Steps 4 & 5: Re-Joining the Human Race

Fr. Bill and William James author Paul S. continue their discussion. Pauls’ chapter on the 4th and 5th Steps is titled: Releasing a Dam of Tears and Finding Tender Mercy. The discussion centers around the “sick soul” diving deep into its sense of “rottenness” to discover a soul that was already there and just waiting for us to set free.

Show Notes:

Paul’s book titled “We Agnostics: William James…” is available here: https://rb.gy/rpvnlr 

The original Varieties of Religious Experience is available free as a pdf: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/621

An excellent biography of William James is by Robert D. Richardson. His section covering James’ delivery of the lectures that formed the book VRE is helpful in putting James’ work in clear context. It’s available here: https://rb.gy/khpbf5

Paul referenced Viktor Frankl’s book: Man’s Search for Meaning. Available as pdf: https://rb.gy/1byuop

Here’s the passage Fr. Bill referenced from Wordsworth’s poem, Intimations of Immortality:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy; (lines 58–70)

Fr. Bill referenced Jung’s Answer to Job: https://rb.gy/desvhq 

For a brilliant analysis of Jung’s Answer to Job: Edward Edinger’s Transformation of the God Image: https://www.amazon.com/Transformation-God-Image-Elucidation-Jungs-Answer/dp/0919123554/