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	The Varieties of Religious Experience
		Chapter 8 is an introduction to chapters 9-15 in that it suggests the aspects of conversion and saints that are found in the religious experiences of the sick-souled--i.e., it speaks of the divided self and the process of its unification.
		Even though it is true that there are physical changes accompanying all experiences (religious or otherwise) to claim that this is the reason for the experience is as ridiculous as claiming that the liver is the reason that one becomes an atheist.
		Such individuals are said to experience a deep discordancy, dividedness within their selves that requires a deep and moving experience--one which is generally referred to as a conversion or mystical experience.
	www.religiousworlds.com /fondarosa/jamesv.html (9151 words)

	The Varieties of Religious Experience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a work by William James.
		James would go on to conceive his philosophy of pragmatism, and although there may be many overlapping ideas in Varieties and Pragmatism, this summary should not be used as a primer for the latter.
		The lectures neglect the experience of ordinary religious people, tending to tap the religious experiences of exceptional people, or exceptional experiences of religious people.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience (905 words)

	The Varieties of Religious Experience (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Chapter 8 is an introduction to chapters 9-15 in that it suggests the aspects of conversion and saints that are found in the religious experiences of the sick-souled--i.e., it speaks of the divided self and the process of its unification.
		Even though it is true that there are physical changes accompanying all experiences (religious or otherwise) to claim that this is the reason for the experience is as ridiculous as claiming that the liver is the reason that one becomes an atheist.
		Such individuals are said to experience a deep discordancy, dividedness within their selves that requires a deep and moving experience--one which is generally referred to as a conversion or mystical experience.
	www.clas.ufl.edu /users/gthursby/fonda/jamesv.html (9151 words)

	Freeman J. Dyson "The Varieties of Religious Experience"
		His aim was to explore the by-ways of religious experience, not to reduce them to a set of scientific conclusions.
		When we are aware of the universe through a religious experience, nothing is quantitative, and when we are aware of the universe through scientific observation and analysis, nothing is sacred.
		To astronomers with a religious turn of mind the heavens may proclaim the glory of God, but the glory will never be captured in their computer models of star-clusters and galaxies.
	www.ctinquiry.org /publications/reflections_volume_7/dyson.htm (7733 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Religious language clothes itself in such poor symbols as our life affords, and the whole organism gives overtones of comment whenever the mind is strongly stirred to expression.
		Now it would be too absurd to say that the inner experiences that underlie such expressions of faith as this and impel the writer to their utterance are quite unworthy to be called religious experiences.
		In the religious consciousness, that is just the position in which the fiend, the negative or tragic principle, is found; and for that very reason the religious consciousness is so rich from the emotional point of view.[20] We shall see how in certain men and women it takes on a monstrously ascetic form.
	www.sd70.bc.ca /books/varre10.txt (17946 words)

	Varieties of Religious Experience
		The Quaker Universalist Fellowship is organized around a fundamental insight: that differences in religious language, though often radical, ought not to obscure the fact that the religious impulse is universal, a part of all persons.
		I have sometimes thought of myself as being a religious humanist, religious in the sense that meaning and purpose are important to me, a humanist in the sense that I reject Descartes’ dualism and seek holistic conceptions of the life of the spirit.
		My own religious life is best understood as an effort to build moral stability and connectedness by creating a web of motivation and behavior that is internally consistent and emotionally satisfying.
	www.universalistfriends.org /varieties.html (3381 words)

	THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: ISSUES (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		But the two cases are not analogous: the unusual functioning we might suppose in extreme religious experience is not comparable to the impaired functioning in cases of brain damage.
		At the start of the book, he has made a radical distinction between, on the one hand, subjects of extreme religious experience and, on the other hand, ordinary believers: suggesting that the two types of experience involved are not merely quantitively but qualitatively different.
		However, while both writers take a psychological perspective, focussing on intense personal religious experience, James points to the energising practical effect on the subject of an encounter with the supernatural, whereas Otto analyses the nature of the subject's experience of the encounter.
	www.bytrent.demon.co.uk /vreproblems.html (2339 words)

	FT March 2000: William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		The Varieties is the text of James’ Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion, delivered in 1901 and 1902 at the University of Edinburgh.
		Today one is more likely to hear religious experience explained as the product of changing cultural fictions about gender, power, and selfhood; but the principle is the same.
		He is so warmly sympathetic toward the religious testimonies he presents—from the relentlessly cheerful affirmations of the mind—cure movement to the metaphysical reveries of nitrous oxide mystics—that one can miss his criticisms.
	www.firstthings.com /ftissues/ft0003/articles/james.html (677 words)

