A Philosophical Review of 'The Varieties of Religious Experience'

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A Philosophical Review of 'The Varieties of Religious Experience'

How William James failed to connect the dots

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

April 23, 2025

In "The Varieties of Religious Experience,¹" William James describes ecstatic and inspirational states of mind that have apparently come to human beings "naturally," as it were, out of thin air, or else been vouchsafed to an individual thanks to their quixotic personality, as in the case of Walt Whitman.

Update: April 29, 2025

James's book is full of descriptions of these seemingly "soberly accessed" states, which he classifies to various degrees as religious in nature. It is not until the end of his book that he nods his hat to the existence of substance-induced visions that are indistinguishable from these "natural" ones, judging by the written accounts of those who have experienced them. Even this last-minute acknowledgment of substance-inspired visions seems to have come about by chance, thanks to James's last-minute reading of a self-published pamphlet by philosopher Benjamin Paul Blood entitled "The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy.²" And so the idea of substance-inspired visions enters James's work by the back door, so to speak, and at the last minute. This is unfortunate because James did not seem to have had the time to connect the dots between Blood's work and a whole new area of investigation largely ignored in James's book: namely, the power of substances OF ALL KINDS to inspire visions and to teach seeming truths, in an experiential rather than didactic manner.

As technically defined by Benjamin Blood, the anesthetic revelation ³ ⁴ refers to but one part of a substance-inspired experience: the firm conviction that one is being given an experiential glimpse of some existential verity. As Blood wrote:

"Its inevitableness defeats all attempts at stopping or accounting for it. It is all precedence and presupposition, and questioning is in regard to it forever too late."

James seemed unaware of the fact that psychoactive substance use in general could bring about these same kinds of experiential convictions, although he seems to have been on the verge of grasping that truth when he wrote the following:

"When enjoying plenary freedom either in the way of motion or of thought, we are in a sort of anaesthetic state in which we might say with Walt Whitman, if we cared to say anything about ourselves at such times, 'I am sufficient as I am.'⁵"

What James did not realize was that a wide variety of substances -- especially psychedelics and phenethylamines - can provide that self-same conviction, that anesthetic substances such as laughing gas hold no monopoly when it comes to providing the user with seemingly ineluctable perspectives on life and the ultimate meaning thereof.

Consider the following reports of the use of phenethylamines in "Pihkal" by chemist Alexander Shulgin:

"Intense intellectual stimulation, one that inspired the scribbling of some 14 pages of handwritten notes."

"The afterglow was benign and rich in empathy for everything."

"I feel that it is one of the most profound and deep learning experiences I have had." ⁶

The implication is there for the taking: namely, that we can ALL be Walt Whitman for a day (or St. Teresa or Meister Eckhart) with the strategic use of psychoactive substances -- or at least we all have that potential as mere "normal" human beings. A variety of personal psychological factors will, of course, play a role in deciding the extent to which we can fulfill that potential as a practical matter, such as our intelligence, education level and personality. Yet we can all transcend what modern researchers call our "default mode network" and so experience the world more deeply and with conviction as to ultimate purposes. That is the crucial epiphany that was dangling in front of the great psychologist's face, but which he failed to grasp. One can only explain this oversight on his part by supposing that puritanical America was already in the habit of ignoring the glaringly obvious benefits of psychoactive substances long before the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. Otherwise James would have known that even opiates, which were still legal in James's time, can provide the "normal" user with the sorts of remarkable transcendental experiences that we assume are only visited on historical exceptions, and then only when they are in an imagined "sober" state, one in which they are supposedly unaffected, psychologically speaking, by any substances whatsoever. Consider the following lines from Edgar Allan Poe about the experience of an opiate-using protagonist in "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains."

