best yet to be

 

I knew so well the satisfaction of losing self in a perception of supreme power and love.         

                                                                        –from The Varieties of Religious Experience 

  

What follows are some truly uplifting passages from William James’ book, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). The brother of novelist Henry James, William studied and wrote in the fields of Philosophy and Psychology. 

            The Varieties of Religious Experience is based on twenty lectures James gave in 1901 and 1902 at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. The passages I have selected are from two chapters, one titled “Mysticism”, based on lectures 16 and 17, and the other titled “The Reality of the Unseen”, based on his third lecture. (The page numbers included are from the Modern Library edition, 1994.

            These passages include testimonies of personal revelations of a realm “beyond” our normal state of consciousness. I put “beyond” in quotation marks because, as you will read, our immortality is not spoken of as something we will finally achieve, but something we have already, unbeknownst to most of us, presumably. 

            With the exception of the next to last selection, these are not accounts by disciplined mystics, people from the various religious traditions who have made it their life-long endeavor to know and “dwell” in the presence of the Power that Be, even as they remain in the flesh and blood. The human race is blessed with plentiful accounts of what the mystics know, even though, as they all report, words cannot do justice to the mystic experience. 

            From these examples of sporadic wanderings into a cosmic or mystic consciousness, as well as the reports of disciplined mystics, our concepts of past, present, and future as separable states of time do not apply; similarly, the self, or ego, disappears or is absorbed by the One. 

Because we are so accustomed to being in our individual selves, we might suppose this “annihilation” of the self to be impersonal, or lacking in joy as we have known and crave in this life. Alas, if we could only suspend our fear of the unknown, and trust in the Power that Be. The joy to be found in this higher realm, though not quite like we have known, will not disappoint. 

             

            Our first example comes from a Canadian psychiatrist, Dr. R. M. Bucke. The following experience inspired him to investigate similar experiences by others, from which he produced the book, Cosmic Consciousness: a study in the evolution of the human mind (Philadelphia, 1901). 

            I had spent the evening in a great city, with two friends, reading and discussing poetry and philosophy. We parted at midnight. I had a long drive in a hansom to my lodging. My mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images and emotions called up by the reading and talk, was calm and peaceful. I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images, and emotions flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind. All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next, I knew that the fire was within myself. Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all  men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure [doubt] all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain. The vision lasted only a few seconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter of a century that has thus elapsed. I knew that what the vision showed was true. I had attained to a point of view from which I saw that it must be true. That view, that conviction, I may say that consciousness, has never, even during periods of the deepest depression, been lost (p.435). 

            

  

            Our second example comes from the poet Alfred Tennyson: 

  

            [A] kind of waking trance—this for lack of a better word—I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words—where death was an almost laughable impossibility—the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is utterly beyond words? 

            By God Almighty! There is no delusion in the matter! It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, associated with absolute clearness of mind (p.418). 

            

            

Our third example is that of a clergyman: 

  

            I remember the night, and almost the very spot on the hilltop, where my soul opened out, into the Infinite, and there was a rushing together of the two worlds, the inner and the outer. It was deep calling unto deep—the deep that my own struggle had opened up within being answered by the unfathomable deep without, reaching beyond the stars. I stood alone with Him who had made me, and the beauty of the world, and love, and sorrow, and even temptation. I did not seek Him, but felt the perfect unison of my spirit with His. The ordinary sense of things around me faded. For the moment nothing but the ineffable joy and exultation remained. It is impossible fully to describe the experience. It was like the effect of some great orchestra when all the separate notes have melted into one swelling harmony that leaves the listener conscious of nothing save that his soul is being wafted upwards, and almost bursting with its own emotion. The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was unseen. I could not any more have doubted that He was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two (p.76). 

