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Tuesday, August 2nd, 2022
23:48
Argued the validity of religion with a stranger, they refused to actually acknowledge the point being made and kept repeating slogans, presuming positions I don't take and generally engaging in bad faith. Also saw others ostensibly representing my perspective fail in yet more disastrous a manner. Would I have been more cynical at the time I may have challenged them also, rekindle the fires of that devil I so love to advocate for and play atheist to illustrate where they were going wrong. Didn't have it in me. I feel hollow and unable to express what's on my mind. It hurts to be misunderstood, that's about all there is.
Haven't read in a few days. Tomorrow, maybe.
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022
22:52
Feel like most laypeople are quick to ascribe spiritual meaning to discussions of normativity that don't warrant them given their positions. I think it stems from a generally intuited perspective. Can't tell if it's deontological or virtue ethicist issue, but I think these terms become somewhat muddy due to conflation of the latter's 'virtue' with the godhead of the former. I can't speak broadly on it, but I keep noticing people wanting to appeal to spiritual moral character without making any actual delineations that warrant such a specification in the first place, they hop from one system to the next as they make their appeals. Too dense to get into without using specific examples, but I don't want to strawman here.
Thursday, August 4th, 2022
17:42
Lectures IV and V of 'Varieties' (grouped together in the one chapter as they are):
There's a lot to speak on with these two lectures, but I'll try to keep it concise. James speaks on happiness, and how religion usually professes to provide such happiness. From this he notes the positive-mindedness that becomes characteristic of the 'healthy-minded' religion (in contrast to the 'sick souled' religion that will be described in the subsequent lectures), the structural expression of that innate sense of connection to the divine that manifests in individuals that have undergone (or were perhaps born with) religious experience. James also points out that the consequent happiness of a religious experience or claim does not afford such a claim existential legitimacy, however, and therein lies a warning that a religious lifestyle may be total bunk even if providing overwhelmingly positive outcomes.
He also goes onto note that what can be called 'healthy-minded' for one may not be so for another, describing that though the conscious upholding of values as they are understood in relation to the divine for one individual may procure a great amount of spiritual happiness, it is certainly not a given that this is the case for another; passivity, not action may in fact be the route to personal fulfillment within the spiritual sphere, a resignation to the divine will in totality via direct experience, which James characterizes as the purer, mystical avenue, providing as it does experiential data outside of doctrinal analysis that may typify that contrasted, conscious effort that is all too common.
A story which revivalist preachers often tell is that of a man who found himself at night slipping down the side of a precipice. At last he caught a branch which stopped his fall, and remained clinging to it in misery for hours. But finally his fingers had to loose their hold, and with a despairing farewell to life, he let himself drop. He fell just six inches. If he had given up the struggle earlier, his agony would have been spared. As the mother earth received him, so, the preachers tell us, will the everlasting arms receive us if we confide absolutely in them, and give up the hereditary habit of relying on our personal strength, with its precautions that cannot shelter and safeguards that never save.
I enjoy this a lot, and take the quote as a commentary on human nature for the structurally religious and the atheistic alike; that which will enrapture the soul and offer us the understanding we desire can be hindered just as much by a lack of faith in the legitimacy of the metaphysical as it can be by our commitment to what we are told is the correct path by others. It's within us, and only us, to take that leap.
It is but giving your little private convulsive self a rest, and finding that a greater Self is there. The results, slow or sudden, or great or small, of the combined optimism and expectancy, the regenerative phenomena which ensue on the abandonment of effort, remain firm facts of human nature, no matter whether we adopt a theistic, a pantheistic-idealistic, or a medical-materialsitic view of their uiltimate causal explanation.
James concludes—somewhat out of step with the content of the rest of the chapter—with the assertion that multiple lenses of analysis should be considered to constitute a wider, more-encompassing philosophical worldview with the facts outlined thus far in mind; 'sectarian scientists' may give us an eye into phenomena, but the deeper philosophical questions that vex us have been pondered for centuries without much epistemic provenance beyond the subjective, religious experience, unfalsifiable and hard to define as they are, yet undoubtedly providing 'serenity, moral poise, and happiness' far exceeding the extents of the indifferent moralist. To James, it's only in applying these differing conceptual systems to various aspects of the human experience that we can truly begin to assess the spiritual in earnest.
Friday, August 5th, 2022
18:44
Lectures VI and VII of 'Varieties':
These lectures are perhaps the most interesting to me so far, describing as they do the nature of the 'sick-souled' individuals as mentioned in my last entry. I don't have a whole lot to say on the lectures—I may well transcribe the entirety of them should I want to get across their significance, needing little interpretation as they do—but I'll make a few notes with attached quotes nonetheless:
In order to define the sick-souled, James first describes the disposition of those healthy-minded individuals that manage to escape the vortex of pessimism and non-meaning typical of that worldview, that is, a total abandoment of consideration of evil in the first place, the simple act of not dwelling on it, not inviting it in, putting unconditional faith instead in the ascribed qualities of the divine. Quoting Luther:
When I was a monk, I thought that I was utterly cast away, if at any time I felt the lust of the flesh: that is to say, if I felt any evil motion, fleshly lust, wrath, hatred, or envy against any brother. I assayed many ways to help to quiet my conscience, but it would not be; for the concupiscence and lust of my flesh did always return, so that I could not rest, but was continually vexed with these thoughts: This or that sin thou hast committed: thou art infected with envy, with impatiency, and such other sins: therefore thou art entered into this holy order in vain, and all thy good works are unprofitable. But if then I had rightly understood these sentences of Paul: "The flesh lusteth contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit contrary to the flesh; and these two are one against another, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would do," I should not have so miserably tormented myself, but should have thought and said to myself, as now commonly I do, "Martin, thou shalt not utterly be without sin, for thou hast flesh; thou shalt therefore feel the battle thereof." I remember that Staupitz was wont to say, "I have vowed unto God above a thousand times that I would become a better man: but I never performed that which I vowed. Hereafter I will make no such vow: for I have now learned by expereince that I am not able to perform it. Unless, therefore, God be favorable and merciful unto me for Christ's sake, I shall not be able, with all my vows and all my good deeds, to stand before him." This (of Staupitz's) was not only a true, but also a godly and holy desperation; and this must they all confess, both with mouth and heart, who will be saved. For the godly trust not to their own righteousness. They look unto Christ their reconciler, who gave his life for their sins. Moreover, they know that the remnant of sin which is in their flesh is not laid to their charge, but freely pardoned. Notwithstanding, in the mean while they fight in spirit against the flesh, lest they should fulfill the lusts thereof; and although they feel the flesh to rage and rebel, and themselves also do fall sometimes into sin through infirmity, yet are they not discouraged, nor think therefore that their state and kind of life, and the works are done according to their calling, displease God; but they raise up themselves by faith.
Then, quoting Miguel de Molinos of the Quietist tradition:
When thou has fallest into a fault, in what matter soever it be, do not trouble nor afflict thyself for it. For they are effects of our frail Nature, stained by Original Sin. The common enemy will make thee believe, as soon as thou fallest into any fault, that thou walkest in error, and therefore art out of God and his favor, and herewith would he make thee distrust of the divine Grace, telling thee of thy misery, and making a giant of it; and putting it into thy head that every day thy soul grows worse instead of better, whilst it so often repeats these failings. O blessed Soul, open thine eyes; and shut the gate against these diabolical suggestions, knowing thy misery, and trusting in the mercy divine. Would not he be a mere fool who, running at tournament with others, and falling in the best of the career, should lie weeping on the ground and afflicting himself with discourses upon his fall? Man (they would tell him), lose no time, get up and take the course again, for he that rises again quickly and continues his race is as if he had never fallen. If thou seest thyself fallen once and a thousand times, thou oughtest to make use of the remedy which I have given thee, that is, a loving confidence in the divine mercy. These are the weapons with which thou must fight and conquer cowardice and vain thoughts. This is the means thou oughtest to use—not to lose time, not to disturb thyself, and reap no good.
James is ultimately sympathetic to this position (and I again presume now that this consolidation of meaning through mystical experience is what constitutes his concept of 'over-belief', stripped as it is of the existential doctrine found in organized religion), but he also realizes the contradiction, based as they are on matters of scripture and unfalsifiable declarations; they are merely ignoring the reality that befalls us: evil does exist, and simply looking to one's unfounded conception of the divine with wilful ignorance fails to address the problem, it will not be answered by theology, it can only obfuscate it, even if it does inspire happiness.
Onto philosophy that does recognize this issue, then. James characterizes Stoicism and Epicureanism as rational philosophies that recognized and attempted to address the problem of evil (see: the Epicurean paradox) by self-cultivation through the strengthening of emotional resilience as a means to counterbalance the existence of that evil; evil is a fact of the world, therefore the world itself can not be called all-good, and it is only through conscious human virtue that this fact of reality can be assuaged within the mind of man. I'll note that I'm not at all versed on either of these philosophies, and James doesn't delve into them too much outside of this, but he uses them as shorthand for the 'philosophical pessimism' that appears separate from healthy-minded religion in its recognition of the paradoxes that come with ignoring evil, but not totally existing within the camp of the sick-souled. James believes that some individuals may find contendedness under this worldview (and it is that, 'contentedness', distinguished from happiness here via the tempering of expectations such philosophies necessarily utilise in order to define meaning as they see it), but that it may be inherently unfulfilling to the average person, predisposed to finding a higher meaning or purpose as we seem to be.
