One of the first ways this became clear to me was when I began training in the Japanese martial art of Aikido back in the 1970s.  I had been impressed with a demonstration of the art, and invited a black belt instructor, Alan Grow, to come to UC Davis twice a week to give instructions.  I started a student club, of which I was faculty adviser, to justify getting space on the mats in the gymnasium for this.

To my surprise and consternation, I could immediately "explain" Aikido far better than my black belt instructor.  As I would later put it, I had a "Black Belt in Talking" by the time I was twelve!  That's an amusing way of saying I was very glib.  But while I could verbally explain Aikido better than my instructor, I couldn't do anything, whereas he could toss me across the mat with what seemed a flick of his wrist.  It took me several years to learn how to learn in a different way.  What was required for Aikido was body-instinctive intelligence, not intellectual, verbal intelligence.  Eventually I learn to pay attention from my body, as it were, and actually begin to really grasp what Aikido is about.

Emotions were even more difficult, as, like most people, when an emotion arose it tended to hijack all of my consciousness, and then make all my perceptions and thoughts centered around and reinforcing that emotion.  If something had aroused a fear response in me, for example, I saw things as more threatening than they probably were, I had thoughts about other times I was afraid, and, of course, my body sensations reinforced the fear.  A fearful stimulus that may have lasted only a few seconds produced a self-reinforcing reaction that could go on for minutes or hours.

I engaged in many personal growth activities in the 70s, 80s and 90s, aspects of the Humanistic Psychology movement as well as a spiritual quest, and gradually learn more about what my emotions were and to be accepting of them.

I would not claim to have become particularly emotionally intelligent, but at least I was no longer really dumb and neurotic about emotions, and, similarly, because of Aikido training and meditation training later, I became more aware of what my body-instinctive intelligence was telling me at a particular time.

This morning I had a particularly clear example of how emotions ought to work when they are reasonably intelligent, rather than undeveloped or neurotic.  My wife Judy and I were having a silly quarrel on a topic we've had silly quarrels about many times over the years, and she mentioned that if she died before I did, I wouldn't have to do the things she expected me to do.  I responded, from an intellectual stance, that this was indeed true, but, on balance, the gains from this would be nothing compared to the loss of her.  To my astonishment, before I could finish that sentence I was all choked up and crying!  And a few seconds later, it was all over!  My emotional intelligence had risen and taken over my consciousness, reminded me of what was really important in my life, and, having perceived that I got the message, had then become quiet again.

This is my understanding of what Gurdjieff had to say about the intelligent way for emotions to function.  Emotions give you a different perspective on situations than intellect or body-instinctual intelligence, they come on powerfully to make sure you notice that perspective, and then, if you've got it, they quickly cease.  On the other hand, undeveloped emotions not only force a message on you, they kick off associations to all sorts of things that have ever felt like this, and you could easily have what I've called in the title of this note, "emotional seizures."  That is, instead of you getting the message right away, so you can act more appropriately, you go on and on with the emotion kicking off thoughts which reinforce the emotion which generate appropriate body sensations which kickoff more related thoughts which reinforce the emotion, on and on and on.  Your mind is seized!  Modern neurological research about emotions talk about how the emotional part of the brain "hijacks" the thinking part.

This is not to say that there are no long-lasting emotions which are useful, necessary and realistic.  Some aspects of life require long consideration, emotionally as well as intellectually and bodily-instinctively.  But most ordinary emotions, when they become intelligent, can indeed, from Gurdjieff's perspective, only last a few seconds, just long enough for you to get that message clearly.

It amazed me that in less the second I became so deeply emotional and was crying, and that it was all over a few seconds later.  But I'm glad to have had this very clear example to share some of my understanding about the nature of personal and spiritual growth, and hope this might be useful to others someday.

These ideas will seem quite sensible and have practical implications when you are in a calm state, and probably be forgotten when a strong emotion takes over: it happens to me that way a lot.  A strong emotion screams "This is the Truth, you feel it, it's Real!!!"  When that happens I try to note what the actual message of the emotion is and also remember about emotional hijack.  It's like a very loud alarm siren is shrieking and it's hard to think, but don't feel too bad about yourself during that alarm….

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 5, Part 5 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: Now once in a while, the transpersonal does get through to us. So one way to grow is to hope to have an overwhelming transpersonal experience that will force a new way of looking at reality on you, that’s going to be such a revelation that – wham! – it’s got your attention, and you feel a need to try to center your life around it, to live in accordance with that.

Probably the most certain way to induce that – more certain than all the usual mystical paths – is to have a near-death experience (NDE). Most people who have a near-death experience find their life tremendously changed. They’ve been talking with God for a while. Even the atheists. They have an especially hard time when they’ve been talking with God in terms of reconciling what they are experiencing with their belief system…..

The trouble is, the near- part is very tricky! So it’s not a method I recommend at all.

(Laughter)

Most people who get that close to death don’t tell you about a fantastic transpersonal experience. They get buried. So you don’t want to go that way. If life pushes you that way – okay. C’est la vie. But the more gradual spiritual paths are attempts to induce transpersonal experiences that can break through. That’s one of the routes.

The other route is what you might call the noise reduction route. The quieting down of the cocktail party so there’s going on in your head to give you chance to “hear” those higher kinds of things, and that’s what the mindfulness techniques do. That’s what certain kinds of psychotherapy do. They try to produce space between your thoughts and feelings and images, so that you can hear more subtle kinds of things

That’s the thing we’ve been focusing on. None of the stuff I teach in the mindfulness course really has anything to do with directly trying to induce transpersonal experiences, per se. It has an indirect effect of making it more likely that such an experience might happen because it cuts that noise level way down. That’s where we’re focusing. But if the higher experiences come, learn from them.

Student: I was wondering if your concept of noise here is analogous to Gurdjieff’s concept of the number of forces that are acting in a particular plane, or realm. He advocates cutting the number of forces by half, making the material world less dense. I’m looking for the connection to that thought.

CTT: You can make that connection if you want. It's interesting, but I didn’t make it.

Student: Okay.

CTT: Gurdjieff’s idea of the number of laws acting at various levels and all that – that always struck me as intellectually interesting, but something I would have no idea of how to find out whether it was true or false.

I mean, it’s true in a general, psychological sense. The more neurotic you are, the more restrictions there are on your experience and behavior. The more laws you’re limited by, in a sense. But whether these are specific laws – you know, whether there’s a book somewhere that states what these particular laws are and that they divide strictly by halves or – I don’t know, and I don’t know how to figure it out.

So if you find that sort of stuff useful to help you move along, great. But I don’t know what to make of it. Sometimes I think Gurdjieff made it all up to get Ouspensky, who was so compulsively intellectual, off his back!

(Laughter)

You know, Ouspensky was such an intellectual. Oh, he wanted everything explained in precise intellectual terms, and sometimes I think this laws and forces stuff was a sop Gurdjieff threw to Ouspensky…..but probably not. Probably he thought this was the real stuff……. and maybe it is.

Student: My impression in reading it is that he was creating a symbolic representation of an individual, just like you alluded to in answering my question.

