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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: first lecture: phenomena are best understood when placed within
their series, studied in their germ and in their over-ripe decay,
and compared with their exaggerated and degenerated kindred. The
range of mystical experience is very wide, much too wide for us
to cover in the time at our disposal. Yet the method of serial
study is so essential for interpretation that if we really wish
to reach conclusions we must use it. I will begin, therefore,
with phenomena which claim no special religious significance, and
end with those of which the religious pretensions are extreme.
The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be
that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula
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