with sleeping outside on the ground in the cold and will soon become sensible and act civilized.

James continues, we despise anyone one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join in on the general scramble and pant along money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying of our way by what we are or what we do rather than by what we have.

(93)

It is true, that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But, wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear of losing it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There are thousands of ways in which a wealth bound man must be a slave whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a free man. Think of the strength which personal indifference to poverty would give us if we were devoted to unpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues for fear of economic consequences (loss of job, promotion, stocks tumble, club doors shut in our faces). Yet, while we lived, we would imperturbably bear witness to the spirit and our example would help to set free our generation. Causes, of course, need funding but as its servants, we would be potent in proportion [perhaps far more so] to any opposing well financed opposition.

L.T. – Due to the above paragraph and my remarks about brutes and their hormonal imbalances that could easily be remedied by giving them estrogen supplements I am here inspired to further inform of the circumstances I found myself in involving organized crime:

But first: For a review of circumstances of that which I am about to here refer to go to: chapter (A) MIRACLES and scroll down to the posts titled Divine Message – A Most Difficult time, page 22, then Downtown Art Studio, page 23, and next Paranormal Visions of Menacing Entities, page 23. Following having read these posts, the reader should next go to chapter (C) MIRACLES and read the first post titled A Most Difficult Time (organized crime and pornography) pages 53 & 54. Then on chapter (F) “The Varieties of Religious Experience” – Part I, page 27 and 42 (above), and from there chapter (G) “The Varieties of Religious Experience” – Part II, pages 71 and 72 and continuing here below on chapter (H) “The Varieties of Religious Experience” Part III, on pages 93, 111 & 112, and 142 & 143 .

After the therapist had convinced me that the mafia was not going to murder me I was initially, albeit briefly, greatly relieved, almost ecstatic. (see Chapter (F) page 27, regarding having purchased a gun to kill myself believing it was the least worst of two dire outcomes). This was then followed by a state of severe depression. Nearly catatonic, I would spend whole days just sitting on the couch staring into space for, even though I had not shot myself, I was still in the same dire situation. My property had been on the market for some time and I rarely, if at all, heard from the real estate agent. The ‘For Sale’ sign posted outside the building was regularly vandalized. On several nights I could hear one of my neighbors repeatedly kicking the metal sign; it was very loud. Perhaps four days or so after the gun incident, I received a letter from a real estate agent, whom I knew not and had never contacted. I deduced that this letter did not come at this time by chance alone. Regardless, I wanted out of the property and telephoned the realtor who sent the letter and we made an appointment for an early evening visit a few days hence. He did not show up and I figured it was just more of the same sort of ‘jerking me around’ that I had been, at this point, used to experiencing, and I did not expect I would at all meet with the relator. However, he showed up unexpectedly early the next morning. Once I had invited him inside the studio he made a comment regarding my early morning appearance.

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I could tell right away that he was a member of, or affiliated somehow, with this criminal organization. (You get so you recognize many of them fairly quickly – they sometimes, not always, possess similar subtle characteristics). During our first meeting that morning he told me that the previous realtor was too frightened to work with the property. He also stated that my neighbors were mafia. He casually mentioned that, “A good friend is someone who will help you bury a body,” and asked me out for a date. I desperately wanted out of the neighborhood, out of the condominium, and I wanted to live, so I agreed to go out with him signed his real estate sales contract.

During our first date, over dinner, he told me of a community he lived in outside of Chicago that was a community of recreational, private airplane pilots. The community had a small runway and hangers to park the home owners’ airplanes in. He mentioned that he sold a neighbor, a doctor, a parachute of his. Later, as the doctor was flying, his plane malfunctioned and he had to eject himself from the airplane. The realtor then told me that the first parachute did not release and the second backup parachute had a tear in a seam resulting in the doctor’s plummeting to the ground and to his death. He then stated that the doctor was an a$$hole.

