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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: persons I speak of find that all this conscious effort leads to
nothing but failure and vexation in their hands, and only makes
them twofold more the children of hell they were before. The
tense and voluntary attitude becomes in them an impossible fever
and torment. Their machinery refuses to run at all when the
bearings are made so hot and the belts so tight.
Under these circumstances the way to success, as vouched for by
innumerable authentic personal narrations, is by an
anti-moralistic method, by the "surrender" of which I spoke in my
second lecture. Passivity, not activity; relaxation, not
intentness, should be now the rule. Give up the feeling of
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