Presence
The mountain path above Trient
Historical account — 1902
VBG Archives·Trient, Switzerland
presencemountainstraveltearswonder
Modern language summary…
A Swiss man was six days into a hiking trip through the Alps -- healthy, well-rested, nothing unusual about the day. On the trail above Trient, without warning, he was overwhelmed by the certainty that God was present, as if goodness and power were passing straight through him. The feeling was so strong he had to wave his companions on, sit down on a stone, and weep. It lasted maybe five minutes. He spent the rest of the climb wondering whether Moses on Sinai could have experienced anything more intimate. What struck him most: God touched none of his five senses, and yet nothing had ever seemed more real.
▸ Read the original account
"I was in perfect health: we were on our sixth day of tramping, and in good training... I can best describe the condition in which I was by calling it a state of equilibrium. When all at once I experienced a feeling of being raised above myself, I felt the presence of God -- I tell of the thing just as I was conscious of it -- as if his goodness and his power were penetrating me altogether. The throb of emotion was so violent that I could barely tell the boys to pass on and not wait for me. I then sat down on a stone, unable to stand any longer, and my eyes overflowed with tears... Then, slowly, the ecstasy left my heart; that is, I felt that God had withdrawn the communion which he had granted... The state of ecstasy may have lasted four or five minutes, although it seemed at the time to last much longer... I think it well to add that in this ecstasy of mine God had neither form, color, odor, nor taste; moreover, that the feeling of his presence was accompanied with no determinate localization... At bottom the expression most apt to render what I felt is this: God was present, though invisible; he fell under no one of my senses, yet my consciousness perceived him."
Source: William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Lecture III. Public domain. View source