	Triablogue: The varieties of religious experience
		During that prayer, you have a "religious experience" (I don't know your particular understanding of the nature of religious experiences, but assume that whatever it is, it is an experience that is in accord with your theology of religious experience).
		You could say that the Muslim's religious experience is psychological and yours is religious, but could you not also conclude that there are psychological experiences that people take to be religious and that you cannot be certain on the basis of the religious experience alone that yours is not one of those psychological experiences.
		Allah and the Qur'an, and the Mormon's veridical experience viz.
	triablogue.blogspot.com /2006/11/varieties-of-religious-experience.html (4460 words)

	Philosophy- Squashed William James - Varieties of Religious Experience - condensed and abridged
		A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman.
		In persons deep in the religious life, as we have now abundantly seen - and this is my conclusion - the door into this region seems unusually wide open; at any rate, experiences making their entrance through that door have had emphatic influence in shaping religious history.
		The theologian's contention that the religious man is moved by an external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of invasions from the subconscious region to take on objective appearances, and to suggest to the Subject an external control.
	www.btinternet.com /~glynhughes/squashed/james.htm (15668 words)

	FT March 2000: William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
		In his own day, it was fashionable to explain religious excitability as a form of autointoxication brought on by disordered digestion or nerves.
		Today one is more likely to hear religious experience explained as the product of changing cultural fictions about gender, power, and selfhood; but the principle is the same.
		He is so warmly sympathetic toward the religious testimonies he presents—from the relentlessly cheerful affirmations of the mind—cure movement to the metaphysical reveries of nitrous oxide mystics—that one can miss his criticisms.
	www.leaderu.com /ftissues/ft0003/articles/james.html (677 words)

	Michel Ferrari, The Varieties of Religious Experience
		The Varieties of Contexts for Reappraising The Varieties.
		The discussion of the problematic consequences of this neglect of language and cultural language games focuses on ‘ineffable experiences’, which are the chief characteristic of mystical states and thus, for James, at the centre of the religious experience.
		The Varieties of Religious Experience is an exploration of personal narratives about religious experience, but as one might gather from the epigraph to this article, James treats religion in an eccentric way.
	www.imprint.co.uk /books/james.html (1236 words)

	The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
		There is no elementary religious emotion, no one specific and essential kind of religious object, no one specific and essential kind of religious act.
		To characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves to that order.
		Experiences making their entrance through that door have had emphatic influence in shaping religious history.
	www.religion-online.org /showbook.asp?title=1637 (736 words)

	Amazon.ca: Books: The Varieties of Religious Experience (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		What makes James' writing so odd in the world of religious studies is his refreshingly realistic take on religion and human nature considering it was written previous to the first world war.
		This was one of the first academic books on the subject of religious experience and is thus extremely important.
		James' book is not a polemic for or against religious conversion, but more accurately a description of the experience and a guide for its (many) interpretations.
	www.amazon.ca /exec/obidos/ASIN/0743257871 (1148 words)

	Random House Trade \| The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
		The Varieties of Religious Experience is certainly the most notable of all books in the field of the psychology of religion and probably destined to be the most influential [one] written on religion in the twentieth century' said Walter Houston Clark in Psychology Today.
		At the center of this vision was a democratization of religious impulses ('Well, I take it, God is in one person quite as much as another') that he passed on to his son.
		Published in June 1902, The Varieties of Religious Experience was an immediate best-seller and brought about something of a Copernican revolution by looking at religion not as it appeared in the object (God or the universe or revelation) but as it appeared in the subject (the believing, doubting, praying, and experiencing person).
	www.randomhouse.com /randomhouse/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679641582 (1098 words)

	James: The Varieties of Religious Experience (Lects. 16 - 17)
		These highest experiences that I have had of God's presence have been rare and brief- flashes of consciousness which have compelled me to exclaim with surprise- God is here!- or conditions of exaltation and insight less intense, and only gradually passing away.
		If you were to tell a man who was himself without experience of such a phenomenon that there are people who at times swoon away so as to resemble dead men, and who [in dreams] yet perceive things that are hidden, he would deny it [and give his reasons].
		Since denial of the finite self and its wants, since asceticism of some sort, is found in religious experience to be the only doorway to the larger and more blessed life, this moral mystery intertwines and combines with the intellectual mystery in all mystical writings.
	www.psywww.com /psyrelig/james/james12.htm (15744 words)

