Modern man has disproved many religious claims. Many areas of life that
formerly were believed to be under the control of religious forces, have now
been totally secularised. Primitive man tried to cure diseases by witchcraft;
we have learned to trust diagnosis and medicine. The ancient Babylonians
studied the stars because they feared their secret powers; astronomers today
achieve much more by mathematics and improved means of observation. While the
alchemist of the Middle Ages confused superstition with chemical experiments,
the present day chemist relies exclusively on scientific principles. Rains,
which in former days were ascribed to a special blessing from God or the magic
skill of a rainmaker, are now predicted by meteorologists with uncanny
precision. Religion is no longer recognised as a causal factor in most areas of
every day life. The false claims made by religion in the past have been
unmasked by science. At least, so say scientists, with a good amount of
justification.
It is hardly surprising that all this should have led to an all-out attack on religion itself. Sigmund Freud, who is rightly considered the founder of the modern science of psychology, wanted to discard religion altogether. “Religion”, he stated, “is a neurosis, a form of infantilism. It should be overcome by the acquisition of a scientific outlook on life. The world is no playground for children.”(1) For Freud, God does not exist and he believes it to be high time that all people should become adults by waking up to this fact.
What then about people’s religious feelings? What about their awe of mystery, their desire to meditate and reflect, their need to pray, their manifold religious experiences? Is there no substance in any of these at all? Freud says: No! What happens is purely psychological. Religious thoughts or feelings are products of misguided imagination. Religious experiences do not respond to any outside reality; they are subjective “projections” of the mind.
Freud, supported by many psychologists even today, reconstructs the origin of the religious neuorosis in the following way. As a child each person depends completely on his father. Father knows everything. Father protects from danger. Father gives orders. For the child the world is full of mysteries and dangers; he solves them all by entrusting himself fully to his father’s care. Later on in life, even though a person is supposed to be an adult, he or she may again have the experience of not being able to cope with reality. The forces of nature may seem overpowering; the riddles of existence cause fear and anxiety. Because a person may not feel strong enough to face up to these problems alone, he or she may then revert to the solution of his or her childhood days by creating an imaginary Father to whom one can entrust one’s destiny. “He calls back from his memory the image of his father, of such exaggerated importance in his childhood days. He raises this image to divinity, and establishes it mentally as something present and real.”(2) Organised religion is a collective neurosis in which people mutually reinforce one another’s subjective imaginations.
Religion, says Erich Fromm, is an illusion. Its material is taken from man’s own individual experience as a child.
“Being confronted with dangerous, uncontrollable and un-understandable forces within and outside of himself, he remembers, as it were, and regresses to an experience he had as a child, when he felt protected by a father whom he thought to be of superior wisdom and strength, and whose love and protection he could win by obeying his commands and avoiding transgression of his prohibitions.” (3)
I venture the guess that few thinking people today would rule out God or religion as apodictically as Freud or Fromm have done. But many would agree with them on two points: they would concede that some forms of (misguided) religiosity thrive on infantilism; and they would readily admit that it is difficult to distinguish a genuine religious experience from a spurious one.
J. C. Flugel, for instance, points out that wishful thinking often gives rise to self-deception, such as we find in day dreams, neuroses, myths and superstitions. Man’s wishful thinking for something like God to exist is undeniable. This psychological need for God does not prove he doesn’t exist, yet it makes it more difficult to accept him. God could be just the product of wishful thinking. Similarly any so called spiritual experience could be just a flight of fancy.(4)
I believe that we have hit here on a very real problem. Freud’s treatment of God as a mere mental projection is obviously preposterous. But having granted this, we have to admit that psychological needs exert a strong influence on religion and that religion expresses itself first and foremost in man’s psychology. A religious experience is always of necessity also a psychological happening. A true perception of God’s presence, which stirs the depths of our personality, may resemble (at least superficially) the state of mind of a person who is psychologically unbalanced,
For people travelling in the Sahara it is a well-attested phenomenon that at times they see on the horizon the vision of a distant oasis. The oasis may look deceptively real: a lake of water surrounded by palm trees. Such a “fata morgana” is, however, an illusion and weary travellers are ill-advised to leave the beaten track in an attempt to pursue it. How can a traveller distinguish between a real oasis and a chimerical “fata morgana”? Fortunately for the traveller he need not persuade himself that every oasis he sets his eyes on is a projection of the mind (as Freud might have him believe); yet his problem remains: when an oasis comes into his field of vision. how shall he know whether to trust it or not ?
