From that time on, to greatly oversimplify, you can talk about two main streams of Buddhist activity.  The heart of Buddhism is the monastic tradition, monks and nuns so dedicated to achieving enlightenment for their own sakes and for the sake of others that they devote their entire lives to living in ascetic conditions and practicing meditation and prayer.  The other main stream is the beliefs of the common people, in essence, that the Buddha was some kind of god, or at least had supernatural abilities, as the monks and nuns also do to various degrees.  These people were too busy trying to survive and  earn a living, and so could not meditate very much themselves, but they could earn merit, which would go toward improving their future lives, by worshiping the Buddha and by supporting the monks and nuns with alms and other donations.  I'm speaking very generally, of course, and you can find many variations on these themes.

As Buddhism moved into cultures that were radically different from the Indian culture Buddhism originated in, it often had to make various and sometimes major adaptations to fit into its new culture.  One of the major adaptations some teachers of Buddhism are making in bringing Buddhism to the modern world, particularly the West is to try to reconcile it with what we know from science and psychology.  This has interesting results, some of which will probably make Buddhism more effective in the long run, and others which can greatly undermine the historical form of Buddhism.  In terms of the latter, I'm especially thinking of the way science is so frequently equated with an overarching philosophy of materialism.  It's not essential to equate science with materialism, of course – see my "The End Of Materialism: How Evidence Of The Paranormal Is Bringing Science And Spirit Together" book-  but science has had, by far, its greatest successes in learning about the material world.  We all like success, so an attitude of materialism, only what is material – known physical objects and physical energies – is real, pervades most of modern life.

From this materialistic perspective, Buddhism may be psychologically effective in reducing individuals' suffering, ultimately through meditation's physiological effects on the brain.  But it carries an enormous amount of superstitious baggage with it.  There are no divine beings, Gautama Buddha is not some kind of god, e.g., or bodhisattvas may be real historical people who reduced their own suffering and helped others, but they have not become minor gods that are worth praying to, or worshiping the Buddha is a useless and misleading thing to do except insofar as it may psychologically sooth you – albeit at the cost of having a fundamentally wrong belief about the nature reality, which will probably lead to a variety of negative consequences.

Incidentally, I have nothing against materialism per se as a philosophical approach to the world.  What I object to is the shortsightedness and arrogance that allows too many believers of it to believe that all truth is encompassed by this view, and thus that there's no need to actually check in with reality to see how well this kind of explanation actually works.  Many things can be explained completely and controlled effectively by material means, and I'm all for progress continuing on these fronts, but many important things can't be.

What led me to these thoughts today is thinking about the idea that traditional Buddhist monasticism is tremendously threatened by an attitude of materialism.  If you're very rich, of course, it's no big deal to help to support a few monks or nuns.  But for the majority of people, why should they spend significant amounts of their very limited resources supporting people who sit around trying to get enlightened and pray, when prayer is one of those superstitions we need to discard?  From a materialistic point of view, praying is talking to yourself.  Perhaps psychologically the monks praying is good for them, even if it involves a major illusion about the nature of reality, but why should we give donations for them to pray for us?  Wouldn't it be better to spend our money on socially useful projects, building schools and hospitals, e.g., or on our own security and pleasure?

My own understanding, drawing from my 50+ years of knowledge of research within scientific parapsychology, is that we have very high quality, scientific evidence that, for example, our minds are more than just the material functioning of the brain, that some things like prayer and psychic healing can sometimes have real effects in the real world, or that telepathy could be a mechanism for prayer to have real effects beyond the person praying, and so materialism is only a partial view of what reality is, it's foolish and unscientific to discard everything spiritual in a wholesale manner.

All religions, including Buddhism, are undoubtedly full of superstitions that are factually wrong, but to totally throw them out, to assume that anything about the spiritual is inherently nonsensical, is a major mistake.  It's not only a mistake in scientific terms – you don't ignore or irrationally reject data just because it doesn't fit with your other beliefs – it's something that psychologically harms many people.  That's because many people have various kinds of spiritual experiences, and to then have scientific Authority Figures say this is all error and nonsense on their parts is to devalue and reject some of their most essential aspects of their lives.  I've spoken and corresponded with innumerable people who have had this happen to them.  It hurts!

I'm hardly the first person to notice that these two extremes of uncritical credulity for anything labeled spiritual on the one hand, and total rejection of spirituality for materialism on the other hand, are not very healthy for the human spirit.  Too many of our values are based in our spiritual and religious views, and to declare them  all superstition is to reduce us to the level of animals.  If we think we are nothing but animals, we are more likely to act that way, with the consequences of such actions.  The founders of the Society for Psychical research in England, more than 125 years ago, saw this problem and advocated that the methods of science could be used to start separating the true from the false, the wheat from the chaff in the sphere of religion.  I'm sad to say there has not been much progress yet.  We have slowly accumulated high quality, laboratory evidence of the reality of things like telepathy, so I have argued in my "The End Of Materialism" book, that it is scientifically invalid to simply throw out all spiritual and religious ideas without examination.  But there is so much more we need to know, so much more that research about the spiritual could clarify!

The basic theme running through my career has been to try to build bridges between the best of science and the best of spirituality.  Both these fields have much nonsense in them, although science has vital self-correcting mechanisms usually not found in religion and spirituality.  I have basically proposed that the testing methods of essential scientific inquiry be used to refine and clarify religious ideas, but I suspect that this proposal is too threatening to many people.  For those who have a strong investment in some religious or spiritual path, they may well see science as the enemy which has ridiculed their beliefs, and so want nothing to do with it.  Further, because spiritual beliefs are so important to our emotional well-being, the idea that some of them might be wrong, or that all are subject to examination by scientific method, might be very threatening to people.  Many scientists, on the other hand, have actively rejected religion in favor of a materialistic, but apparently scientific, worldview, and do not like the idea that they have been making a major mistake by not actually examining the phenomena of religion scientifically.  Or they have not so much made an active decision to ignore or reject the spiritual so much as this attitude has been conditioned into them by modern life and their conventional scientific education.

Coming back to traditional Buddhism, Western ideas, with their heavy materialistic bias, are spreading more and more over the world.  Traditional Buddhism, which supports monastics for the supposed benefit of their prayers, may go on for a long time in some parts of the world, but have little power to establish itself in the more modern world.  Personally I think this would be a great loss.  My best understanding of the parapsychological evidence to date is that monks and nuns praying for us may actually be doing something useful in reality, it's not simply a form of delusion.

