William James on Consciousness and the Four Features of Transcendent Experiences
Maria Popovathemarginalian.org
William James on Consciousness and the Four Features of Transcendent Experiences
We take in, blend, and yet transcend senses, creating a peculiar alchemy of the awareness and sensation of being a human, of having a moment-by-moment experience of living. In the philosophy and science of mind, these little bites of memorable conscious experiences are called “qualia.”
The mind is its own place, and the places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the sy
... See moreThis rational capacity to think and to act in obedience to absolute or transcendental values constitutes a dependency of consciousness upon a dimension of reality found nowhere within the physical order. It is a capacity for something that nature cannot “see,” and a desire at once inexhaustible and often remarkably impractical.
This happening is what I call God, and what it is essentially is beyond all possible conception. I feel it most intensely in a stillness of mind where words and ideas are not running around in my brain.