"In the meantime the morphine had its customary effect- that of enduing all the external world with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of a leaf- in the hue of a blade of grass- in the shape of a trefoil- in the humming of a bee- in the gleaming of a dew-drop- in the breathing of the wind- in the faint odors that came from the forest- there came a whole universe of suggestion- a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought.⁷"

Once again, the implication is clear: substance-use (beyond that of anaesthetics alone) can inspire a wide range of inspirational and ecstatic states that are indistinguishable from those reported by presumably "sober" individuals during their experience of purported religious epiphanies, from which it follows that a thorough discussion of "drug use" is crucial to any study of religious states. This is the glaring omission in James' book - one which he no doubt would have remedied himself had he lived long enough to connect the dots of the various facts that he himself had adduced. James got halfway there by realizing that the use of anesthetics, and especially laughing gas, could inspire a kind of religious state. What he failed to realize was that anesthetics are just one kind of substance that can accomplish that feat. This is less excusable than the reader might think, however, given the fact that James fails to even mention the apparently inconvenient truth that the Hindu religion owes its very existence to the use of a drug that inspired and elated ⁸. Any purportedly comprehensive book on the religious experience that ignores that fact is surely biased, whether consciously or not, in favor of the passion-scorning materialist mindset of the west.

The failure of William James to connect the dots has helped modern Drug Warriors to get away with demonizing psychoactive substances indiscriminately and without regard to context, resulting in the effective outlawing of the religious impulse itself. The success of this demonization campaign against inspirational substances has been so thorough that even James's alma mater, Harvard University, fails to mention the anaesthetic revelation in their online biography of the man, never mind the obvious profound implications that James's work has for religious liberty ⁹ ¹⁰. The prime imperative of academia today is to deny all positive uses for psychoactive medicines, and everything -- including James's legacy and civil liberties -- must come in a distant second place. Indeed, the idea that drugs have positives uses is the ultimate "damned" fact of our time, in the Fortean sense of that word ¹¹ ¹² ¹³. It is a fact that Americans are determined to ignore, even if they have to rewrite history and dishonor legacies in order to do so.

Author's Follow-up:

April 27, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

This weekend I did a re-read of "The Varieties of Religious Experience" to see what I might have missed. I was once again dumbfounded by James's failure to fully understand the implications of the so-called anesthetic revelation ¹⁴ ¹⁵ . If laughing gas and chloroform can produce ecstatic and inspirational states that are indistinguishable from those produced by religious epiphanies, then surely it is obvious that drugs of all kinds could at least theoretically do the same. But then I recalled that James was writing before the ethnobotanical investigations of Richard Schultes with regard to drugs like psilocybin, before the discovery of LSD by Albert Hofmann, before the use of ayahuasca by Terence McKenna ¹⁶ , and before chemists like Alexander Shulgin had synthesized empathogenic phenethylamines like MDMA ¹⁷ . He could not have imagined that user reports for such substances would eventually prove to be indistinguishable from reports of religious epiphanies -- especially since it would scarcely occur to a westerner to look for such a connection.

Of course, opium ¹⁸ was used in James's time and was known to bring about extravagant dreams. Poets of the time used the drug to enhance their creativity in what 19th-century author Richard Middleton described as "a series of quarterly carouses." In "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains," published 1844, Edgar Allan Poe demonstrated how morphine could produce a profound appreciation of the baroque detail of Mother Nature's bounty, and such appreciation of natural beauty is one of the hallmarks of the mystic experiences described by James. Yet the link between opiate use and spiritual results is no doubt highly dependent upon the personality of the user and their intentions viz the inebriated state, making it unlikely that James would guess at the potential connection, especially as he appears to have had no personal experience with the drug, except perhaps for interventions that were conceived of as being purely physical in nature. In light of these caveats, I would be tempted to forgive James entirely for failing to connect drug use with religious states, were it not for the fact that the Hindu religion ¹⁹ owes its existence to the use of a drug that inspired and elated, a fact that James unaccountably fails to mention in any of his 20 Gifford Lectures that comprise his book.

It is easy to demonstrate the similarity between drug states and religious epiphanies, however. I need only ask the reader to take the following short test. Read the following six quotations and then try to decide which of them are accounts of drug user experiences drawn from the book "Pihkal" by chemist Alexander Shulgun and which are accounts of ostensive religious epiphanies contained in "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by psychologist William James.

1) "I have the sense of a presence, strong, and at the same time soothing, which hovers over me. Sometimes it seems to enwrap me with sustaining arms."

2) "At one point I went out back and strolled along to find a place to worship. I had a profound sense of the Presence and great love and gratitude for the place, the people, and the activities taking place."

