Heresy

[Otto]

William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human
Nature (1902)

>From the LECTURES XVI AND XVII - MYSTICISM

 The words 'mysticism' and 'mystical' are often used as terms of mere
reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast
and sentimental, and without a base in either facts or logic. For some
writers a 'mystic' is any person who believes in thought-transference,
or spirit-return. Employed in this way the word has little value:
there are too many less ambiguous synonyms. So, to keep it useful by
restricting it, I will do what I did in the case of the word
'religion,' and simply propose to you four marks which, when an
experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical for the
purpose of the present lectures. In this way we shall save verbal
disputation, and the recriminations that generally go therewith.

1. Ineffability.- The handiest of the marks by which I classify a
state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately
says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its
contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality
must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to
others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of
feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to
another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or
worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of
a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a
lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret
the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him
weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his
experiences an equally incompetent treatment.

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:

3. Transiency.- Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except
in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to
be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day.
Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in
memory; but when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence
to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt
as inner richness and importance.

4. Passivity.- Although the oncoming of mystical states may be
facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the
attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other
ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic
sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own
will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and
held by a superior power. This latter peculiarity connects mystical
states with certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative
personality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the
mediumistic trance. When these latter conditions are well pronounced,
however, there may be no recollection whatever of the phenomenon and
it may have no significance for the subject's usual inner life, to
which, as it were, it makes a mere interruption. Mystical states,
strictly so called, are never merely interruptive. Some memory of
their content always remains, and a profound sense of their
importance. They modify the inner life of the subject between the
times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region are,
however, difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and
mixtures.

These four characteristics are sufficient to mark out a group of
states of consciousness peculiar enough to deserve a special name and
to call for careful study. Let it then be called the mystical group.


http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/james/james12.htm#380

As mentioned by John Barth at "Mystery and Tragedy. The Twin Motions
of Ritual Heroism", "The Friday Book" (1984), p. 46.