On "Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James (1907)

ChatGPT suggested I read Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. I found a copy at The Guttenberg Project, since the book was published in 1902.

The book is some 550 pages, with over 360 footnotes! In the first paragraph of the book's preface, the author must know of my reluctance to read its entirety:

"In Lecture XX I have suggested rather than stated my own philosophic conclusions, and the reader who desires immediately to know them should turn to pages 511-519, and to the “Postscript” of the book." (page v)

I read through the Table of Contents, then browsed through a few chapters to the end of the book. The result is I likely misunderstand, or at least, misinterpret some of James' remarks. But in the spirit of "purposely ambiguous", I give my reactions to some of his comments found in Lecture XX.

Lecture XX

"Though the scientist may individually nourish a religion, and be a theist in his irresponsible hours, the days are over when it could be said that for Science herself the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork." (page 491)

I don't agree. I find "the glory of God" to be that which science does not yet understand, which is the vast majority of all knowledge, compared to the amount we currently have accumulated. I am comfortable with being a "theist" all my hours, and do not find this "irresponsible". I give James the benefit of the doubt that here he is commenting on more traditional beliefs in "God". I do not see religion and science as competitive (at least, not my beliefs), but rather complementary. Science is the path to understanding the world beyond my personal experience. "God" is that which I do not know or understand. And there are aspects of "God" that I will never understand, but can move towards, through our shared perspectives (aka science).

"It is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific imagination, to find in the driftings of the cosmic atoms, whether they work on the universal or on the particular scale, anything but a kind of aimless weather, doing and undoing, achieving no proper history, and leaving no result." (page 491)

I don't agree. There are certainly things in the universe we observe but don't yet understand. There will always be such things. But I present the human species as evidence to the contrary of "the driftings of the cosmic atoms...achieving no proper history, and leaving no result". We are the result of those very driftings!

"The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. The bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our private selves are like those bubbles—epiphenomena, as Clifford, I believe, ingeniously called them; their destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world's irremediable currents of events." (page 494)

I don't agree. James seems to be lost because he is comparing an individual's destiny with the "world's irremediable current of events". The comparison, if we are to make one, certainly requires something more than just an individual. Perhaps a clearer comparison would be using "the existence of life on this planet". Life on this planet has definitely affected the world's currents of events. Even just the human species has affected the world. One might continue the "epiphenomena" argument that our planet Earth is insignificant in the billions of galaxies of the universe. But I would suggest that the process that created us is in fact present throughout the universe. And even if no other life existed in the universe, and we were alone and insignificant in our ability to impact the universe today, our story is not yet over. "God" continues to offer us to expand our understanding of the universe.

"When we survey the whole field of religion, we find a great variety in the thoughts that have prevailed there; but the feelings on the one hand and the conduct on the other are almost always the same, for Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives. The theories which Religion generates, being thus variable, are secondary; and if you wish to grasp her essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct as being the more constant elements. It is between these two elements that the short circuit exists on which she carries on her principal business, while the ideas and symbols and other institutions form loop-lines which may be perfections and improvements, and may even some day all be united into one harmonious system, but which are not to be regarded as organs with an indispensable function, necessary at all times for religious life to go on. This seems to me the first conclusion which we are entitled to draw from the phenomena we have passed in review." (page 504)

I agree that there is much to learn by looking for the commonalities between religions, looking for the essence. But there is more shared between religions than just "feelings and the conduct". I have explored the tenets of various religious beliefs from the point of view of successful human species survival in a previous blog post. 

"This readiness for great things, and this sense that the world by its importance, wonderfulness, etc., is apt for their production, would seem to be the undifferentiated germ of all the higher faiths. Trust in our own dreams of ambition, or in our country's expansive destinies, and faith in the providence of God, all have their source in that onrush of our sanguine impulses, and in that sense of the exceedingness of the possible over the real." (footnote 342)

Yes. The role of imagination is crucial to our survival strategy. Imagining the world different from the way it is gives us options, gives us hope. Hope is needed to counterbalance the helplessness I feel when I am faced with my insignificance. Hope is something I can pass on, feed into the future, long beyond my lifetime. 

