Being Twice Born

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Happiness often comes after a Crisis of Meaning: throughout history, the happiest people often record going through a deep depression caused by a sense of the loss of meaning… these events should not be repudiated but welcomed since only through them is the “Twice-born” sense of renewal possible.

Twice Born

William James, the 19th Century philosopher and psychologist, writes that the happiest people are those who have gone through an intense period of suffering, marked by the search for a deeper meaning in their lives. He calls these people the “twice born” and he takes for his example the novelist Leo Tolstoy. James explains that the Russian novelist’s successful effort to restore himself to mental health led to more than a return to his original condition. The twice-born reach a new and higher plane: “The process is one of redemption, not of mere reversion to natural health, and the sufferer, when saved, is saved by what seems to him a second birth, a deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before. (p.157) This sense of being “born again” is characteristic of religious and mystical experiences, but it can be extended to any experience where there is a strong sense of renewal after a tragic event…. The morale of the story is clear: challenges and tragedies can be seen not as obstacles to happiness, but rather as the means to achieve a deeper and more lasting happiness.

–Mark Setton [The Philosophy of Finding Meaning in Life (The Pursuit of Happiness website)].

Additional William James Quotes

“The real witness of the spirit to the second birth is to be found only in the disposition of the genuine child of God, the permanently patient heart, the love of self eradicated. And this, it has to be admitted, is also found in those who pass no crisis, and may even be found outside of Christianity altogether.”

–William James [The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902) Lecture X, “Conversion, concluded”].