They leave the world in the shape of an unreconciled contradiciton, and seek no higher unity. Compared with the complex ecstasies which the supernaturally regenerated Christian may enjoy, or the oriental pantheist indulge in, their receipts for equanimity are expedients which seem almost crude in their simplicity.
Rational, then, but not providing an answer. It breeds only the 'melancholic metaphysicist'. Thus comes the issue, the sick-souled.
For James, the truly sick-souled are those that can not fall into the aforementioned camps due to their intrinsically rational qualities as paired with a mounting pessimism. They've awoken to (or were perhaps born with) an inability to accept the appeasements of the healthy-minded, and the indifferent acceptance of the rational philosophers. They appear to exist under a looming death sentence of meaninglessness if they do not find a spiritual remedy to this issue, as the mindset is characterized by a metaphysical anhedonia, that is, a total lack of purpose that engenders and reinforces the foul disposition.
It seems to me that we are bound to say that morbid-mindedness ranges over the wider scale of experience, and that its survey is the one that overlaps. The method of averting one's attention from evil, and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as it will work. It will work with many persons; it will work far more generally than most of us are ready to suppose; and within the sphere of its successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a religious solution. But it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one be quite free from melancholy one's self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a pholosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only opener of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
Once more, it seems James is leading us to his conclusion of a pragmatic acceptance of over-belief as the means to spiritual acceptance of this fact, but this lecture in particular is only describing the nature of the sick-souled, the remedy has to wait until later. Fascinating stuff.
Saturday, August 6th, 2022
17:53
Lecture VIII of 'Varieties':
I don't have a lot to say on this one, as it is mostly a discussion of the nature of 'Unification', that is, the joining of the rationality of the outer self with the conviction of the inner self. James makes the claim that the sick-souled must be reborn through unification of these selves, as to be sick-souled is to exist purely within the realm of the outer self, neglecting that spark within us that produces meaning; they become 'twice-born' in this process of unification, though James notes that whether this process comes gradually, or suddenly, it is always predicated on the foundation of the sick-soul, that is, it is a remedy for an issue that never plagued the healthy-minded, and so a nucleus of that doubt exists inherent to the individual that the all-encompassing religioisty of the reborn self can only obscure, but that the very act of obscuring such doubt may well be the remedy for happiness, and can as such be considered 'required', lest we accept the depressive, and the suicidal.
It's an interesting structure, I don't know if I wholly agree with this as a total lens of analysis for religioisty as a whole, diverse as it is, but I do find it is a good tool to speak with in terms of generalities, though to James' credit, he does mention that all of this exists on a spectrum, and that such extremes as defined do not exist in any one individual, merely intermediate scales of internal and external focus that at times may necessitate reassessment to provide metaphysical treatment. So too does he mention that it is not pure religioisty that provides meaning in this manner, calling back to the philosophical discussion of the last lectures, it can be said that departing from organized religion and becoming more secular (as in accepting natural theology or rational philosophy over specific doctrine) is equally as potent a cure for the unbalanced individual as is the move away from secularism towards religiosity in general. I find this an agreeable enough statement.
James extensively quotes Tolstoy as an example of the excessive rationality of the sick-souled necessitating unification through faith in the inner self, but I won't provide that here. It's interesting nonetheless.
18:44
Lecture IX of 'Varieties':
Where the last lecture described 'Unification' of the self, lecture IX goes on to describe how this relates to religious experience in more detail, that is, how unification relates to 'Conversion'. For James, to be converted means for religious ideas to move from from the periphery of one's consciousness to the center stage, and that this conception of religious meaning begins to take a central role in the convert's energy and motivation.
Such religious conversion is said to come in two flavors, the volitional kind, and the self-surrendering kind. Volitional conversion is a sustained, fighting effort, the motivated belief in meaning in spite of the self until one breaks through as in religious experience. Self-surrender, on the other hand, is religious conversion through apathy, through letting go (refer back to the parable of the man and the branch detailed in Lectures IV and V) and accepting uncritically, thus becoming an inlet through which spiritual gratification may then flow.
James belives that self-surrender is the more likely outcome for an individual, as the question of meaning as philosophy understands it ultimately has no answer, and so all the brain can do is surrender itself to faith when met with such a void; volitional conversion is said to eventually meet this end also, as James considers them one and the same in terms of outcome, with only the individual's predisposition to commitment existing as the differentiating factor. For James, humans by and large seem to be motivated by fear of this existential lack of meaning rather than any innate aspiration for spiritual meaning itself.
Quoting religious psychologist Edwin Diller Starbuck:
[Conversion is the] process of struggling away from sin rather than of striving towards righteousness.
This is where James seems to most strongly identify the paradoxes that necessitate identification with the religious aspect residing within our inner self (one of his prior excerpts of a convert's experience was in actuality autobiographical); if we are of the understanding that we, as humans, fear so greatly this lack of meaning, and that we seem to construct meaning out of thin air even on irrational grounds, even to the point of self-surrendering to that which we may previously have considered objectively false by methods of the empirical, then it only makes pragmatic sense that we should attempt to foster a form of psychospiritual happiness predicated on our personal conception of the divine through mystical experience that is independent of group doctrine and creed.
One may say that the whole development of Christianity in inwardness has consisted in little more than the greater and greater emphasis attached to this crisis of self-surrender, From Catholicism to Lutheranism, and then to Calvinism; from that to Wesleyanism; and from this, outside of technical Christianity altogether, to pure 'liberalism' or transcendental idealism, whether or not of the mind-cure type, taking in the medieval mystics, the quietists, the pietists, and quakers by the way, we can trace the stages of progress towards the idea of an immediate spiritual help, experienced by the individual in his forlornness and standing in no essential need of doctrinal apparatus or propitiatory machinery.
I stepped somewhat out of bounds of the content of this Lecture itself when describing James' outlook in my last paragraph, as I have a few times prior, but I'm starting to see the dots connect, and I find the sentiment agreeable.
Monday, August 8th, 2022
03:17
Nightmares are back, can't sleep. Find myself uneasy and irritable around stimuli I'd usually be able to weather.
15:35
Lecture X of 'Varieties':
Not much to say on this lecture. It's an extension and conclusion on the themes of Coversion, mostly just examples of various branches of Christianity and their perspectives on sudden versus gradual conversion. Also some nineteenth-century psychologizing on the nature of consciousness and how individual temperament may predispose one to a certain kind of conversion under such a framework. I wouldn't go as far to say the conclusions drawn are unfounded, though it is important to note that the understanding of the mind at the time of James' writing means a lot of the terminology and concepts used places such assertions very much in the sphere of only semi-informed guesswork.
Guesswork that is generally on the mark, however, with comments on the idea that psychological neuroses likely play a big part in contributing to an individual's susceptibility to suggestion, automatic motor reflexes and hallucinations; the boundary between sudden and gradual conversion (or the likelihood of an indiviudal acquiring religiosity at all) becoming a matter of subliminal disposition—a psychological lens through which questions of the existential are magnified when dwelled upon, more in some, less in others.
Tuesday, August 9th, 2022
17:53
Lectures XI, XII, and XIII of 'Varieties':
All these lectures speak on the nature and benefits of 'Saintliness'. For James, Saintliness is considered to be the internalization of a religious disposition to the ends of defeating impulse through inhibition. He goes on to describe the traits that characterize this state at some length, and with much quotation. I will here provide these noted qualities as outlined at the beginning of the chapter:
1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world's selfish little interests; and a conviction, not merely intellectual, but as it were sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power. In Christian saintliness this power is always personified as God; but abstract moral ideals, civic or patriotic utopias, or inner visions of holiness or right may also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life, in ways which I described in the lecture on the Reality of the Unseen.
2. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control.
3. An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down.
4. A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards 'yes, yes', and away from 'no,' where the claims of the non-ego are concerned.
These fundamental inner conditions have characteristic practical consequences, as follows:—
a. Asceticism.—The self-surrender may become so passionate as to turn into self-immolation. It may then so overrule the ordinary inhibitions of the flesh that the saint finds positive pleasure in sacrifice and asceticism, measuring and expressing as they do the degree of his loyalty to the higher power.
b. Strength of Soul.—The sense of enlargement of life may be so uplifting that personal motives and inhibitions, commonly omnipotent, become too insignificant for notice, and new reaches of patience and fortitude open out. Fears and anxieties go, and blissful equanimity takes their place. Come heaven come hell, it makes no difference now!
c. Purity.—The shifting of the emotional centre bring with it, first, increase of purity. The sensitiveness to spiritual discords is enhanced, and the cleansing of existence from brutal and sensual elements becomes imperative. Occasions of contact with such elements are avoided: the saintly life must deepen its spiritual consistency and keep unspotted from the world. In some temperaments this need of purity of spirit takes an ascetic turn, and weaknesses of the flesh are treated with relentless severity.
d. Charity.—The shifting of the emotional centre brings, secondly, increase of charity, tenderness for fellow-creatures. The ordinary motives to antipathy, which usually set such close bounds to tenderness among human beings, are inhibited. The saint loves his enemies, and treats loathsome beggars as his brothers.
