Psychology of mystical experience

William James

1842 – 1910

William James was a Harvard psychologist and philosopher, the founding figure of pragmatism, and a pioneering investigator of religious and mystical consciousness. His 1902 The Varieties of Religious Experience, drawn from his Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, systematically examined personal religious and mystical states and became a foundational text for the psychology of religion and the academic study of mysticism.