As a scientist, that view is, of course, always subject to further test.  Some of what I believe along these lines may turn out to be correct, some research may produce further evidence supporting it, and, even more importantly, as we gain a better scientific understanding of what, for example, makes prayers (or psychic healing in general) more likely to be effective, we may be able to greatly increase the usefulness and efficacy of monastics (and us ordinary people) praying for the world.

Is there much chance of applying the essence of science, "essential science" as I called in my book, to improve our knowledge of and efficacy of spiritual work?  Good question!  I've worked to promote this idea in many rational ways, and I pray for it, in the hope that my prayers are somehow effective in reality, not just a psychological phenomena within me.  The chance of success?  Good question!

Finally I will note that my understanding of Gautama Buddha's ideas is that they were compatible with a basically scientific approach to reality.  In his Sutta to the Kalamas, for example, he constantly tells people to check ideas and beliefs against their experience, against what actually can be observed to work, rather than simply whether they are popular or supported by authorities (including himself), etc.  That's probably the most important part of essential science: all ideas must constantly be checked against observable, experiencable reality, and must be modified when new observations require us to go beyond the current conceptions.  Unfortunately I often get the impression that as Buddhism as became an established institution for many centuries, this call to check ideas against reality has been turned into a too fixed belief that Gautama Buddha's understandings were the last word on ultimate reality, he was omniscient, and so new observations and ideas are simply checked back for doctrinal compliance with what the Buddha thought about things, rather than against a wider observation of reality.  This is one of the things that I'm sure will have to change as Buddhism becomes more important in modern culture and tries to be more compatible with science.

Some modern teachers promote an atheistic kind of Buddhism.  Meditation practices have effects on your brain which make you happier.  I am all for anything which makes people happier in a healthy way – but if you reduce the effects of meditation to brain functioning then, as a scientifically inclined Westerner, my response is fine, the drug companies should be able to develop a pill to produce the same happiness, I hope they develop it soon as all that meditation can be pretty tedious……  But all I know, my "best estimate" as a widely-informed scientist, is that there's more to spirituality than nothing but particular electro-chemical patterns in the brain, and we need to understand that "more" to really benefit others and ourselves…..

(added 1-28-12)

A while after posting the above, I had a "vision" (small v, image arising, rather than big V, Vision from Above) of where Buddhism without any reality to the spiritual, Materialistic Buddhism, could go with the right research.  It's a sarcastic, critical vision in some ways, as well as humorous – but insofar as it could reduce human suffering, I'm all for it!  As long as it doesn't further distract us from the vitally needed research on what's real about the spiritual and how to optimally live with it…..

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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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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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One of the list members, an ordained Christian minister, wrote that he had a difficult time understanding my mentality.  Where was I coming from?  What would I stake my life on?  I don't think I can satisfy his or similar persons' curiosity, but this seemed like a good time to do a quick review of my life's work, so I'll share the essence of my response here – the spiritual place I'm coming from, what science is, how it goes will with spirituality, etc.  It can only be a partial look, but an interesting one….

One of my favorite spiritual songs, from the CD Remembrance, by psychologist and spiritual seeker John Astin, goes

Why have you come to earth?

Do you remember?

Why have you, taken birth?

Why have you come?

The refrain is

To love, to serve and remember.

To love, to serve and remember.

This song always touches me deeply when I hear or sing it, intellectually because it summarizes my faint understandings of why I'm here so well, emotionally….because it just does, it touches me.

My best guess, as of today, as to "where" we come from is that some kind of reincarnation process is at work, and the karma driving it, the lawful causality, is partly straightforward consequences of what we have done and become in previous existences, and partly conscious choice.  Buddhists say that if you want to know what your past lives were like, look at your present life.  If you want to know what your future lives will be like, look at your present life.  Sounds reasonable to me.  Well I still have a lot, lot more to learn about love, although I'm not completely ignorant about it, I believe the work I do in helping us understand our minds and souls better is a service to all humanity, and I would like to have deeper contact with our spiritual roots, to remember….

I say my "best guess," as I know how little I know and how much a desire for certainty, and/or the forces of hope and fear, can fool me into thinking I know more than I do.  That I am here to love, serve and remember as primary goals is my best guess – but I don't Know in any final sense, even though I'd like to know more deeply.  And my regular prayer to Whatever/Whoever is the Highest is that I may grow in wisdom and compassion and be of greater service.  And any guidance in whatever form is much appreciated!  Meanwhile, knowing how easily I can get caught up in my hopes, fear and delusions, it's most honest to talk about my best guesses, my best theories of how things are.

I am, of course, intellectually taking and hopefully living a basically spiritual view of life, a belief that there is Spirit (or whatever you want to call it), that life is more than just this material existence, that the Universe/Spirit is basically benevolent, and that I'd like to contribute to this benevolence and evolution, as well as reducing human suffering.  To put it more beautifully than I can phrase it, here is what R. M. Bucke, describing his Cosmic Consciousness experience, said:

Among other things … he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain.

Note carefully that I take a basically "spiritual" view of life, rather than a "religious" view.  I differentiate spiritual experience as those personal experiences where one is touched by Spirit in some deep way.  I have been blessed with some light touches in my life, and am very grateful for this.  Others have many and more profound touches, and part of my own understanding is based on their reports and ideas about their experiences.

In almost all cases, I and others are seldom able to just accept spiritual experience for what it is/was, partly/mainly because human nature is such that we have a deep desire to "understand" things, to make "sense" of them.  Given the radically different nature of much spiritual experience such that it does not express well in ordinary language, the attempts to understand, to create explanations and theories that "explain" the experiences can be very frustrating.  My favorite Kurt Vonnegut poem expresses this latter point so well:

Tiger got to hunt.

Bird got to fly.

Man got to ask himself

Why?  Why?  Why?

Tiger got to sleep.

Bird got to land.

Man got to tell himself

He understand….

