When we begin to talk about personal experience and subjective feelings, it would seem we are in the domain that Two Minds Theory calls the Intuitive System. James selected examples like that of George Fox (founder of the Quaker denomination of Christian Protestantism), who walked raving through the streets of an English town crying “Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield!” because he had experienced a vision of Christians martyred there by the Romans a thousand years previously (p. 8). And James specifically excluded the cooler, more logical mode of Narrative thought in a comparison between the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius and the anonymous Christian author of the 14th century Theologia Germanica: Although both writers urge their readers to go along with the natural order of things without struggling or complaining, “Marcus Aurelius agrees to the scheme [imposed by reality, while] the German theologian agrees with it.” Only a heartfelt emotional response, then, can qualify as a “religious experience” in James’s way of thinking. Philosophical beliefs or moral principles arising out of the Narrative mind won’t do the trick. On the other hand, apparently deity-free religions like Buddhism or Ralph Waldo Emerson’s belief in the divine order of nature do qualify as “religions” in James’s view, because they have an element of religious feeling that comes out of the Intuitive mind.
James was a strong believer in dualism of the mind: "It is notorious that facts [i.e., Narratives] are compatible with opposite emotional comments, since the same fact will inspire entirely different feelings in different persons, and at different times in the same person; and there is no rationally deducible connection between any outer fact and the sentiments it may happen to provoke. These have their source in another sphere of existence altogether, in the animal and spiritual region of the subject's being [i.e., the Intuitive mind]," (p. 150). James said that the relationship between religious experiences and the Narrative mind's religious beliefs is analogous to the relationship between a meal and its description on a menu: "a bill of fare with one real raisin on it instead of the word 'raisin,' with one real egg instead of the word 'egg,' might be an inadequate meal, but it would at least be a commencement of reality" (p. 500). James further said that the Narrative structures built on top of people's intuitive religious experiences, such as lists of doctrinal beliefs or instructions for specific religious practices, are a thin substitute for such 'reality': "Compared with this world of living individualized feelings, the world of generalized objects which the intellect contemplates is without solidity or life. As in stereoscopic or kinestoscopic pictures seen outside the instrument, the third dimension, the movement, the vital element are not there. We get a beautiful picture of an express train supposed to be moving, but where in the picture, as I have heard a friend say, is the energy or the fifty miles an hour?" (p. 502).
James was emphatic that only an Intuitive-level experiential religious faith is deserving of the name. "Rationalism [i.e., the Narrative system] insists that all our beliefs ought ultimately to find for themselves articulate grounds. Such grounds, for rationalism, must consist of four things: (1) definitely statable abstract principles; (2) definite facts of sensation; (3) definite hypotheses based on such facts; and (4) definite inferences logically drawn. ... On its positive side [rationalism] is surely a splendid intellectual tendency, for not only are all our philosophies fruits of it, but physical science (amongst other good things) is its result. Nevertheless, if we look on man's [sic] whole mental life as it exists, on the life of men that lies in them apart from their learning and science, and that they inwardly and privately follow, we have to confess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop logic, and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same, if your dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions. If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature [i.e., the Intuitive system] than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits" (p. 73). James illustrated the dominance of Intuitive-level experiences with a variety of quotations; I found this one particularly striking: "The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that He [God] was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two" (pp. 66-67). James summed up the difference between the Narrative and Intuitive modes of religious thought like this: "Instinct [Intuitive mind] leads, intelligence does but follow. If a person feels the presence of a living God after the fashion shown by my quotations, your critical arguments, be they ever so superior, will vainly set themselves to change his faith" (p. 74).
In his account of conversion experiences, James identified "soul-sickness" as a symptom of division between one's conscious thoughts and one's inner experiences, and suggested that the feeling of being "divided" between good intentions and undesired actions was the result of conflict between one's inner and outer thoughts -- a clear statement of what Two Minds Theory calls the "intention-behavior gap." In some cases conflict arises from an Intuitive sense of "not-right-ness" even when everything objectively seems to be going well, for instance in St. Augustine's account of his private misery even when to all outward appearances he was the life of the party (pp. 171-173). In other cases, religious conflict can arise even when in the midst of strongly positive Intuitive experiences, because of the Narrative awareness that things fade, alternatives exclude, and all lives at last end in death (p. 141). In another example of two-minds sense of being separate from one's own experience, James quoted Alphone Daudet's account of his brother's death: "The first time that I perceived that I was two [separate minds in one person] was at the death of my brother Henri, when my father cried out so dramatically 'he is dead, he is dead!' While my first self wept, my second self thought, 'how truly given was that cry, how fine it would be at the theatre'" (p. 167). All of us have experienced these subjective "divisions" within our own minds, which Two Minds Theory suggests are due to real neuroanatomical divisions between the Intuitive and the Narrative systems, each of which has its own areas of strength.
