Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,
Lecture 4, Part 8 of 17 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.
Student: You can only handle as much pleasure as you can pain.
CTT: Sounds like a cool idea. I have no idea whether it’s true.
Student: But I mean, it seems like if you start trying to [...]
For several years I’ve been a member of an organization of “spiritual leaders” devoted to the question of developing a trans-traditional spirituality that would be more suitable to our time. Why me? I’m not a “spiritual leader,” but I think I’m their token scientist with a clear interest in spirituality.
A serious question was [...]
Continue reading about Mindfulness: Can We Live in the Present?
My recent interview on the Buddhist Geeks web radio show (www.buddhistgeeks.com), noting scientific evidence for a Buddhist idea like reincarnation, has resulted in some spirited comments on their website. I think my response to these, dealing with the nature of science and whether there is really scientific evidence for something like reincarnation or whether [...]
Continue reading about Buddhism, Reincarnation, Science, Parapsychology
I have been having a discussion with some parapsychologist colleagues about whether or not the existence of psi argues for a duality of existence in the world, a “spiritual” level or reality as I argue in my recent The End of Materialism book. Some argue that materialism will eventually explain psi, while I call [...]
Continue reading about Promissory Materialism, “God of the Gaps,” and Pragmatic Interactive Dualism
Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,
Lecture 4, Part 18 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.
Student: So what’s the reason why you enlighten people?
CTT: It’s a friendship act. That’s all.
Student: Yes. Why would an enlightened person not say that they were enlightened? Because you keep being humble, and [...]
For the past week I have been reading a ms. (the current working title is Straight Talk) sent me by P. M. H. Atwater, what is to be her final (and very big!) book on her years of investigations of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). Atwater is a leading independent scholar in this area, and I’ve [...]
Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,
Lecture 4, Part 17 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.
CTT: But let’s throw in one more factor here that’s important, especially since so many of us are going to become clinicians, and that’s projection and transference reactions. Every one of us has [...]
Continue reading about Transference and countertransference, or How I came to love my teacher
Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,
Lecture 4, Part 16 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.
Student: I have a question that I’ve been wondering about. Have you actually met anybody personally that you would think of as an enlightened being, or…?
Student: Or admitted to being enlightened?
Student: Admitted is one thing. [...]
For years I’ve been part of a private discussion group of scientific parapsychologists, mostly experimentalists. Recently we heard from one of our members, Professor Brian Josephson, a Nobel prize winning physicist, that he and another physicist had been dis-invited from participation in a small physics conference this summer because the organizers learned he was [...]
Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,
Lecture 4, Part 15 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.
Student: What if that would test for enlightenment.
CTT: Pardon.
Student: What about a test to measure enlightenment?
CTT: Yes. What about it?
Student: Is there anything like that available for people?
(Laughter)
Is it possible to create something like that?
CTT: Well [...]
Continue reading about “I think I’m God, but my wife is unconvinced.”