  

Our fourth example is related by a Swiss, translated by James from the French original: 

  

            I was in perfect health; we were on our sixth day of tramping, and in good training….I felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst and my state of mind was equally healthy….I can best describe the condition in which I was by calling it a state of equilibrium. When all at once I experienced a feeling of being raised above myself, I felt the presence of God—I tell of the thing just as I was conscious of it—as if his goodness and his power were penetrating me altogether. The throb of emotion was so violent that I could barely tell the boys to pass on and not wait for me. I then sat down on a stone, unable to stand any longer, and my eyes overflowed with tears. I thanked God that in the course of my life he had taught me to know him, that he sustained my life and took pity both on the insignificant creature and on the sinner that I was. I begged him ardently that my life might be consecrated to the doing of his will. I felt his reply, which was that I should do his will from day to day in humility and poverty….The impression had been so profound that in climbing slowly the slope I asked myself if it were possible that Moses on Sinai could have had a more intimate communication with God. I think it is well to add that in this ecstasy of mine God had neither form, color, odor nor taste; moreover, that the feeling of his presence was accompanied with no determinate localization. It was rather as if my personality had been transformed by the presence of a spiritual spirit. But the more I seek words to express this intimate [communion], the more I feel the impossibility of describing the thing by any of our usual images. At bottom the expression most apt to render what I felt is this: God was present, though invisible; he fell under no one of my senses, yet my consciousness perceived him (pp.77-79). 

            

William James himself could not report any spontaneous mystical-type experience of his own like those related thus far. But at the risk of raising a few eyebrows, I can relate that he had experimented with nitrous oxide and ether, which he had heard could stimulate a mystical-like state. “Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler” he wrote. “This truth fades out, however, or escapes, at the moment of coming to; and if any words remain over in which it seemed to clothe itself, they prove to be the verist nonsense. Nevertheless, the sense of a profound meaning having been there persists…” 

Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question—for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness….Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. The keynote of it is invariably a reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity. Not only do they, as contrasted species, belong to one and the same genus, but one of the species, the nobler and better one, is itself the genus, and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite into itself….(pp.422-23, emphasis original). 

  

            Given his time and place, most of James’ examples naturally involve individuals who identified as Christian, or were most familiar with that tradition. For the sake of variety, it is fitting to include a passage James selected from the autobiography of al-Ghazali (d. 1111 C.E), who is credited with a reconciliation of orthodox Islam and Sufism, the Muslim mystic tradition. William James, reflecting a common shortcoming of Western intellectualism of the time, and which arguably still remains, was noticeably under-informed on the subject of Islam, as was I on September 11, 2001. For instance, James refers to the faith as “Mohammedanism”. Nonetheless, James quotes from al-Ghazali at length, obviously impressed by his intellectual and spiritual achievements: 

            The science of the Sufis aims at detaching the heart from all that is not God, and at giving to it for sole occupation the meditation of the divine being. Theory being more easy for me than practice, I read [certain books] until I understood all that can be learned by study and hearsay. Then I recognized that what pertains most exclusively to their method is just what no study can grasp, but only transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the soul…. 

            Reflecting on my situation, I found myself tied down by a multitude of bonds—temptations on every side. Considering my teaching, I found it was impure before God. I saw myself struggling with all my might to achieve glory and to spread my name. [Here follows an account of his six months’ hesitation to break away from the conditions of his life at Baghdad, at the end of which he fell ill with a paralysis of the tongue.] Then, feeling my own weakness, and having entirely given up my own will, I repaired to God like a man in distress who has no more resources. He answered, as he answers the wretch who invokes him….So I quitted Baghdad, 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 meditation on God—all according to the methods of the Sufis, as I had read of them. 

            ….During this solitary state things were revealed to me which it is impossible either to describe or to point out. 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 of the contemplative life consists in the humble prayers which escape from the fervent soul, and in the meditations on 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….From the beginning, 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. Then the transport rises from the perception of forms and figures to a degree which escapes all expression, and which no man may seek to give an account of without his words involving sin (pp.439-41). 

  

            I conclude with this brief and powerful insight from the German idealist Malwida von Meysenbug, on the occasion of praying on a seashore, “before the illimitable ocean, symbol of the Infinite: 

            

I prayed as I have never prayed before, and knew now what prayer really is: to return from the solitude of individuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is, to kneel down as one that passes away, and to rise up as one imperishable (p.431).