in human experience:
and this tendency to what seems a narrow and limited viewpoint:

"If you open the chapter on 'Association,' of any treatise on Psychology,
you will read that a man's ideas, aims and objects form diverse internal
groups, and systems, relatively independent of one another. Each 'aim'
which he follows awakens a certain specific kind of interested excitement,
and gathers a certain group of ideas together in subordination to it as
its associates."

It is perhaps natural to assume that most instances of the attainment of
Illumination, have been inseparable from religious devotion, or at least
contemplative mysticism. This view is held almost exclusively by
Orientals, and seems to have been shared to a great extent by western
commentators upon the subject.

A notable example among Occidentals, bearing the religious aspect, and one
which is important from the fact that the person detailing his experience,
was a man of mental training, is the case of Rev. Charles G. Finney,
formerly president of Oberlin College.

In his "Memoirs," Dr. Finney describes what Orthodox Christians generally
call the "baptism of the Holy Spirit":

"I had retired to a back room for prayer," writes Dr. Finney, "and there
was no fire or light in the room; nevertheless it appeared to me as if it
were perfectly light. As I went in and shut the door after me, it seemed as
if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. It did not occur to me then
nor did it for some time afterwards, that it was wholly a mental state.

"On the contrary, it seemed to me a reality, that he stood before me and I
fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to him. I wept aloud like a
child and made such confessions as I could with choked utterance.

"It seemed to me that I bathed his feet with my tears, and yet I had no
distinct impression that I touched him, that I recollect. As I turned and
was about to take my seat, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost.

"Without any expectation, without even having the thought in my mind, that
there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever
heard the thing mentioned, by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit
descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me body and soul.

"I could feel the impression like the waves of electricity going through me
and through me. Indeed, it seemed to come in _waves of liquid love_. For I
could not express it in any other way. It seemed