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