On another occasion, during a time when he was grieving over having to put his dog to sleep, I asked him if he planned on getting another pet. He said, “No, I’m tired of putting people down.” On another day when he took me to a commercial gold mining property for a hike, and just after we parked but had not yet gotten out of the car, I asked him if he was going to kill me (meaning out in the wilderness). I wasn’t hysterical at all, I had come to expect to be killed at some point and felt an ongoing malaise about it. He responded, “He would not hurt a hair on my head.” After hiking a bit and stopping for lunch he pulled out a knife, with about a seven inch long blade, and went on describing in detail its sharpness. The realtor then told of a scene in the movie “Ryan’s Song,” a war movie where, as a German soldier in hand-to-hand combat with an American soldier was sinking a knife into the chest of the American, the German was saying “There, you go to sleep now.” The relator said, even when one is killing another the killer can feel compassion for his victim.

There’s more, much more, I could report, including drugging (I believe he was slipping antidepressants into my bottled drinking water) and a certain and specific incident of hypnosis. Also, I was sexually entertaining him to stay alive. Eventually, another realtor from another firm altogether managed to sell my condominium and get me out of that dreadful neighborhood.

This is the part that is quite shocking. This realtor told me he knew my ex-husband’s attorney (I never told the realtor who my husband’s attorney was) and that he was good friends with her and her husband who was a home builder. And, that he had, as one of his real estate listings, a very expensive home that the attorney’s husband had built on spec. He also told me of a female that the attorney had introduced him to as a possible romantic connection (here underscoring that the real estate agent and the attorney were good friends). On one occasion he told me not to contact my ex-husband for he was under extreme stress and not at all well. Adam’s circumstances were as stressful as mine, maybe more so but, I would rather not, for his and his new family’s sake, go into detail here. I should add however, that our divorce was not contentious and for a while, early on, Adam helped me out a good deal. The realtor’s comment cost me several nights sleep worrying that Adam too was being menaced as I was by these thugs. I then deduced (wrongly unfortunately) that the realtor was just being manipulative and decided that Adam was probably fine. Obviously my ex-husband’s attorney had stepped outside proper, perhaps legal even, bounds of professional conduct. I suspect that it was she who sent him in my direction initially. She is now a judge.

This has all been officially reported. Back to the book:

(95)

James concludes that whoever possesses strongly a sense of the divine, instead of placing happiness where common men place it (in comfort) the saintly places it in a higher kind of inner excitement which converts discomforts into sources of cheer thus annulling unhappiness. He turns his back upon no duty, however thankless, and when we are in need of assistance we can count upon the saint lending his hand with more certainty than we can count upon any other person. Finally, his humble-mindedness and his ascetic tendencies save him from the petty personal pretensions which so obstruct our ordinary social intercourse and, his purity gives us in him a clean man for a companion. Exhilaration, purity, charity, patience, self-severity – these are splendid excellencies and the saint, above all men, shows them in the most completely possible measure.

But, as we have seen, all these things together do not make saints infallible. When their intellectual outlook is narrow, they fall into all sorts of holy excesses, fanaticism or theopathic absorption, self-torment, prudery, scrupulosity, gullibility and a morbid inability to meet the world. In fact, says James, in some circumstances a saint can be even more objectionable and damnable than the superficial carnal man. Therefore we must judge him not sentimentally only, and not in isolation, but using our own intellectual standards when estimating his total function. James states that the most inimical critic of the saintly impulses whom he knows of is Friedrich Nietzsche. He contrasts the saints with the worldly; such as we find them embodied in the predaceous military character, and to the advantage of the latter.

In fact, says James, the saint does appeal to a different faculty as enacted in the fable about the wind, the sun, and the traveler.

L.T. – Which here I shall include:

The 6th century B.C. Aesop Fable “The Wind and the Sun”

The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly, they saw a traveler coming down the road and the Sun said, “I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger.” “You go first,” the Sun said to the Wind then retired behind a cloud and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler. But, the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak around him until, at last, the Wind had to give up. Then, the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveler who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on. Moral of the story: Kindness affects more than severity.