3) "I thought that I was near death; when, suddenly, my soul became aware of God, who was manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so to speak, in an intense personal present reality. I felt him streaming in like light upon me."

4) "I began to become aware of a point, a brilliant white light, that seemed to be where God was entering, and it was inconceivably wonderful to perceive it and to be close to it. One wished for it to approach with all one's heart."

5) "I felt a love to all mankind, wholly peculiar in its strength and sweetness, far beyond all that I had ever felt before. The power of that love seemed inexpressible."

6) "I am experiencing more deeply than ever before the importance of acknowledging and deeply honoring each human being. And I was able to go through and resolve some judgments with particular persons."

ANSWERS: Quotes 1, 3, and 5 are descriptions of religious epiphanies as cited in "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James. Quotes 2, 4 and 6 are drug user reports that are quoted in "Pihkal" by Alexander Shulgin.

William James seemed to believe that he was not susceptible to such mystical states as described above. He says the following in his lectures on Mysticism:

"Whether my treatment of mystical states will shed more light or darkness, I do not know, for my own constitution shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely, and I can speak of them only at second hand."

Of course, we now know that no one is constitutionally "shut out" from mystical experiences, provided that they are willing to use psychoactive substances advisedly to attain their ends. Nor can James scoff at using such a means to achieve such and end, given his pragmatic philosophy. In Lecture X on conversion, James reiterates his belief that "the worth of a thing" cannot be decided by its origins.

"Our opinion of the significance and value of a human event or condition, must be decided on empirical grounds exclusively. If the "fruits for life" of the state of conversion are good, we ought to idealize and venerate it."

Author's Follow-up:

April 29, 2025

Let me address some further insights obtained from my recent re-reading of "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James.

RECKONING WITHOUT DRUGS

In Lecture II (on "the circumscription of the topic"), James writes as follows:

"There is a state of mind, known to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God."

Really? Religious men and no others?

This statement indicates how James writes from two perspectives in his book: for the most part, as in this case, he writes as if the anesthetic revelation ²⁰ ²¹ does not exist and that therefore spiritual experiences are limited to those with a religious predilection. Only on rare occasion does he acknowledge that the anesthetic revelation ²² provides seemingly identical results to those experienced by the religious-minded individual. As B.P. Blood ²³ explains of his anesthetic revelation ²⁴ , one is impressed somehow with ontological verities during the experience -- convictions that one cannot gainsay but can only shut up about, as it were, and try to process. I repeat his above-mentioned quote on this subject:

"Its inevitableness defeats all attempts at stopping or accounting for it. It is all precedence and presupposition, and questioning is in regard to it forever too late."

When James reckons without these revelations, one is reminded of modern writers who reckon without the effects of so-called drugs. They are led astray, to put it mildly. Hence the plethora of feel-good articles about depression in Psychology Today, in which the authors completely fail to notice that we have outlawed almost everything that could help the depressed. As mentioned above, however, James is only "half way there" in acknowledging the potential sources of religious states even when he acknowledges the existence of the anesthetic revelation ²⁵ ²⁶ , for he has yet to realize that the mystical states provided by anesthesia are but a subset of a larger set of mystical states provided by psychoactive substances in general -- those substances that we disparage today as "drugs."

THE WILL

"The will therein lieth that dieth not." -- From Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe.

While reading the various reports of spiritual experiences documented in James's Gifford Lectures, I occasionally was reminded of Schopenhauer's idea of the eternal Will. Consider this description of mystical consciousness that James quotes by poet J.A. Symonds. Symonds describes what he calls his "trance" as follows:

"It consisted in a gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space, time, sensation, and the multitudinous factors of experience which seem to qualify what we are pleased to call our Self. In proportion as these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity."

The existence of such an "underlying or essential consciousness" is precisely what Schopenhauer posits in "The World as Will and Idea/Representation."

WALT WHITMAN FOR A DAY

In Lectures 4 and 5 on "the religion of healthy-mindedness," James quotes Dr. Bucke, a disciple of Walt Whitman, as follows:

"His favorite occupation seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural sounds. It was evident that these things gave him a pleasure far beyond what they give to ordinary people."