Such is the “fata-morgana” problem of religious experience. Some people maintain it cannot be solved. If our own eyes deceive us, what eyes have we got to correct them with ? This is the way Ch. Berg approaches the question. Religious experiences may be true or untrue, he says, but whether true or not, the evidence will remain inconclusive. We can always explain them in a natural way without having to invoke external supernatural factors.(5) Others - rightly in my view - maintain that the fata morgana problem can be solved, Man isn’t as helpless as he seems to be. He is not condemned to go through life with the continuous fear that all he sees might be an illusion.
At this stage it may be good to remind ourselves of the kind of thing we are talking about. To be a little more specific and concrete in our further discussion, I would like to introduce here two examples of persons who claimed to have a religious experience.
J. Trevor narrates the following incident in his autobiography:
“One brilliant Sunday morning .... 1 went up into the hills with my stick and my dog. In the loveliness of the morning, and the beauty of the hills and valleys.
I soon lost my sense of sadness and regret. For nearly an hour I walked along the road to the 'Cat and Fiddle', and then returned. On the way back, suddenly, without warning, I felt that I was in heaven-an inward state of peace and joy and assurance, indescribably intense, accompanied with a sense of being bathed in a warm glow of light, as though the external condition had brought about the internal effect-a feeling of having passed beyond the body, though the scene around me stood out more clearly and as if nearer to me than before by reason of the illumination in the midst of which I seemed to be placed. This deep emotion lasted, though with decreasing strength, until I reached home, and for some time after, only gradually passing away.” (6)
A certain lady from Brussels, who does not want to reveal her name and whom I will therefore call Mrs. Anonymous, claims in a recent mimeographed publication that she frequently heard Christ speak to her. I will here print an excerpt from a conversation she had with Christ on the 28th of July 1973:
Christ: “I and your television, we do not go well together.”
Mrs. A: “But my dear Jesus, I need some relaxation. After all, I live on my own, I rarely go out, I watch T. V. only occasionally and I avoid bad films altogether. You know that, don’t you ?”
Christ: “I am your relaxation.”
Mrs. A: “Lord, priests and religious watch T. V. Should they too drop the practice ?”
Christ : “Yes, it alienates them from me and makes them lose their souls, for their mind is distracted and their heart no longer belongs to me. Their religious life and their life of prayer has become a routine. They lost their love, and sacrifice has become an empty word which they discard with disdain. They love pleasure and their personal satisfaction. They deny God all they have promised him. A soul dedicated to God, as is implied in the word dedication, should give up everything for me....”(7)
We have no reason to doubt the sincerity of these two claims. But how can we know whether they are valid? Could Mr. Trevor or Mrs. A have had an authentic experience of the Divine ? Or were both of them, or either of them. suffering from hallucinations? Could they themselves recognise and establish the authenticity of their experiences? This is the “fata-morgana” problem.
We have come to appreciate the valuable services of the different branches of science. When we get stuck we turn to them for guidance. A farmer will have his soil examined in a laboratory to find out what fertilizer will produce the best crops. The salesman does market research to determine how a new product can best be presented to the public. The answers to certain ability tests can now be evaluated with the help of a computer. We might be tempted to think that the modern sciences could also help us solve the fata morgana problem.
However, this proves a false hope. The modern sciences can render some service in preparatory work, but when it really comes to the crunch, they let us down. They fall short of the reach of religion. The more specific the instrurnent, the more limited its scope. The sciences are carefully manufactured instruments which by their very nature are limited in scope. An X-ray unit helps us detect cases of tuberculosis or lung cancer; it cannot write a poem or describe a beautiful landscape.
