The Varieties of Religious Experience Lectures 6 and 7 – The Sick Soul (Part 2)

                                     Lectures 6 and 7 – The Sick Soul (Part 2 pg 138-165)

With roots in failure of course old theologians found failures essential and that only through it do we find life's deeper significances. This is James's first stage of world sickness; increase human sensitivity to carry them a bit over the pain threshold (p139) and it becomes easy to diminish one’s own successes. As all goods perish, can they truly be the goods our souls need? We get another example; their worldly labors ceased to matter, and all seemed vain as ‘all things perish’ was persistent in thought. To them the darkest days are the ones to remember as there will be many. Certainly, if life is good its negations must be bad thus, one necessitates the other and happiness always carries its contradiction as certainly there is a fascination with human finiteness and life transiency. Healthy minded individuals would find this nonsense, drop the negatives, and enjoy life. But others may find this happiness ignorant and superficial and that our true struggles are deeper. But such transiency is certainly full of death and illness which can conceptually consume any normal individual subjective, pushing people for transcendence “a good that flies beyond the goods of nature” (p140). Such transients can lower an individual's pain threshold and, as James says, “bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians” (p140). As we grow our pride is bound to shrink, according to James, generally due to an inner temperament clash between passionate youth and old age (p140), one bound to sorrows of the latter. So far as we have seen, once and twice borns realities depend on what significance and degree they frame their conceptuals and thus ascribe their values. To a twice born, death is inevitable; they may be able to laugh it off with wine but certainly are so conceptually close to death that they have that “melancholic metaphysical worm as a brother” (p141). Many of life's factors such as common experiences or sufferings necessitate oppositions, in this regard by James, there are contingencies, moral order and immortal significance respectively. However, we have seen natural science aims to remove these and make them subjectively anxiety ridden. Certainly, naturalism gives cosmological narratives just as religion but with more grim and cold fates.

Now, James addresses that it is too common for people to regard ancient Greeks as role models of healthy mindedness, but we know they generally separated goods and bads. So as goods were extravagant, bads were nihilistic and pessimistic and such extremes commonly reflect in Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam – or all of these also known as twice borns. However, concerning healthy mindedness the farthest the Greeks went was in two regards: stoic insensibility, arguing that life's only true good is one’s full autonomy, with all else being lies; and two, epicurean resignation, don't seek happiness rather escape unhappiness and avoid disappointment. With these regards representing parts of the “sobering process of man's primitive intoxication with sense happiness” (p143) and pushing both factors only grows twice borns necessities. Thus, by James, history concludes its once born era.

Now, generally the quickest way to a twice borns peak of happiness usually involves an individual being a victim of their own pathological melancholy, something completely opposed to healthy mindedness as such melancholy ignores good entirely and is a very rare threshold sensitivity that makes one oppressive to their own good fortunes. Next James wants to show us another example but with a patient suffering an extreme depression known as and anhedonia – a “passive joyless… discouragement… lack of taste and zest and spring” (p145). In this we have a little girl with a liver disease and a complete flip in reality, or her constitution, as such she shows zero concern for her mother and father. With another case of a grown adult also with every emotion devoid or dead to them. James argues such depression is also rarely seen in seasickness and certainly many religions and founders conceive following illnesses. We get another example, now with a Catholic philosopher overwhelming himself to exhaustion creating a phenomenal experience; a visceral universal tremor woke him and instantly they felt the rejection of God. Then believing that this must be hell as he felt every idea of heaven removed from him. Such melancholy is not merely lacking joy but also active with anguish and such anguish is carried through many individual agencies such as loathing, mistrust, exasperation, anxiety, and fear (p147). Rarely do these cross with religious conversion, with exasperation cases generally never. We get another example within a French asylum, a patient with little sleep and horrid visions is concerned of why this has happened, why to him, where is the justice, and as such they are say they are afraid of God as much as the devil. By all this James sees two main factors; with such a consequence of evil good is devoid and impossible and, two, his ‘querulous’ temperament prevents a true religious direction as James argues querulousness tends irreligious in constructing systems (p149).