Before we get carried away with the doctor about the supposed uniqueness of Whitman's character, let us reconsider the quote that I posted above by Edgar Allan Poe about a morphine experience that evoked a similar love for nature in the inebriate.

"In the meantime the morphine ²⁷ had its customary effect- that of enduing all the external world with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of a leaf- in the hue of a blade of grass- in the shape of a trefoil- in the humming of a bee- in the gleaming of a dew-drop- in the breathing of the wind- in the faint odors that came from the forest- there came a whole universe of suggestion- a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought.²⁸"

One is tempted to ask an heretical question here: Did Walt Whitman, perhaps, use opiates wisely to attain just such a susceptibility to natural influences? Had he -- or anyone else -- done so, the pragmatism of James gives us no grounds to despise them for this or to consider that their love of nature is somehow not "really" a love of nature. The pragmatist looks for fruits. If the fruits are good, that is all we can ask.

Of course, here we run up to the propaganda-inspired idea that "safe use" is not possible -- but that is a lie and makes no more sense than saying "safe driving" is not possible, nor "safe drinking."

SELF-SATISFIED ABSTAINERS

"Thou hast been as one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing." --Hamlet, Shakespeare

I often run into self-satisfied abstainers who preen themselves on the supposed fact that they do not need drugs. This is bizarre, in my opinion, because we are only now beginning to see the vast world of potential and common-sense benefits that drug use can bring about with respect to music appreciation, our love of nature, our compassion for our fellows, etc. And so when folks declare in advance of almost all research on this topic that they could not benefit from any drug or drug combination, it seems presumptuous and even masochistic. Moreover, just because they personally do not have the insight to notice any shortcomings in their psyche, it does not follow that their self-image is correct. Odiferous tramps may not feel that they could benefit from the use of a deodorant, but their neighbors may think otherwise, and rightly so. A hateful bully may not think that he needs to use an empathogen, but his victims may have other ideas. And why would one want to "just say no" to improving one's religiosity, as did the Vedic people with the help of Soma? Sure, one can have a metaphysical belief that such drug use is wrong, but in that case, be so good as to claim your membership in the Christian Science religion, rather than pretending that your view on the subject is a logical one before which all rational thinkers must bend the knee.

I was reminded of the self-satisfied individual when James wrote the following in Lecture 8, on the divided self and the process of its unification:

"Some persons are born with an inner constitution which is harmonious and well balanced from the outset. Their impulses are consistent with one another, their will follows without trouble the guidance of their intellect, their passions are not excessive, and their lives are little haunted by regrets. Others are oppositely constituted, and are so in degrees which may vary from something so slight as to result in a merely odd or whimsical inconsistency, to a discordancy of which the consequences may be inconvenient in the extreme."

Wherever we fall on the spectrum, we should have enough imagination to convince ourselves that it is wrong to generalize from our own experience of life. That takes very little reflection, indeed, after all. I sometimes, for instance, see a kid being dragged through a grocery store and subjected to non-stop abuse by its parent, for both real and imaginary offenses. I can only imagine the kind of personality that will result for that child from that constant uncalled-for nagging. Surely all sane people would look on and say to themselves: "There but for fortune go I." And yet many of these same people will go on to preen themselves on the supposed self-sufficiency of their personality and to implicitly blame others for failing to evince the same sangfroid without the help of drugs. Their very conviction that they are beyond the need for improvement, psychologically speaking, is no doubt a pathology in itself, and the last thing they should do is to dismiss those drugs a priori that could help them better understand their place in the universe and their inherent frailty as a member of the shortsighted species that we so ironically refer to as Homo sapiens.

READY, AIM, SELF-ACTUALIZE

In the Lectures on conversion, James tells us how new aims bring about new energies. This reminds me of the point made by Thomas Szasz (in Ceremonial Chemistry ²⁹, I believe), that Malcolm X did not use a "medical model" to get his followers off of heroin ³⁰; instead, he gave them new goals in life. This motivated them and made heroin irrelevant, as it were. This seems to be precisely what the use of phenethylamines and psychedelics can do: give us new goals in life, thus enabling ourselves to treat our psychological maladies holistically.