Modern sciences start from verifiable facts, facts that can be established by observation and measurement. If sufficient facts are assembled about a certain aspect of reality, an interpretation of these facts may lead to the formulation of a hypothesis. When the hypothesis has been tested and confirmed in experimentaI situations, it may be accepted as a conclusion that will be the stepping-stone to further research, to other hypotheses and scientific conclusions. But precisely because of this rigid methodology, a modern science excludes other aspects of reality from its purview.
Take, for instance, the experience of happiness and joy. What can be more important in human life? Yet the modern sciences cannot penetrate its core. Biology and medicine can measure the accelerated heart beat and even chemical changes in certain centres of the brain. Anthropology can describe the cultural forms through which joy may be expressed in different societies. Psychology can analyse some of the mental processes involved But all these are only observations about the external manifestations of joy. They still, somehow, miss the essence of joy. For joy is a uniquely human experience, a dance of body and mind. It springs from a knowledge of well-being. It involves, in its deepest roots, an acceptance of self, of exislence. We know what joy is only because we are human beings ourselves. Even a scientist does not know what joy is by the observations of his science, but on!y because he himself is a human being.
There is an interesting parallel to this in the famous discussion between the two Chinese philosophers, Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu (5th century B.C.). When these two were crossing the Hao river, Chuang remarked how happily the fishes were jumping about in the water. Hui challenged him: “Since you are not a fish, how do you know that these fishes are happy?” The two then got into a lively argument which Chuang rounded off by stating: “I know the joy of fishes in the river through my own joy, as I go walking along the same river.” Because we ourselves are alive, we can capture the meaning of what it feels like to be alive. Joy is an aspect of living.
The modern sciences cannot judge about good or evil. They enable man to perform heart transplants or abortions, to produce energy stations for industry or neutron bombs for war. The sciences by themselves cannot evaluate whether any of these things are good for man, not even whether they can be morally justified. But surely the ethics and morality of what we do cannot be brushed aside as of little consequence to ourselves and society?
There is another facet of reality that escapes the observation of the sciences. It is the reason for things, the purpose of their existence. This is true even on a small scale. When someone gives a kidney so that another person may live, the motivation of the deed: compassion, the love of the person concerned, or just the financial profit resulting from it, are beyond the ken of medicine. Similarly in a much bigger way, the secular sciences are not able to answer the questions concerning the why and wherefore of existence itself. Scientific observations give us much information on laws governing the universe; they shed no light at all on its purpose or meaning.
The secular sciences, however useful they may be in many respects, fail us where ultimate questions or deeper human values are concerned. I have elaborated this at length, partly to discredit Freud’s too glib assertions, partly to point out that these sciences cannot provide the norm for distinguishing genuine from imaginary religious experiences. Freud was wrong because he reduced the world of man to whatever falls under the scope of scientific observation. We would basically make the same mistake today if we were to think that the secular sciences are able to judge about the validity of our philosophical or religious insights. What they can do at the most is to function at times as “negative norms”. If a psychological test proves that a certain person suffers from hallucinations we will be warned by this not to attach any value to his claims to receiving supernatural visions. But psychology by itself will never be able to state categorically: “This is a genuine vision, that is not!”
To tackle our problem in a positive fashion, it is necessary to work out the value of human perception. Man is gifted with intelligence. Man’s mind is constructed in such a way that it is geared to perceiving and interpreting reality around him, Man does not only reach the outside world through sight, hearing and touch; he also judges persons, objects and events in a continuous process of scrutiny and evaluation. Man’s survival depends on intelligent perception, and millions of years of evolutionary history have gone into equipping him with the faculty of being able to judge things and to judge them critically.