CTT: Yeah. It’s certainly true psychologically, that the more neurotic and conditioned you are, the more laws restrict your behavior, even if they’re nonspecific. Well, they’re specific for you. You may be conditioned in a certain, specific way that, say, closed doors make you nervous. That puts a restriction on your ability to use rooms in an efficient, comfortable kind of fashion. When you have some therapeutic insight into what’s behind that, and kind of let go of that mechanism, it’s like you gained another degree of freedom, because now closed doors don’t bother you.

Student: Whew. Thank God he opened that!

(Laughter)

So that’s the little review I wanted to give you. Okay? We’ve been working with the three boxes in the left and upper part. The fourth one is there. We hear more about the fourth one in other kinds of courses. If any of you take the altered states course next quarter, we’ll be talking some about altered states that have some things to do with these higher sorts of things, but I’m functioning as a “noise reducer teacher” in this particular class.

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I knew this to be true from modern psychological studies.  Our common sense model is that perception is accurate, seeing, e.g., is like taking a picture with a camera, whatever is actually in front of your eyes registers on the film, and we think a picture never lies.  "Seeing is believing."  Of course with modern digital cameras and software to edit photos, we now know a finished photo may be very different from what was actually in front of the camera.  Similarly psychological research in the last century has shown over and over that perception is seldom a simple registration of what's actually there, it's much more a form of high-speed (you think it's instant), automatized thinking, a construction that's a guess as to what's there.  But presented as an obviously real perception, with no "best guess" label attached.  For us digital types, it's better to see the eyes, e.g., as a digital camera and there's Photoshop type processing automatically going on before we perceive the picture.  How this biological Photoshop alters the picture has a lot to do with our emotions, our personality, and our cultural conditioning.  Believing is seeing, or at least has a lot to do with what you perceive.

I notice this once in a while in myself.  Sometimes I look out my bedroom window at night, e.g., and notice a tree in a neighbor's yard is underlit by a floodlight, it's very pretty.  Except as I look more closely I realize I'm seeing a patch of partly lit night sky through the trees, not an underlit tree.  I've seen this many times, but still often at first see the illusion, then suddenly it switches – my biological Photoshop changes its functioning – and it's a patch of dim night sky.  I can almost never switch it back, but next time it may happen again.

In spite of intellectual knowledge about "Believing is seeing," though, I seldom think that this is something that applies to me.  After all, I'm a scientist, I strive to perceive accurately and like to believe I'm good at that!

So I was somewhat startled, then pleasantly surprised when I had a strong personal demonstration that "believing is seeing" this morning.

Our neighbors are having their kitchen remodeled, and I looked out our living room window and noticed that a couple of workers were rolling a very heavy looking machine across the street toward the kitchen.  I wasn't quite sure what the machine was for, but I thought it was a tile cutting machine, something I know is heavy and massive.  A few minutes later I looked out our kitchen window, and could see their truck parked across the street, which I figured would give me a clue as to what kind of machine it was.  The distance was sufficient that it was somewhat difficult for me to see clearly, but I could make out a company name and, by squinting a little, underneath the company name it said "tile floors."  The figure below gives you an idea of the level of clarity I could see with from a distance.

I went and told my wife that it was now clear that our neighbors were installing a tile floor on their kitchen, and we would probably hear a fair amount of noise during the day as they cut tiles.

Imagine my surprise a few minutes later when my wife told me that our neighbors had had a hardwood floor put down yesterday, and the machine I had seen was a large floor sander!  I now went and looked at their truck from closer window and, as the figure below shows, the words below their company name clearly says "hardwood floors!"

I can't say there were any powerful emotions driving this, but what a clear example that "seeing is believing!"  I had decided a tile floor was going down, and under somewhat difficult seeing conditions, I saw my proof in the words on the side of the truck.  I think this is especially amazing, as the word "hardwood" is twice as long as the word "tile" would be.

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Small Song of Small Realization?

Ordinary samsara.

A moments stimulus, sixth consciousness

Fast reaction, seventh consciousness

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

My endless story of ME, MY FEELINGS

New stimulus

Not noticed much or clearly

I'm busy with my story…..

New stimulus: added into my Story, twisted to fit,

Seventh rules sixth, believing is seeing…..

I think I'm aware, but

Just deeper into samsara, moment after moment, hour after hour.

Many brief moments through the day

A few seconds of just being here, noticing what's happening

Nothing special, just here, now

My story is interrupted, I'm calm, present

Stimulus comes along, sixth consciousness

I notice it

Perhaps think no further about it

Perhaps think just a few helpful thoughts, don’t get carried away

Radiance of rigpa?

Stopping once in a while, turning mind in

No big deal

Yet I don't add my crazies to my ongoing crazies for Big Crazies….

Less samsara in my day…..

Elaborating….

Samsara:  Buddhist term for ordinary consciousness, which is seen as a badly distorted form of consciousness.  Our perception of world and self is badly distorted by the three main driving forces of greed/attraction, aversion/rejection and ignorance (of reality and of one's true Buddha nature).

Sixth Consciousness:  Traditionally each of the main five senses is considered a kind of consciousness, and (ordinary) mind is considered the sixth kind of consciousness, a consciousness which takes the input of the senses at any one time and simply and objectively names their object and perhaps brings up some immediately relevant, objective information about them.  Right now, my sixth consciousness says "computer screen" as I look straight ahead, "coffee cup" as I look to my left, "bookcase" as I look to my right.

Seventh Consciousness: This is an almost completely conditioned, automatic elaboration of the simple perceptions of sixth consciousness into our personal "stories," our hopes, fears, etc.  So there is a feeling as I notice the computer screen in front of me of satisfaction, of pride, I'm a writer, I'm good at it, and an undercurrent of anxiety – this monitor has been acting a little flaky lately, suppose it breaks, it will be expensive to replace it…..That coffee cup, I need to take it to the kitchen and wash it, I'm so tired of washing out coffee cups, maybe it I just leave it out my wife will wash it for me, oh damn, how can I think that, I'm a lazy person, why can't I be more responsible?  Ah, the bookcase, look at all those books!  I'm so smart to read so many books, I'm happier thinking about how smart I am rather than how lazy I am…..

According to Buddhism, greatly supported by the discoveries of modern psychology, we almost never stay with simple sixth consciousness perception, automatic seventh consciousness reactions take over almost instantly and can be strong enough to effectively blot out or distort simple, objective perceptions.  I've used mild illustrations of this here, but the emotional dynamics and psychological defenses of our individual selves can have us dwelling in our "stories," our dramas, most of the time.

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

A perception, my like or dislike, which triggers associated likes and dislikes, which triggers more, on and on and on, the original sixth consciousness perception lost in the drama.  New events, new stimuli which are strong enough to get our attention are often almost instantly distorted by the seventh consciousness to fit right into our ongoing story…..And our illusory existence, samsara, continues and builds…..

Many brief moments: In Dzogchen turning the mind inward to notice what's there, in Gurdjieffian terms self-observation or self-remembering.  Succinctly expressed in Buddhism as samsara is the mind turned outward, lost in its projections.  Enlightenment is mind turned inward, directly seeing its own true nature.  Rigpa is one of the names for the true nature of our minds, our Buddha nature.