(96)

James continues: For Nietzsche, the saint represents little more than slavishness and his prevalence would put humankind in danger. Here the author quotes Nietzsche [much abridged]:

“The sick are the greatest danger for the well. The weaker, not the stronger, are the strong’s undoing. The morbid are our greatest peril – not the bad men, not the predatory beings. Those born wrong, the miscarried, the broken – those who are the weakest are undermining the vitality of the race, poisoning our trust in life and putting humanity in question. And here swarm the worms of sensitiveness; here is woven endlessly the net of the meanest of conspiracies: the conspiracy of those who suffer against those who succeed and are victorious. For there [the saintly conspirators] the very aspect of the victorious is hated as if health, success, strength and pride and the sense of power were in themselves things vicious and for which one ought to make bitter expiation [atonement].”

Poor Nietzsche’s antipathy is itself sickly enough laments James. Yet, he well expresses the clash between the two ideals: The carnivorous-minded strongman, the adult and cannibal male who can see nothing but mouldiness and morbidness in the saint’s gentleness and self-severity and, regards him with pure loathing. The whole feud essentially revolves upon two pivots: Shall the seen world, or the unseen world, be our chief sphere of adaptation? And, in the seen, the empirical world, must our means of adaptation be aggressiveness or non-resistance? The debate is serious, James insists, and both worlds must be taken into account.

[KALKI]

(104)

Here, in a footnote, James gives us a quote from “Vivekananda” by Raja Yoga, London, 1896:

“The mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state. And, when the mind gets to the higher state, then knowledge beyond reasoning comes.”

Before we start in on this next part of James’ book I think it is a good idea to define a few of the religious terms he uses:

Samadhi – [Hinduism and Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism and yogic schools] a state of meditative consciousness attained by the practice of dhyana. In Hindu yoga this is regarded as the final stage, at which union with the divine is reached (before or at death).a state of meditative consciousness attained by the practice of dhyana.

Dhyana [Hinduism] – meditation which is a deeper awareness of oneness which is inclusive of perception of body, mind, senses and surroundings, yet remaining unidentified with them and leads to Samadhi and self-knowledge. [Buddhism] – a series of cultivated states of mind which lead to perfect equanimity and awareness.

Vedanta – one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy. The term Veda means “knowledge” and anta means “end” originally referred to in the Upanishads; a collection of foundational texts in Hinduism.

Sufism – according to its adherents, is the inner mystical dimension of Islam. Practitioners of Sufism, referred to as Sufis, belong to a congregation formed around a grand master referred to as a Mawla who maintains a direct lineage of teachers dating back to the Prophet Muhammad. Sufis strive for ishan (perfection of worship) as detailed in a hadith (Arabic for narrative – in this case a collection of reports claiming to quote what the Prophet Muhammad said verbatim on any matter). Sufis regard the Prophet Muhammad as the primary perfect man who exemplifies the morality of God and their leader and prime spiritual guide. Sufis consider themselves to be the true proponents of the pure, original form of Islam.

Nirvana – [Buddhism] freedom from the endless cycle of personal reincarnations. The final beatitude that transcends suffering, karma, and samsara [in Hinduism – the endless cycle of births, deaths, and rebirths] and is sought through the extinction of desire and individual consciousness.

[KALKI]

The Hindu Vedantists say that one may stumble into super-consciousness sporadically, without the previous discipline, but it is then impure. Their test of its purity, like our test of religion’s value, is empirical: its fruits must be good for life. When a man comes out of Samadhi, he remains enlightened, a sage, a prophet, a saint; his whole life is changed, illumined.