Of course, our perception is not entirely unconditioned. We do not see things as an indiscriminate blur of colours and lines, we do not hear an unstructured confusion of sounds. Whatever we perceive we perceive within a “frame of reference” (Abt and Bellak).(9) This frame of reference is a way in which reality around us is already structured in a relevant manner. The frame of reference in which we perceive things is partly determined by inborn traits, partly acquired when we imbibe culture or order our own experiences. The language we have learned to speak helps us to define experience in a particular way. In every perception our memory is present as the rules of the game are present in a game of tennis (Politzer).(l0) This frame of reference has also been called the “hypothesis of perception” (Bruner and Postman) (11) or the “existential perspective” of our world (De Waelhens).(12)
The frame of reference helps us to interpret the meaning of a situation, but it may also distort perception. Suppose we enter a church filled with people. While our eyes are still getting used to the subdued light inside, we see a person vested in a chasuble approaching the lectionary. Immediately our mind jumps to a conclusion, to an interpretation of what is going on: “The local parish priest is going to read from the Bible! ” This “hypothesis” of what is going on is due to our frame of reference: to the associations we have acquired about church, chasuble, lectionary, and so on. However, as we continue to observe things, we may find we have been mistaken. The person wearing the chasuble may turn out to be not the local parish priest, but an Episcopalian minister, in fact an ordained woman priest. Although she is approaching the lectionary, she may not read from the Bible, but from a collection of patristic writings. By continued perception we test the hypotheses suggested by our frame of reference. We either find them confirmed by further evidence, or reject them in favour of a better interpretation of events. This is the way perception works in life.
H M. M. Fortmann, who published a four-volume study on modern literature regarding religious perception, suggests the following two principles as a key to solving the “fate morgana” problem: (1) Perception itself is never wrong (although inadequate perception may lead to wrong interpretations). (2) Perception itself is the norm for judging perception. (13) When we thought we were seeing the local parish priest on his way to the lectern to read from the Bible, it wasn’t our perception that was wrong, because what we actually saw was the chasuble. The rest was interpretation. To correct our mistake, all we had to do was to continue examining the situation. It was our continued perception that judyed the validity of our earlier assumptions. Following the lead given by Merleau-Ponty and other philosophers. Fortmann demonstrates that this is a far more satisfactory approach to human knowledge than the restrictive theory proposed bv Freud.
The world around us is constantly sending messages to us. Who are we to say that these messages should only be taken seriously if they are of a particular kind, if they can be observed by the secular sciences? Reality is speaking to us in many more ways than can be understood by a telescope or a computer. Also, if these messages come to us from reality there can be nothing wrong with them or with our perception of them. We can only go wrong by giving them a wrong interpretation. This should be corrected, not by denying the messages or curtailing them, but by critical further perception. To deny the validity of perception itself is to strike at the root of man’s contacts with reality.
If, in a particular situation, we have the impression that something unusual is happening to us, that something of greater value is communicated to us, or in other words, if we feel we may have a supernatural experience, we should not react by rejecting the possibility of such an experience. Rather we should critically examine what is happening, being at all times determined to accept the truth. Imaginary experiences will always leave doubts; a real perception of the Divine stands up to careful scrutiny Whenever God touches us in some way or other, when he comes face-to-face with us in however passing a fashion, we know it and the confirmation of its truth will ultimately lie in the experience itself. The final confirmation of seeing is seeing itself.
F. B. Pratt uses an interesting parable in this context. Imagine, he says, that on a planet not far from the brilliant sun there live millions of intelligent beings. Although they all move about in perpetual sunlight, they are generally not aware of this because something has gone wrong in the development of their eyes and they are blind. Only a few of these beings have eyes that can see. One day one of these chosen few opens his eyes and receives light sensations. He reports that he can see the sun. One psychologist among those beings, who is blind himself, comes to examine the phenomenon. “So”, he says, “you claim you see the sun after opening your eyes? Well, the matter is clear. The fact that you see light sensations is not due to there being a sun outside, but only to the opening of your eyes. By opening your eyes you have projected your wish to see a sun. The sun you see is imaginary and a product of your mind.” But the man who can see insists: “I do see the sun.” “Is that so?” says the psychologist. “Well, see if you can still see it with your eyes shut. Again, attempt the opposite: see if you fail to see it with your eyes open. No? It doesn’t work? Well, point out to me a single point in your experience not consistent with my psychological explanation. You can’t? Well, then it is clear that the sun does not exist.”(14)
Our modern psychologists were not the first to discover the possibility of mistaken religious experiences. The question, “How am I to know if this comes from God?” is as old as religion itself. When the farmer’s son Gideon (1050 BC) felt called by God to lead the revolution that would liberate his people from Midianite oppression, he struggled to find the truth. “Give me some proof that you are really the Lord”(Jdg 6, 17). Scripture was well aware of the problem.