So individuals have spiritual experiences, they try to understand.  They try to communicate the basic experiences and their understandings to others.  They may be so desperate to seem to understand in an explanatory framework, usually a framework (religion, philosophy) society has given us, that they gradually twist and distort their memories of the actual experiences to make them apparently fit.  We then further move into the social side of humanity, and after a while stories about the experiences or ideas about them have become religious tenets, dogmas, and those tenets pressure and shape future individuals' experiences.

As a young man I tended to uniformly condemn this distortion process, but as I've gotten older I realize we need social expressions of the spiritual, religious rites and rituals to make society run more smoothly.  But I'm still quite suspicious of the way organized religions distort what we know of the basic spiritual experiences and, indeed, often suppress further direct religious experience of individuals in order to maintain the authority of the religion and its leaders.  I have heard innumerable horror stories of people who had profound spiritual experiences as children and were beaten and brainwashed to make them conform….

Science and Spirituality:

Now, please put all your knowledge about science and religion on hold for a bit.  Many of us have had our spiritual lives badly twisted and invalidated by what we think of as science, so we have to work to stay genuinely calm about this…..

Yes, religion, especially in the form of the Roman Catholic Church suppressed exploration and creation of new knowledge badly for a long time.  Science, as it was arising, had to fight badly for its freedom, there's a heritage of a lot of bad blood.  Today scholars point out that we tend to have less overt conflict because most organized religions have ceded the territory of physical reality to science to avoid conflict.  Declare that science can't deal with the spiritual and religious, then ignore science.  This isolation is fine with most scientists who were educated to believe religion was all nonsense anyway.

My training as a scientist, a psychologist, fits well with my basic personality and my basic spiritual orientation.  On the one hand I am curious about all sorts of things and open to all sorts of ideas.  On the other, I've never liked to be fooled – by others or by myself.  Basic science thrives on and encourages curiosity about, in principle, everything.  Yes, there are fashions and taboos about what it is "proper" for science to look at, but in principle essential science (see my more lengthy and detailed descriptions of what essential science, as opposed to scientism, is, in my The End of Materialism book).  Essential science is also very aware of how we fool ourselves and each other and has built-in procedures for minimizing this.

Discussing the above as a spiritual seeker strongly (but not exclusively) working to serve in the role of scientist, I would characterize individuals' spiritual experiences as data, as facts, as experiential realities.  The interpretation of these experiences, though, is theory, belief.  The typical near-death experience report, e.g., of meeting a Being of Light who telepathically communicates with one and unconditionally accepts one is data, that's what was experienced.  To say that means the Being of Light is God or Jesus or a Spirit that exists independently of the experiencer is a theory, an interpretation of the experience.

The beauty and power of essential science is its recognition that we love theories, we love to feel we are smart and understand.  "Man got to tell himself he understand."  But that feeling of understanding, even if it fits with currently fashionable beliefs and wins social approval, is not sufficient for essential science.  We recognize what I have called a universal principle of rationalization.  We clever humans can take any set of facts, observations, experiences, whatsoever, and create a plausible sounding theory as to why they are as we believe.

There's an apt parallel in mathematics, a theorem (can't recall the name off-hand) which says you can take a sequence of truly randomly generated  numbers of any length (dozens, millions, billions) and figure out an algorithm, a mechanical formula, which will generate that sequence.  So that means the sequence is not really random but the lawful consequence of that algorithm?  No, for if you turn on your random number generator again, the algorithm will not predict the next numbers in the sequence beyond chance accuracy.

(Note I am talking about true random generators here.  There are pseudo-random number generator programs which do indeed work on an algorithm, but those are not our concern here.)

The point is to recognize the power of rationalization.  We humans are very creative, we can create apparent reasons, but they may have no relation to reality.  Thus the cardinal rule of science.  It's wonderful if your theory accounts for all the data to date, is elegant, obviously true, etc.  But you have to then predict what will happen in new circumstances, and then actually test your predictions in those new circumstances.

If your theory predicts correctly, good, keep working with it, refine it, expand it, etc.  But if it doesn't predict what actually, observably happens next, the theory is wrong, and either should be discarded or reworked.  It doesn't matter how much you or others believed it, the test of prediction in new circumstances is the gold standard of evaluation.

Spiritual Experiences as Data, Spiritual and Religious Beliefs as Theories

I regard individual spiritual experiences as the data of spirituality, and spiritual or religious beliefs as theories about what that data means.

In the physical sciences, in the last few hundred years, following this procedure of essential science – observe, theorize, predict from the logic of the theory, see if the predictions work, refine, revise or replace as needed – all the physical sciences have made immense progress.  Our theories account for and predict more and more observables more and more precisely.  Where theories haven't kept working, they have led to the creation of new theories that work better than the old ones.  That's progress: our conceptual understanding of reality explains and predicts it more and more accurately.

So, has there been any progress in spirituality or religion in the last few hundred years?

Are the basic theories/beliefs of spirituality and religion more precise and refined than they were in the past?  Do they account for actual observables better?

We know the answer, particularly with the hardened positions of organized religions.  You're not supposed to "test" religious beliefs, you're supposed to believe them.  Or else!

Me and the "Spiritual Leaders" Group: Why and How?

So bringing this all back to me and the group of spiritual leaders I have belonged to for several years – why and how am I here?

The simplest why is because the group's founder asked me to join, and I greatly respect him and his work.  I did argue with him about it, the group was for "spiritual leaders," why was he asking me?  I'm not a spiritual leader.  More deeply, I spend most of my professional time talking to other psychologists and scientists, which is nice, but it's a somewhat narrow range of humanity.  The prospect that I could listen to and converse with people who were "spiritual leaders," was very interesting.  I could be exposed to and learn from whole new points of view, data and theories of people whose primary orientation/allegiance was to the spiritual, and that would be (and has been!) most interesting.  Hopefully this would enlarge my own view, and suggest practices that would increase my own devotion and understanding, which in turn would increase my ability to be of service in my main task of bridging the best of the spiritual and scientific worlds.

As to the "how" am I here: I read the various exchanges on our listserv and my mind tends to automatically divide them into two types.  The first are what I consider "data posts," sharing of personal spiritual experiences.  The second, and by far more numerous category, are "theory" posts.  At their best, the theory posts are on the order of "My tradition thinks that such-and-such experiences mean so-and-so, the strength of this theory/belief is A, B and C, the lacks and weaknesses are D, E and F."  At their worst, the theory posts are relatively rigid statements of theories that have turned into dogmas.  Instead of "This is the best way we can think of to make sense of this" it's "This is The Truth."