So I'm in samsara, then I turn mind inward for a moment.  A sensory event, a stimulus comes along then and it's just sixth consciousness perception, it's just a bookcase, no activation of my personal "story" about how wonderful I am, how much I know.  I glance at the bookcase again, notice a book sticking out, close to falling off the shelf, I'll push it in next time I go over that way, back to the moment.  Here's my mind, here, now, nothing "special" about it, just calmly here – but that's pretty special compared to the usual ongoing, self-stimulating drama of ME!

Radiance of rigpa:  It's not that the goal of Buddhism is to stay forever in a state of mind that's absolutely calm, where nothing ever happens.  That's not our nature.  Our nature of mind, our rigpa, moves, thinks, creates, like the sun radiating light and heat.  But to have it stay close to sixth consciousness perception, not get twisted into my story…..that's something!

I called this a small song of small realization, question mark.  No big deal, yet very fundamental.  Coming back to the moment every once in a while during my day, I don't get so carried away, I don't have fantasy building on fantasy, amplifying samsara.  Perhaps not a big deal insight, but I like it….

So once again:

Small Song of Small Realization?

Ordinary samsara.

A moments stimulus, sixth consciousness

Fast reaction, seventh consciousness

I like, I dislike, which reminds me, which I like or dislike which reminds me….

On and on and on.

My endless story of ME, MY FEELINGS

New stimulus

Not noticed much or clearly

I'm busy with my story…..

New stimulus: added into my Story, twisted to fit,

Seventh rules sixth, believing is seeing…..

I think I'm aware, but

Just deeper into samsara, moment after moment, hour after hour.

Many brief moments through the day

A few seconds of just being here, noticing what's happening

Nothing special, just here, now

My story is interrupted, I'm calm, present

Stimulus comes along, sixth consciousness

I notice it

Perhaps think no further about it

Perhaps think just a few helpful thoughts, don’t get carried away

Radiance of rigpa?

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I saw the show and it was fascinating, although I think the great graphics tended to be wonderful visual entertainment rather than really explaining any of the science.  But much better for me, at least, than empty abstraction.  This is a series – try to catch the rest.

But what is "dark" energy and matter?  Does it really convey some sort of spiritual quality?  Or that certain truths are part of the mystery of God and forever veiled from us?  The necessary faith and confidence for doing science – or for living life, for that matter – is that we are smart and will be able to figure most things, if not all things, out.  When one's arrogance is high, we'll be able to figure it all out.  When we get stuck and frustrated we may admit that perhaps the human brain maybe can't work it all out, but can still do great things…..  This is necessary "faith," for if you start thinking "I and we aren't very bright, we probably can't learn anything," that is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  To quote, as I'm sure I have before, Henry Ford, "Those who think they can and those who think they can't are both right…..

"My colleague seemed to think that the postulating of dark matter and energy was a refutation of what I've described in The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together as scientism, the materialistic philosophy overwhelmingly dominant in most areas of science that says everything can and will eventually be explained in terms of physical matter and physical energy.  Because "dark" energy and matter are not matter as we know it?

But that's not the case.  Scientism is a philosophy of materialism, everything is made of matter and energy.  If we can't explain something now in terms of known forms of matter and energy, then it's an item of faith that, as we discover new forms of material matter and material energy, we will then be able to explain things in expanded materialistic terms.

As I'm sure I've said many times before, scientism is not science, although most people, including most scientists, think it is.  An essential part of a genuinely scientific theory is that it is capable of disproof, of making observations which are quite incompatible with the theory.  When scientism encounters something inexplicable in terms of current materialistic theories, though, it keeps the faith by saying someday we will explain it in physical terms, including a wider understanding of what "physical" means.  This is what philosophers long ago named promissory materialism, as you can't ever disprove that someday they won't explain it in terms of material entities and forces (or little green men or angels or devils or aliens or whatever you prefer). I try not to fall into scientism, even though it's a prestigious thing to do as it leads to more social acceptance.  If I had wanted to be very successful in conventional terms I would never have followed a career that kept looking into things that were taboo, that were heresy in materialistic terms.

Essential science – see again my The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together book – always puts data, observations, experience first and foremost, and if your theories to explain them, materialistic, mathematical, socialistic, religious, whatever don't actually work, too bad for the theories and beliefs.  Study the data more closely, see what you can learn.

In our times, though, we spiritual beings – I think that's what we all essentially are – have our spirituality badly repressed and rejected because of scientism.  But we try to find some means to justify being more spiritual, justifying, rationalizing by trying to find scientific reasons to be more spiritual.  So we can take developments like dark energy and matter as pointing toward a mystery beyond human understanding, as pointing toward God or Spirit.  It's commonly done all the time in New Age, as well as other spiritual movements.  Quantum physics has been used this way for decades now.You can certainly take new scientific data and theory that way, and I sometimes do, but I don't think a "proof" of the existence of God because of our ignorance is very powerful.  "This is beyond our understanding, so there must be a God who understands."  I'm much more impressed by people's mystical experiences, not to mention all the scientific investigations surveyed in my book that show we humans sometimes do things we think spiritual beings would be able to.  By "spiritual" here I mean of a nature very different than contemporary physics and reasonable extensions of it allow to happen.  Telepathy as a possible "mechanism" for transmitting information and requests in prayer, as just one example.

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Charles T. Tart

—————-

The concept of reincarnation, that of an individual dying and then being reborn into another body, has existed in various religions for at least 3,000 years. The belief most likely arose independently in different areas, and this was followed by periods in which the concept spread to other regions.

It has now spread to the point that there are probably more people alive who believe in reincarnation than do not. Even in cultures such as the United States and Western Europe that do not have a predominant belief in reincarnation, 20 to 30 percent of the population holds the belief. While the general concept is present in a number of religions and people groups, there are also significant differences between the various belief systems.

Hinduism

In Hinduism, it is believed that an enduring soul survives after death, spends a variable amount of time in another realm, and then becomes associated with a new body. Rebirth into the opposite sex or, under certain circumstances, into a nonhuman animal form is considered possible.

Hinduism includes the concept of karma, the idea that the conditions into which one is born are determined by one's conduct in various previous lives. Life on Earth is considered undesirable, and an individual may engage in religious practices in each life until eventually earning release from the cycle of rebirth, losing individuality, and achieving union with the infinite spirit  (nirvana ).

Shiite Muslims

A number of groups of Shiite Muslims in western Asia, such as the Druses of Lebanon and Syria and the Alevis in Turkey, have a belief in reincarnation that does not include the concept of karma.

Instead, they believe that God assigns souls to a series of lives in different circumstances that are generally disconnected from one another until the ultimate Judgment Day, when God sends them to heaven or hell based on the moral quality of their actions during all the various lives.

The Druses also believe that rebirth occurs immediately after death with no discarnate existence possible. While the Alevis believe that rebirth in nonhuman animals can occur, the Druses do not, and, in fact, they believe that they can only be reborn as other Druses. Neither group believes that they can be reborn as members of the opposite sex.

Judaism and Christianity

While reincarnation is not a belief in mainstream Judaism and Christianity, it has been part of the belief system of some of their groups. In Judaism, the Kabbalah, the body of teaching based on an esoteric interpretation of Hebrew scriptures, includes reincarnation, and Hasidic Jews include it in their belief system.