One situation in which the question arose was the occasional occurrence of false prophets. Some deceivers or religious maniacs might claim to have received a message from God. The Book of Deuteronomy gives two norms by which such unauthorised prophets may be unmasked. The first norm states that his predictions must be substantiated by facts.
“You may wonder how you can tell when a prophet’s message does not come from the Lord. If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and what he says does not come true, then it is not the Lord’s message. That prophet has spoken on his own authority, and you are not to fear him” Deut 18, 21-22
False prophecy can also be recognised by its deviation from officially revealed and generally accepted religious truths. God will not contradict himself.
“A prophet or an interpreter of dreams may promise a miracle or a wonder in order to lead you to worship and serve gods that you have not worshipped before. Even if what he promises comes true, do not pay any attention to him.... Such a man is evil and is trying to lead you away from the life that the Lord has commanded you to live.” Deut 13. 1-2. 5
These negative norms still have their validity today. We can be sure that religious experiences have to be rejected if they contradict either established fact or the revealed truths of faith.
But what about the prophet himself? How could he know whether it was truly God speaking to him? The answer given by the Old Testament is very much in agreement with what we have seen in the previous section about direct perception. The prophet knows it is God because the experience is so overwhelming that he cannot deny its reality even if he wanted to. Amos, who was just an ordinary shepherd in the village of Tekoa (750 BC) and who was forced, much against his liking, to preach in the country of Judah, explains it as follows:
“When a lion roars, who can avoid being afraid ?
When the sovereign Lord speaks, who can avoid proclaiming his message ?” Am 3,8
Just as one cannot help trembling with fear when a lion roars, so one cannot help responding to God when he speaks to us. Jeremiah testifies to the same thing. God’s word is irresistible. Frustrated by the fierce opposition he met on all sides, he had often been on the point of giving up his religious role.
“But when I say, ‘I will forget the Lord and no longer speak in his name’, then your message is like a fire burning deep within me. I try my best to hold it in, but can no longer keep it back.” Jer 20, 9
What did Jesus say about it ? Did Jesus give any norms by which we may distinguish true from false religious experiences? Although Jesus did not explicitly and directly speak about the psychological problem that is so characteristic of our own age and which was transformed by Freud into his projection theory, Jesus made some statements from which we can deduce his attitude. I believe that Jesus’ view may be summarised in these words: “When I am revealing myself to you, it is something that happens in your heart. Do not expect extraordinary signs and miracles to authenticate my presence. If you are unprejudiced and keep an open mind, you will see by the effects produced in your life that it is me and not an illusion.”
Miracles may sometimes prepare the way for faith; they could never take its place. Jesus always demanded that people should accept him on account of himself, on account of what they had seen in him or heard from him, not merely on account of a miracle. The inhabitants of Sychar at first came to meet Jesus because of what the Samaritan woman had told them; this initial response changed into real faith when they experienced Jesus himself. “Now we believe because we ourselves have heard him and we know that he really is the Saviour of the world” (Jn 4, 42). When Jesus told Nathanael that he had seen him under the fig tree (alluding to an incident known only to Nathanael himself), the man was so impressed that he exclaimed, “You are the son of God!” But Jesus did not accept this confession as real faith. “Do you believe just because I told you I saw you when you were under the fig-tree ? You will see much greater things than this! .... You will see heaven open and God's angels going up and coming down on the Son of Man” (Jn 1, 50-51). Jesus was not referring to some kind of strange vision Nathanael was to have in the future. No, he was telling Nathanael that he would see for himself how God was at work in Jesus’ life. His faith was to be based on this experience.