The ratio of the two kinds of posts varies from time to time.  When it's too much in the dogma direction, I notice people get more argumentative and/or tend to drop out of the list.  I've certainly been tempted to drop out at times when I think we've had too much of the "My Truth is better than your truth" stuff.  Can rigid belief and the virtue of humility exist together?  Doesn't seem like it……    ;-(

My initial  hope in joining the group was that there would be a lot of "data posts," forming a deeper bond among us than just an intellectual one, and, even more importantly, that this kind of data and the intelligence and good will of my fellow group members would then see the creation of new theories, of new ways of thinking about spiritual experience that might lead to some new (and ultimately testable) predictions/understandings about Spirit, and, hopefully, more effective ways of helping people have primary spiritual experiences themselves.  I'm afraid there's been very little of this theory progress and an awful lot of attempting to squeeze everything back into the old theories, the Sacred Beliefs That-Must-Not-Be-Questioned, that various members already have…..

And Yet….

I've learned a lot from reading the posts of group members talking with each other.  One great mystery (to me) is still just as mysterious after all these years, though.  Given how very powerful scientific thought is in our times, and given how much there's a general perception that science has shown spirituality and religion are all nonsense – why does there seem to be such a lack of interest on the part of these spiritual leaders, the progressive and liberal wing of religion and spirituality to my way of thinking, in my beginning attempts to show that it is reasonable to be both spiritual and scientific, that there is excellent scientific evidence for this position?

In terms of seeing my life's work as building bridges between the best of science and the best of spirituality, it's like I've built a small bridge – but hardly anyone seems interested in crossing back and forth…..????  Note I'm not lost in my own ego here, brooding over why don't you read my articles, my books, I'm referring to general attempts to bridge the best of science and the best of spirituality.

I think I've got a few on the scientific (not the scientistic) side feeling that it's OK to be interested in spirituality and pursue it.  I'm not sure I've affected anyone on the official spiritual or religious side to see how science and spirituality can work together for more knowledge and effectiveness.  I guess I was hoping this latter process would happen with my group  membership…now I'm not sure it will.

So, that's why and how I'm here in this group as of this time.  I've written a lot, probably too much, violating the guideline I'm always giving others than short posts are more likely to be actually read.  Anyway, I hope someone finds it useful.

Now I have to stop participating in this interesting discussion for a while and turn to the course material on mindfulness training I'm preparing.

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My closest personal brush with death happened a few years ago when I took a new medication for my atrial fibrillation.  I started feeling funny, but had an appointment with my cardiologist – who took and EKG and then personally rushed me in a wheel chair into the Emergency Room for my heart to be shocked, as I was in ventricular fibrillation, a condition that can be fatal fairly quickly!
What amazed me was how calm I was.  I talked intelligently with the doctors and nurses as they were preparing me for the shock, asking about the procedure, made sure my wife knew I was in the ER, etc., being a pleasant fellow to have around, while knowing that this could be it, I could be dead in a few minutes.  Then they drugged me with a short acting thing (Brevitol) that made me stupid and unconscious for a few minutes, during which time they shocked me.
In retrospect I marveled that I was so calm about it!  Maybe just dumb luck, but my best guess was it came from two factors. One, years of vipassana meditation practice with Shinzen Young, teaching me to be open and clear about the moment, with equanimity, coupled with Gurdjieffian self-remembering practice of staying in the moment, and two, a good intellectual knowledge of the scientific evidence about survival of the spirit after death.  I summarize that evidence in one of the chapters of my recent "The End of Materialism" book, where I put it in the Many Maybes category, psychic stuff where there is so much evidence for its reality that it would be stupid to ignore that evidence, but enough questions on interpreting the evidence that I wouldn't feel comfortable saying it's "proven" that we survive death.  One of my thoughts in the ER was that I was personally going to find out if I survived death!
If I didn't survive death, of course, I would never suffer the embarrassment of knowing I was wrong in expecting to survive.  Along with that, I don't believe in any kind of hell, no God that I believe in would be that cruel.  Difficult afterlife periods perhaps, but no eternal damnation nonsense.
I would like to think I now am guaranteed to have a peaceful and spiritual death, but I know things can change too……
I hope that's at least a little helpful.  Meanwhile my wife and I do the practical stuff, like updating our Advance Directives (we don't want to be kept alive as vegetables), leaving info for our kids about our stuff, etc., and I continue my work to try to bring genuine science and genuine spirituality a little closer.

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One afternoon Rinpoche invited a few of us to meet with him privately and discuss what we saw as important obstacles to the introduction and growth of Vajrayana Buddhism in our Western culture.  Since he had touched, in passing, on the fact that Western science equates consciousness with brain functioning in an earlier teaching session, I focused on that, as building bridges between genuine science and genuine spirituality has been the focus of my half-century of scientific and personal work.

I have long been concerned that the prejudicial rejection of any reality to spirituality in orthodox science not only distorts the scientific understanding of our nature, it also seriously injures many people who have spiritual yearnings or who have been touched by personal spiritual experiences,  because They, The Authorities, those scientists who know what reality is, have "proven" that the spiritual is all illusion.  I and some of us know this attitude – I call it Dismissive Materialism, as it dismisses and invalidates the spiritual without going through the necessity in proper science to examine actual evidence – has hurt these people, for instead of feeling touched by Spirit and starting to grow, they think they must be stupid or a little crazy, and so squelch their budding spirituality.

Vajrayana Buddhism, like all the world's major spiritual systems, is heavily based on giving reality, as much reality as the material world has, if not more, to a "spiritual" realm.  The idea of the Siddhartha Gautama, the  historical Buddha, or various Buddhas since that time, or bodhisattvas continuing after their physical death as real beings, real "mind streams" that can help us and bless us in our own spiritual search, is central to Vajrayana, as are acceptance of various god-like, non-material beings, dakas, dakinis, yidams, protectors, karma, reincarnation, etc.  In Christianity, comparably, we have God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, various angels, saints, all existing in a non-material way and able to help us.

