Admitting You're a Sinner

[vulcanlogician]

Are you concerned that..in his novel approach of calling that religion..he might lose the majority of religion, or the pulse, if you will..and be talking about something else instead?  t the beginnig, removing the cultural artifacts...that;s a hel of alot of the substance of what we take the term religion to sensibly mean or refer to.   Is it really still religion when you remove all of that, and the gods too?  

I'm pretty sure you gathered from the definition I provided that experiences of God count too, but you might not have because I intentionally emphasized the inclusion of the non-theistic dimension. So gods aren't necessarily removed, but yes, James doesn't consider theism essential to the religious experience. To explain himself on this account, he references Buddhism (most likely intending Theravada, but he does not specify) as a set of symbols which have a real existence to the practitioner-- yet they are not (and cannot be) verified by empirical investigations. In this he captures the essence of belief as it exists to the believer. 

While experienced most profoundly in solitude or contemplation, these symbols are nonetheless transmitted via doctrines and cultural means. To James, the origin of this body of symbols does not matter. What matters is how the adoption of these symbols impacts one's personal experience. I haven't gotten to his lecture on mysticism yet, but I remember reading an excerpt from it a while back. I recall that he recommends that if you have a mystical experience that you should count it as a valid experience, just like any other ordinary perception you might have. It's true but it's only true for you. You ought not, advises James, assume that your mystical experience has relevance to anyone else's life.

I suspect that James doesn't hold "cultural religion" in much higher esteem than you or I do (at least, he gives that vague impression with some of his statements). But he regards personal religious sentiments as more than just flashes of revelation. They are SUSTAINED attitudes about the universe and our place in it which come about due to reflections upon the divine, the transcendent reality. They are to be considered in higher regard than ordinary experiences of things.

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 Spinoza says: “I will analyze the actions and appetites of men as if it were a question of lines, of planes, and of solids.” And elsewhere he remarks that he will consider our passions and their properties with the same eye with which he looks on all other natural things, since the consequences of our affections flow from their nature with the same necessity as it results from the nature of a triangle that its three angles should be equal to two right angles. Similarly M. Taine, in the introduction to his history of English literature, has written: “Whether facts be moral or physical, it makes no matter. They always have their causes. There are causes for ambition, courage, veracity, just as there are for digestion, muscular movement, animal heat. Vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar.” When we read such proclamations of the intellect bent on showing the existential conditions of absolutely everything, we feel—quite apart from our legitimate impatience at the somewhat ridiculous swagger of the program, in view of what the authors are actually able to perform—menaced and negated in the springs of our innermost life. Such cold-blooded assimilations threaten, we think, to undo our soul’s vital secrets as if the same breath which should succeed in explaining their origin would simultaneously explain away their significance, and make them appear of no more preciousness, either, than the useful groceries of which M. Taine speaks. 

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The value of an lsd induced "religious" experience is, in that paradigm, functionally equivalent.  A sudden experience of the numinous can be..and often must be distinguished from "religion" - as they aren't in any way limited to religious people and obviously don;t always refer to anything we'd otherwise consider a religion.  

I haven't got to that part yet, but he does explore religious experiences as they might come via psychotropic substances. I doubt he is as thorough or informed as Tim Leary or Aldous Huxley on such matters...

I can manufacture that feeling with such intensity and reliability that I like to joke with people about having found zen at the bottom of a hole.  I put in the work, it's not actually natural talent.  Part of therapy.

(Imagine me as Lao Tzu or somebody)

A man who finds zen at the bottom of a hole
has not found zen, because he has not found the bottom of the hole.
But if he jokes about finding zen at the bottom of the hole,
because he knows he hasn't truly found zen,
then he has only found the bottom of the hole,
and therefore zen...