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Rudolph Otto is more sympathetic than William James. He describes religious experience as a kind of ‘creature feeling’. Where as James with his psychological background tends to be more clinical. Both of them refer to the experience as being mystical. James makes one of his main points that a religious experience is experienced through someone with a person religion and not institutional religion; Otto that it is very difficult to understand a ‘deeply felt religious experience’ if one has not experienced it themselves. James believed that a mystical experience can be experienced by all cultures and he was most interested in understanding religious experience. If personal religious experiences were what James preferred, dogmatism was something that he disliked. Dogmatic thought, whether religious or scientific, was anathema to James. The importance of James to the psychology of religion--and to psychology more generally--is difficult to overstate. He discussed many essential issues that remain of vital concern today. As part of much larger work, the short selection in the text leaves the reader wondering if James' description is all there is to mysticism. While James lays down the ground