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

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 significance 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:—

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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