“ If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door, then. ”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). copy citation
Author | William James |
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Source | The Varieties of Religious Experience |
Topic | God grace miracle |
Date | 1902 |
Language | English |
Reference | |
Note | |
Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/621/621-h/621-h.html |
Context
“Such rapid abolition of ancient impulses and propensities reminds us so strongly of what has been observed as the result of hypnotic suggestion that it is difficult not to believe that subliminal influences play the decisive [pg 270] part in these abrupt changes of heart, just as they do in hypnotism.149 Suggestive therapeutics abound in records of cure, after a few sittings, of inveterate bad habits with which the patient, left to ordinary moral and physical influences, had struggled in vain. Both drunkenness and sexual vice have been cured in this way, action through the subliminal seeming thus in many individuals to have the prerogative of inducing relatively stable change. If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door, then. But just how anything operates in this region is still unexplained, and we shall do well now to say good-by to the process of transformation altogether,—leaving it, if you like, a good deal of a psychological or theological mystery,—and to turn our attention to the fruits of the religious condition, no matter in what way they may have been produced.150”
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