James lecture one

 In this blog post I will be reviewing Lecture I Religion and Neurology by William James on the Varieties of Religious Experience. As always, I start by asking myself a question: Is there a link between Religion and how our brain works? Going further, how does language affect our brain, and then affect our religion? 

James says that this account will be looking at people who are “most accomplished in the religious life and best able to give an intelligible account of their ideas and motives”. (20 of 571) So we are going to look at people who can speak. James goes on to say that we are going to look at people that are well-accomplished in their field and have classic writings. 

“Every religious phenomenon has its history and its derivation from natural antecedents” (22 of 571) James says that Religion is built on top of stories. What then was it like to have the first stories in a religion? James then says that every believer has been built on top of other believers. And we must look at the first believers and study them. Then James goes on to compare the Bible to breathing. Conversion and melancholy are important aspects of religion, and so are they adolescents “and therefore synchronous with the development of sexual life” (29).  He seems to be relating religion to an act of the body. Breathing or sex. 

“Take the trancelike states of insight into the truth which all religious mystics report” (41) Just like ``Head of the Cow'', as we saw in the movie in class. James says we should not classify these religious experiences outside the normal, outside of the circle. But we can put them in our Kora- outside of Chaos.


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