The Buddhists, James explains, used the word “samadhi” as well as the Hindus; but “dhyana” is their special word for higher states of contemplation. There seems to be four stages recognized in dhyana [in Buddhism]. The first stage comes through concentration of the mind upon one Phra_Ajan_Jerapunyo-Abbot_of_Watkungtaphao[1]point. It excludes desire, but not discernment or judgment; it is still intellectual. In the second stage, the intellectual functions drop off, and the satisfied sense of unity is felt. In the third stage, the satisfaction departs and indifference begins along with memory and self-consciousness. In the fourth stage, the indifference, memory and self-consciousness are perfected. James here states that just what memory and self-consciousness mean in this connection cannot be the same faculties familiar to us in the lower life. Higher stages still of contemplation are mentioned – a region where nothing exists and where the meditator says: “There exists absolutely nothing” and stops. He then reaches another region where he says: “There are neither ideas nor absence of ideas,” and again stops. Then another region where, “having reached the end of both idea and perception, he stops finally.” This would seem to be, not Nirvana, but as close an approach to it as this life affords.

thY0214M7DIn The Mohammedan world, the Sufi sect and various dervish [see image of whirling dervishes] bodies are the possessors of the mystical tradition. The Sufis have existed in Persia since the earliest times. And, as their pantheism is so at variance with the hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind, it has been suggested that Sufism must have been introduced into Islam by Hindu influences. James tells us that we Christians know little of Sufism for, its secrets are disclosed only to those initiated. But, to give its existence a certain liveliness in our minds James quotes a Moslem philosopher and theologian, Al-Ghazzali, a Persian from the eleventh century who ranks as one of the greatest theologians of the Moslem church [much abridged]:

“The science of the Sufis aims at detaching the heart from all that is not God and giving it up to for the sole occupation of the divine being.” “… my heart no longer felt any difficulty in renouncing glory, wealth, and my children” says Al-Ghazzali, “so I quitted Bagdad and, reserving from my fortune only what was indispensable for my subsistence, I distributed the rest. I went to Syria, where I remained about two years with no other occupation than living in retreat and solitude conquering my desires, combating my passions, training myself to purify my soul, to make my character perfect, to prepare my heart for meditating on God – all according to the methods of the Sufis, as I had read of them.”

“I recognized, for certain, that the Sufis are assuredly walking in the path of God. Both in their acts and in their inaction, whether internal or external, they are illumined by the light which proceeds from the prophetic source. The first condition for a Sufi is to purge his heart entirely of all that is not God. The next key to the contemplative life consists in the humble prayers which escape from the fervent soul and, in the meditation of God in which the heart is swallowed up entirely. But, in reality this is only the beginning of the Sufi life; the end of Sufism being total absorption in God.” “… revelations take place in so flagrant a shape that the Sufis see before them, whilst wide awake, the angels and the souls of the prophets. They hear their voices and obtain their favors.”

Al-Ghazzali goes on to describe the prophetic faculty as being analogous to such: “… sleep. If you were to tell a man who has never had the [sleep] experience that there are people who at times swoon away so as to resemble dead men, and who [in dreams] perceive things that are hidden [from the outside observer], he would deny it. Nevertheless, his arguments would be refuted by actual experience. Just so, in the prophetic, the sight is illumined by a light which uncovers hidden things and objects which the intellect fails to reach. The chief properties of prophetism are perceptible only during the transport, and by those who embrace the Sufi life.”

[KALKI]

James posits that it is a commonplace of metaphysics that God’s knowledge cannot be discursive but must be intuitive; that is, it must be constructed more after the pattern of what in ourselves is called immediate feeling than after that of proposition and judgment [faculties of the intellect]. But, James asserts, our immediate feelings have no content beyond what the five senses supply. Yet, we have seen and shall see again that the mystics may emphatically deny that the senses play any part in the very highest type of knowledge which their transports yield.

In the Christian church there have always been mystics. The experiences of these mystics have been treated as important precedents and the church has codified a system of mystical theology based upon them. “Orison,” or meditation, is the groundwork for the methodical elevation of the soul towards God. And, it is through continued practice of orison the higher levels of mystical experience may be attained. It is odd however, James notes, that Protestantism, especially evangelical Protestantism, should seemingly have abandoned everything methodical in this line apart from what prayer might lead to.

The first thing to be aimed at in orison is the mind’s detachment from outer sensations for, these interfere with its concentration upon ideal things. Such manuals as “Saint Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises” recommend the discipline to expel sensation by a graduated series of efforts including imagined holy scenes. For example, an imaginary figure of Christ coming fully to occupy the mind. But, in certain cases imagery may fall away entirely and in the very highest raptures it tends to do so.

