# Case I explained — The Varieties of Religious Experience

> Chapter companion for The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

## What happens

A personal account of healing through mental treatment. The narrator describes a long illness that led to physical limitations, and their subsequent experience with a silent mental healer in Boston. After about ten days, they experienced a sudden and marked surge of energy and improvement, which proved permanent. The narrator reflects on the nature of this change, attributing it not to conscious suggestion or imagination, but to a telepathic reception of a healthier mental attitude on an unconscious level. They conclude that the mind can exert a vast influence over disease and that the mechanisms of mental healing are still poorly understood.

## Themes in this chapter

### The Role of Feeling and Emotion

The chapter highlights a sudden, felt sense of energy and power as central to the healing experience, rather than intellectual conviction.

### Empiricism and Existential Analysis

The narrator attempts to empirically analyze their own experience, weighing evidence and considering various explanations for the healing.

## Character check-ins

### William James

The narrator of the case, who describes his own experience of illness and healing.

## Key lines

> I sat quietly with the healer for half an hour each day, at first with no result; then, after ten days or so, I became quite suddenly and swiftly conscious of a tide of new energy rising within me, a sense of power to pass beyond old halting-places, of power to break the bounds that, though often tried before, had long been veritable walls about my life, too high to climb.

After ten days of silent sessions with the healer, I suddenly felt a surge of energy and a new sense of capability that allowed me to overcome long-standing limitations.

_Describes the sudden and transformative moment of healing._

> I have always felt that I had abundant evidence to justify (to myself, at least) the conclusion that I came to then, and since have held to, that the physical change which came at that time was, first, the result of a change wrought within me by a change of mental state; and, secondly, that that change of mental state was not, save in a very secondary way, brought about through the influence of an excited imagination, or a consciously received suggestion of an hypnotic sort.

I believe my physical improvement was caused by a change in my mental state, and that this mental change was not primarily due to imagination or hypnotic suggestion.

_The narrator's core conclusion about the mechanism of healing._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_varieties_of_religious_experience_se/chapters/case-i
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_varieties_of_religious_experience_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_varieties_of_religious_experience_se/chapters