On William Jame’s Religious Thoughts

Religion can be divided into two different parts,namely,individual religion and institutional religion.Individual religion is prior to institutional religion,the former of which is more important and more fundamental than the latter,when viewed from historical and theoretical perspectives Individual religion is about believers’ whole reactions of life,including their experience,emotion,willing,knowledge and behavior.Influenced by his early spiritual life,James had developed an individual religion theory.Irrational elements,such as individual emotions,will,consciousness,were highly emphasized in his religion thoughts.James analyzed notion of the god and religious phenomena of conversion,enlightenment,divine revelation,etc.,in virtue of his early theory of consciousness.The stream of consciousness consists of successful consciousness fields,each of which has its center and fringe Ordinary consciousness fields are surrounded by sub-consciousness areas,but ordinary consciousness are unware of their existence.What makes his thoughts unique is that he takes sub-consciousness as the domain of god.Enlightenment comes when some implicit activities in sub-consciousness break into the ordinary consciousness of manConsciousness is personal,but consciousness emerges by itself,thus there’s a problem here:is the subject within or out of domain of consciousness?This problem has been solved in his theory of radical empiricism.Radical experience is understood as an existential home for human beings,thus it belongs to nobody.Religious experience serves as a link between consciousness and radical experience.The contact between religion’s object and person exists within religious experience God means "MORE" that is connected with person’s sub-consciousness.Person feel like being controlled by a great power when"MORE" influences one’s sub-consciousness and the great power break into ordinary consciousness field then become center of the field.The course of all these is pre-reflective and empiricalJames had investigated problems,such as whether god exists,how god reveal itself,through his pragmatist view.He commented that god is true and real as long as god proves himself useful James thought we emotionally rely on a substantial god,with whom our emotions will have their concrete contents,which means we can get rid of feelings of emptiness and pessimism as god indeed exists.To put it in another way,as long as god make people happy and feel full of hope,he and the redemption will be both proved valid.As a matter of fact,god also reveals himself in the practical life,especially when life is intolerable and a redemption is immediately needed.However,god cannot appear casually because he needs some concrete and emergent affair as a stimulation.God cannot do whatever he wants,thus,god is a limited god...