For James, these qualities seem to speak to some innate moral character that is omnipresently expressed and extrapolated on within both schools of religious virtue, and of moral virtue, existing independent of creed, culture, or theology. He admits that such qualities certainly mesh well with a deontological framework, as in the theism of the Abrahamics, but that the existence of such a moral predisposition in humans can in no way exist as a prop for claims regarding the veracity of one specific interpretation of the metaphysical:
One might therefore be tempted to explain both the humility as to one's self and the charity towards others which characterize spiritual excitement, as results of the all-leveling character of theistic belief. But these affections are certainly not mere derivatives of theism. We find them in Stoicism, in Hinduism, and in Buddhism in the highest possible degree. They harmonize with paternal theism beautifully; but they harmonize with all reflection whatever upon the dependence of mankind on general causes; and we must, I think, consider them not subordinate but coordinate parts of that great complex excitement in the study of which we are engaged. Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm, ontological wonder, cosmic emotion, are all unifying states of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood incline to disappear, and tenderness to rule. The best thing is to describe the condition integrally as a characteristic affection to which our nature is liable, a region in which we find oureslves at home, a sea in which we swim; but not to pretend to explain its parts by deriving them too cleverly from one another. Like love or fear, the faith-state is a natural psychic complex, and carries charity with it by organic consequence. Jubilation is an expansive affection, and all expansive affections are self-forgetful and kindly so long as they endure.
This is an outwardly humanist conception, but James' perspective differs from the secular humanist in that he believes one can ascribe this moral predisposition to one's conception of the divine (as I'm assured we'll read up on in later lectures), only insofar as it does not make existential claims, that is to say, belief about our moral character as it relates to the divine can be considered 'true' to an individual in the absence of evidence, but not in contradiction of existing evidence. You see here how pragmatism and mysticism align.
On this point, James once more draws a line between moral philosophy and religiosity, proclaiming that though both schools can affirm that such moral predisposition exists, it is only within the sphere of religion that one can abandon self-responsibility, taking total conviction in a higher order:
The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. This abandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies. Mind-cure, theosophy, stoicism, ordinary neurological hygiene, insist on it as emphatically as Christianity does, and it is capable of entering into closest marriage with every speculative creed. Christians who have it strongly live in what is called 'recollection,' and are never anxious about the future, nor worry over the outcome of the day. Of Saint Catharine of Genoa it is said that 'she took cognizance of things, only as they were presented to her in succession, moment by moment, . . . and when the present moment was estimated in itself and in its relations, and when the duty that was involved in it was accomplished, it was permitted to pass away as if it had never been, and to give way to the facts and duties of the moment which came after.
This does become slightly muddier a claim to modern sensibilities, with our understanding of eastern philosophy, for instance, raising some questions about how one exactly differentiates a purely moral system from a religious one within a culturally pantheistic framework (the likes of which weren't wholly understood by western philosophers at the time of James' writing), but this is nullified by the fact that James is ultimately espousing a pandeist ideal with his focus on personal mysticism, so the issue is one of degrees and can likely be reconciled with more inclusive language—James could be considered as aspiring to ends eastern philosophy may have already met in some regards. There's a lot to write about on this point, but I feel I can't delve into it here, suffice it to say that it's complicated and perhaps such delineation is beyond me. I'm already reading back this past paragraph and finding too many threads to grasp and speak on coherently.
Wednesday, August 10th, 2022
19:49
Lectures XIV and XV of 'Varieties':
Two lectures on the values of saintliness. I don't have a lot to speak on these two, as with the second chapter on the nature of conversion, it's mostly just an extended jutification on the merits of saintliness as given. James outlines that such virtues are indispensably good in their aims, but that their espousal and subsistence in this world are often impracticable—though they do speak to a prospective better world we may wish to aspire to.
From this, James notes too that ecclesiastical systems and organized religion as a whole do a disservice to the individual conception of saintliness, wherein the structure of a church may implore one to commit to such saintly virtue as a prerequisite to salvation, something that, by nature, is built on a foundation of unfalsifiable revelation; James asks us to consider how beliefs become part of structural orthodoxy; it is only a question of majority acceptance—many such beliefs regarding the nature of spiritual aspiration were considered at first as heretical, it was only after such beliefs superseded those of the old that they took up the mantle of objectivity (this applies too to the evolution of religious understanding as a whole, not just sectarianism).
The practical question exists on an individual level as it relates to religious veracity also, with the aforementioned feasibility of commitment to such ideals being contextual to the society in which the religion exists coming under James' scrutiny. Organized religion espousing the 'correct' path to divinity thus fails on two counts here. I will quote at length one of the opening passages of this chapter to truly illustrate the pluralist mindset that James takes from this fact on grounds of his empiricism:
Since it is impossible to deny secular alterations in our sentiments and needs, it would be absurd to affirm that one's own age of the world can be beyond correction by the next age. Skepticism cannot, therefore, be ruled out by any set of thinkers as a possibility against which their conclusions are secure; and no empiricist ought to claim exemption from this universal liability. But to admit one's liability to correction is one thing, and to embark upon a sea of wanton doubt is another. Of willfully playing into the hands of skepticism we cannot be accused. He who acknowledges the imperfectness of his instrument, and makes allowance for it in discussing his observations, is in a much better position for gaining truth than if he claimed his instrument to be infallible. Or is dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for claiming, as it does, to be in point of right undoubtable? And if not, what command over truth would this kind of theology really lose if, instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability for her conclusions? If we claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than we could have had, if we were unconscious of our liability to err.
Nevertheless, dogmatism will doubtless continue to condemn us for this confession. The mere outward form of inalterable certainity is so precious to some minds that to renounce it explicitly is for them out of the question. They will claim it even where the facts most patently pronounce its folly. But the safe thing is surely to recognize that all the insights of creatures of a day like ourselves must be provisional. The wisest of critics is an altering being, subject to the better insight of the morrow, and right at any moment, only 'up to date' and 'on the whole.' When larger ranges of truth open, it is surely best to be able to open ourselves to their reception, unfettered by our previous pretensions. 'Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive.'
The fact of diverse judgements about religious phenomena is therefore entirely unescapable, whatever may be one's own desire to attain the irreversible. But apart from that fact, a more fundamental question awaits us, the question whether men's opinions ought to be expected to be absolutely uniform in this field. Ought all men to have the same religion? Ought they to approve the same fruits and follow the same leadings? Are they so like in their inner needs that, for hard and soft, for proud and humble, for strenuous and lazy, for healthy-minded and despairing, exactly the same religious incentives are required? Or are different functions in the same organism of humanity alloted to different types of man, so that some may really be the better for a religion of consolation and reassurance, whilst others are better for one of terror and reproof? It might conceivably be so; and we shall, I think, more and more suspect it to be so as we go on. And if it be so, how can any possible judge or critic help being biased in favor of the religion by which his own needs are best met? He aspires to impartiality; but he is too close to the struggle not to be to some degree a participant, and he is sure to approve most warmly those fruits of piety in others which taste most good and prove most nourishing to him.
Friday, August 12th, 2022
23:19
Acquired a copy of Ninian Smart's The World's Religions.
Saturday, August 13th, 2022
04:05
Tried to meditate, couldn't focus whatsoever, environment and person distracting.
Sunday, August 14th, 2022
19:03
Lectures XVI and XVII of 'Varieties':
Regarding mysticism. I don't have much at all to write on these lectures. They are fairly concise in describing the mystical state, drawing examples and comparisons from various creeds, as well as outlining some pretty all-encompassing definitions, but I can't add much to the conversation that I haven't already written in previous entries on this topic. I once more find the sentiment and descriptions James gives very agreeable. If I think to add anything it will be in my concluding entry on this text. I do have some quotes for posterity, however. First, the traits James gives to define the mystical state:
1. Ineffability.—The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart of ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.
2. Noetic quality.—Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of signifiance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.
These two characters 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. These are:—
3. Transiency.—Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seem to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.
4. Passivity.—Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, 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. This latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the meidumistic trance. When these latter conditions are well pronounced, however, there may be no recollection whatever of the phenomenon, and it may have no signifiance for the subject's usually inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mere interruption. Mystical states, strictly so called, are never merely interruptive. Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the inner life of the subject between the times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region are, however, difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and mixtures.
Then, on the nature and content of mystical experience in generality:
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, hardly altered by differences in clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually telling of the unity of man with God, their speech antedates languages, and they do not grow old.
Again, note the religious plurality here. For James, this individual conception of the divine is just that, individual, and by its nature incommunicable. Samadhi and Dhyana, Orison and Raptus, Byss and Abyss, and all the other forms of mystical experience he notes touch on some greater truth beyond human consciousness, expressed only in different terms, filtered through sociocultural lenses that they are.
I imagine that these experiences can be as infinitely varied as are the idiosyncracities of individuals.
. . .
[Mystical experience] is on the whole pantheistic and optimistic, or at least the opposite of pessimistic. It is anti-naturalistic, and harmonizes best with twice-bornness and so-called otherworldly states of mind.
Then, on the nature of mysticism as a guiding principle (the 'spiritual recentering' as described in previous lectures):
As a rule, mystical states merely add a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness.
And finally, regarding the authoritativeness of mystical experience:
(1) Mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come.
(2) No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically.