As you may recall, James, in a previous chapter, wrote not all that favorably about Saint Teresa. However, here he includes quite a few passages of her mystical experiences from her autobiography [much abridged]:

“In the orison of union, the soul is fully awake in regards to God, but wholly asleep in regards to things of the world and in respect to herself. During the short time the union lasts, she is deprived of every feeling and cannot think of a single thing. She needs to employ no artifice in order to arrest [employ] the use of her understanding. For, it remains so stricken in inactivity that she neither knows what she loves, nor in what manner she loves, nor what is that she wills. In short, she is utterly dead to the things of the world, living solely in God.”

[KALKI]

Saint Teresa continues, “Thus does God, when he raises a soul to union with Himself, suspend that natural action of all her faculties. She neither sees, hears, nor understands so long as the union lasts. But, this time is always short, and seems even shorter than it actually is. God establishes himself in the interior of this soul in such a way that when she returns to herself, it is wholly impossible for her to doubt that she has been in God, and God in her. This truth remains so strongly impressed on her that, even though many years should pass without the condition returning, she can neither forget the favor she received, nor doubt its reality.”

L.T. – This last paragraph closely describes my own same experience that I wrote of on chapter MIRACLES in the second account titled “More on Seeing Heaven.” My experience came about quite unexpectedly when I was sixteen years old during a conversation with a friend. I had asked her why she believed in God. I had not been meditating. I didn’t even know what meditation was then. This is all quite surprising to me; that is, to read of so many other’s experiences much like the ones I’ve had. Other individuals’ similar accounts in James’ book use the word “transport,” and in my description of the experience, I refer to the sensation of traveling at a surreal, not at all earthly, rate of speed.

James alleges that the kinds of truth communicable in mystical ways, whether these be sensible or supersensible, are various. Some of them relate to this world. For example: visions of the future, the “reading of hearts” [whereby a Saint is able to read into the heart and conscience of an individual and then be able to guide the person towards a greater union with God], the sudden understanding of texts, and knowledge of distant events. But, the most important revelations are theological or metaphysical.

In a footnote here, James mentions that he omits cases of visual and auditory hallucination, verbal and graphic automatisms [as in automatic writing and channeling] and such marvels as “levitation, stigmatization, and the miraculous healing of disease. These phenomena, which mystics have often demonstrated, have not mystical significance according to the author. For, they occur without any “consciousness of illumination” whatsoever and, they often occur in persons of non-mystical minds. Consciousness of illumination is, for us, the essential mark of mystical states.

[KALKI]

Here he cites such “consciousness of illumination” or mystical revelations as experienced by Saint Ignatius:

“Saint Ignatius confessed one day to Father Laynez that a single hour of meditation had taught him more truths about heavenly things than all the teachings of all the theologians put together. One day, in orison, on the choir steps of the Dominican Church, he saw in a distinct manner the plan of divine wisdom in the creation of the world. On another occasion, during a procession, his spirit was ravished in God, and it was given him to contemplate the deep mystery of the Holy Trinity in a form and with images necessarily fitted to the weak understanding of a dweller on Earth. This last vision flooded his heart with such sweetness that, in later times, the mere memory of it made him shed abundant tears.”

Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491 – 1556) was a Spanish knight from a Basques noble family, a hermit, a priest and founder of the Society of Jesus; a male religious congregation of the Catholic Church. Members are called Jesuits. Today, the Jesuits are in engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in 112 nations on six continents. Ignatius became the society’s first Superior General. The society participated in the Counter Reformation (beginning with the Council of Trent in 1545 and ending at the close of the Thirty Year’s War in 1648); a movement whose purpose was to reform the Catholic Church from within and to counter the Protestant Reformation spreading throughout Catholic Europe (See Martin Luther Part I page 31).