"there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts:— 1. An uneasiness; and 2. Its solution.

1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is SOMETHING WRONG ABOUT US as we naturally stand.

2. The solution is a sense that WE ARE SAVED FROM THE WRONGNESS by making proper connection with the higher powers." (page 508)

I find the idea the "there is something wrong about us" to be limiting and not acceptable. Shame has been a great cultural harness, but it dominates by removing options. Shame is a form of violence, which is anathema to imagination and hope. Why couldn't we just say that "we can see that we can do better" rather than "there is something wrong about us"? "We can do better" opens doors instead of shutting them.

The solution that "we are saved from the wrongness by... the higher powers" is easily manipulated by and for an elite. Too often, religious organizations have convinced their believers to support the institution, even when those institutions have neglected their very reasons for being. Who is to determine these "higher powers"? By what means? With what authority? How do we prevent these "authorities" from declaring themselves "better than" the rest of humanity? Remember, it is the human species that survives over the longer term, not the individual. Authoritarian hierarchies encourage a reduction of variety, and hence, weakens the chances of our species surviving. Better to encourage diversity, focus on collaboration and cooperation. Let's build systems that ease these goals, rather than authoritarian and violent systems.

"The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticises it, is to that extent consciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a most helpless germ. With which part he should identify his real being is by no means obvious at this stage; but when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives,[349] the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck." (page 508)

How about a simpler (and not contradictory) explanation: Expand my thinking to an ever more inclusive number of people. Grow from "I care about myself" to "I care about everyone" (and beyond!). This is the process of finding something higher. I struggle every day to move my thinking from "what about me" to "what about the species" (and beyond, when I see the connection between my species and other species!). That transition is one of "God's" miracles, even more so these days when I am deafened with the calls of "me, me, me".

"It seems to me that all the phenomena are accurately describable in these very simple general terms.[348] They allow for the divided self and the struggle; they involve the change of personal centre and the surrender of the lower self; they express the appearance of exteriority of the helping power and yet account for our sense of union with it;[349] and they fully justify our feelings of security and joy. There is probably no autobiographic document, among all those which I have quoted, to which the description will not well apply. One need only add such specific details as will adapt it to various theologies and various personal temperaments, and one will then have the various experiences reconstructed in their individual forms.

So far, however, as this analysis goes, the experiences are only psychological phenomena. They possess, it is true, enormous biological worth. Spiritual strength really increases in the subject when he has them, a new life opens for him, and they seem to him a place of conflux where the forces of two universes meet; and yet this may be nothing but his subjective way of feeling things, a mood of his own fancy, in spite of the effects produced." (page 509)

Yes! And I experience these feelings without belief in a personalized, human-projection of God. I simply connect to my species, my place in the eons of this planet, my commitment to the future survival of the idea that God and knowledge are complementary.

"Religion, in her fullest exercise of function, is not a mere illumination of facts already elsewhere given, not a mere passion, like love, which views things in a rosier light. It is indeed that, as we have seen abundantly. But it is something more, namely, a postulator of new FACTS as well. The world interpreted religiously is not the materialistic world over again, with an altered expression; it must have, over and above the altered expression, a natural constitution different at some point from that which a materialistic world would have. It must be such that different events can be expected in it, different conduct must be required." (page 518)

James is once again caught up in the experience of the individual, not the species. The definition of "the materialistic world" changes as we come to know the world. Some of that which was once spiritual, magical, God-controlled (i.e.-out of our control), has become part of the materialistic world through our shared understanding of the world (aka science). Why can't I be satisfied with being "the next one" in a long, billion-year process of life/death/building? Yes, it makes me feel insignificant. But it does not reduce the importance of my efforts to contribute to survival. I am critical to the survival of my genes and my memes. I must find solace in being insignificant AND critical in our struggle to know "God".

"The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in." (page 519)

I don't know if there really are "other worlds of consciousness" as James refers to them. I do know that I can imagine other worlds. And perhaps my imagination will become fact, either through discovery or through construction. In any case, hope will be my guide, and shared experience across rich diversity (science) and collaboration my deed.