(3) They break down the authority of the non-mystical or rationalistic consciousness, based upon the understanding and the senses alone. They show it to be only one kind of consciousness. They open out the possibility of other orders of truth, in which, so far as anything in us vitally responds to them, we may freely continue to have faith.
Sunday, August 21st, 2022
07:00
Haven't had the motivation to do much of any heavy reading the past week. Burning through fiction though. Acquired copies of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man and A. C. Bouquet's Comparative Religion.
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022
19:46
Lecture XVIII of 'Varieties':
This chapter centres around whether or not philosophy can ever be the answer for religious justification. James argues that feelings are fundamental to religion: philosophy and theology would never have started had there not been felt experiences to prompt reflection, and that intellectualized reasoning for religion always falls short, as philosophy can do no more to prove rationally any religious claims than mystical experience itself.
For this reason, as a tool, analytic philosophy instead must be used in comparative studies regarding religion to outline contradiction in religious claims, as well as finding where such claims violate the natural sciences. As it can never prove claims, only disprove the false ones, we can deduce that, overall, metaphysical and moral claims do not/can not justify God, as they are revalatory in nature; one only needs to produce a counter claim to create a division in interpretation that can't be reconciled due to the unfalsifiable nature of the question. Theologians weep; it's the mountain that can not be surmounted.
Wednesday, August 24th, 2022
16:46
Lecture XIX of 'Varieties':
Shortest lecture of the lot by eye, focusing on miscellaneous characteristics left out from other lectures.
James notes that people seem predisposed to an enjoyment of the aesthetics of religion first and foremost, and the systemization and categorization that creates these structures. Shared understanding, mutually recognised terminology. Attachment to firm, understandable concepts that exist immediate to one's material life in the pursuit of the spiritual seems valuable to us innately, and it's often our attachments to these aspects that constitute our religious understanding rather than any actual firsthand spiritual contentedness.
Also a general note on how religious attachment (or the removal of material attachment, as it were) does indeed provide some traceable, therapeutic change in the believer, so pragmatic grounds for acceptance there also.
Not a lot to say on the other points, mostly just extrapolations on stuff I've already commented on in previous entries.
17:30
Lecture XX of 'Varieties':
James reaches his conclusions. First, a formulation on the broadest characteristics of religious life:
1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance;
2. That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end;
3. That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof—be that spirit 'God' or 'law'—is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.
Religion includes also the following psychological characteristics:—
4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism.
5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation ti others, a preponderance of loving affections.
And then, regarding the question of whether or not such a formulation should necessarily lead to a universally recognized 'objective' religion:
[To this question] I answer 'No' emphatically. And my reason is that I do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly the same functions and the same duties. No two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner. One of us must soften himself, another must harden himself; one must yield a point, another must stand firm,—in order the better to defend a position assigned him. If an Emerson were forced to be a Wesley, or a Moody forced to be a Whitman, the total human consciousness of the divine would suffer. The divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy missions. Each attitude being a syllable in human nature's total message, it takes the whole of us to spell the meaning out completely. So a 'god of battles' must be allowed to be the god for one kind of person, a god of peace and heaven and home, the god for another. We must frankly recognize the fact that we live in partial systems, and that parts are not interchangeable in the spiritual life. If we are peevish and jealous, destruction of the self must be an element of our religion; why need it be one if we are good and sympathetic from the outset? If we are sick souls, we require a religion of deliverance; but why think so much of deliverance, if we are healthy-minded? Unquestionably, some men have the completer experience and the higher vocation, here just as in the social world; but for each man to stay in his own experience whate'er it be, and for others to tolerate him there, is surely best.
And finally, on the notion of religious development in the face of modern sciences and sensibilities, quoting Théodule-Armand Ribot:
Of religious sentiment properly so called, nothing survives at last save a vague respect for the unknowable x which is a last relic of the fear, and a certain attraction towards the ideal, which is a relic of the love, that characterized the earlier periods of religious growth. To state this more simply, religion tends to turn into religious philosophy.—These are psychologically entirely different things, the one being a theoretic construction of ratiocination, whereas the other is the living work of a group of persons, or of a great inspired leader, calling into play the entire thinking an dfeeling organism of man.
In his conclusion, James also makes a startlingly germane point, being that the Science of Religion as a practice can not itself be substitute for religion; to understand the theoretics is not to live the experience, to know, psychologically speaking, that humans seem to experience this 'something' we call the divine, can never itself become a system by which that divine is understood and categorized. This is the individual, mystical experience we're discussing after all, but it's really gotten me thinking about the topic as a whole from a perspective I hadn't really considered, being, by all accounts, the 'outside observer' independent of faith James characterizes on this point.
17:57
Finished The Varieties of Religious Experience. I don't have a real closing statement on the work. I value a lot that I've read, being able to put into words a great deal with its quotations.
One thing that has been put on my mind is the question of the validity of Thelema aesthetically speaking. It is the case, and I have indeed known this for a good deal of time, that True Will and a lot of other Thelemic notions are merely a form of aestheticized humanism that accepts the subjective spiritual experience, Scientific Illuminism itself being a fairly explicit commentary on the idea that reality is at its core a subjectively, agnostic experience, allowing many stripes of religious belief under the umbrella of Do what thou wilt. But then I think on what I've read today, that conversation on how experience and knowledge of experience are two separate things. Also how we're drawn to categorizations, systems, tools. Maybe Thelema has a lot of credit in this arena, given it is, at the end of the day, espousing the Science of Religion within its core of philosophy, but providing too a diverse framework of experience and attachment for adherents that knows no particular creed.
I'll have to think on it. Thelema and the philosophy itself can surely be divorced from one another, as it has been for centuries preceding Crowley, after all, but I believe it likely has its place. Earned its stripes, if you will. I digress.
Friday, August 26th, 2022
16:06
Acquired copies of Liz Flower's The Elements of World Religions, Oxford Press' Founders of Faith and Philip Hughes' A Popular History of the Catholic Church.
Saturday, August 27th, 2022
12:53
Began reading Ninian Smart's The World's Religions.
In defining Religion, Smart outlines a few universal aspects, or 'Dimensions', that he believes best describe religious tradition as a whole. They are:
The Practical and Ritual Dimension, which unites a people under a shared symbolic language, usually to the ends of promoting ethical insight and spiritual awareness, which, in turn, is justified and enhanced by the Experiential and Emotional Dimension, the human substance that feeds off of, and feeds into, the personal worth of Religious thought.
The Narrative or Mythic Dimension develops, creating an existential framework for belief, tied as it is to the Ritual Dimension by the association of religious practice to such events and myths, underpinned in turn by the Doctrinal and Philosophical Dimension, the rationalization and adaptation of such theology to the realm of human affairs through reasoned analysis and interpretation.
Both Narrative and Doctrinal considerations inform the values of a tradition by shaping the wider worldview, creating then the Ethical and Legal Dimension, where religious law and codes of conduct arise to govern society.
All of the above is grounded proper through the Social and Institutional Dimension, the practical incarnation of religion proper within a group of people, as in the operations and influence of churches and sects, which, in turn, leads go the creation of the Material Dimension, the aesthetic and iconographic sensibilities that distinguish lineages and afford recognizability.
Much like with James' definition of religion as outlined in The Varieties of Religious Experience, I don't see much of an issue in describing religion in this manner. Smart offers too the admission that the subject is so broad that an all-encompassing definition escapes being pinned down, and that some Religions can and will eschew one Dimension or another, but that's just part of the process, really.
Interestingly, Smart applies this seven dimensional analysis to secular worldviews off the bat, as in Nationalism, Marxism, and Scientific Humanism, noting that while these ideologies are not religious, the dimensional mode of analysis can be used to identify where such worldviews play on and excite the same human conceptions of meaning.
13:31
Roots, Formation and Reformation. Smart points out that what constitutes a religion is rarely exclusively scriptural or revelatory in origin; most of what we consider central to the Abrahamics, for instance, really only came about during the stretch from the 14th to 19th centuries, being hotly debated at the time with various theological and Philosophical justifications from all manner of perspectives, it's only after the dust settles and one attaches oneself to a particular denomination that things seem clear.
The Jewish Diaspora in the wake of the Second Temple's destruction, as well as the emergence of Christianity as a whole is, in actuality, the origin point of some core components of Rabbanic scholarship, informed as they were by the changing of the times, developments in practice that needed to be readdressed. You'd hope such elucidation would be thought provoking for adherents, but Religions are nothing if not adaptive when they want to be.
Tuesday, August 30th, 2022
17:49
Some key terms detailed in 'World Religions' regarding Indian religion that weren't covered in my past foray into Buddhism:
Puja, Buddhist term initially meaning ceremonial remembrance of a great teacher, over time became Bhakti, or fervant devotion to the Buddha as a divine figure.
Tapas, Jainist term for religious austerity through means of self-mortification. Can be considered the opposite of Tantra, the utilisation of the esoteric to reach liberation.
Moksa, liberation from samsara.
Atman, the spiritual self that lies within every individual, connected as it is to the one divine being, Brahman.
Sramanas, wandering ascetics, considered themselves beyond material and social considerations, contrasted to the Brahmin who found themselves fully engaged with the social fabric of daily life.
Rishi, the seers of the past who, through oral transmission, brought humanity ritual and the Vedas.
Sruti, acceptance of the revelation of the Vedas.
Rta, the ultimate cosmic order, can be considered an early conception of the Dharma.
