William James
Mysticism

William James devoted much of his career to the psychological investigation of mysticism. A significant influence on this undertaking was his own mystical experience under the influence of nitrous oxide. Inspired by a report by Benjamin Paul Blood in 1874, James experimented with inhaled nitrous oxide, upon which he experienced a "tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination" in which "every opposition... vanished in a higher unity" and "the ego and its objects... are one." For so ardent an anti-Hegelian, this was a particularly novel and confusing experience for James. He was powerfully affected by the event and struggled greatly to interpret it. His journey of self discovery instigated by the experience is largely what inspired his later in-depth investigations of mysticism.

William James provided a description of mystical experience in his famous collection of lectures published in 1902 as The Varieties of Religious Experience. He posits four criteria as "sufficient to mark out a group of states of consciousness" which may be called the "mystical group."

These criteria are as follows:

For James, the first two attributes, ineffability and the noetic quality, "will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use the word." The qualities of transiency and passivity are "less sharply marked, but are usually found." He uses a number of historical examples to illustrate the presence of these attributes in geographically and temporally disparate instances, concluding that the 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 other-worldly states of mind " (original italics).

In line with his pragmatism, he asserted that the epistemological authority of mystical consciousness for the individual who experiences it is may be rightfully justified, but that others are under no obligation to accept that authority uncritically. Importantly, however, the mere existence of mystical states necessarily indicates an incompleteness in the epistemological authority of the non-mystical. He would continue to advocate for the acceptance of mystical states as a fruitful subject of psychological research and source of knowledge. In his book The Pluralistic Universe (1909), he would expand upon his notion of "radical empiricism" in arguing for the possible association of empiricism and religion in the study of human spirituality In viewing mysticism from a psychological perspective, he acknowledged that the limits of our being extend far beyond what is ordinarily accessible by our sense perception, and that our finite beings are affected by unconscious forces. "But that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal."

James viewed mysticism as the most foundational aspect of religion. While he grants that religious experience reveals the possibility of union with something greater than oneself, he clarifies that mysticism (and philosophy) identify that something as an "all inclusive soul of the world" that he does not deem wholly necessary for a practical and fulfilling religious life. As always, James is averse to any dogmatic or absolutist doctrines, within religion and without, and thus values mysticism as a unique method of personal acquaintance with a larger reality.
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