In Christianity, some groups of early Christians, particularly the Gnostic Christians, believed in reincarnation, and some Christians in southern Europe believed in it until the Council of Constantinople in 553 C.E. Some Christians find support for reincarnation in the passage in the New Testament Book of Matthew in which Jesus seems to say that John the Baptist is the prophet Elijah returned.

Ancient Greece

The Greek philosophers wrote extensively about the concept of reincarnation, beginning with the legendary Orpheus and with Pythagoras. After Socrates, Plato, whose ideas about reincarnation became particularly influential, taught that one's soul is immortal, preexists before birth, and is reborn many times.

Each soul chooses its next life, guided by its experiences in the previous lives. Aristotle initially accepted the ideas of his teacher Plato, but later largely rejected the concepts of reincarnation and immortality, becoming the father of materialism in Western thought.

West Africa

The concept of reincarnation is common among the various peoples of West Africa. In general, unlike Hindus and Buddhists, they believe that rebirth is desirable and that life on Earth is preferable to that of the discarnate, limbo state.

They believe that individuals are generally reborn into the same family and that their souls may split into several rebirths simultaneously. Some groups believe in the possibility of rebirth into nonhuman animals while others do not. Many have the concept of "repeater children," in which one soul will harass a family by repeatedly dying as an infant or young child only to be reborn into the family again.

Native Americans and Inuit

The Inuit and many other Native American tribes, particularly those in the most northern and northwestern parts of North America, also believe in reincarnation. The details of the beliefs have varied greatly across different groups.

Many do not necessarily expect all individuals to be reborn, but they instead focus on those who have had premature deaths, such as deceased children being reborn into the same family or dead warriors being reborn with birthmarks corresponding to their wounds.

Some have believed in human to nonhuman rebirth and in cross-sex reincarnation. Many of them also believe that an individual may be reborn simultaneously as several different people.

Evidence for Reincarnation

In the twentieth century, researchers began exploring possible evidence for reincarnation. In 1961 Ian Stevenson, then the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, began investigating cases of young children who claimed to remember previous lives.

In a typical case, a child at the age of two or three would begin to speak spontaneously about another life. Some children described the life of a stranger while others talked about a deceased individual known to the child's family. In the cases involving a stranger, the child would often persist with the claims until the family eventually made efforts to locate the family of the previous personality; that is, the person whose life the child was describing.

In many cases, their efforts were successful, and the child would then meet the family. At these meetings, the child would often be said to identify members of the previous family as well as items belonging to the deceased individual.

Stevenson discovered that such cases were fairly easy to find in many parts of the world, particularly in Asia, and he eventually relinquished his position as departmental chairman to pursue the research full time.

Since that time, he and other researchers have collected over 2,500 cases of children claiming to remember previous lives. As of 2002, such cases were still being collected regularly. While they each have individual variations, they generally share certain characteristics.

Location of cases. Cases are most easily found in cultures with a belief in reincarnation, and the most common areas for cases include India, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Lebanon, Thailand, Myanmar, West Africa, and among the tribal groups of northwest North America. Cases have been found, however, wherever they have been sought, and they include well over 100 nontribal American ones.

Types of lives described. The children who spontaneously report past lives generally describe a life as someone in their own culture. Even the exceptions usually show some geographical connection, such as Burmese children who describe the lives of Japanese soldiers killed in Burma during World War II, and cases of children describing lives in faraway countries are very rare.

In addition, the lives described are almost always ordinary ones, as the children describe typical family life and routine occupations. Claims to have been a famous person or royalty are essentially nonexistent in the spontaneous child cases. The children also tend to describe recent lives; the average interval between the death of the previous personality and the birth of the child is around fifteen months.

One exceptional part of the lives described is the percentage of violent deaths reported.

Stevenson found that approximately 60 percent of the children who talk about the mode of death of the previous personality describe a violent one. Compared to cases with a nonviolent mode of death, the cases that involve violence have a shorter interval on average between the death of the previous personality and the birth of the subject.

Age and manner of speaking. The children studied almost always start talking about the previous lives between the ages of two and five years. Some with unusual verbal skills may make statements earlier, and some make gestures earlier that are not understood until they develop the verbal skills to make statements that connect the gestures to a previous life.

They almost always stop talking about the previous life between the ages of five and eight, which is generally the age when children branch out from the family and begin school, and also the age when children tend to lose early childhood memories.

Many of the children show extreme seriousness or great emotion when they talk about the previous life. They may cry as they talk about missing their previous family or show great anger in describing their killer.

The children in the stronger cases, such as ones with more verified statements about the previous life, tend to show more emotion in describing the previous life than those in the weaker cases.

Some children may talk about the previous life with great emotion one minute and then go off to play the next, and some parents say that their child has to be in the "right" state of mind to discuss the previous life. In U.S. cases, this is often during relaxed times such as during a car ride or after a bath. Other children, however, appear to have access to the memories at all times.

Themes of the past life statements. The children in the studies who talk about previous lives do not tend to make statements indicating great wisdom. Instead, they generally talk about events from the end of the previous life; almost three-quarters of the subjects describe the mode of death of the previous personality.

They are also much more likely to talk about people from the end of that life than about people from earlier in it. Thus, a child who describes the life of an adult tends to talk about a spouse or children rather than parents.

Few subjects talk about any time between lives. Of those that do, some describe staying near their homes or the site of their deaths, and they may describe seeing their funerals or other events that occurred after their deaths. Others report going to a discarnate realm, at times describing meetings with other beings such as sages or guides.

Birthmarks and birth defects. In about 35 percent of the cases, the child bears a birthmark or birth defect that matches a wound of the previous personality, usually the fatal wound.

The birthmarks tend to be unusual ones, often being puckered scarlike areas, and some of them are said to have oozed or bled for some time after the child was born.

The birth defects are often ones that are extremely rare. In the late 1990s Stevenson published a series of over 200 such cases in which he documented the correspondence of the marks to wounds on the previous personality, using postmortem reports whenever possible.

Examples include cases in which children had birthmarks that matched the bullet entrance and exit wounds on the previous personality and others with multiple marks matching the wounds from the shotgun blasts that killed the previous individuals.

Behaviors related to the previous life. Many of the children in these studies show behaviors that suggest a connection to the previous individual. They often show emotions toward the various members of the previous family that are appropriate: demurring to a husband, being bossy to a younger sibling (who is now, in fact, much older than the subject), and so forth.

Many of the children show phobias related to the mode of death; 50 percent of those describing a violent death show a phobia of the instrument of that death. At times, the phobia will be present long before the child talks about the previous life; for example, a baby may show an intense fear of water, and that child later reports a memory of having drowned in the previous life.

Some children show likes and dislikes that match those of the previous personality. For example, Burmese children who describe lives as Japanese soldiers may complain about the spicy Burmese food while requesting raw fish to eat.

Many of the children show connections to the previous life in their play. For example, some act out the occupation of the previous personality.

At times, this can reach compulsive proportions so that, for instance, the child misses school because of the insistence on continuing with this play. Others repetitively act out the death that they describe in what appears to be posttraumatic play.

Many of the children who report previous lives as members of the opposite sex show behaviors appropriate to that sex.

They may dress, play, and think of themselves as members of the opposite sex, and this behavior can be of such severity to warrant a diagnosis of gender identity disorder. Most of the children, however, show a normal course of development that is indistinguishable from their peers.