Dismissive Materialism says all this is superstitious nonsense, of course.  Mind is nothing but a product of the physical functioning of the brain.  When the brain is badly injured or dies, that's the end of consciousness.  So  Siddhartha  Buddha was a smart fellow who lived 2500 years ago and figured out some psychological techniques to reduce human suffering by altering attitudes and beliefs about who you are and the nature of reality.  But the Buddha's “mind stream” ceased with the death of his brain.  The psychological techniques he created, like meditation, are still useful for reducing personal suffering.  Indeed they are especially useful to scientists studying brain functioning, as trained meditators can keep their minds still and focused much better than ordinary folks, which makes tracing brain circuits easier.  The result of such brain research, from the perspective of Dismissive Materialism, will be that eventually we will know exactly what brain circuits reduce suffering and produce feelings of happiness, enlightenment, etc., and then we will go on and discover more effective ways to activate those circuits, such as designer drugs, and we will no longer have to spend years and years meditating and doing other superstitious processes like Vajrayana rituals which are not guaranteed to work anyway, even within Buddhism.  We will have the Materialist version of Buddhism, drug X, Nirvanathene © which reduces your suffering.

If Buddhism or other imported spiritual systems follow the same historical path as Christianity and Judaism have followed in Western culture, what will probably happen is that spiritual systems will cede more and more territory to material science while claiming a certain mystery and exclusive territory, the territory of ethics, meaning, values, etc., that cannot be directly approached by materialistic science.  Christianity and Judaism have thus been marginalized in many ways as to contributing to our understanding of the world, although many social scientists will admit that research shows that belonging to a religion is good for your health.  It doesn't matter that your core beliefs are false and nonsensical – God, heaven, hell, salvation, Buddhas, enlightenment, all that sort of stuff – belonging to any tight-knit social group gives you support mechanisms that are good for your ordinary health.

I believe that if Buddhism does not directly confront this invalidation from Dismissive Materialism, it will become like our home-grown religions.  There will be a few small groups of people who manage to have a lot of faith and get along largely ignoring this invalidation, and many, many people who have half-hearted religious and spiritual lives.

In the few minutes I had to mention this point with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, I gave a quick version of the above and added, again much too briefly, that when science is done properly – an emphasis of dealing rationally with all the data, not just that which fits what you want to believe – we find that there is actually plenty of high-quality scientific evidence that people sometimes manifest the kinds of qualities which we would expect genuinely spiritual beings to have. Telepathy may be a mechanism of prayer, e.g., or clairvoyance and remote viewing examples of psychic/spiritual interconnectedness of being.

I have written about the findings of scientific parapsychology (not New Age, unscientific beliefs calling themselves parapsychology) constituting a scientific basis for taking Transpersonal Psychology as the study of a real spiritual nature of humans.  My recent book The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together is an overview of the scientific evidence and conclusions I have come to about this from my own and others' research.  I will be sending a copy to Tsoknyi Rinpoche, although I tend to doubt he will have much time to read in it, given the enormous amount of responsibilities he and other lamas have in preserving and spreading Tibetan Buddhism since the Chinese conquest of Tibet.

This is part of a general problem I see.  Western religious and spiritual leaders have taken quite a beating from materialistic science for a long time.  Often this was deserved – a lot of factually false or psychologically harmful ideas have been presented as religious truths.  But now the tendency is for spiritual leaders to pretty much ignore science, unless a particular, isolated finding happens to agree with their belief system, thus apparently lessening conflict.  But this does not solve the fundamental problem: Dismissive Materialism is one of the most powerful psychological, social and economic forces in the world and steadily undermines many genuinely spiritual aspirations and attempts at development.

Will Buddhism, or any other imported spiritual system, do any better than Christianity and Judaism have done in confronting Dismissive Materialism head on, instead of trying to pretend there is no problem?  I don't know.

What I think would be very helpful will be for progressive spiritual leaders to be aware of the kind of high quality scientific evidence I talk about in The End of Materialism, and when attacked by Dismissive Materialists presenting themselves as "scientists," be able to ask them if they are speaking as scientists, if they have actually studied this evidence?  Almost none of them have!  If they will honestly admit they haven't, then they should logically admit that their dismissal of the spiritual is a personal conviction, but does not carry the prestige of Science.  Better yet, religious and spiritual systems should explore positive ways to join with open-minded sciences like parapsychology and Transpersonal Psychology to begin discriminating different qualities of knowledge in these areas, exploring how to more effectively encourage and aid healthy spiritual lives, etc.

I fear, though, that once spiritual leaders have fallen back on the "just have faith" defense, they themselves don't want to associate with genuine science, as genuine science can question anything as part of refining knowledge, and that may mean some parts of spiritual systems will be found to be factually or theoretically inadequate and need to be replaced with better understandings and practices……This opens a whole area of how open minded science and the practice of humility can create progress in spirituality which I can’t go into here…..

And so these thoughts taper off in a quite unsatisfactory manner, no certain answers, lots of possibilities, and the human spirit being the most important thing in the world…..

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I’ve just finished editing* a video of me giving the ISSSEEM (International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine) 2010 Presidential Address, Toward An Evidence-Based Spirituality for the 21^st Century, which can serve as a summary of that book as well as stimulation for directions I hope people will study in the future, as well as giving a more personal look at me for those who want more than words.

It’s on YouTube in four parts, as follows:

Part 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9CBYisAa1o

Part 2 -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdxQkMLLn24

Part 3 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTreTfThbw

Part 4 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf3_LbxgyLc

It’s about an hour and a half altogether.

* Editing means the camera person kept swinging the camera back and forth between me and the slides in spite of my instruction to keep it on me, I planned to use a video editing program to add in the slides later.  I have now done that, which makes for much more readable slides and, by overriding most of the camera swings, less dizzying pans.  Excuse minor technical glitches in this, I’m just an amateur.

Interestingly, my son David Tart is very skilled at animation and has been the animation director of a number of films.  He looked at earlier efforts of mine and gave me good advice – stop trying to get better and better at video editing Dad!  With some obvious crudity, my stuff is a amateur job but a good one, to be admired.  If it gets even better, people will start looking at it as if it were done by a professional, and then get distracted because it’s quite flawed by professional standards.

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Where Do Spontaneous Images Come From, And Why?

I’m wondering where the huge number of images and dreamlets, whose form and content almost never have anything to do with my life, come from when I meditate.  I say “where,” as the origin of these images and dreamlets does not feel at all like it comes from “me,” from my conscious thoughts and intentions.

