Twenty five hundred years ago, Gautama Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, had some deep insights and created powerful techniques that would allow major reductions of human suffering. Traditionally the Buddha is said to found a total end to all suffering. Perhaps that’s true, perhaps it’s not. I don’t know, but certainly Buddhist meditation techniques and related [...]
Continue reading about Meditation, Monasticism, Buddhism, Materialism – Preliminary Thoughts
Dr. Charles Tart Mindfulness Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Lecture 4, Part 7 of 18 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 or not! Student: [...]
As readers of this blog or my recent The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together know, I have long been concerned with the psychological and spiritual damage the world view I call Dismissive Materialism does to people. The idea that there is no inherent meaning or purpose [...]
Some interesting correspondence on world views, altered states, animism, materialism, suppression of the bright shadow, Dismissive Materialism, etc. that, with Matt Colborn’s permission, I’m sharing. 3-17-11 Hi Charles – I’ve just been doing some corrections to the manuscript of my book Pluralism and the Mind and as a result been thinking a lot about different [...]
Continue reading about World Views, Animism, Dismissive Materialism
Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Lecture 4, Part 6 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here. CTT: Comments on the comments on your papers, or things you want to bring up? Student: I was going to say that last year I took some time off. When I came [...]
Continue reading about An Attentional/Intentional Structure of Pathology
I recently got an email from an old friend and colleague about a possibly psychic dream. I’m not going to report on that here, it’s old hat for me to hear about dreams that provide psychic info on real-world events, but some of the other ideas his email stimulated in me may be of interest, [...]
Continue reading about Ghosts, Horror Movies, Death and the Spiritual Path
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 [...]
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 science [...]
Continue reading about Buddhism, Reincarnation, Science, Parapsychology
Sandy raises a point that comes up a lot. When you write about “spiritual” versus “non-spiritual” people, our mind tends to immediately think in extremes – often helped by the extremeness we have experienced with those two classes of people! It’s easy to think of “spiritual” implying all the good virtues – generosity, faithfulness, control [...]
Continue reading about Explorations on the Spiritual Side – 2 – The “Problem” of Nice Atheists
Dr. Charles T. Tart, Mindfulness, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Lecture 3, Part 3 of 13 parts. To start class from beginning, click here. Student: I’ve been having really lucid dreams as well. It’s really been helping my dream states. I mean, last night was sweet. I was playing bike polo the whole night. (Laughter) And [...]