The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

William James was a philosopher and psychologist, and The Varieties of Religious Experience, published in 1902, is his own foundational text based on the Gifford Lectures he delivered at Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902, examining religious experience as a psychological phenomenon across many traditions and individual accounts. Its influence is real and lasting, shaping how the psychology and philosophy of religion subsequently treated firsthand religious experience as a subject of serious study. Its limit is that James worked from the personal testimonies and psychological theory available at the turn of the twentieth century, so a claim needing current psychological or neuroscientific research on religious experience needs a modern source alongside this foundational text.