the varieties of religious experience audiobook

Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority. They are states of insight into the depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experience an equally incompetent treatment.Īlthough so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge.

Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. 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. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced it cannot be imparted or transferred from others. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.

The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative.

So, to keep it useful by restricting it, I will do what I did in the case of the word 'religion,' and simply propose to you when an experience may justify us in calling it mystical. Employed in this way the word has little value: there are too many less ambiguous synonyms. For some writers a 'mystic' is any person who believes in thought-transference, or spirit-return. The words 'mysticism' and 'mystical' are often used as terms of mere reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and without a base in either facts or logic. But though forced to look upon the subject so externally, I will be as objective and receptive as I can and I think I shall at least succeed in convincing you of the reality of the states in question, and of the paramount importance of their function.įirst of all, then, I ask, What does the expression 'mystical states of consciousness' mean? How do we part off mystical states from other states? Whether my treatment of mystical states will shed light or darkness, I do not know, for my own constitution shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely, and I can speak of them only at second hand. One may say truly, I think, that personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness so for us, who are treating personal experience as the exclusive subject of our study, such states of consciousness ought to form the vital chapter from which the other chapters get their light.

The varieties of religious experience audiobook