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The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James

1. _Ineffability._—The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state

152 words  |  Chapter 12

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 or 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.
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Chapters

1. Chapter 1 2. 1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world’s selfish 3. 2. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own 4. 3. An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining 5. 4. A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious 6. 1. Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, 7. 2. Temperance in meat and drink, simplicity of apparel, chastity, 8. 3. They may also be fruits of love, that is, they may appeal to 9. 4. Again, ascetic mortifications and torments may be due to 10. 5. In psychopathic persons, mortifications may be entered on 11. 6. Finally, ascetic exercises may in rarer instances be prompted 12. 1. _Ineffability._—The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state 13. 2. _Noetic quality._—Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical 14. 3. _Transiency._—Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in 15. 4. _Passivity._—Although the oncoming of mystical states may be 16. 1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which 17. 2. That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true 18. 3. That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof—be that spirit 19. 4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form 20. 5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to 21. 1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is 22. 2. The solution is a sense that _we are saved from the wrongness_ by 23. 141. Compare the other highly curious instances which he gives on 24. Chapter xi. of book ii. of Saint John’s Ascent of Carmel is devoted

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