Methods and Interpretations

In the vast majority of cases, the investigators do not get to a case until after the subject's family and the previous personality's family have met, often not until years after.

This leads to the need to interview as many firsthand witnesses as possible. These include, of course, the subject, but he or she may not still be reporting memories of the previous life by the time of the interview. The child's parents are always important witnesses, since the young child has often told more to them than to others.

In addition, other family members and family friends can be important witnesses. After they have been interviewed and the information recorded, the previous personality's family is interviewed.

Those family members can confirm both the details of the previous personality's life that are relevant as well as any recognitions or information that the child demonstrated when the two families met. In all instances, firsthand knowledge rather than hearsay is sought. Interviews are conducted with the use of an interpreter in countries where one is needed.

Repeat interviews are often conducted, both to obtain additional details that were missed during the first ones and to determine whether the reports remain consistent. In addition, other evidence is gathered when relevant. For example, postmortem reports may be obtained, both to confirm the details that the child gave about the death as well as to confirm, when applicable, that the child's birth-marks do match wounds on the deceased.

In the cases in which the previous personality was unknown to the subject's family, investigators also attempt to learn whether the child or the family may have had a connection to the previous personality or possible access to information about that life that is not immediately apparent.

There are also times when the researchers find a case in which the previous personality has not yet been identified. The information from the subject and his or her family is recorded, and it is then used in an effort to identify the deceased individual whose life the child is describing.

There are several possible ways in which these cases could arise through normal means. One is fraud, but this is quite unlikely for the vast majority of cases, given the number of witnesses often involved, the amount of effort that would be necessary to perpetrate such a fraud, and the lack of motive to do so.

Another possibility is that the children have learned about the deceased person through normal means but then forgotten where they acquired the information. This would not explain the birth-marks that match the wounds of the deceased.

Also arguing against this interpretation are the lack of opportunity in many cases for the child to have heard anything at all about the previous personality, the mention by some children of information known to only a select few intimates of the previous personality, the child's strong sense of identification with the previous personality, and other behavioral features that the children often show.

In addition, the stronger cases, such as ones with more verified statements about the previous life, tend to involve greater distance between the homes of the child and the previous personality than the weaker ones.

A third possibility is that after the families of the subject and the previous personality have met, the family members credit the subject with having had more knowledge of the prior life than he or she actually had. According to this interpretation, the evidence for a connection with a previous life is not valid due to faulty memory on the part of the participants.

While this possibility would not explain the birthmark cases or the ones in which a written record was made of the child's statements before the previous personality was identified, it could explain many others.

Two studies, however, argue against this hypothesis. In 2000 Stevenson and Jürgen Keil conducted a study in which Keil reinvestigated cases twenty years after Stevenson's initial investigation. They found that the cases had not become stronger in the participants' minds over the years, and, in fact, some had become somewhat weaker as witnesses recalled less specific details of what the child had said.

In the other study, Schouten and Stevenson in 1998 compared cases from India and Sri Lanka in which written records had been made before the two families met with other thoroughly investigated cases without such written records. The two groups had the same percentage of correct statements, and the overall number of statements was actually lower in the cases without a written record made beforehand.

In addition to normal means, a possible way to explain the cases would be that the children gain knowledge of the previous personality through extrasensory perception. This seems unlikely because most of these children show no other extrasensory ability and because the cases involve multiple features—birthmarks, identification with the previous personality, longing for the previous family, phobias, repetitive play—other than the knowledge of the previous life.

Another possible explanation is reincarnation. These cases, taken at face value, suggest that memories, emotions, a sense of identification, and even physical features can carry over from one life to the next.

This does not necessarily mean that these characteristics carry over for other individuals who do not remember previous lives, or that other individuals have even had previous lives. The cases do, however, provide evidence that should be considered in any evaluation of the concept of reincarnation.

See also: A FRICAN R ELIGIONS ; A FTERLIFE IN C ROSS -C ULTURAL P ERSPECTIVE ; B UDDHISM ; H INDUISM ; I SLAM ; P HOENIX , T HE ; P LATO

Bibliography

Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Head, Joseph, and Sylvia L. Cranston, eds. Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery. New York: Warner Books, 1979.

Mills, Antonia, and Richard Slobodin, eds. Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief among North American Indians and Inuit. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.

Schouten, Sybo A., and Ian Stevenson. "Does the Socio-Psychological Hypothesis Explain Cases of the Reincarnation Type?" Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 186 (1998):504–506.

Stevenson, Ian. Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation, revised edition. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2001.

Stevenson, Ian. Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.

Stevenson, Ian. "The Belief in Reincarnation among the Igbo of Nigeria." Journal of Asian and African Studies 20 (1985):13–30.

Stevenson, Ian. Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol. 4: Twelve Cases in Thailand and Burma. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983.

Stevenson, Ian. Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol 3: Twelve Cases in Lebanon and Turkey. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980.

Stevenson, Ian. Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol 2: Ten Cases in Sri Lanka. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977.

Stevenson, Ian. Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vol 1: Ten Cases in India. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975.

Stevenson, Ian, and Jürgen Keil. "The Stability of Assessments of Paranormal Connections in Reincarnation-Type Cases." Journal of Scientific Exploration 14 (2000):365–382.

Tucker, Jim B. "A Scale to Measure the Strength of Children's Claims of Previous Lives: Methodology and Initial Findings." Journal of Scientific Exploration 14 (2000):571–581.

JIM B. TUCKER

from the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, Kastenbaum R (ed.).  New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 705-710, 2003.

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My style of learning is generally to think about things, talk about them with others, get their feedback on what they think of my ideas, hear what their understanding is, etc.  It's probably a very Western way, as compared to that of many traditional cultures where you try to learn what the Masters have to say and put it into practice, with what often seems to me (I may be prejudiced here) an emphasis on rote learning rather than thinking about.

Recently some of us older students or Rinpoche have finally started having an email discussion about some aspects of what "enlightenment" or spiritual progress is from the Buddhist perspective and our own perspectives, and I thought it might be useful to share some of my comments on this here.  Perhaps this is an example of what a modern, Western, transpersonal psychologist thinks.

The discussion started around an idea in Buddhist teachings that our unenlightened, ordinary state involves being too much lost in infinite complexities of deluded, samsaric existence.  As a beautiful translation of a traditional Tibetan text by Sogyal Rinpoche puts it,

Ho!  Mesmerized by the sheer varieties of perception,

Which are like the reflections of the moon in water,

Beings wander endlessly astray in samsara's vicious cycle…..

My wife Judy noted that a reason for complexity is

>Why do we want to see what's beyond the "sheer variety"?  For me anyway, it's to answer those old questions – Where do we come from?  What's REALLY going on here?  How is it that I exist?<

I'm completely with her (makes for a good marriage).  Yes, I don't want me or other people to suffer, and clearly we can get distracted by all that complexity so we don't learn the Buddhist procedures that would reduce our suffering, but that's not enough for me.  I'm curious!  And I think my curiosity, my interest in knowing more, is one of my best features.