St_Ignatius_of_Loyola_(1491-1556)_Founder_of_the_Jesuits[1]During recovery, after being seriously wounded in battle, Ignatius underwent a spiritual conversion causing him to abandon his military career and devote himself to working for God. During this time he read the “Da Vita Christi,” by Ludolph of Saxony (the result of 40 years work by the author) and this work greatly influenced Ignatius. He also experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus following which he practiced serious asceticism and prayed for seven hours a day, often in a cave. As a result, Ignatius then composed the “Spiritual Exercises,” a set of meditations, prayers and mental exercises divided into four thematic weeks during a religious retreat. In 1662 he was canonized and declared patron of all spiritual retreats and is a foremost patron saint of soldiers.

The portrait of Saint Ignatius of Loyola was painted by Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640).

(109)

[KALKI]

James next tells us that Saint John of the Cross, whom the author refers to as one of the best of the mystical teachers, describes the condition as the “union of love,” which he says, is reached by “dark contemplation” [from St. John’s book “The Dark Night of the Soul”] “… the soul then feels as if placed in a vast and profound solitude … there, in the abyss of wisdom, the soul grows by what it drinks in from the well-springs of the comprehension of love … and realizes how insignificant and improper the terms we employ are when we seek to discourse of divine things.”

In the condition called raptus, or ravishment, by theologians, breathing and blood circulation are so depressed that it is a question amongst physicians whether the soul be or not be temporarily separated from the body. James states that one must read Saint Teresa’s descriptions and the very exact distinctions which she makes claiming that one is dealing, not with imaginary experiences, but with the phenomena which, however rare, follow perfectly definite psychological types.

Yet, James continues, to the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggestive hypnotic states, based intellectually on superstition and a corporeal state of degeneration. Undoubtedly, these pathological conditions have existed in many of the cases but, that tells us nothing about the value of the knowledge imparted by these states to the consciousness. So, in order to pass a spiritual judgment here, we must not content ourselves with superficial medical talk, but inquire further as to their fruits, which have been varied. Here James reminds us of the helplessness in the kitchen and schoolroom of poor Margaret Mary Alacoque. She, like many other ecstatics, would have perished but for the care given them by admiring followers. These “other worldly” states encouraged by the mystical practice makes one whom the character is naturally passive and the intellect feeble peculiarly liable. But, insists James, in natively strong minds and characters we find quite opposite results. And here James tells us that Saint Ignatius, for example, was a mystic, but his mysticism made him assuredly one of the most powerfully practical human engines that ever lived.

[KALKI]

17
http://williamjamesstudies.org/new-i...of-the-crisis/

Just as I was completing this article, I received from John Kaag a photocopy of the title page of the first volume of Julius Frauenstädt’s Schopenhauer-Lexikon: Ein philosophisches Wörterbuch (1871). This dictionary of Schopenhauer’s philosophical terms has no annotations in it but the title page bears the following inscription: “W. E. Hocking / from the library of William James / May 1923.” This previously unknown possession of James doesn’t appear in R. B. Perry’s list of volumes sold from James’s library in 1923 after his widow Alice died in 1922 (regarding this list, see Note #5), presumably because Perry included only volumes that were annotated by James, though it is also possible that the volume was given rather than sold to Hocking, who taught at Harvard in the decades following James’s death in 1910. The discovery of this volume, which underscores James’s interest in Schopenhauer’s work, serves as yet another reminder of the ephemeral nature of historical evidence and the resulting gaps in the historical record (a reminder, that is, of something already illustrated by the discoveries related in this article and its sequel). When James purchased this volume and how he may have used it cannot now be determined; but the existence of another bit of Jamesian Schopenhaueriana belies any claims about his lack of interest in Schopenhauer’s thought. John Kaag found this volume when he recently stumbled upon the previously unknown library of (William) Ernest Hocking at the Hocking family’s New Hampshire estate (see Kaag, 2014). It is relevant to add that among the other books once owned by James, also found by Kaag in Hocking’s library, were Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in Translation (1896) and Paul Carus’s Buddhism and Its Christian Critics (1897). James did annotate these books, and his annotations have allowed Kaag (2012) to clarify the significance of Buddhism for some of James’s important analyses and assertions in Varieties and other late-life works. Additional sources that offer similar clarification (including the results of archival research by David Scott and Eugene Taylor) are discussed by King (2005).