James argued that this type of Narrative-Intuitive conflict can never be directly resolved through reason or effort. Instead, it tends to be resolved only through the gradual emergence of a different type of experience that also arises from the Intuitive mind. "To say that a man is 'converted' means, in these terms, that religious ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness, now take a central place, and that religious aims form the habitual centre of his energy" (p. 196). Or, as I suggested in a blog post about narrative "reframing" techniques, new Narratives can be quite powerful, but only to the extent that a person actually believes them. "We can make ourselves more faithful to a belief of which we have the rudiments, but we cannot create a belief out of whole cloth when our perception actively assures us of its opposite. The better mind proposed to us comes in that case in the form of a pure negation of the only mind we have, and we cannot actively will a pure negation" (p. 212). A narrative by itself is a cold and abstract thing; the experiential, Intuitive level of belief is what makes a Narrative an animating principle in a person's life. James proposed the following two-minds model of how a person acquires religious beliefs: "There is thus a conscious and voluntary [Narrative] way and an involuntary and unconscious [Intuitive] way in which mental results may get accomplished; and we find both ways exemplified in the history of conversion, which Starbuck calls the volitional type and the type by self-surrender respectively. ... Of the volitional type of conversion it would be easy to give examples, but they are as a rule less interesting than those of the self-surrender type, in which the subconscious effects are more abundant and often startling. ... Even in the most voluntarily built-up sort of regeneration there are passages of partial self-surrender interposed; and in the great majority of all cases, when the will has done its uttermost towards brining one close to the complete unification aspired after, it seams that the very last step must be left to other forces and performed without the help of its activity" (pp. 206-208). James said that "in the volitional type the regenerative change is usually gradual, and consists in the building up, piece by piece, of a new set of moral and spiritual habits" (p. 206), echoing Aristotle's position on building up virtue through habit. Yet practice alone only points you in the right direction, according to James's view: "In any terms, the crisis [of conversion] described is the throwing of our conscious selves upon the mercy of powers which, whatever they may be, are more ideal than we are actually, and make for our redemption" (p. 210).
In his own life James leaned more on his Narrative mind despite his strong appreciation of Intuitive experiences. He confessed to a lack of strong religious feeling in his own life: “there are moments of sentimental and mystical experience … that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to every one; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them” (p. 16). In a letter to a friend, he wrote, "My personal position is simple. I have no living sense of commerce with a God. I envy those who have, for I know that the addition of such a sense would help me greatly. The Divine, for my active life, is limited to impersonal and abstract concepts which, as ideals, interest and determine me, but do so faintly in comparison with what a feeling of God might effect if I had one. ... Yet there is something in me which makes response when I hear utterances from that quarter made by others. I recognize the deeper voice. Something tells me: -- 'thither lies truth'" (p. xxiv). James thus characterized his own religious thinking as being primarily at the Narrative level. Yet the narrative he constructed about the elements that are consistent across multiple religious traditions emphasizes Intuitive experiences. In it, a person "identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself, and does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is coterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality [i.e., God], which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck" (p. 508). It is common among dualists to separate the mind into a "higher" and "lower" sphere of thought. What's unusual in James's analysis is the linkage of the Intuitive mind with "higher" thinking and connection to the divine. Historically, dualists from Descartes to Daniel Kahneman have identified the "true self" or "higher thinking" with the logical and language-based Narrative mind; James flips this assumption on its head.
A clear risk of James's classification system, and the reason that Intuitive thinking has historically been seen as dubious, is that emotional responses can arise from unhealthy sources just as much as from healthy ones. One might be able to identify pathological roots for many religious sentiments: “medical materialism finishes up St. Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Theresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. George Fox’s discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disordered colon. Carlyle’s organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastronomic-duodenal catarrh” (p. 13). James begs this question by arguing that the function of religious behavior can be examined independent of its origins -- “by their fruits you will know them.” But I think we, who are by this point in history deeply submerged in medical materialism, should still grapple with the point. In James’s time there was still a strict hierarchy where reason (the Narrative mind) was superior to emotion (the Intuitive mind). Psychology continues to move us beyond this all-or-none type of thinking, by studies showing that the Narrative mind is less reasonable than we would like, and through demonstrations of the Intuitive mind’s particularly brilliance for solving problems without benefit of logical thought. It seems undoubtedly true that Intuitive thinking can lead us astray, as in the case of biases and snap judgments that are later proven wrong. Yet it’s also true that the Intuitive mind can save us from ourselves, as in the reflex arc that removes the hand from a hot stove before we consciously experience pain. So to my way of thinking the origin of Intuitive-level experiences does matter, but I agree with James that intuitions can be positive rather than pathological.
James acknowledges the risk of pathological influences on religious thoughts from a religious level of analysis: “the problem how to discriminate between such messages and experiences as were really divine miracles, and such others as the demon in his malice was able to counterfeit, … has always been a difficult one to solve, needing all the sagacity and experience of the best directors of conscience” (p. 20). Similarly, "the believers in the non-natural character of sudden conversion have had practically to admit that there is no unmistakable class-mark distinctive of all true converts. The super-normal incidents, such as voices and visions and overpowering impressions of the meaning of suddenly presented scripture texts, the melting emotions and tumultuous affections connected with the crisis of change, may all come by way of nature, or worse still, be counterfeited by Satan" (p. 238). In part this is where James’s focus on “fruits” is helpful, insofar as an adaptive behavior suggests an adaptive origin. But some counter-cultural behaviors like George Fox’s rant against Litchfield might nevertheless have positive value if they spur societal change. James’s idea of consulting with “directors of conscience” is another option, using the wisdom of the group to determine the truth or value of beliefs — an approach to moral reasoning that’s similar to the role of peer review in science.
Regardless of this difficulty, James emphatically argues that we cannot discount religious phenomena just because they originate in the Intuitive mind. In fact, he says, the Intuitive mind is simply the way in which higher powers interact with the human mind, rather than through the Narrative means of logic and reason: "if there be higher powers able to impress us, they may get access to us only through the subliminal door" (p. 243, emphasis added). "The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely 'understandable' world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world. ... Yet the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world" (pp. 515-16). The Intuitive mind, for James, is more than a set of automatic mechanisms that produce cognitive biases and reflex responses. It is instead the path to connection with a wider universe, the way in which "the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come" (p. 515).
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