Varieties of Religious Experience by William James The Varieties of Religious Experiences is the result of the Gifford Lecture Series on natural religion which William James delivered in 1901 at the University of Edinburgh. Despite being trained as a chemist, physician, and later a psychologist, James is not committed to scientific materialism in his study of religion. However he does respect the scientific method and therefore tries to be as rigorous as possible in examining a topic as subjective as religion. He does this by drawing his conclusions from a large number of case studies of religious experiences, many of which are firsthand accounts. From his mass of data James describes two major religious attitudes: "healthy mindedness" and "the sick soul". The former emphasizes human welfare and health as both the path and result of religion while the latter contends that real spiritual fruits grow from suffering. James also examines the process of religious conversion and draws a distinction between gradual conversion and instant conversion. In his conclusion James makes an argument for a type of transcendentalism. He claims that an overwhelming amount of evidence from mystics to saints suggests that an unseen reality exists which humans can explore. Even science implicitly states this by organizing nature into orderly laws. He contends that philosophy is not sufficient to discover these deeper layers of reality because it is ultimately based on personal feelings and experience. Penetration into the mystery of reality takes on many forms from prayer to meditation, but they all lead to communion with the same God or a higher power. The ultimate evidence for the existence of this higher order comes from the character or saintliness of those who have achieved a certain connection with the Divine or Transcendent.
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