The reports of phenethylamine use in "Pihkal" suggest how informed drug use can give us new aims and motivations:

"I felt that the experience continued for many days, and I feel that it is one of the most profound and deep learning experiences I have had."

"The breakthrough I had... the following day... was of the highest value and importance for me."

"It could be best described as an 'insight-enhancer' and obviously of potential value in psychotherapy (if one would wish to spend 30 hours in a therapy session!). I suppose it would be best to simply stick with the insight-enhancing and skip the psychotherapy."

Notes:

1: “The Varieties of Religious Experience : William James : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2021. Internet Archive. 2021. https://archive.org/details/the-varieties-of-religious-experience_202109. (up)
2: The anaesthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy Blood, Benjamin (up)
3: The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy DWP (up)
4: anesthetic revelation (up)
5: The Varieties of Religious Experience James, William, Goodreads, New York, 1902 (up)
6: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
7: A Tale of the Ragged Mountains Poe, Edgar Allan (up)
8: Complete Rig Veda in English (Sakala Shakha). n.d. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/rigvedacomplete. (up)
9: Coverup on Campus DWP (up)
10: How Harvard University Censored the Biography of William James DWP (up)
11: Charles Fort Didn't Know from Damnation DWP (up)
12: According to Fort, science ignores (i.e. 'damns') facts that do not conform with current theory. Reports of the positive effects of drug use run counter to the behaviorist tenets of psychology, which tell us that quantifiable data is all that matters in the field -- not the 'mere' subjective fact that one is elated or inspired. (up)
13: Charles, Fort. 2025. “The Book of the Damned.” Gutenberg.Org. 2025. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/22472/pg22472-images.html. (up)
14: The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy DWP (up)
15: anesthetic revelation (up)
16: McKenna, Terence. 2026. “History Ends in Green.” The Library. 2026. https://www.organism.earth/library/document/history-ends-in-green. (up)
17: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
18: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
19: Complete Rig Veda in English (Sakala Shakha). n.d. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/rigvedacomplete. (up)
20: The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy DWP (up)
21: anesthetic revelation (up)
22: anesthetic revelation (up)
23: The anaesthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy Blood, Benjamin (up)
24: anesthetic revelation (up)
25: The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy DWP (up)
26: anesthetic revelation (up)
27: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
28: A Tale of the Ragged Mountains Poe, Edgar Allan (up)
29: “Ceremonial Chemistry – Syracuse University Press.” 2026. Syr.edu. 2026. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1114/ceremonial-chemistry/. (up)
30: Hall, Wayne, and Megan Weier. 2016. “Lee Robins’ Studies of Heroin Use among US Vietnam Veterans.” Addiction 112 (1): 176–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13584. (up)

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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.

The outlawing of coca and opium is a crime against humanity.

No drug causes addiction after one use. From this fact alone, it follows that even drugs like meth and crack and Fentanyl can be used wisely -- on an intermittent basis.

Alexander Shulgin is a typical westerner when he speaks about cocaine. He moralizes about the drug, telling us that it does not give him "real" power. But so what? Does coffee give him "real" power? Coke helps some, others not. Stop holding it to this weird metaphysical standard.

Smart people in America are like Don Quixote. They are sane on every subject on earth, but mention the subject of "drugs," and they start talking politically correct blather.

It's interesting that Jamaicans call the police 'Babylon,' given that Babylon denotes a society seeking materialist pleasures. Drug use is about transcending the material world and seeking spiritual states: states that the materialist derides as meaningless.

Americans were always free to take care of their own health -- until drug warriors handed doctors a monopoly on providing mind and mood medicine.

And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.

The drug war has created a whole film genre with the same tired plots: drug-dealing scumbags and their dupes being put in their place by the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, which has nothing but contempt for altered states.

If I should die of some unusual concatenation of circumstances, I want my survivors to pass "Brian's Law," a law stating that we will no longer pass laws based on hard cases and so needlessly fill our prisons by taking common-sense discretion out of the hands of judges.

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A Philosophical Review of 'The Varieties of Religious Experience'

How William James failed to connect the dots

Author's Follow-up:

April 27, 2025

Author's Follow-up:

April 29, 2025

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

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