[KALKI]

So, if James was in fact influenced by Schopenhauer more than we have realized (and it wouldn’t take much to reach this criterion), let’s not assume that this is somehow unusual or even shocking. Anyone who chooses to investigate the connection between James and Schopenhauer should keep an open mind about the possible outcome, as Schopenhauer himself – yes, and James too – would have done if they were in our place.

This is not the time for an extensive, much less exhaustive treatment of the relationship between Schopenhauer and James. (In any case, I am not capable of providing one.) But a few words about James’s relation to Schopenhauer in the years after 1875 and a few hints about possible areas of influence seem in order. Hopefully, they will provide some initial guidance for scholars who may wish to look more deeply into the connection between Schopenhauer and James. Whatever “loathing” James may have felt for Schopenhauer’s tone and attitude (see Note #3), he seems to have been inspired by Schopenhauer’s honesty about the evils of the world, by his criticism of the stagnant habits of the philosophical community, by his clear and sprightly writing (including his frequent and effective use of clinching metaphors), and by his careful and unfettered analysis of previous human thought, including Kant’s first Critique, which formed the root of Schopenhauer’s own work. Getting other thinkers right was always a concern – a matter of justice as well as utility – for both Schopenhauer and James.

The first tangible example of Schopenhauer’s influence on James became apparent in 1877 as he worked on publications that appeared in 1878 and 1879. I mentioned in the text that James took out Wilhelm Gwinner’s Schopenhauer aus persönlichem Umgange dargestelt (1862) several times during the late 1860s. Gwinner’s book focused on Schopenhauer’s life and character as well as his system of thought. James’s repeated return to this book indicates an early interest in the relation between the philosopher’s character or temperament, on the one hand, and his way of thinking, on the other, an interest that was generalized in James’s “The Sentiment of Rationality” (1879/1978c), which made pertinent references to Schopenhauer (1859) and led to James’s later distinction between the philosophical tendencies of “the tender-minded” and those of “the tough-minded” (James, 1907/1975a) and to his claim that “a philosophy is the expression of a man’s intimate character, and all definitions of the universe are but the deliberately adopted reactions of human characters upon it” (James, 1909/1977, p. 14). All three works reflect James’s underlying interest in the psychology of philosophers, or more precisely, “The Psychology of Philosophizing,” which he had tentatively considered as a title for “The Sentiment of Rationality” (James, ca. 1877/1978d, p. 359). His views on this topic, underlying his defense of “the subjective method” (e.g., James, 1878/1978b), were thus almost certainly influenced by his reflections on Schopenhauer – and more than that, they were probably influenced by Schopenhauer’s own reflections on “man’s need for metaphysics” (Schopenhauer, 1859, Vol. 2, Ch. 17: “Ueber das metaphysiche Bedürfniss des Menchen”), which James made a special note of having read in late 1869 (James, 1868-1873). His annotated copy of Schopenhauer’s (1859) masterpiece confirms the care that he took in this reading.

Schopenhauer also seems to have made a deep impression upon James through his discussion of moral principles. This was first apparent in James’s initial article (1875/1987a) on the vivisection controversy of the mid-1870s, in which he expressed respect but also some reservation regarding an unbending application of the Buddhist principle neminem laede (“injure no one”). This way of stating the principle, in Latin, clearly comes from Schopenhauer, who frequently invoked this formulation in his works (e.g., Schopenhauer, 1841/2009, p. 140). (The full principle, in Latin, is neminem laede, imo omnes, quantum potes, juva, i.e., “injure no one; instead, help everyone as much as you can.”) The final proof that this is so comes from the fact that, when James (1879-1885/1988) cited this principle in his later lectures, he gave Schopenhauer credit for it (p. 175).

