"Unlike many modern psychologists, he felt the field should encompass paranormal phenomena and mystical experiences. As well as writing one of the great studies of mystical experiences, The Varieties of Religious Experience, he self-experimented with psychoactive substances such as nitrous oxide and ether. (From this perspective, a mystical experience is an experience of heightened awareness, in which the world becomes more vivid and beautiful, and there is a sense of oneness and bliss, as well as a sense of meaning and revelation.)"
"As a result of his experiments, James famously wrote that human beings' normal state of consciousness is "but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different."In other words, it would be a mistake to assume that the world that our normal consciousness reveals is reality itself."
Early psychologists held that normal consciousness represents only one mode of human experience and that other forms of consciousness exist. William James pioneered a broad psychology that included paranormal and mystical phenomena, taught the first U.S. psychology courses, and authored The Principles of Psychology (1890). James self-experimented with nitrous oxide and ether and characterized mystical experiences as heightened awareness featuring vivid perception, oneness, bliss, and revelation. James argued that ordinary consciousness is only a special type and that many altered states can reveal a wider, more intense reality beyond the filtered vision of everyday awareness.
Read at Psychology Today
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