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2022
23:48
Argued the validity of religion with a stranger, they refused to actually acknowledge the point being made and kept repeating slogans, presuming positions I don't take and generally engaging in bad faith. Also saw others ostensibly representing my perspective fail in yet more disastrous a manner. Would I have been more cynical at the time I may have challenged them also, rekindle the fires of that devil I so love to advocate for and play atheist to illustrate where they were going wrong. Didn't have it in me. I feel hollow and unable to express what's on my mind. It hurts to be misunderstood, that's about all there is.
Haven't read in a few days. Tomorrow, maybe.
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022
22:52
Feel like most laypeople are quick to ascribe spiritual meaning to discussions of normativity that don't warrant them given their positions. I think it stems from a generally intuited perspective. Can't tell if it's deontological or virtue ethicist issue, but I think these terms become somewhat muddy due to conflation of the latter's 'virtue' with the godhead of the former. I can't speak broadly on it, but I keep noticing people wanting to appeal to spiritual moral character without making any actual delineations that warrant such a specification in the first place, they hop from one system to the next as they make their appeals. Too dense to get into without using specific examples, but I don't want to strawman here.
Thursday, August 4th, 2022
17:42
Lectures IV and V of 'Varieties' (grouped together in the one chapter as they are):
There's a lot to speak on with these two lectures, but I'll try to keep it concise. James speaks on happiness, and how religion usually professes to provide such happiness. From this he notes the positive-mindedness that becomes characteristic of the 'healthy-minded' religion (in contrast to the 'sick souled' religion that will be described in the subsequent lectures), the structural expression of that innate sense of connection to the divine that manifests in individuals that have undergone (or were perhaps born with) religious experience. James also points out that the consequent happiness of a religious experience or claim does not afford such a claim existential legitimacy, however, and therein lies a warning that a religious lifestyle may be total bunk even if providing overwhelmingly positive outcomes.
He also goes onto note that what can be called 'healthy-minded' for one may not be so for another, describing that though the conscious upholding of values as they are understood in relation to the divine for one individual may procure a great amount of spiritual happiness, it is certainly not a given that this is the case for another; passivity, not action may in fact be the route to personal fulfillment within the spiritual sphere, a resignation to the divine will in totality via direct experience, which James characterizes as the purer, mystical avenue, providing as it does experiential data outside of doctrinal analysis that may typify that contrasted, conscious effort that is all too common.
A story which revivalist preachers often tell is that of a man who found himself at night slipping down the side of a precipice. At last he caught a branch which stopped his fall, and remained clinging to it in misery for hours. But finally his fingers had to loose their hold, and with a despairing farewell to life, he let himself drop. He fell just six inches. If he had given up the struggle earlier, his agony would have been spared. As the mother earth received him, so, the preachers tell us, will the everlasting arms receive us if we confide absolutely in them, and give up the hereditary habit of relying on our personal strength, with its precautions that cannot shelter and safeguards that never save.
I enjoy this a lot, and take the quote as a commentary on human nature for the structurally religious and the atheistic alike; that which will enrapture the soul and offer us the understanding we desire can be hindered just as much by a lack of faith in the legitimacy of the metaphysical as it can be by our commitment to what we are told is the correct path by others. It's within us, and only us, to take that leap.
It is but giving your little private convulsive self a rest, and finding that a greater Self is there. The results, slow or sudden, or great or small, of the combined optimism and expectancy, the regenerative phenomena which ensue on the abandonment of effort, remain firm facts of human nature, no matter whether we adopt a theistic, a pantheistic-idealistic, or a medical-materialsitic view of their uiltimate causal explanation.
James concludes—somewhat out of step with the content of the rest of the chapter—with the assertion that multiple lenses of analysis should be considered to constitute a wider, more-encompassing philosophical worldview with the facts outlined thus far in mind; 'sectarian scientists' may give us an eye into phenomena, but the deeper philosophical questions that vex us have been pondered for centuries without much epistemic provenance beyond the subjective, religious experience, unfalsifiable and hard to define as they are, yet undoubtedly providing 'serenity, moral poise, and happiness' far exceeding the extents of the indifferent moralist. To James, it's only in applying these differing conceptual systems to various aspects of the human experience that we can truly begin to assess the spiritual in earnest.
Friday, August 5th, 2022
18:44
Lectures VI and VII of 'Varieties':
These lectures are perhaps the most interesting to me so far, describing as they do the nature of the 'sick-souled' individuals as mentioned in my last entry. I don't have a whole lot to say on the lectures—I may well transcribe the entirety of them should I want to get across their significance, needing little interpretation as they do—but I'll make a few notes with attached quotes nonetheless:
In order to define the sick-souled, James first describes the disposition of those healthy-minded individuals that manage to escape the vortex of pessimism and non-meaning typical of that worldview, that is, a total abandoment of consideration of evil in the first place, the simple act of not dwelling on it, not inviting it in, putting unconditional faith instead in the ascribed qualities of the divine. Quoting Luther:
When I was a monk, I thought that I was utterly cast away, if at any time I felt the lust of the flesh: that is to say, if I felt any evil motion, fleshly lust, wrath, hatred, or envy against any brother. I assayed many ways to help to quiet my conscience, but it would not be; for the concupiscence and lust of my flesh did always return, so that I could not rest, but was continually vexed with these thoughts: This or that sin thou hast committed: thou art infected with envy, with impatiency, and such other sins: therefore thou art entered into this holy order in vain, and all thy good works are unprofitable. But if then I had rightly understood these sentences of Paul: "The flesh lusteth contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit contrary to the flesh; and these two are one against another, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would do," I should not have so miserably tormented myself, but should have thought and said to myself, as now commonly I do, "Martin, thou shalt not utterly be without sin, for thou hast flesh; thou shalt therefore feel the battle thereof." I remember that Staupitz was wont to say, "I have vowed unto God above a thousand times that I would become a better man: but I never performed that which I vowed. Hereafter I will make no such vow: for I have now learned by expereince that I am not able to perform it. Unless, therefore, God be favorable and merciful unto me for Christ's sake, I shall not be able, with all my vows and all my good deeds, to stand before him." This (of Staupitz's) was not only a true, but also a godly and holy desperation; and this must they all confess, both with mouth and heart, who will be saved. For the godly trust not to their own righteousness. They look unto Christ their reconciler, who gave his life for their sins. Moreover, they know that the remnant of sin which is in their flesh is not laid to their charge, but freely pardoned. Notwithstanding, in the mean while they fight in spirit against the flesh, lest they should fulfill the lusts thereof; and although they feel the flesh to rage and rebel, and themselves also do fall sometimes into sin through infirmity, yet are they not discouraged, nor think therefore that their state and kind of life, and the works are done according to their calling, displease God; but they raise up themselves by faith.
Then, quoting Miguel de Molinos of the Quietist tradition:
When thou has fallest into a fault, in what matter soever it be, do not trouble nor afflict thyself for it. For they are effects of our frail Nature, stained by Original Sin. The common enemy will make thee believe, as soon as thou fallest into any fault, that thou walkest in error, and therefore art out of God and his favor, and herewith would he make thee distrust of the divine Grace, telling thee of thy misery, and making a giant of it; and putting it into thy head that every day thy soul grows worse instead of better, whilst it so often repeats these failings. O blessed Soul, open thine eyes; and shut the gate against these diabolical suggestions, knowing thy misery, and trusting in the mercy divine. Would not he be a mere fool who, running at tournament with others, and falling in the best of the career, should lie weeping on the ground and afflicting himself with discourses upon his fall? Man (they would tell him), lose no time, get up and take the course again, for he that rises again quickly and continues his race is as if he had never fallen. If thou seest thyself fallen once and a thousand times, thou oughtest to make use of the remedy which I have given thee, that is, a loving confidence in the divine mercy. These are the weapons with which thou must fight and conquer cowardice and vain thoughts. This is the means thou oughtest to use—not to lose time, not to disturb thyself, and reap no good.
James is ultimately sympathetic to this position (and I again presume now that this consolidation of meaning through mystical experience is what constitutes his concept of 'over-belief', stripped as it is of the existential doctrine found in organized religion), but he also realizes the contradiction, based as they are on matters of scripture and unfalsifiable declarations; they are merely ignoring the reality that befalls us: evil does exist, and simply looking to one's unfounded conception of the divine with wilful ignorance fails to address the problem, it will not be answered by theology, it can only obfuscate it, even if it does inspire happiness.
Onto philosophy that does recognize this issue, then. James characterizes Stoicism and Epicureanism as rational philosophies that recognized and attempted to address the problem of evil (see: the Epicurean paradox) by self-cultivation through the strengthening of emotional resilience as a means to counterbalance the existence of that evil; evil is a fact of the world, therefore the world itself can not be called all-good, and it is only through conscious human virtue that this fact of reality can be assuaged within the mind of man. I'll note that I'm not at all versed on either of these philosophies, and James doesn't delve into them too much outside of this, but he uses them as shorthand for the 'philosophical pessimism' that appears separate from healthy-minded religion in its recognition of the paradoxes that come with ignoring evil, but not totally existing within the camp of the sick-souled. James believes that some individuals may find contendedness under this worldview (and it is that, 'contentedness', distinguished from happiness here via the tempering of expectations such philosophies necessarily utilise in order to define meaning as they see it), but that it may be inherently unfulfilling to the average person, predisposed to finding a higher meaning or purpose as we seem to be.