The Pharisees demanded that Jesus produce a miracle to prove that God was with him. Jesus refused categorically. “No such proof shall be given” (Mk 8, 12). On another occasion he said, “The only sign that may be given is the sign of Jonah” (Mt 16, 4). By this sign of Jonah Jesus did not refer to the Resurrection (as is done elsewhere, in the Gospel; Mt 12, 40). Rather, as the people of Nineveh had to believe Jonah’s words without miracles to prove them, so Jesus expected his contemporaries to perceive God at work in him. The Pharisees were fools to attach such importance to external signs. That is not the way the kingdom of God works. God does not make his presence felt in colourful visions or exterior sounds. “The Kingdom of God does not come in such a way as to be seen. No one will say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is’; because the kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17, 20). Jesus was exasperated with the Pharisees who, as spiritual men, should have been able to discern spiritual signs, “You can predict the weather by looking at the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs concerning these times! ” (Mt 16, 3). There were occasions when Jesus went beyond such complaints. He felt the Pharisees were deliberately refusing to recognise that it was God’s spirit that filled him with power (Mt 12, 28). By hardening their hearts they closed the door to faith and conversion. People can be forgiven any sin ...., but whoever says evil things against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven” (Mt 12, 31). “If you were (just) blind, you would not be guilty. But since you claim that you can see (and thus choose to be blind). this means that you are guilty” (Jn 9, 41).
To perceive the kingdom of heaven we need to be unprejudiced. We need to keep our eyes sensitive to the radiance of God’s presence. “When your eyes are sound, your whole body is full of light; but when your eyes are no good, your whole body will be in darkness. Make certain then, that the light in you is not darkness” (Lk 11, 34-35). We should respond with the open-armed spontaneity of a child (Mk 10, 15), not with the sophistication of a man aware of his learning (Mt 11, 25).
If pressed further about any specific marks by which to distinguish the right kind of religious experience from the wrong one, Jesus would undoubtedly have pointed to what he said regarding true and false prophets. These can be distinguished, he said, by the effects they produce. The norm Jesus gives here is much more comprehensive than the ones we found in the Old Testament. For Jesus is referring not only to the contents of the prophecy, but to their over-all results.
“Thorn bushes do not bear grapes, and briars do not bear figs. A healthy tree bears good fruit, but a poor tree bears bad fruit. A heaIthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a poor tree cannot bear good fruit.” Mt 7. 16-18
If a religious experience confuses and disturbs, if it results in anxiety or bitterness, it cannot be from God. But if it fills us with joy and peace, if it consistently helps to make us find happiness and meaning in life, we can be sure that it derives from God who is the source of all good.
Freud’s contention that religious experiences are little more than subjective projections of the mind is totally unacceptable. Freud and others who defend his train of thought, overlook the limited nature of scientific observation. The highest fulfilment of a human personality demands an openness and response to the ultimate meaning of our existence. Religion is a valid and objective aspect of life.
We also disagree with C. H. Berg and others who maintain that religious experiences can never be proved simply because we will always find that a psychological explanation can equally well account for the facts. This would place man in a continuous fata-morgana complex with no possibility of ascertaining whether his impressions are true or false. Basically this position amounts to distrust in human perception. The answer, confirmed both by human experience and reflection, is simple and radical: Man’s perception can be trusted; even though inadequate perception can lead to errors and mistakes, perception itself is never wrong; the norm for judging perception is perception itself. This means that if we have a true religious experience, we are able to recognise it as such when are both open-minded and critical.
