Spirituality and Mysticism

Abstract

But this institutional aspect of religion, so ambiguous in its value, is only half the story. The other aspect comes under the general heading of spirituality and mysticism. The general twentieth-century concentration on the remarkable and extraordinary in this area was heavily influenced by William James’s monumental The Varieties of Religious Experience. This continues to be an indispensable and highly accessible and fascinating book, as widely read now as when it was first published over a hundred years ago. But we do not need today to focus to the same extent on those more dramatic cases.