They leave the world in the shape of an unreconciled contradiciton, and seek no higher unity. Compared with the complex ecstasies which the supernaturally regenerated Christian may enjoy, or the oriental pantheist indulge in, their receipts for equanimity are expedients which seem almost crude in their simplicity.
Rational, then, but not providing an answer. It breeds only the 'melancholic metaphysicist'. Thus comes the issue, the sick-souled.
For James, the truly sick-souled are those that can not fall into the aforementioned camps due to their intrinsically rational qualities as paired with a mounting pessimism. They've awoken to (or were perhaps born with) an inability to accept the appeasements of the healthy-minded, and the indifferent acceptance of the rational philosophers. They appear to exist under a looming death sentence of meaninglessness if they do not find a spiritual remedy to this issue, as the mindset is characterized by a metaphysical anhedonia, that is, a total lack of purpose that engenders and reinforces the foul disposition.
It seems to me that we are bound to say that morbid-mindedness ranges over the wider scale of experience, and that its survey is the one that overlaps. The method of averting one's attention from evil, and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as it will work. It will work with many persons; it will work far more generally than most of us are ready to suppose; and within the sphere of its successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a religious solution. But it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one be quite free from melancholy one's self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a pholosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only opener of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
Once more, it seems James is leading us to his conclusion of a pragmatic acceptance of over-belief as the means to spiritual acceptance of this fact, but this lecture in particular is only describing the nature of the sick-souled, the remedy has to wait until later. Fascinating stuff.
Saturday, August 6th, 2022
17:53
Lecture VIII of 'Varieties':
I don't have a lot to say on this one, as it is mostly a discussion of the nature of 'Unification', that is, the joining of the rationality of the outer self with the conviction of the inner self. James makes the claim that the sick-souled must be reborn through unification of these selves, as to be sick-souled is to exist purely within the realm of the outer self, neglecting that spark within us that produces meaning; they become 'twice-born' in this process of unification, though James notes that whether this process comes gradually, or suddenly, it is always predicated on the foundation of the sick-soul, that is, it is a remedy for an issue that never plagued the healthy-minded, and so a nucleus of that doubt exists inherent to the individual that the all-encompassing religioisty of the reborn self can only obscure, but that the very act of obscuring such doubt may well be the remedy for happiness, and can as such be considered 'required', lest we accept the depressive, and the suicidal.
It's an interesting structure, I don't know if I wholly agree with this as a total lens of analysis for religioisty as a whole, diverse as it is, but I do find it is a good tool to speak with in terms of generalities, though to James' credit, he does mention that all of this exists on a spectrum, and that such extremes as defined do not exist in any one individual, merely intermediate scales of internal and external focus that at times may necessitate reassessment to provide metaphysical treatment. So too does he mention that it is not pure religioisty that provides meaning in this manner, calling back to the philosophical discussion of the last lectures, it can be said that departing from organized religion and becoming more secular (as in accepting natural theology or rational philosophy over specific doctrine) is equally as potent a cure for the unbalanced individual as is the move away from secularism towards religiosity in general. I find this an agreeable enough statement.
James extensively quotes Tolstoy as an example of the excessive rationality of the sick-souled necessitating unification through faith in the inner self, but I won't provide that here. It's interesting nonetheless.
18:44
Lecture IX of 'Varieties':
Where the last lecture described 'Unification' of the self, lecture IX goes on to describe how this relates to religious experience in more detail, that is, how unification relates to 'Conversion'. For James, to be converted means for religious ideas to move from from the periphery of one's consciousness to the center stage, and that this conception of religious meaning begins to take a central role in the convert's energy and motivation.
Such religious conversion is said to come in two flavors, the volitional kind, and the self-surrendering kind. Volitional conversion is a sustained, fighting effort, the motivated belief in meaning in spite of the self until one breaks through as in religious experience. Self-surrender, on the other hand, is religious conversion through apathy, through letting go (refer back to the parable of the man and the branch detailed in Lectures IV and V) and accepting uncritically, thus becoming an inlet through which spiritual gratification may then flow.
James belives that self-surrender is the more likely outcome for an individual, as the question of meaning as philosophy understands it ultimately has no answer, and so all the brain can do is surrender itself to faith when met with such a void; volitional conversion is said to eventually meet this end also, as James considers them one and the same in terms of outcome, with only the individual's predisposition to commitment existing as the differentiating factor. For James, humans by and large seem to be motivated by fear of this existential lack of meaning rather than any innate aspiration for spiritual meaning itself.
Quoting religious psychologist Edwin Diller Starbuck:
[Conversion is the] process of struggling away from sin rather than of striving towards righteousness.
This is where James seems to most strongly identify the paradoxes that necessitate identification with the religious aspect residing within our inner self (one of his prior excerpts of a convert's experience was in actuality autobiographical); if we are of the understanding that we, as humans, fear so greatly this lack of meaning, and that we seem to construct meaning out of thin air even on irrational grounds, even to the point of self-surrendering to that which we may previously have considered objectively false by methods of the empirical, then it only makes pragmatic sense that we should attempt to foster a form of psychospiritual happiness predicated on our personal conception of the divine through mystical experience that is independent of group doctrine and creed.
One may say that the whole development of Christianity in inwardness has consisted in little more than the greater and greater emphasis attached to this crisis of self-surrender, From Catholicism to Lutheranism, and then to Calvinism; from that to Wesleyanism; and from this, outside of technical Christianity altogether, to pure 'liberalism' or transcendental idealism, whether or not of the mind-cure type, taking in the medieval mystics, the quietists, the pietists, and quakers by the way, we can trace the stages of progress towards the idea of an immediate spiritual help, experienced by the individual in his forlornness and standing in no essential need of doctrinal apparatus or propitiatory machinery.
I stepped somewhat out of bounds of the content of this Lecture itself when describing James' outlook in my last paragraph, as I have a few times prior, but I'm starting to see the dots connect, and I find the sentiment agreeable.
Monday, August 8th, 2022
03:17
Nightmares are back, can't sleep. Find myself uneasy and irritable around stimuli I'd usually be able to weather.
15:35
Lecture X of 'Varieties':
Not much to say on this lecture. It's an extension and conclusion on the themes of Coversion, mostly just examples of various branches of Christianity and their perspectives on sudden versus gradual conversion. Also some nineteenth-century psychologizing on the nature of consciousness and how individual temperament may predispose one to a certain kind of conversion under such a framework. I wouldn't go as far to say the conclusions drawn are unfounded, though it is important to note that the understanding of the mind at the time of James' writing means a lot of the terminology and concepts used places such assertions very much in the sphere of only semi-informed guesswork.
Guesswork that is generally on the mark, however, with comments on the idea that psychological neuroses likely play a big part in contributing to an individual's susceptibility to suggestion, automatic motor reflexes and hallucinations; the boundary between sudden and gradual conversion (or the likelihood of an indiviudal acquiring religiosity at all) becoming a matter of subliminal disposition—a psychological lens through which questions of the existential are magnified when dwelled upon, more in some, less in others.
Tuesday, August 9th, 2022
17:53
Lectures XI, XII, and XIII of 'Varieties':
All these lectures speak on the nature and benefits of 'Saintliness'. For James, Saintliness is considered to be the internalization of a religious disposition to the ends of defeating impulse through inhibition. He goes on to describe the traits that characterize this state at some length, and with much quotation. I will here provide these noted qualities as outlined at the beginning of the chapter:
1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world's selfish little interests; and a conviction, not merely intellectual, but as it were sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power. In Christian saintliness this power is always personified as God; but abstract moral ideals, civic or patriotic utopias, or inner visions of holiness or right may also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life, in ways which I described in the lecture on the Reality of the Unseen.
2. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control.
3. An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down.
4. A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards 'yes, yes', and away from 'no,' where the claims of the non-ego are concerned.
These fundamental inner conditions have characteristic practical consequences, as follows:—
a. Asceticism.—The self-surrender may become so passionate as to turn into self-immolation. It may then so overrule the ordinary inhibitions of the flesh that the saint finds positive pleasure in sacrifice and asceticism, measuring and expressing as they do the degree of his loyalty to the higher power.
b. Strength of Soul.—The sense of enlargement of life may be so uplifting that personal motives and inhibitions, commonly omnipotent, become too insignificant for notice, and new reaches of patience and fortitude open out. Fears and anxieties go, and blissful equanimity takes their place. Come heaven come hell, it makes no difference now!
c. Purity.—The shifting of the emotional centre bring with it, first, increase of purity. The sensitiveness to spiritual discords is enhanced, and the cleansing of existence from brutal and sensual elements becomes imperative. Occasions of contact with such elements are avoided: the saintly life must deepen its spiritual consistency and keep unspotted from the world. In some temperaments this need of purity of spirit takes an ascetic turn, and weaknesses of the flesh are treated with relentless severity.
d. Charity.—The shifting of the emotional centre brings, secondly, increase of charity, tenderness for fellow-creatures. The ordinary motives to antipathy, which usually set such close bounds to tenderness among human beings, are inhibited. The saint loves his enemies, and treats loathsome beggars as his brothers.