Observational Method:

For years I have tried to practice some vipassana (“insight”) meditation most days as part of my ongoing study of consciousness.  I wouldn’t call myself an accomplished meditator by any means, but I’ve certainly learned a lot about how my mind, and thus probably mind in general, works.  Now I want to ask about one of the mysterious aspects of it.

I often get sleepy while attempting to do vipassana with my eyes closed, and rather than just complain to myself about not being able to stay fully awake, I’ve learned, thanks to advice from Shinzen Young, to take the visual imagery that arises as the object of my meditation, to try to observe whatever imagery spontaneously comes with as much concentration, clarity and equanimity as I can.  That is I don’t try to influence it, don’t try to make certain kinds of images arise and others not arise, but stay with whatever comes along and observe them as clearly and  “objectively” as possible.

I can classify my observed imagery roughly in three categories.

First is what I might call the background screen, the faint, moving, morphing, vague patterns, probably caused partly by what light does come through my closed eyelids plus internal processes.

Second is more definite images, brighter, still moving and morphing to some degree, but largely impersonal, more like poorly defined geometrical designs than identifiable, everyday objects.

Third is what I call “dreamlets,” brief (a few seconds) dreams with definite, moving imagery and accompanying, appropriate thoughts (internal talk).  Dreamlets come as I slip more deeply into a hypnagogic state.  I get absorbed quickly into the dreamlet story and lose some of my ability to observe, but often retain some sense that I am observing throughout, and usually come back to more awake, less imagistic consciousness after a few seconds.  Rarely, I can keep observing ongoing dreamlets in this hypnagogic state for longer periods, but it is tricky to maintain enough intention and activation to not actually fall asleep, but not so much as to wake me up so much that the dreamlet fades away.

My question, phrased in the heading as where the images (and dreamlets) come from, is a set of why questions.  Why do the images appear, why do they have the particular forms that they do, and what function, if any, do they have?  I’ve thought about several crude theories, described below, none of which is very satisfying in terms of fitting the data, and wonder if JCS online participants may have some better ideas.

Random Image Creation Process Theory:

One line of theorizing is that some parts of the mind are basically random generators, there is no “Why?” answer or “What function?” answer.  It would be like a program running in your computer that randomly accessed sections of randomly selected files on the hard disk and displayed them for a few seconds before making another random selection, with some blending/morphing of images as one selection is replaced by another.  This kind of theory is a partial fit to my thousands of observations of my imagery and dreamlets, as for almost all of them, there is no obvious connection to my recent activities, my ongoing concerns, or my personal history.  As to continuity, while at the form level alone one image frequently morphs into another in a second or two, there is seldom any obvious cognitive reason for A turning into B into C, etc.

A major shortcoming of the purely random theory is that whatever generates my images works with constraints to generate recognizable objects and dreamlets: they all make rough or complete sense.  I do not see weird things you would never see in reality, the characters in my dreamlets do not speak in gibberish or do impossible things, etc.  So if there is a random process behind things, it is a constrained process, limited as to what kinds of forms and happenings it can pick.

Deeper Processing Byproduct Theory:

Another line of theorizing, applied by some to nocturnal dreams also, is that the images are a byproduct of some deeper activity of sorting through recent sensory impressions and thoughts.  The deeper activity is theorized to be of importance in organizing the brain or something like that, the experienced imagery is a kind of fluff, an epiphenomenon of no direct or relevant meaning.

The main problem with this theory is that these “deeper processes” are so vague at present that this kind of theory could not be disproven or distinguished from a constrained random process theory until such time as the characteristics of the hypothesized deeper processes are specified.

Another problem with this theory is the observation, mentioned above, that what I see is not truly random, it is constrained to “sensible” objects and happenings.  Why would something that is just fluff or static be constrained instead of totally random?

The older version of this deeper processing line of theorizing is, of course, Freud’s ideas on the meaning of dreams as disguised expressions of deeper desires.  Perhaps….but as it’s not feasible to have a psychoanalyst on standby whenever I have an image while meditating, I won’t go there now.  In general, I’m sure that if I started a process of association to many of these images, subtly guided/biased by a therapist, I would eventually get back to things of significance to me, but whether this would be more effective than, say, starting associating to words picked from the dictionary at random, is a good question.

World-Simulation Virtual Reality Processing Model:

For years I have found it useful to think of consciousness as a world-simulation process, as a Biological-Psychological-Virtual-Reality (BPVR) (Tart, C., 1991.  Multiple personality, altered states and virtual reality: The world simulation process approach.  Dissociation, 3, 222-233), where a mental model of self and world is constantly being created.  This model is compared against sensory stimuli from the world in order to update the model, although the simulation of the world created by whatever processes do it is not always an accurate simulation of external reality.  From this perspective, it is quite useful for the simulation process to generate scenarios of what one is liable to encounter in the world and try out various responses to see what is likely to happen, a series of “What if?” exercises so you won’t be surprised by novel events and may have a strategy for coping with them already worked out.

This modeling fits my conscious thinking well.  At best, much of my waking thinking is directed to modeling my goals and life situation and devising useful plans of action.  My more idling, less consciously directed, waking thoughts similarly frequently revolve around practicing the best ways to deal with my ordinary reality: how to phrase a certain idea in a lecture I will be giving, e.g.

The problem with applying this model to the imagery and dreamlets that arise during vipassana practice is that the content is so seldom recognizably about my life, or situations I might have to deal with in my ordinary life.  If there is a practice simulation process, you would think it would focus primarily on what might be useful given my history, and only rarely “play” with material of no likely practical usefulness.

The previous three theories are compatible with mainstream thinking that totally equates mind with brain functioning.  The next two lines of theorizing require more openness than the usual conventional mindset has, and may be dismissed without thinking about them by those who find the ideas disturbing.  But if you do dismiss them, I would still like your thoughts on the questions raised above and at the end of this note.

Semi-Random Recall of Past Lives:

Since I learned this vipassana technique in the context of Buddhism, and Buddhism accepts the reality of reincarnation – most everybody in India did in the Buddha’s time –  I wondered if these images and dreamlets, usually of no obvious connection to my current life, could be bits of memories from previous incarnations?  Certainly if I had been raised to believe in reincarnation and then learned vipassana meditation in a Buddhist context, it would be easy to interpret the imagery, so unconnected to my current life, as coming from previous lives.  Indeed, I could take it as a sign that I was making progress toward enlightenment, since Gautama Buddha is reputed to have remembered his past lives as part of his enlightenment experience.