At my current level of (mis?)understanding, I know that many Buddhist practices will reduce my suffering, make me more effective at helping others, and also allow me much more innate contentment:  just happy being, not needing constant entertainment and distraction.  There's also, I think, a promise in the teachings that if I ever got really really enlightened I would, like the Buddha, know everything, like he supposedly did.  I know for sure the techniques and practices help a lot here-and-now, but I don't really know about this way-down-the-road promise.  I don't actively deny the possibility, but I put it on "hold," I know what results in ordinary life are, I don't know about this.

So I hope to keep up a sensible level – respect the relative, as ordinary existence is called – of interest in and curiosity about, and attempts to improve the ordinary, the relative, but hopefully my meditations and other practices keep me reminded that this isn't the absolute, the highest possible, stay open to the …. I was going to say "the More," but this sounds greedy, I don't know how to express the whatever is is/isn’t. But maybe some of you know what I mean.

Making this more concrete: the classic Buddhist teaching example of how our perception is distorted is about walking down a jungle path at twilight and mistaking a rope lying beside the path for a deadly snake.  It's a great illustration of how consciousness is constructed, biased, not just a high fidelity perception of what's really there.  The lesson, for me at least, being don't automatically take everything you see and experience as necessarily true, it may be a little or a lot illusory and distorted.  Learn to experience more of what's called the 6th consciousness, simple sensory perception, not be always stuck in 7th consciousness, the automatic, biased elaborations and story that substitute almost instantly for actual perceptions..

On the other hand, as a being incarnated in a vulnerable physical body, the world, especially hot places like India, is full of dangerous things like snakes.  I'm likely to survive much longer if my automatic processes (I think of this one as an ancient program hardwired into the human brain, human karma) scream "Snake, stop moving forward, jump back!!!," I stop, then I'll be happy to be embarrassed afterwards for being mistaken.  Embarrassment is much lighter suffering than snake bite and dead…..

Again, just my personal opinion, but Buddhist teachings in general often seem to put too much emphasis on getting on to the Absolute compared to practical teachings for getting along better in the Relative.  Not that there isn't a lot of practical advice in Buddhism as I know it, but the balance doesn't seem right to me.

Some of my friends, continuing our discussion, seemed to be a little embarrassed at wondering/speculating what more enlightenment would be like.  I understand the need for knowing what various teaching say if you're going to practice Buddhism, but I worry that too much humility, too much "Just quote what the Buddha or one of the enlightened Masters said" is not adaptive in our culture, so I wanted to encourage people to relax and think.  Thus:

Can I encourage you, my friends, to stop apologizing for thinking about the teachings and their application to life?  There is no problem with thinking, with "risings" per se, as I understand it (oh, oh, that's coming close to an apology….), it's the inappropriate and habitual attachments to thoughts that leads to problems.  I've heard Sogyal Rinpoche teach that, and it's certainly my own best understanding to date.  It's not thoughts (or feelings) that are a problem, it's the following after them, the way they automatically carry us away into our fantasies and stories.

When I/we discuss our understandings of the teachings, I try to remember that we are like first graders having a discussion about what you will learn in college or graduate school.  We probably have some little but correct  understandings, but may be way off on others.  So, in our Western intellectual culture at least, do we beat little kids when they think and talk about things they don't understand?

I know, there are some very repressive parents and sub-cultures that do, but I never did.  If I spoke up at all to kids I tried to encourage them to learn more things and think things through – and be prepared to learn more and think more as time went on, rather than think they had The Final Answer right now.

Gosh, as I write that I think I must have been an ideal parent—and I'm sure I was never that good, but that was my guiding ideal.  Same thing with students in my undergraduate and graduate classes nowadays – if they can repeat the "facts" I've taught them correctly, that's good, but if that's all they do, I'm sad.  I'm delighted when they think about and extend what they've been taught, when they don't childishly stay in a "They are children, I am the grown up who must be right" stance, but think about, explore things beyond my initial teaching and stimulation.

One of the things that really attracted me to the Buddha as a teacher is his Sutta to the Kalamas.  Here's a translation I have:

-Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.

-Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

-Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.

-Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.

-Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

-But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

My personal understanding of this, fueled by ego and cultural conditioning, of course, as well as, hopefully, by common sense and genuine understanding, is don't freeze your ideas and ideals at any point, keep open to the moment, to learning.

But there are many strains of Buddhism, and while I'm not a Buddhist scholar, I've gotten the impression in looking at some teachings that this sutta has been interpreted (arising in much more authoritarian cultures than ours?) as think until you reach the same conclusion the Buddha is supposed to have reached about things, and then you can or should stop thinking…..Sadly this approach can reinforce the tribal mentality that is part of being human, so we feel threatened by people who don't fully conform to the approved interpretation and reject them (Me?  Now?  Sorry, I'm a thinker, even thought I try not to get too attached by my thoughts).

So in our culture, at least in my idealized understanding of it, we encourage our kids to think.  So keep thinking, kids, and don't apologize for it!  Share your thinking, and the thoughts you get from us other kids may help you correct misunderstandings or understand better.  And don't be mean to yourself or others because they are thinking!

And maybe some day when we're in graduate school and know so much much more, we'll look back fondly on our little kids selves….."They had some weird ideas, but they were good kids, had their hearts in the right places, and learned a lot…."

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Let's start with that word "miracle."  The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary's first definition is:

miracle /0ˈmɪrək(ə)l/ noun & verb. ME.

[ORIGIN Old French & Modern French from Latin miraculum object of wonder, from mirari, -are look at, wonder, from mirus wonderful.]

1 A marvellous event not ascribable to human or natural agency, and therefore attributed to the intervention of a supernatural agent, esp. (in Christian belief) God; spec. an act demonstrating control over nature, serving as evidence that the agent is either divine or divinely favoured.

I believe this is the way most people use the word "miracle," a supernatural agent has demonstrated His/Her/Its control over nature, and it makes no sense given what we humans understand about nature and nature's laws.

Let's consider something very simple which I think we all believe science has established beyond any reasonable doubt.  If you take two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen and heat them enough, they turn into water.  Always.

A "miracle" would then be that you repeat the above and it doesn't turn into water, as such an outcome is not ascribable to what we know on "natural agency."  If someone credits God or the gods with fixing it so no water is formed, that's the basic stuff of a "miracle."

Putting such a result into more neutral language, you have some observations, in this case a zillion of them, that two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen, heated to some specified temperature, always turns into the stuff we call water.  We have also developed a conceptual system, chemistry, which makes this observation logically plausible and fits it in with a much wider collection of observations, the body of chemistry.

Ideal Science and Scientists and Reality:

Now I could describe the "ideal" scientist as always curious and not overly attached to any concepts, and to some degree some scientists tend to be like that (I hope I'm that way).  But coming back to ordinary human reality, we all tend to get attached to things that work practically and to things that make sense and so make us feel smart.  Who doesn't like to feel that they are smart, understand how the world works, and can control it at least fairly well?

So probably most actual human scientists, faced with the observation of no water formed when there should have been water formed, jump to the conclusion that there was something wrong with the experiment, not that what they believe are basic laws of chemistry were violated, that there was a "miracle."  And since we humans do make mistakes, it's not a bad first conclusion, we could indeed have screwed up the experiment.

So we do the experiment over and over and the "miraculous outcome" keeps happening, no water, even though we've carefully examined our apparatus, etc.