In various ways this principle is deeply consonant with “the moral business” to which James had dedicated his life. In fact, it seems eventually to blend for him, as it did from the start for Schopenhauer, into a far-reaching view of how we should understand and approach one another. Toward the end of the century, James wrote “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” (1899/1983), which he considered his most important essay since it reveals “the perception on which my whole individualistic philosophy is based” (James, 1899/2000, p. 522). In this essay, undercutting later criticisms (based on misunderstanding) of his individualism, he argued that his individualistic philosophy is founded upon the perception that each and every individual – not just “I” or a limited group of “we” – is to be treated with the same respect and accorded the same dignity because of the underlying humanity shared by all. This essay, which has been called the first modern manifesto for multiculturalism (Sollors, 1996), is both pluralistic in its emphasis on variation and difference, and monistic in its emphasis upon equal rights and mutual dependency. In defense of a theme that James expressed in various ways in multiple writings (e.g., that each of us contributes a different syllable to the common message of human experience), James argued that every person enjoys “a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands” (1899/1983, p. 149). He spelled out the implications of this view in subsequent works (e.g., James, 1907/1975b & 1909/1975c), and the same attitude suffused his notion that the community – ultimately the world-wide community – is the operative agent for the advancement of knowledge, ideals, values, and behavior. This is not a replication of Schopenhauer’s views, but it suggests that James eventually came to see the identification of individuals with each other, which caused him such anxiety in the early 1870s, in a more positive light. By then, sympathy and compassion, Schopenhauer’s key moral virtues, had become fundamental to his own ethical and social thought.

James also came to have a more positive view of Hindu thought and of Tat twam asi in particular, as seen in the mysticism chapter of The Varieties of Religious Experience, where he wrote:


This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition….‘That art thou!’ [Tat twam asi] say the Upanishads, and the Vedantists add: ‘Not a part, not a mode of That, but identically That, that absolute Spirit of the World.’ (James, 1902/1985, p. 332)

That James now saw what had previously scared him as a positive thing, as the essential “mystical truth” (p. 333), is demonstrated by the entire context in which he wrote this passage. Like “such self-contradictory phrases as ‘dazzling obscurity,’” he now regarded talk about melding many into one as being closer to “music” than “conceptual speech” (p. 333). Schopenhauer, the great advocate of music, would have understood and appreciated this statement, which underscores a point made above, about the artistic rather than literal significance of Schopenhauer’s thought. Such music gives us a way of comprehending our common, shared humanity, warts and all. And that comprehension led James to the implicit poly- or pantheism, mentioned earlier, that held humans responsible for assisting in the creation of a more ideal world (see James, 1882/1997a, p. 195; 1902/1985, p. 413; & 1907/1975b, pp. 131-144). In this way and others, Schopenhauer seems to have provided a stimulus that eventually sensitized James to the claims, rights, and significance of “the other.”

Much more could be said, even in this truncated discussion – for example, about Schopenhauer as a possible source of James’s beloved concept of the “sting” of certain precious moments of experience, of his aversion to “resignation” as opposed to “hope” as the “keynote” of life, of his views on immortality, and so forth. And I haven’t touched at all upon the possible influence of some of Schopenhauer’s other works, which seem often (like his major work) to provide ideas that James pushed against, which surely constituted as important – sometimes a greater – influence than ideas he agreed with. For instance, in understanding and then opposing both naïve optimism and rebarbative pessimism, the latter being represented by Schopenhauer, James came to his own middle position of meliorism, which treats “salvation” as neither inevitable (as optimism does) nor impossible (as pessimism does) but as possible; and from early on, possibility was a word that opened up for James a vibrant, challenging, and ultimately invigorating world of risk and opportunity (see James, 1875/1987b, p. 313, & 1907/1975b).

But it is time to end. In doing so, I want to be clear: I don’t think Schopenhauer was a major influence on James, but he was instrumental at an important moment in James’s life, and he seems to have remained on the edges of his consciousness, prodding and provoking, throughout his career. It will be interesting to see how the connection between Schopenhauer and James will come to be understood if and as other scholars subject it to closer inspection.