While I do not have the standard mindless rejection of any possibility of reincarnation that is so common in Western intellectual communities, since I know there is some data supporting the theory, nevertheless my imagery doesn’t support this idea.  The images of people and things that arise are almost always what you would see in the contemporary world.  (I say “almost always” to be cautions and not over-generalize, I couldn’t swear that I have never had an image of someone dressed in an old-fashioned way, e.g., but I don’t think so.)

Random Telepathic Reception Theory:

Given the existence of thousands of peer-reviewed published experiments supporting the existence of several kinds of psi, extra-sensory perception – see my recent “The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together” book (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2009) for a review of data and its implications – another line of theorizing might be that the process of vipassana meditation increases my receptivity to telepathically picking up the thoughts of others.  We could analogously picture various minds “broadcasting” like radio stations and the meditation process occasionally “turning on” the “telepathic receiver” and randomly twirling the dial to different frequencies.  I’m reminded of lying in bed at night, sleepy, randomly turning the tuning dial, there’s a little snatch of conversation (turn), some music (turn), a bit of drama (turn),, music (turn), conversation, etc.  This would fit the contemporary nature of the imagery and its lack of connection to my ongoing life and personal history, but introduce new mysteries of what is the hypothesized telepathic reception mechanism, how does it get switched on and tuned, and why?  I won’t speculate further here, but it’s interesting to think about….

Bottom Line Question:

So, “where” do all these images and dreamlets come from?  Why do they take the form they do?  What, if anything, does it mean?

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Lecture 4, Part 11 of 19 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

CTT: The mindfulness traditions claim they’ll take you all the way to enlightenment. And we certainly have historical examples of people who are considered Buddhas or saints or something like that, who supposedly went all the way and became remarkable human beings. What we don’t have, from a Western perspective, is sort of a “percent of students who succeed” figure.

We hear about the outstanding successes, but what percentage of people who follow those paths actually get somewhere significant? 90 percent? 10 percent? We don’t know.

Student: Why don’t they have some kind of way of tracking it?

CTT: That’s a very good question. I was having a variation of this conversation with Shinzen Young, my meditation teacher friend, some years ago, about how well does this meditation work for people. He shocked me because he said, “When I teach people meditation, just about everybody will say this is good and I’m going to make it part of my life”. You know, if they’ve had a weekend or a class or something like that, they really feel like they’ve picked up an important psychological tool.

If he comes back a year later and 5 percent of them are still actually doing meditation, he feels he’s been very successful. I was shocked, because my comparison was from a Western educational point of view. If I ran a higher education school and I had a 95 percent flunk out rate after the first year…. I mean, come on. You know? A few percent, you can understand. Some people came and they really shouldn’t have been here and all that, but 95 percent?

I’d feel like there was something badly wrong with the educational system.

And I thought, this is really odd, because I think Shinzen is a really good meditation teacher. He told me no, this is not 5 percent for him, this is 5 percent for all meditation teachers he knows, including the traditional, lineage-ordained meditation teachers in Eastern settings. About 5 percent.

And not only that, it’s not worried about in the East at any rate.

The view there is that it’s karma. If it’s your karma to come around for instruction, you’ll come around. If it’s your karma to stay, you’ll stick around, but if it’s not your karma to stay, you won’t stick around. Maybe 10 lifetimes down the road you’ll come around again. Well maybe, but I found this a very convenient excuse to not look into the efficiency of your teaching.

Now, you know, is it my bias as a Westerner? If 95% of my students fail, there’s something very badly wrong with the way I’m teaching! The moral I take from that is not that various meditation teachers are bad, but that we don’t understand how to effectively teach meditation very well, and/or that lots of people get attracted to meditation who really aren’t suitable for it. But I’m more interested in how do you teach more effectively.

You were next.

Student: Yeah. I think one of the problems with those systems is that they don’t have any… When you come here, ITP, you know in five or six years you’ll have a Ph.D.; whereas if you go and you learn that practice, you don’t know how long it’s going to take. There are no guarantees and there’s no time line and there’s no sort of measurement of how far you’ve come. I think if there was a way of saying it’s going to take you three years – If you do this, it will be three years – then people would do it and you’d have a lot of graduates.

(Laughter)

CTT: And if they graduated, they wouldn’t be paying tuition anymore…

Student: I’m sure Shinzen Young is not motivated by getting more tuition, right? He would prefer to have a lot of his students really progress with meditation, become enlightened or something?

CTT: That’s right. And he has devoted enormous effort to try to figure out ways to make the whole teaching process more effective. When we look at these spiritual systems, we have these romantic pictures of the guru, right? It’s a he, usually. He’s got a white beard. He sits on a little throne or wears a turban or something, and he looks so saintly because it’s very important that gurus fit our pictures of what saints should look like.

And the devotees surround the guru and that just lets you know that, “Wow, man, this is really something to have all these devotees.” It’s such a privilege to serve him tea. If somebody really is a fantastic teacher, teaching you spiritual things that you need to know, serving him or her tea nicely, or whatever is asked, is a tiny price to pay for that.

But I think we also have to look at the larger social situation in which it’s embedded. For some people, being a guru is making a living. And when you start making a living, you usually might like to make a nice living. Well, if your students graduate too fast and are not necessarily replaced, that’s not so good. So sometimes I feel as if there’s a deliberate attempt to hold the student back.

Now I should reveal my personal experience bias here. A few years ago I started taking a Tai Chi course, my wife and I did, because I felt it was time for me to learn some Tai Chi. The instructor was very good at his verbal explanation as to what to do, as well as personally correcting moves. But he went kind of fast.

By the third class, I was still trying to work out my mistakes on the first three steps and he was into teaching the fifteenth step. So I asked him, “Would you mind if I make a tape recording of you giving the instructions, and then I’ll have that to practice with and I won’t be practicing my mistakes?” He wouldn’t allow me to do that. Well, it’s not like I was going to sell the tape or set myself up as a Tai Chi teacher or something like that. I wanted to learn and he was preventing me from effective learning. So I stopped taking the class, because there was no point practicing my mistakes more and more thoroughly while I got more and more behind.