Well a lot of scientist will simply dismiss the anomalous results at this point rather than question their knowledge: it still must be some error even if they can't figure out what that error is yet.  We will figure it out some day, of course.  This someday belief, applied to being unable to come up with a convincing physical explanation for something, is what philosophers long ago named "promissory materialism."  Someday we will understand this and everything else in proper material terms.  The problem is that this is not science, this is "faith," in the worst connotation of "faith."  A principal requirement for something to be a scientific theory, according to many philosophers of science, is that a theory must be capable of being disproven.  Well you can never prove that X won't be proven in the terms you prefer – chemistry, God, devils, little green UFOs, what have you – someday.

A practical example of this is the evidence for ESP.  Hundreds and hundreds of experiments show ESP manifesting, so the pseudo-skeptics then claim that ESP really means Error Some Place rather than Extrasensory Perception.

A very few scientists will find the failure of an experiment to conform to what we think are the laws to be really exciting and want to research it – like us parapsychologists.  After all, any parapsychology experiment comes down to setting up a situation where, given what we think we know about the physical world, nothing can happen.  Put two people in isolated rooms miles apart, have one look at a randomized deck of cards every minute while the person in the other writes down what she thinks the card is each time.  Given all we know about the physical world, you'll get chance level scores, say 50% correct if the task is to guess red or black with ordinary playing cards.  Then some people average more than that, say 53%, long enough to be statistically significant, and we have evidence for ESP.  Yes, 50% of the time the receiving person is just guessing, but every once in a while they know what the correct card is…..very interesting.

Now if you call this a "miracle" in the sense of "A marvellous event not ascribable to human or natural agency, and therefore attributed to the intervention of a supernatural agent," you've brought your attempts to understand what's happening to an end, you've defined it as something beyond human understanding, so what's the point of trying?  And by not trying to understand further, you don't understand further….

But if you don't use that word "miracle," with it's implication that we humans can't understand, but describe it as an anomalous event, simply something that doesn't make sense in terms of what we already know, that doesn't say it didn't happen, and it invites us to try to expand our understanding.  So for a few scientists like me, "miracles" are an incentive to look deeper and further.  Indeed things that we're sure happen but don't make sense in terms of conventional knowledge might mean an error some place, but might very well mean the next major breakthrough in science if we apply ourselves.

How Far Can We Understand?

Now it could turn out that no matter how much further and deeper we look, we never get beyond verifying that these things occur, but just won't make sense to us.  I'm willing to consider that outcome as possibility, although my preference is for it to make sense, and I am confident that, with further study, these kinds of events will indeed make a lot more sense than they do now.  Whether they will make any kind of "ultimate sense," I don't know.

But Miracles Prove My Religion is the True One!

I also have no objection to religious and spiritual people pointing to apparent miracles – paranormal phenomena in my more neutral description – as evidence that there is a reality to the spiritual.  Indeed that's the whole thrust of my "The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together" book.  Many, many people have had their spiritual and religious lives inhibited or squelched by followers of Scientism (Materialism pretending to be all of science) claiming that all spirituality is unreal, nonsense, imaginary, and who wants to be thought dumb and deluded?   The overview of evidence for the paranormal – for "miracles" if we were forced to use that terminology – that I give in the book is to support my conclusion that the followers of Scientism who have told spiritual people they are stupid are not only harming those people, they are misleading them, because real science, actually working with all the data of parapsychology, shows that humans sometimes show the kinds of qualities we would expect spiritual beings to have.  So it's reasonable to be both scientific and spiritual in ones approach to life.

On the other hand, I think one of the reasons for irrational opposition to parapsychological research from religious people is that the evidence is now clear that no particular religion can claim superiority over any other because it can point to paranormal events, "miracles" among its followers.  Looking at the catalogs of these events in various religions they all have pretty much the same basic parapsychological phenomena occurring.

I personally take that as a sign that God/Spirit, whatever you want to call it, is happy to give such little boosts to people's faith as long as it's any faith that helps people become wiser and more compassionate.  I can't "prove" that incidentally, I can't point to extensive surveys that show, e.g., that "nice" religions have more paranormal events happen that "not nice" religions, this is just my personal feeling, my best guess at this early stage of our knowledge. And perhaps my bias that I may need to overcome some day.

It would be very interesting to catalog the kinds of "miracles," paranormal events reported in various spiritual traditions though.  At first glance they are all pretty much the same, but differences might be very revealing.  For example, in Tibetan Buddhism there is a tradition, based on reports of people who claim to have witnessed this, of very spiritually advanced people passing into "rainbow body" when they die.  These are people who ask that their body be undisturbed, in a closed room, after they die.  Observers report seeing all sorts of rainbow like light leaking out of the room, and when it is opened at the end of the traditional seven days there is no body left in the room except for fingernails, hair, and clothing.  Or in some cases a very shrunken body.  I've never heard of anything similar in other traditions.

Do Miracles Destroy Science?

Coming back to the central issue, yes, I think considering any events as "miracles" does tend to destroy science.  There's little point in doing science if some supernatural being suddenly and inexplicably changes the way the world works.  My belief – can't prove it, but it's what I operate from – is that Spirit or God or whatever is basically benign and won't sabotage our intelligence this way.  But in terms of the way most scientists feel, yes, the possibility of supernatural beings arbitrarily changing reality does gut science.  A simple way to not worry about that is to deny all spiritual reality…..No non-physical, "supernatural" (another word that causes a lot of trouble), then nobody to mess up our experiments and undermine the advance of our knowledge.  No "miracles," no worry.

Lots of interesting psychological questions developing from all this speculation, no time to go into it now….

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Dear Shinzen,

Here's an opening/interesting thought.  I've always cited the Sutta to the Kalamas (a translation I use is below for convenience) as showing that the Buddha was basically scientific in his attitude.  Don't take anything on Authority or apparent logic, keep testing it against experience, only adopt it (subject to change later if the right data comes along) if the ideas/concepts keep agreeing with reality/experience.  It's my idea of how basic science is done, data first, always, theory second.

Mentioned it on one of my discussion lists a couple of days ago, with the addendum that while lip service was paid to it, Buddhism as I had come across it, often didn't seem to honor it.  The actual rule seemed to be think about something until you come to the same conclusions the Buddha is reputed to have come to, then you can stop thinking.  Since the Buddha knew everything, now you are right.  Authority Forever!!!

A Buddhist scholar on the list complimented me on my attitude, it was certainly me, but perhaps I had it wrong, perhaps Gautama Buddha's actual intention, and/or the intention of later Buddhists, might indeed have been to get you thinking only until you agreed with the Buddha.  Thus your faith was strengthened, etc.  Wow!  The Buddha doing a little mind fucking, even if for my and everybody's good?  Well maybe…..I did tell my kids about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, with the best of intentions and it worked out pretty well…..

So my mind is more open, but not comfortable, it's a slippery slope misleading people for their own good…..I generally don't want to start down that slope at all since it's so tricky……And absolute honesty is essential to doing real science…..

I touched on this some in an interview with Vince Horne of the Buddhist Geeks program last week.  Vipassana, I opined (following your ideas), is a great invention, it's a microscope you can use to discover the fine and otherwise implicit structure of your own mind, then maybe change it intelligently.  But if you get a microscope, you don't just wave it around at random, you may be given certain slides (and not others) to look at, and those slides have been prepared in certain ways, selecting materials, stains, etc.  Nothing wrong with this tool as long as you realize you're using it within certain limits and you constantly seek to understand these limits and how they might slant your observations.  If you forget these limits and think you're seeing Unlimited Truth, though, you may get quite deluded….

