William James Quotes

Magic is the divinity of man achieved in union with faith.

The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the divine into the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity.

People talk about universal intelligence ... I'm reticent to believe almost anything, just because my parents weren't religious at all, but that's when I feel it. People talk about being in the "flow."

I am not a spiritual guy, but all of a sudden I felt the need to really feel things.

We feel unsatisfied until we know ourselves akin even with that greatness which made the spots on which it rested hallowed; and until, by our own lives, and by converse with the thoughts they have bequeathed us, we feel that union and relationship of the spirit which we seek.

To feel the presence of the Lord is an amazing thing.

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.

You don't have to go to church to be spiritual, but there are certain times in your life that you know there is a presence of something very spiritual.

Yoga is not a practice - the word 'yoga' means union. It does not mean standing on your head, twisting your body, or holding your breath. Yoga means to know the union of life. When you experience everything as a part of yourself, you are in yoga.

[T]hat I could find company and consolation and hope in an object pulled almost at random from a bookshelf--felt akin to an instance of religious grace.

Happiness is neither within us, nor without us. It is in the union of ourselves with God.

The complaint that church is boring is never made by people in awe.

A sense of continuity with the rest of creation is a form of religious experience essential to sanity.

In that first 'fusion' with Jesus (holy communion), it was my Heavenly Mother again who accompanied me to the altar for it was she herself who placed her Jesus into my soul.

Nothing in or of this world measures up to the simple pleasure of experiencing the presence of God.

Painting' and 'religious experience' are the same thing. It is a question of the perpetual motion of a right idea.

Religion means a binding. If a man does not feel himself a part of the Universe, and does not hear its pulse, he is not religious. But once he has heard that pulse, he will be hearing it always. Every day his life will replenish itself from this inexhaustible source, eternal and powerful as the sun.

Mysticism occurs whenever a human being sees the separation between the natural and the supernatural, between the temporal and the eternal, as overcome.

I still go to church occasionally. I went the other day and found peace.

Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt - marvellous error! - That it was God I had here inside my heart.

I got to a point where kind of a oneness with everything and a great compassion. It teaches you compassion. It was a great, enlightening experience, a spiritual experience. Not particularly religious, but spiritual. It was great. I can still go there.

He did not study God; he was dazzled by him.

The essence of religious feeling does not come under any sort of reasoning or atheism, and has nothing to do with any crimes or misdemeanors. There is something else here, and there will always be something else - something that the atheists will for ever slur over; they will always be talking of something else.

We are driven to confess that we actually care more for religion than we do for religious theories and ideas: and in merely making that distinction between religion and its doctrine-elements, have we not already relegated the latter to an external and subordinate position? Have we not asserted that "religion itself" has some other essence or constitution than mere idea or thought?

The individual soul should seek for an intimate union with the soul of the universe.