Hallucinations do exist. One way of spotting them is by applying the so-called negative norms. The man in the desert who unexpectedly sees an oasis will be wary of trusting his eyes for a number of reasons: he may find that no such oasis is indicated on his map; he knows that light reflected on a mixture of heated air and dust can produce images resembling water. In the same way we will distrust religious experiences if we are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or if we go through a period of emotional unbalance. We will also treat with the greatest suspicion whatever is in conflict with what we know about God and religion from reliable sources, Religious experiences cannot be genuine if they contradict good taste, common sense or sound Christian doctrine. Experiences that unsettle us, make us unhappy, that rob us of devotion to God or peace with ourselves, cannot be from God.
The positive norms for recognising a genuine religious experience are twofold. First of all, the nature of the experience itself should be such that it is compelling. When God’s hand touches us, we cannot fail to know it. Secondly, we will recognise its true origin by the beneficial influence on our lives. A greater awareness of God’s presence may lead to heavier demands for involvement and sacrifice; at the same time, it will always increase our peace, our over-all happiness and self-fulfilment.
I would like to close this chapter with a reference to the experience of J, Trevor which I quoted at the beginning by way of example. In my opinion, his evaluation of what happened to him sums up in a very practical way the various aspects of the “fata-morgana” question discussed in this chapter.
“The spiritual life justifies itself to those who live it; but what can we say to those who do not understand ? This, at least, we can say, that it is a life whose experiences are proved real to their possessor, because they remain with him when brought closest into contact with the objective realities of life. Dreams cannot stand this test. We wake from them to find that they are but dreams. Wanderings of an overwrought brain do not stand this test. These highest experiences I have had of God’s presence have been rare and brief-flashes of consciousness which have compelled me to exclaim with surprise - God is here! or conditions of exaltation and insight, less intense, and only gradually passing away. I have severely questioned the worth of these moments. To no soul have I named them, lest I should be building my life and work on mere fantasies of the brain. But I find that, after every questioning and test, they stand out today as the most real experiences of my life.” (l5)
1. S. FREUD “Ueber eine Weltanschauung” in Gesammelte Werke, Imago. London, vol. xv, p. 18.
2, S. FREUD ib. p. 176.
3. E. FROMM Psychoanalysis and Religion, Bantam edition, Yale 1950 p. 11.
4. J. C. FLUGEL Man. Morals and Society. Penguin 1955, p. 322.
5. C. H. BERG Mankind. The Origin and Devolopment of the Mind. Allen and Unwin, London, 1962, p. 1 7.
6. J. TREVOR My Quest for God. London 1897, pp. 268-269: quoted in W. JAMES, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Collins, Fontana ed., 1960, pp. 382-383.
7. “Actuele Bookschap ontvangen door een persoon uit het Brusselse”, Kortrijk 1974, p p. 17-18.
8. TH. MERTON The Way of Chuang Tzu, New Directions, New York 1965, pp. 97-98.
9. L. E. ABT and L BELLAK Projective Psychology. Clinical Approaches to the Total Personality, Grove Press, New York 1959, p. 33; cf. H. M. M. FORTMANN, Als Ziende do Onzienlijko. Paul Brand, Hilversum 1968. vol. 2. P. 44.
10. G. POLITZER Critique des fondements de la Psychologie, Rieder, Paris 1928; cf. H. M. M. FORTMANN, ib. vol. 2, p. 72.
11. BRUNER and POSTMAN in R. R. BLAKE and G. V. RAMSEY ed., Perception. An Approach to Personality, Ronald Press, New York 1951, pp. 123ff.; cf. H. M. M. FORTMANN, lb., vol. 2. D. 41
12. A. DE WAELHENS Une Philosophie da l’Ambiguite. L’Existentialisme de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Public. Univ., Louvain 1951, p. 83; H. M. M. FORTMANN, lb.. vol. 2., p. 64.
13. H.M.M. FORTMANN ibidem pp. 82-89.
14. Quoted in 0. STRUNK Readings in the Psychology of Religion, Abingdon Press, Nashville 1959, p. 267.
15. J. TREVOR see note 6 above.