Any thoughts?

Charley, who might be a little less deluded because he now knows another way in which he might be deluded about being deluded…..     

Gautama Buddha's Sutta to the Kalamas

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.

Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.

Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

(from Gates, 1989).

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Anyway yesterday's interview on how, from my perspective as a psychologist, implicit as well as explicit beliefs can greatly change the results of techniques such as "meditation" went well.  Vince is a good interviewer, and we share this geeky emphasis on what works, as opposed to what you should or shouldn't believe.  If anyone is interested, I'll let people know when the interview will actually be aired, and I think it will be in their podcast archives afterwards.

Exchanging thanks with Vince by email afterwards, I found a lot of recent  frustration coming out that may be of general interest, so here's a lightly edited version of what I wrote Vince…..

It was a good conversation!  So nice to talk with someone who is intelligent and open…. Helpful to me too in relieving some of the frustration I'm feeling with some of the "spiritual leaders" in a web group I belong too.  Most are pretty open, but some of them seem to be operating from some very fixed and Absolute Commandments.

(1) THOU SHALT BELIEVE with all thy heart and mind that you were created in God's image (or have Buddha nature, etc.), and so partake of the Highest Nature yourself

(2) That includes the gift of INTELLIGENCE, which you shall use,

(3) EXCEPT IN AREAS OF DOCTRINE, where you shall absolutely never question doctrines A, B and C.  If you do not understand said Doctrines A, B and C, this shall be taken as a sign of Sin or Endarkenment on your part, as The Doctrines are Revealed Truth……

I see too much of this in Buddhism as I've contacted it too, for in spite of the Sutta to the Kalamas, about examining things for yourself, which I quote all the time, the applied rule seems to be that yes, you can think about and contemplate various Buddhist ideas….and when your thought agrees with what the Buddha is recorded to have said, you have finally gotten it and can stop thinking/contemplating…..

My repeated, common-sense idea that religious and spiritual ideas are the equivalent of scientific theories, intelligent formulations of ideas to deal with actual experiences, and so subject to change and refinement, even replacement, as new data/experiences come in — well I must be one of those heretics…..

Let me know when the show will be aired and I'll let my reader list know.  Don't know if I'll bother to let my "spiritual leader" group know….

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Mindfulness

Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

Lecture 4, Part 16 of 18 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: It’s a very unusual environment here at ITP, going back to William’s concerns for a minute or so. We don’t have a doctrine. We’re not a particular spiritual system with tight parameters of what you should and shouldn't experience, and what’s good and bad and all that.

But while we’re open in a lot of directions, there is a general receptivity and respect that makes things a lot safer and more productive. Nobody’s going to tell William, “Oh – you must be psychotic if you’re having funny experiences. You better go see a psychiatrist.” They’re more likely to say, “Oh. What happened? What was it like? What can I learn from that?” Something like that. Or make suggestions for particular things. This receptivity, I think, makes an enormous difference.

In the past, to find receptivity to unusual experiences, you generally had to belong to some particular religious or spiritual group. So you got people who respected you, but you got a very narrow container to try to fit things into. I think there are a lot of tragedy stories in traditional spiritual disciplines of people who were having deep and genuine experiences that could have been growthful, but they wouldn’t fit in a particular system that well, so they were looked upon as failures, or the work of the devil, or something like that. People suffered from them instead of growing from them.

I’ll tell you the story of the Spiritual Emergence Network.

For years, since I got a little reputation as someone who was interested in unusual kinds of things, I would hear from people. This was in the old days, so it was generally by telephone or letters. You guys remember letters? Pieces of paper?

(Laughter)

People who had had some unusual experience and were worried about it, and they had heard that I knew something about it. A few of these communications would be from people who I thought really were psychologically disturbed. They needed psychological help and, I’m not a therapist, I couldn’t give it to them. Often, they were crazy enough, to use a “technical term,” that if I suggested psychological help, they’d just put me into their delusional system.

So that part was sad. But a lot of these people were ordinary people – you know, sane like us, they’re allowed to walk around the street loose without a keeper – who’d had an unusual psychic or spiritual experiences, and they simply needed someone to be receptive to that.

So I often functioned in a therapeutic way simply by being a professor who said “This is not necessarily a sign of craziness. It’s a phenomenon. Here’s a name for it. We know a little bit about it.”

And that was sufficient in an awful lot of cases. “Oh, I experienced 'telepathy.' Oh, okay. Professor says I’m not crazy.”

Student: So it’s validation that’s making the big differences.

CTT: Yes. They got a glimpse of a bigger container that would allow them their experiences. And a lot of times, I might have to tell them, “You know, you might be crazy. I don’t know you.”

(Laughter)

“But on the basis of this one experience, you don’t sound crazy to me. You sound like an ordinary person who’s had a strange experience.”

Eventually (1978) Stan Grof and his wife Christina founded the Spiritual Emergency Network, which was an international network of people who were tolerant of this sort of thing. They would have liked to have a network right away of experienced psychotherapists who were quite knowledgeable about spiritual and psychic experiences and could actually work with people. They couldn’t get all that, but they got people who were friendly, who weren’t freaked by them.

And so as people would contact this network – and I referred a lot of people to them – they weren’t promised anything spectacular. They’d say, “Oh, okay. You’re in Neosho, Missouri? We have a member in the next town who’d be happy to sit down and have coffee with you and listen to your story without acting like you’re weird or crazy.”

And again, for a lot of people, that was all they needed. A bigger container, another human being who would accept them, instead of somebody who wants to send them to a psychiatrist or to a priest to get exorcised, or something like that.

I don’t know what the current status of the Spiritual Emergency Network is now. They’ve changed to Emergence instead of Emergency to give it a more positive spin, and they’ve gone in and out of business several times, and I don’t know whether they’re in business at the moment. I believe they've always been dependent on the generosity of private donors. They have trained a lot of psychotherapists who now know something about transpersonal and spiritual kinds of experiences, so they’ve helped things that way. I don’t know if they still just do their basic networking of – for example – “Here’s somebody you can have coffee with who will be friendly.” I hope they get back in business, but I think they’re out of business at the moment for lack of money.

Student: And what was that again? Spiritual Emergence –?

CTT: Spiritual Emergence Network. It was headquartered at CIIS in its last incarnation. I’m not quite sure exactly where it is now.

Student: Sounds like a much needed service.

CTT: Yes. It was very needed.

Student: Yeah. Why don’t we start it here?

Student: Yeah.

CTT: I don’t know how many people have suffered uselessly because they’ve had an unusual experience and the only way they can interpret it – and the only social interpretation they get of it – is this is pathology, or the work of the devil. We don’t need that! I mean, some people are crazy and need help with pathology, but, really….

Okay, so we’ve done our mid-quarter review. I’m happy. You guys seem happy.

You’ve stayed very grounded tonight. I guess we’ve reached the point where I will collect papers and you will exchange papers and we’ll get to go home.

Thank you for being present.

Student: Thank you.

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