Now, turning towards religious melancholy with Tolstoy in which we get, one, a case of anhedonia and a loss for life's values and, two, a good point of view between the gnawing of the consciousness and the striving for philosophical relief. James says to start this we should address spiritual judgments in the sense of value. Certainly, facts necessitate opposites but there is no way to rationalize the connection between facts and inner sentiments. Thus, all facts are relatively different for all people at different times, with James calling this our “animal and spiritual region” (p150). So, try to imagine oneself devoid of all emotions to perceive the world as such. There is certainly no negativity or deadness and thus no part is more important than another and no values can be forced. Thus, regards such as fear, love, and worship generally never stem from logic but rather organic factors. “The excited interest which these passions put into the world as our gifts to the world” (p151). For most of us the real world is an indistinguishable combination of physical facts and emotional values and “withdraw or prevent either factor…[and] pathological ensues” (p151). For Tolstoy, his life was completely withdrawn and thus altering his complete conception of reality. James gives us examples of melancholy sentiments: as if it were another world; life through a cloud; shadow people; as if all other people are actors (p152). And many times, out of desperation individuals seek religious regards. Finally, we've reached the Tolstoy example and at 50 years of age suddenly reaches a moment of ‘not knowing what to do’ or ‘how to live’ and to him life feels dead. He believed these concerns to be answerable, but it will ‘just take time’, a trait James claims is generally an early sign of a sick person. But this was caught too late and combined with the continuum of Tolstoy’s individual suffering and with him considering it as a passive disorder the crucial point intended his death. For Tolstoy, life is broken, and such invisible forces push him psychologically suicidal. It is not that he would want it to be but rather described it as the opposite feeling of the force to live. With fears to live, Tolstoy holds on in hope and in spite of his circumstances. This whole situation was odd as this happened when his life was full of wealth, values, intellect, and good mental and physical health. But, by this believes that one can only live so intoxicated on life for so long before sobering back to the curse of it. We get another Tolstoy example; the man is running from a beast in a desert and then sees a well. He then proceeds to jump in it but there is a dragon at the bottom so instead clings to the bush growing from the inner well wall. In this, his hands began to weaken as two mice came out to gnaw at the roots of the bush; demise is imminent. In realizing this the man finds honey on the leaves of the bush and “licks them off with rapture” (p154) until the pleasure ceases and he is left with nothing but the gaze of the mice and the dragon. So, why should I live with death being inevitable? In this case, devoid of an answer it becomes impossible to go on. But is this condition not natural for humans? That nothing can truly be answered but this absurdity of life as being certain. In his contextual regard Tolstoy saw four possibilities: sucking honey but gaining no knowledge after, reflective epicureanism and seizing momentary joy, “manly suicide”, or to look at the dragon and mice while clinging. Suicide is a constant inner narrative. For Tolstoy, his conscious eventually recognized his striving and that in this hope for better and from all his suicidal notions to him, must have been a thirst for God. Not of logic but from his heart, a dread hoping for assistance.

James will continue to address Tolstoy’s recovery later, but it is certainly odd to see this phenomenon of disenchantment with life and such a disregard for one's habitual values and lifestyle, to seem as such as a mockery. And the return of one’s happiness afterwards is generally vastly different than originally but also with a new reassessment of natural evils to be less of as personal roadblock and now “swallowed up in the supernatural good” (p157). Thus, feeling as a second birth, common to redemptive salvation. We get another example, this of John Bunyan’s religious melancholy more so troubling his personal identity, believing if he died tomorrow, he could not understand how Christ could love him. He was afraid of his words even just as a fear of misusing them. Then suddenly, he has a phenomenal experience and is momentarily with God, Christ, spirit, and ‘good’. But here he could feel it was his original affliction that separated all of this thus hating himself even more and feeling small to God. Sin will come naturally, he believed, for one as wicked as the devil, arguing that he feels forsaken (devoid) of God. Then he begins expressing sorrow of being human and begins to envy animals as those lucky with the lack of sin and the lack of hell. Bunyan did regain a light, but James will save this for later. We get another example, Henry Alline, an evangelist around 1800 of whom described religious melancholy as the beginning; all is a burden and life is a curse. His sins felt transparent to all and created a feeling of vanity with a lack of meaning, with him also envying animals, a trait seeming common in such situations. Concerning such examples of melancholy, James says the worst is that of panic fear. We get another example, this one of a person who is currently pessimistic and depressed and then has a phenomenal moment of darkness, fearing existence, and seeing the face of a person crazier that they were with in asylum. And this became the form they felt subjectively, and nothing could defend such fear. With this creating bodily reactions and then after a whole universal change with their dreads receding. Without God or scripture, they truly believed they would have gone insane. Of religious melancholy examples so far we have “one of the vanity of moral things; another the sense of sin;… describing the fear of the universe” (p161) with one way or another humans “original optimism and self-satisfaction get leveled with the dust” (p161).

None of the examples were intellectual panics but rather the reactions to the feeling of evil closing in on one’s subjective. The – help, I need help; but for such deliverance it must be a rather intense complaint. That is a big reason religion is not leaving, as some sensitivities find it necessary. To reflect, there is certainly an antagonistic nature between healthy mindedness devoid of evil and those that find it essential with the latter clearly craving a second birth. This morbid mindedness surely overlaps more experiences; averting evil is good for those it works for but certainly it does not work for everyone. But by such prior healthy mindedness we saw that it certainly works more than people generally give credit and it can be utilized more but however, it is generally transient just as melancholy. But healthy mindedness is not particularly philosophically sound, as the evil it ignores may be key parts of reality of which may be necessities of revelatory experiences or pursuits of deeper truths. Normal life certainly itself has regards as bad as pathological melancholy and affecting the individual as “the lunatics visions of horrors are all drawn from the material of daily fact” (p163). Thus, if you protest it you will end up right there. So, to this regard an animal's fear before being eaten is the right reaction. Certainly, maybe no religious reconciliation with life is possible (p164) and certainly some evils conceive higher forms of good but there are also some evils with no point in a good system in any way and in regard of such ignorant submission or willful neglect are only practical. With evil a genuine part of nature then philosophically there must be a rational significance; with healthy mindedness not attending to many regards it is a less complete system. With James agreeing, the most complete religious systems having pessimistic elements such as Buddhism and Christianity; religions of deliverance, that a person “must die to an unreal life before he can be born into the real life” (p165).

--Seth Graves-Huffman