William James and The Varieties of Religious Experience
Within the work of William James’ The Varieties of the Religious Experience, one finds a fundamentally different approach to religion than the ones studied thus far as argued by Emile Durkheim and Mircea Eliade. For James, the source of religion authoritatively stems from the individual, rather than the Durkheimian collective or the Eliadean orientation of humankind and sacred. James argues, “Religion, therefore, as I now arbitrarily ask you to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine (39).
Such a definition allows for James to construct various arguments. Firstly, let one examine the latter part of the definition where James does not limit what the divine can be for the individual. The divine could be the monotheistic God of the Abrahamic traditions, the Transcendentalist view of nature, or the unity-with-God notion practiced by eleventh-century Sufis. Secondly, James’ focusing on the individual underscores his entry point into religion made in his introduction to The Varieties of Religious Experience. He states, “Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed…It would seem, therefore, that as a psychologist, the natural thing for me would be to invite you to a descriptive survey of [humankind’s] religious propensities” (16).
I argue that he is, in a sense, removing the divine from definition of a religion, or at least minimize it. A scientist can’t observe the divine. What he or she can do, however, is study the effects that the notion of the divine has on an individual. In a sense, then, religion becomes science-like in that it can be empirically studied. It moves religion from the history book to one of science. This is not to argue that faith is absent from the equation. Rather, it plays an instrumental role in shaping the feelings, acts, and experiences of the individual man in his solitude that a scientist can measure. By observing one’s behavior and making judgments as to its significance, James is able to adopt two modes of inquiry: the existential judgment and the spiritual judgment (17).
For James, the existential judgment seems to be the easier mode of inquiry. He notes that, “Every religious phenomenon has its history and its derivation from natural antecedents” (17). He uses the construction of the bible to illustrate this fact, and then shows how contemporary forms of biblical criticism or exegesis build on this existential notion to bring one to a spiritual judgment about the work. Therefore, a spiritual judgment can only be made with regards to a previous existential one.
If one looks at his lectures devoted to mysticism, one sees a similar framework being employed. James notes, “One may say truly, I think, that personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness” (328). What this means, or what James seems to be implying, is that mysticism is the fountainhead for all religious experience. In effect, it cannot be sectarian or particular, for if all things flow from it, it must be, in and of itself, universal.
This universality allows for the divine to be perceived in a variety of ways, hence James’ title The Varieties of the Religious Experience.” The majority of his lectures dealing with mysticism (in fact, the bulk of the lectures contained within this book) recount various peoples — men and women, young and old, European and American, Christian and Sufi – detailing their religious experiences. What this seems to suggest, therefore, is that religious experience is ahistorical and atemporal. It is a living presence that permeates the whole of human existence, and it is a living presence that can be accessed in a variety of ways, whether an epileptic episode or pharmacological induction. What matters is not that the mystical experience be reduced to medical materialism (a phrase that James coins), but rather what the mystical experience means for the individual in terms of present behavior and future actions. Therefore, what holds more significance is the fruits of the mystical experience, rather than the seeds that bring about the fruit, although the seeds are important to bring about such fruit. Here again, one sees James’ framework of the existential and spiritual modes of inquiry.
James’ work regarding mysticism has not been without criticism. In his article “The Making of Modern ‘Mysticism’ from the Academy of American Religion, scholar Leigh Eric Schmidt traces the genealogy of “mysticism” from the sixteenth century to the present. His article concerns itself with mysticism being perceived for its essentialist illusions (273). We can read essentialist in this context as universal. For scholars like Wayne Proudfoot, Steven T. Katz, and Hans H. Penner, religious experience is not to be any more unique, ineffable, or perennial than any other kind of experience (274). These scholars, I believe, understand James’ work to say that history does not matter. For them, historicity seems to be more important, as it allows history to be a significant criterion of value for investigative research.
I do not think, however, that James’ work negates historicity. Rather, I think he recognizes that social factors and the environment give the context for a religious experience, and he believes that to “…understand a thing rightly we need to see it both out of its environment and in it, and to have acquaintance with the whole range of its variations” (31). Furthermore, “Religion, no matter what it is, is a man’s total reaction upon life” (42). This total reaction, therefore, includes man both in its environment and out of it, both inside his history and outside of it. Mystical experience is not a mere way to avoid reductionism amid modernity as Proudfoot argues, but rather to allow religious experience to exist alongside and within modernity. Again, I reference James’ quote on religion being man’s total reaction. For him, this reaction could be studied empirically. Perhaps this is why he could be better understood as founding the science of religion. Mystical experience is the single-cell that evolves into the organism of religious experience. Therefore, mystical experience must be, in and of itself, a religion. Perhaps it is not a religion in how Emile Durkheim may have defined it or how Eliade chose not to define it, but definitely within the psychological and philosophical framework that James provides.