	Amazon.com: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, Centenary Edition: Books: William James (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Especially interesting, I thought, were the descriptions of "conversion," a two-fold experience consisting of spiritual crisis and of release from that crisis and the reaching of a profound state of surety and, usually, happiness.
		The Varieties takes a phenomenological approach in that it is in large part devoted to looking at religious activities, such as conversions, mysticism, saintly behavior, prayer, and seeing what they are and what they do without making commitments regarding the causes of the behavior.
		The earlier chapters of the Varieties are philosophical in tone as James labors to define, explain and defend the nature of his inquiry.
	www.amazon.com /Varieties-Religious-Experience-Nature-Centenary/dp/0415278090 (3318 words)

	THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
		If the inquiry be psychological, not religious institutions, butrather religious feelings and religious impulses must be itssubject, and I must confine myself to those more developedsubjective phenomena recorded in literature produced byarticulate and fully self-conscious men, in works of piety andautobiography.
		To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind,then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritualvalue, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one hasalready worked out in advance some psycho-physical theoryconnecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts ofphysiological change.
		Religious language clothes itself insuch poor symbols as our life affords, and the whole organismgives overtones of comment whenever the mind is strongly stirredto expression.
	xroads.virginia.edu /~HYPER/WJAMES/ch01.html (6027 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: The Varieties of Religious Experience (Penguin Classics): Books: William James (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		First published in 1902, The Varieties of Religious Experience initiated the psychological study of religion, paving the way for Freud and Jung as well as for clinical and paranormal branches of psychology.
		When the entire field of religion is surveyed, we discover massive variety in the thoughts that have prevailed there; but the feelings and the conduct are nearly always the same for Christian, Moslem and Buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives.
		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.
	www.amazon.co.uk /Varieties-Religious-Experience-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140390340 (1842 words)

	The Varieties of Religious Experience Summary & Essays - William James
		In The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), William James offers a sense of validity to the formerly abstract idea of spiritual experience.
		With an understanding of physiology, psychology, and philosophy, James studied cases of religious inspiration and concluded there were specific aspects of human consciousness that contained energies that could come to a person’s assistance in time of great need.
		However, his theories about religious experience were also heavily influenced by his philosophical interests, which drew him to conclude that an unseen reality does exist and is available to everyone for exploration.
	www.enotes.com /varieties-religious (415 words)

	The Varieties of Religious Experience Summary
		The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
		The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a book by the pioneering Harvard psychologist William James that comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on" Natural Theology" delivered at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland between 19...
		Get the complete The Varieties of Religious Experience Summary Pack, which includes everything on this page.
	www.bookrags.com /The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience (266 words)

	VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE Information, Clues, Links, and Other Useful Starting Points ... Sometimes,Some ...
		Reading The Varieties of Religious Experience, it is easy to see why.
		I just re-read James's Varieties, and again I am impressed at his even-handed treatment of a notoriously difficult subject.
		VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE Instantly Downloadable PDF or and/other e-book formats (When available).
	www.omega23.com /sing23.php3?prodid=0684842971 (1396 words)

	Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
		The Varieties of Religious Experiences is the result of the Gifford Lecture Series on natural religion which William James delivered in 1901 at the University of Edinburgh.
		Despite being trained as a chemist, physician, and later a psychologist, James is not committed to scientific materialism in his study of religion.
		He does this by drawing his conclusions from a large number of case studies of religious experiences, many of which are firsthand accounts.
	www.selfknowledge.org /resources/bookreviews/varieties.htm (292 words)

	Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
		Most of its documentation concentrates on the full range of religious experience within Christianity but where the author also comments on other religions he does so accurately and astutely.
		The first few chapters show that there are large academic circles which William James knows to be largely atheistic, and also that there are large numbers of secular-living people as well as explicit atheists in general, and not just in England but from William James' homeland, the USA.
		They are as convincing to those who have them as any direct sensible experiences can be, and they are, as a rule, much more convincing than results established by mere logic ever are.
	www.vexen.co.uk /books/james_varieties.html (1080 words)

	William James
		William James and the Logic of Religious Belief, by W. Richard Comstock, 1967.
		Scholars Reevaluate the Significance of The Varieties of Religious Experience.
		Pure Experience, the Response to William James: An Introduction, by Eugene Taylor and Robert Wozniak.
	www.emory.edu /EDUCATION/mfp/james.html (2909 words)

	New Thought Movement Home Page
		It was recognized as "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness" by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience.
		Experience: All There Is, explaining mind or spirit in terms of momentary bursts of awareness.
		John Buchanan's "Mystical Experiences in a Whiteheadian Universe" on that page is very much worth reading, as are numerous other papers presented at that conference, as are other writings on the Center for Process Studies site.
	websyte.com /alan (3347 words)

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