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James, William, 1842-1910

"Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature"

My comrades waited for me ten minutes
at the cross of Barine, but I took about twenty-five or thirty
minutes to join them, for as well as I can remember, they said
that I had kept them back for about half an hour. The impression
had been so profound that in climbing slowly the slope I asked
myself if it were possible that Moses on Sinai could have had a
more intimate communication with God. I think it well to add
that in this ecstasy of mine God had neither form, color, odor,
nor taste; moreover, that the feeling of his presence was
accompanied with no determinate localization. It was rather as if
my personality had been transformed by the presence of a
SPIRITUAL SPIRIT. But the more I seek words to express this
intimate intercourse, the more I feel the impossibility of
describing the thing by any of our usual images. At bottom the
expression most apt to render what I felt is this: God was
present, though invisible; he fell under no one of my senses, yet
my consciousness perceived him."
The adjective "mystical" is technically applied, most often. to
states that are of brief duration.


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