For James, these qualities seem to speak to some innate moral character that is omnipresently expressed and extrapolated on within both schools of religious virtue, and of moral virtue, existing independent of creed, culture, or theology. He admits that such qualities certainly mesh well with a deontological framework, as in the theism of the Abrahamics, but that the existence of such a moral predisposition in humans can in no way exist as a prop for claims regarding the veracity of one specific interpretation of the metaphysical:
One might therefore be tempted to explain both the humility as to one's self and the charity towards others which characterize spiritual excitement, as results of the all-leveling character of theistic belief. But these affections are certainly not mere derivatives of theism. We find them in Stoicism, in Hinduism, and in Buddhism in the highest possible degree. They harmonize with paternal theism beautifully; but they harmonize with all reflection whatever upon the dependence of mankind on general causes; and we must, I think, consider them not subordinate but coordinate parts of that great complex excitement in the study of which we are engaged. Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm, ontological wonder, cosmic emotion, are all unifying states of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood incline to disappear, and tenderness to rule. The best thing is to describe the condition integrally as a characteristic affection to which our nature is liable, a region in which we find oureslves at home, a sea in which we swim; but not to pretend to explain its parts by deriving them too cleverly from one another. Like love or fear, the faith-state is a natural psychic complex, and carries charity with it by organic consequence. Jubilation is an expansive affection, and all expansive affections are self-forgetful and kindly so long as they endure.
This is an outwardly humanist conception, but James' perspective differs from the secular humanist in that he believes one can ascribe this moral predisposition to one's conception of the divine (as I'm assured we'll read up on in later lectures), only insofar as it does not make existential claims, that is to say, belief about our moral character as it relates to the divine can be considered 'true' to an individual in the absence of evidence, but not in contradiction of existing evidence. You see here how pragmatism and mysticism align.
On this point, James once more draws a line between moral philosophy and religiosity, proclaiming that though both schools can affirm that such moral predisposition exists, it is only within the sphere of religion that one can abandon self-responsibility, taking total conviction in a higher order:
The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. This abandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies. Mind-cure, theosophy, stoicism, ordinary neurological hygiene, insist on it as emphatically as Christianity does, and it is capable of entering into closest marriage with every speculative creed. Christians who have it strongly live in what is called 'recollection,' and are never anxious about the future, nor worry over the outcome of the day. Of Saint Catharine of Genoa it is said that 'she took cognizance of things, only as they were presented to her in succession, moment by moment, . . . and when the present moment was estimated in itself and in its relations, and when the duty that was involved in it was accomplished, it was permitted to pass away as if it had never been, and to give way to the facts and duties of the moment which came after.
This does become slightly muddier a claim to modern sensibilities, with our understanding of eastern philosophy, for instance, raising some questions about how one exactly differentiates a purely moral system from a religious one within a culturally pantheistic framework (the likes of which weren't wholly understood by western philosophers at the time of James' writing), but this is nullified by the fact that James is ultimately espousing a pandeist ideal with his focus on personal mysticism, so the issue is one of degrees and can likely be reconciled with more inclusive language—James could be considered as aspiring to ends eastern philosophy may have already met in some regards. There's a lot to write about on this point, but I feel I can't delve into it here, suffice it to say that it's complicated and perhaps such delineation is beyond me. I'm already reading back this past paragraph and finding too many threads to grasp and speak on coherently.
Wednesday, August 10th, 2022
19:49
Lectures XIV and XV of 'Varieties':
Two lectures on the values of saintliness. I don't have a lot to speak on these two, as with the second chapter on the nature of conversion, it's mostly just an extended jutification on the merits of saintliness as given. James outlines that such virtues are indispensably good in their aims, but that their espousal and subsistence in this world are often impracticable—though they do speak to a prospective better world we may wish to aspire to.
From this, James notes too that ecclesiastical systems and organized religion as a whole do a disservice to the individual conception of saintliness, wherein the structure of a church may implore one to commit to such saintly virtue as a prerequisite to salvation, something that, by nature, is built on a foundation of unfalsifiable revelation; James asks us to consider how beliefs become part of structural orthodoxy; it is only a question of majority acceptance—many such beliefs regarding the nature of spiritual aspiration were considered at first as heretical, it was only after such beliefs superseded those of the old that they took up the mantle of objectivity (this applies too to the evolution of religious understanding as a whole, not just sectarianism).
The practical question exists on an individual level as it relates to religious veracity also, with the aforementioned feasibility of commitment to such ideals being contextual to the society in which the religion exists coming under James' scrutiny. Organized religion espousing the 'correct' path to divinity thus fails on two counts here. I will quote at length one of the opening passages of this chapter to truly illustrate the pluralist mindset that James takes from this fact on grounds of his empiricism:
Since it is impossible to deny secular alterations in our sentiments and needs, it would be absurd to affirm that one's own age of the world can be beyond correction by the next age. Skepticism cannot, therefore, be ruled out by any set of thinkers as a possibility against which their conclusions are secure; and no empiricist ought to claim exemption from this universal liability. But to admit one's liability to correction is one thing, and to embark upon a sea of wanton doubt is another. Of willfully playing into the hands of skepticism we cannot be accused. He who acknowledges the imperfectness of his instrument, and makes allowance for it in discussing his observations, is in a much better position for gaining truth than if he claimed his instrument to be infallible. Or is dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for claiming, as it does, to be in point of right undoubtable? And if not, what command over truth would this kind of theology really lose if, instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability for her conclusions? If we claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than we could have had, if we were unconscious of our liability to err.
Nevertheless, dogmatism will doubtless continue to condemn us for this confession. The mere outward form of inalterable certainity is so precious to some minds that to renounce it explicitly is for them out of the question. They will claim it even where the facts most patently pronounce its folly. But the safe thing is surely to recognize that all the insights of creatures of a day like ourselves must be provisional. The wisest of critics is an altering being, subject to the better insight of the morrow, and right at any moment, only 'up to date' and 'on the whole.' When larger ranges of truth open, it is surely best to be able to open ourselves to their reception, unfettered by our previous pretensions. 'Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive.'
The fact of diverse judgements about religious phenomena is therefore entirely unescapable, whatever may be one's own desire to attain the irreversible. But apart from that fact, a more fundamental question awaits us, the question whether men's opinions ought to be expected to be absolutely uniform in this field. Ought all men to have the same religion? Ought they to approve the same fruits and follow the same leadings? Are they so like in their inner needs that, for hard and soft, for proud and humble, for strenuous and lazy, for healthy-minded and despairing, exactly the same religious incentives are required? Or are different functions in the same organism of humanity alloted to different types of man, so that some may really be the better for a religion of consolation and reassurance, whilst others are better for one of terror and reproof? It might conceivably be so; and we shall, I think, more and more suspect it to be so as we go on. And if it be so, how can any possible judge or critic help being biased in favor of the religion by which his own needs are best met? He aspires to impartiality; but he is too close to the struggle not to be to some degree a participant, and he is sure to approve most warmly those fruits of piety in others which taste most good and prove most nourishing to him.
Friday, August 12th, 2022
23:19
Acquired a copy of Ninian Smart's The World's Religions.
Saturday, August 13th, 2022
04:05
Tried to meditate, couldn't focus whatsoever, environment and person distracting.
Sunday, August 14th, 2022
19:03
Lectures XVI and XVII of 'Varieties':
Regarding mysticism. I don't have much at all to write on these lectures. They are fairly concise in describing the mystical state, drawing examples and comparisons from various creeds, as well as outlining some pretty all-encompassing definitions, but I can't add much to the conversation that I haven't already written in previous entries on this topic. I once more find the sentiment and descriptions James gives very agreeable. If I think to add anything it will be in my concluding entry on this text. I do have some quotes for posterity, however. First, the traits James gives to define the mystical state:
1. Ineffability.—The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart of ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.
2. Noetic quality.—Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of signifiance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.
These two characters 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. These are:—
3. Transiency.—Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seem to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.
4. Passivity.—Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, 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. This latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the meidumistic trance. When these latter conditions are well pronounced, however, there may be no recollection whatever of the phenomenon, and it may have no signifiance for the subject's usually inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mere interruption. Mystical states, strictly so called, are never merely interruptive. Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the inner life of the subject between the times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region are, however, difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and mixtures.
Then, on the nature and content of mystical experience in generality:
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, hardly altered by differences in clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually telling of the unity of man with God, their speech antedates languages, and they do not grow old.
Again, note the religious plurality here. For James, this individual conception of the divine is just that, individual, and by its nature incommunicable. Samadhi and Dhyana, Orison and Raptus, Byss and Abyss, and all the other forms of mystical experience he notes touch on some greater truth beyond human consciousness, expressed only in different terms, filtered through sociocultural lenses that they are.
I imagine that these experiences can be as infinitely varied as are the idiosyncracities of individuals.
. . .
[Mystical experience] is on the whole pantheistic and optimistic, or at least the opposite of pessimistic. It is anti-naturalistic, and harmonizes best with twice-bornness and so-called otherworldly states of mind.
Then, on the nature of mysticism as a guiding principle (the 'spiritual recentering' as described in previous lectures):
As a rule, mystical states merely add a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness.
And finally, regarding the authoritativeness of mystical experience:
(1) Mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come.
(2) No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically.
(3) They break down the authority of the non-mystical or rationalistic consciousness, based upon the understanding and the senses alone. They show it to be only one kind of consciousness. They open out the possibility of other orders of truth, in which, so far as anything in us vitally responds to them, we may freely continue to have faith.
