William James, Complete Religious Experience Is Far

¶ … William James, complete religious experience is far more than simply a theoretical, or abstract living-in -- the moment feeling. For him, religion has to be lived and experienced in a wholesome, holistic manner. It has to be conscious and permeate man's entire being.

James described this in the following way: If religion be a function by which either God's cause or man's cause is to be really advanced, then he who lives the life of it, however narrowly, is a better servant than he who merely knows about it, however much. Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

(489) For James, this "effective occupation" requires experience that is a "full fact": A conscious field plus its object as felt or thought plus an attitude towards the object plus the sense of a self to whom the attitude belongs.. (499) In other words, religion cannot be divided into parts. It has to demonstrate a phenomenological relationship with the other -- a sort of I-Thou attitude -- where the other becomes absorbed into the self.

We spoke about this before in terms of the conversion experience which is one that transforms the whole man. This includes the I and the me. In regards to the ME, it has to thoroughly penetrate all spheres of the empirical life, such as man's relationship to others in all its materialistic indications (bodies, family, possessions); man's social self (I.e. The conversion experience has to shape the feeling of the many different social selves that he has); and the feelings of his spiritual self.

By penetrating and influencing each of these singly, the holistic whole becomes transformed and 'converted', and man's 'I', therefore changes since one -- reciprocally -- affects the other. James' attitude towards religious absorption is one of love where the worshipper feels an active and all-absorbing infatuation and interest in the other. This is polar opposite to Eckhart's assertion that disinterest ranks superior to love (pp.83-89). Eckhart observes that, for various reasons, disinterest to religion or God is preferable than love.

Love seeks something; disinterest seeks nothing; God is the paragon of disinter; peace is emblematic of disinterest, and so forth. But to James disinterest is synonymous to detachment and life is something to be lived in and thrown into rather than to be watched from a distance. The religious experience, to him, has to be all-absorbing; it cannot simply be something that is mentally sampled from. St.

Thomas also seems to be lauding disinterest in various parts of his sayings, as for instance in the following: 42) Jesus said, "Become passers-by." Nonetheless, he tells us to love our fellow-men and he refers to himself and to God various times as a light. For instance: "Jesus said, "It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the All" (77). Light fills the world; it is manifest. One cannot confine it to one particular corner. One sees it; it fills one's being.

In the same way, St. Tomas seems to tell us that Jesus' presence (or God's presence) needs to fill a human for that human to live in / be with God. In a similar, way St. Thomas quotes Jesus as saying: "The heavens and the earth will be rolled up in your presence. And one who lives from the Living One will not see death." (111). In other words, the worshipper will be so immersed in phenomenological vividness of God that that is all there is.

"The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it." (ii3) -- For it is only seen by experience. Action comes from the very essence -- the soul - of the human. Religion -- or consent to a God -- cannot simply come from acquiescence and from a theoretical acknowledgement of God's existence.

James described this in a psychological way in his 'Principals of Psychology: "Will you or won't you have it so?" is the most probing question we are ever asked; we are asked it every hour of the day, and about the largest as well as the smallest, the most theoretical as well as the most practical, things. We answer by consents or non-consents and not by words. What wonder that these dumb responses should seem our deepest organs of communication with the nature of things! (PP, p. 1182).

In other words, our consent to the minutest aspects of regular life come by nods or rejections, most frequently articulated or actively formed. They are never abstract, mental affirmations. Life involves a throwing into it. Life is God. In that way, affirmation of God is likewise a consent or non-consent that is activated on a fully conscious, man-permeated, rather than ephemeral, level. This may be also James' intent when he talks about reality.

To him, reality is something that "means simply relation to our emotional and active life…whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real" (PP 924). For a person then who is a true worshipper, he is not.