Sunday, August 21st, 2022
07:00
Haven't had the motivation to do much of any heavy reading the past week. Burning through fiction though. Acquired copies of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man and A. C. Bouquet's Comparative Religion.
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022
19:46
Lecture XVIII of 'Varieties':
This chapter centres around whether or not philosophy can ever be the answer for religious justification. James argues that feelings are fundamental to religion: philosophy and theology would never have started had there not been felt experiences to prompt reflection, and that intellectualized reasoning for religion always falls short, as philosophy can do no more to prove rationally any religious claims than mystical experience itself.
For this reason, as a tool, analytic philosophy instead must be used in comparative studies regarding religion to outline contradiction in religious claims, as well as finding where such claims violate the natural sciences. As it can never prove claims, only disprove the false ones, we can deduce that, overall, metaphysical and moral claims do not/can not justify God, as they are revalatory in nature; one only needs to produce a counter claim to create a division in interpretation that can't be reconciled due to the unfalsifiable nature of the question. Theologians weep; it's the mountain that can not be surmounted.
Wednesday, August 24th, 2022
16:46
Lecture XIX of 'Varieties':
Shortest lecture of the lot by eye, focusing on miscellaneous characteristics left out from other lectures.
James notes that people seem predisposed to an enjoyment of the aesthetics of religion first and foremost, and the systemization and categorization that creates these structures. Shared understanding, mutually recognised terminology. Attachment to firm, understandable concepts that exist immediate to one's material life in the pursuit of the spiritual seems valuable to us innately, and it's often our attachments to these aspects that constitute our religious understanding rather than any actual firsthand spiritual contentedness.
Also a general note on how religious attachment (or the removal of material attachment, as it were) does indeed provide some traceable, therapeutic change in the believer, so pragmatic grounds for acceptance there also.
Not a lot to say on the other points, mostly just extrapolations on stuff I've already commented on in previous entries.
17:30
Lecture XX of 'Varieties':
James reaches his conclusions. First, a formulation on the broadest characteristics of religious life:
1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance;
2. That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end;
3. That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof—be that spirit 'God' or 'law'—is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.
Religion includes also the following psychological characteristics:—
4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism.
5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation ti others, a preponderance of loving affections.
And then, regarding the question of whether or not such a formulation should necessarily lead to a universally recognized 'objective' religion:
[To this question] I answer 'No' emphatically. And my reason is that I do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly the same functions and the same duties. No two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner. One of us must soften himself, another must harden himself; one must yield a point, another must stand firm,—in order the better to defend a position assigned him. If an Emerson were forced to be a Wesley, or a Moody forced to be a Whitman, the total human consciousness of the divine would suffer. The divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy missions. Each attitude being a syllable in human nature's total message, it takes the whole of us to spell the meaning out completely. So a 'god of battles' must be allowed to be the god for one kind of person, a god of peace and heaven and home, the god for another. We must frankly recognize the fact that we live in partial systems, and that parts are not interchangeable in the spiritual life. If we are peevish and jealous, destruction of the self must be an element of our religion; why need it be one if we are good and sympathetic from the outset? If we are sick souls, we require a religion of deliverance; but why think so much of deliverance, if we are healthy-minded? Unquestionably, some men have the completer experience and the higher vocation, here just as in the social world; but for each man to stay in his own experience whate'er it be, and for others to tolerate him there, is surely best.
And finally, on the notion of religious development in the face of modern sciences and sensibilities, quoting Théodule-Armand Ribot:
Of religious sentiment properly so called, nothing survives at last save a vague respect for the unknowable x which is a last relic of the fear, and a certain attraction towards the ideal, which is a relic of the love, that characterized the earlier periods of religious growth. To state this more simply, religion tends to turn into religious philosophy.—These are psychologically entirely different things, the one being a theoretic construction of ratiocination, whereas the other is the living work of a group of persons, or of a great inspired leader, calling into play the entire thinking an dfeeling organism of man.
In his conclusion, James also makes a startlingly germane point, being that the Science of Religion as a practice can not itself be substitute for religion; to understand the theoretics is not to live the experience, to know, psychologically speaking, that humans seem to experience this 'something' we call the divine, can never itself become a system by which that divine is understood and categorized. This is the individual, mystical experience we're discussing after all, but it's really gotten me thinking about the topic as a whole from a perspective I hadn't really considered, being, by all accounts, the 'outside observer' independent of faith James characterizes on this point.
17:57
Finished The Varieties of Religious Experience. I don't have a real closing statement on the work. I value a lot that I've read, being able to put into words a great deal with its quotations.
One thing that has been put on my mind is the question of the validity of Thelema aesthetically speaking. It is the case, and I have indeed known this for a good deal of time, that True Will and a lot of other Thelemic notions are merely a form of aestheticized humanism that accepts the subjective spiritual experience, Scientific Illuminism itself being a fairly explicit commentary on the idea that reality is at its core a subjectively, agnostic experience, allowing many stripes of religious belief under the umbrella of Do what thou wilt. But then I think on what I've read today, that conversation on how experience and knowledge of experience are two separate things. Also how we're drawn to categorizations, systems, tools. Maybe Thelema has a lot of credit in this arena, given it is, at the end of the day, espousing the Science of Religion within its core of philosophy, but providing too a diverse framework of experience and attachment for adherents that knows no particular creed.
I'll have to think on it. Thelema and the philosophy itself can surely be divorced from one another, as it has been for centuries preceding Crowley, after all, but I believe it likely has its place. Earned its stripes, if you will. I digress.
Friday, August 26th, 2022
16:06
Acquired copies of Liz Flower's The Elements of World Religions, Oxford Press' Founders of Faith and Philip Hughes' A Popular History of the Catholic Church.
Saturday, August 27th, 2022
12:53
Began reading Ninian Smart's The World's Religions.
In defining Religion, Smart outlines a few universal aspects, or 'Dimensions', that he believes best describe religious tradition as a whole. They are:
The Practical and Ritual Dimension, which unites a people under a shared symbolic language, usually to the ends of promoting ethical insight and spiritual awareness, which, in turn, is justified and enhanced by the Experiential and Emotional Dimension, the human substance that feeds off of, and feeds into, the personal worth of Religious thought.
The Narrative or Mythic Dimension develops, creating an existential framework for belief, tied as it is to the Ritual Dimension by the association of religious practice to such events and myths, underpinned in turn by the Doctrinal and Philosophical Dimension, the rationalization and adaptation of such theology to the realm of human affairs through reasoned analysis and interpretation.
Both Narrative and Doctrinal considerations inform the values of a tradition by shaping the wider worldview, creating then the Ethical and Legal Dimension, where religious law and codes of conduct arise to govern society.
All of the above is grounded proper through the Social and Institutional Dimension, the practical incarnation of religion proper within a group of people, as in the operations and influence of churches and sects, which, in turn, leads go the creation of the Material Dimension, the aesthetic and iconographic sensibilities that distinguish lineages and afford recognizability.
Much like with James' definition of religion as outlined in The Varieties of Religious Experience, I don't see much of an issue in describing religion in this manner. Smart offers too the admission that the subject is so broad that an all-encompassing definition escapes being pinned down, and that some Religions can and will eschew one Dimension or another, but that's just part of the process, really.
Interestingly, Smart applies this seven dimensional analysis to secular worldviews off the bat, as in Nationalism, Marxism, and Scientific Humanism, noting that while these ideologies are not religious, the dimensional mode of analysis can be used to identify where such worldviews play on and excite the same human conceptions of meaning.
13:31
Roots, Formation and Reformation. Smart points out that what constitutes a religion is rarely exclusively scriptural or revelatory in origin; most of what we consider central to the Abrahamics, for instance, really only came about during the stretch from the 14th to 19th centuries, being hotly debated at the time with various theological and Philosophical justifications from all manner of perspectives, it's only after the dust settles and one attaches oneself to a particular denomination that things seem clear.
The Jewish Diaspora in the wake of the Second Temple's destruction, as well as the emergence of Christianity as a whole is, in actuality, the origin point of some core components of Rabbanic scholarship, informed as they were by the changing of the times, developments in practice that needed to be readdressed. You'd hope such elucidation would be thought provoking for adherents, but Religions are nothing if not adaptive when they want to be.
Tuesday, August 30th, 2022
17:49
Some key terms detailed in 'World Religions' regarding Indian religion that weren't covered in my past foray into Buddhism:
Puja, Buddhist term initially meaning ceremonial remembrance of a great teacher, over time became Bhakti, or fervant devotion to the Buddha as a divine figure.
Tapas, Jainist term for religious austerity through means of self-mortification. Can be considered the opposite of Tantra, the utilisation of the esoteric to reach liberation.
Moksa, liberation from samsara.
Atman, the spiritual self that lies within every individual, connected as it is to the one divine being, Brahman.
Sramanas, wandering ascetics, considered themselves beyond material and social considerations, contrasted to the Brahmin who found themselves fully engaged with the social fabric of daily life.
Rishi, the seers of the past who, through oral transmission, brought humanity ritual and the Vedas.
Sruti, acceptance of the revelation of the Vedas.
Rta, the ultimate cosmic order, can be considered an early conception of the Dharma.