But sometimes I wonder about that dynamic, you know? So you do have this whole social situation and it’s complex and there’s a real spiritual element in there most of the time and then there are actual human being playing social games, making a living, etc.. Things to be aware of.

Yes. Arms and legs. I lost mine for a minute there.

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I'll also create short video about aspects of parapsychology on YouTube from time to time.  I expect to put the first one up later today and will post a second note about the URL when it's up.

Syllabus, ITP PRES2073, Basic Parapsychology

Professor Tart

Copyright Charles T. Tart 2011

Winter 2011, ONLINE

- Shortened Version for non-ITP student readers -

Prerequisites: None for ITP students

Schedule: Asynchronous Online: Papers due Mondays,  online discussion rest of week

POSSIBLE CHANGES: As this is my first course taught on Angel Learning Systems, I may have to make some changes in this syllabus, but I hope not…..   -[some small modifications were made on 12/22/10]-

Every culture and every person within a culture is a “philosopher,” a “scientist,” a “theorist,” in that she has a worldview, a set of (hopefully somewhat integrated) beliefs as to what the world is like.  The “world” includes the physical world, their own selves, other people, and “otherworldly” aspects of reality. Your personal and cultural worldview automatically and habitually affects/constructs your thinking (and perception) in important ways, including what kinds of values and goals make "sense" and how you perceive things.  Some actions or ideas are not even seriously thought about, e.g., as they are “obviously” impossible.  And if “impossible’ events happen, considerable conflict may be experienced.

Transpersonal psychology was created partially as a reaction to the dominant worldview of our times, scientistic materialism.  [Note the differences between science and scientism, the words "scientific" and "scientistic"]  Scientism, more accurately described as an automated world view rather than a formal philosophy, as a psychological syndrome of Dismissive Materialism, affects all of us in many ways, even when we think we don’t believe it, or think we are in rebellion to it,  or think we have a firm grounding in some spiritual practice.  Dismissive Materialism sees human consciousness as nothing but the resultant of electrical and chemical interactions within the brain and nervous system.  So consciousness is not only exclusively generated and controlled by the brain and physical environment, it perishes absolutely when the brain dies.  From the dominant view of scientistic materialism, Dismissive Materialism, most of the ideas and experiences of concern to transpersonal psychologists are pre-scientific nonsense, primitive beliefs based on fear of injury and death, outmoded and nonsensical beliefs about “souls” and “spirits” and “energy” and similar things that any “rational” person dismisses.

One of the reasons for creating transpersonal psychology was the psychological observation that a completely materialistic worldview is not very satisfying to the human “spirit:” indeed many seem to sicken when they are caught within the materialistic world view.  But in being transpersonal psychologists, are we desperately hanging on to superstition and nonsense just to make ourselves feel better?  Good feelings first, to hell with truth?  A modern, (transpersonal) "opiate of the masses," as Marx characterized religion?  Rejecting the truths of modern science out of fear they will undermine a comfortable belief system?  These are important questions each of us must personally answer, as well as deal with rationally and scientifically as transpersonally oriented professionals.

The central contentions of this course will be that, [a] using the best kind of rigorous science (scientific parapsychology, which must be distinguished from the vast mass of sloppy beliefs popularly put under the "parapsychology" and "New Age" labels), a total reduction of all human functioning to nothing but material brain function is factually wrong; that [b] no genuinely scientific theory that claims to be comprehensive can ignore facts it can’t account for; and [c] high quality scientific data gives support to a scientifically based view of consciousness that points in the direction of “spiritual” or transpersonal realities.  But, and this is a very important "but," simply believing either in a materialistic or transpersonal worldview because of habit or feelings or cultural conditionings is common,  unscientific, contrary to many spiritual aspirations, and is a major disservice to the world and to our profession.  Some of what is labeled by such terms as “psychic,” or “spiritual” is indeed factually nonsensical and wrong, but there are vital realities mixed in.  Learning how to discriminate and how to wisely use what we know is essential.  No ITP graduate should be a fuzzy philosopher who doesn’t think clearly and rigorously, a sloppy scientist who doesn’t actually test her beliefs, or a slipshod theorist about reality who doesn’t recognize and deal with difficulties and contradictions.  And "believer" is not a positive term among the influential people in our society.

Two primary texts will be used, as well as possible occasional assigned readings, viz. Charles Tart's The End of Materialism) and Dean Radin's The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena[1]. Both authors are leading parapsychologists.  The course will consist of various micro-lectures by the instructor, extensive reading in the two textbooks, and online discussions based on the readings and on students’ personal knowledge and experience. Because of the large amount of material we need to survey to get an adequate conceptual and scientific overview, there will be little, if any, experiential work.  The reading and paper assignments are given below.  Further, multiple commenting on student papers in a collegial way will increase the intensity of the learning experience.

Lectures and Discussion:

A typical undergraduate class combines a textbook about the subject with lectures from the instructor on the subject.  Since I’m the author of our primary textbook in this course, The End of Materialism, that book is my systematic set of lectures on the material.  I will give many “micro-lectures” expanding on various aspects of parapsychology during the course of the class, especially in discussing various issues brought up in student papers.  We’re a graduate school, of course, so as is typical of the best graduate schools, the student is assumed to be self-disciplined to keep up with the reading and so bring informed discussions/writings to the class.

Paper Assignments: A 500-1,000 word paper dealing with (a) the reading materials for the week, and/or (b) previous class discussion is due each week, beginning with the second week.  NOTE I WILL BE PUTTING SELECTIONS FROM THESE PAPERS INTO OUR GROUP DISCUSSION SPACE, INVITING COMMENTS, SO DON’T WRITE ABOUT PERSONAL MATERIAL YOU WOULD NOT WANT YOUR OTHER CLASSMATES TO KNOW ABOUT.  But note also that by taking the class, you agree that the contents of students’ papers and comments on them ARE CONFIDENTIAL within the class and instructor.  DO NOT quote from these papers or abstract of summarize in enough detail that a person might be identified to any place or persons outside the class without first getting written permission from each writer involved.  You practice professional level confidentiality here as if you were a counselor or therapist.  See later material in this syllabus about confidentiality and courtesy.

Your paper should be uploaded to the Discussion Forum for our class on Angel by Monday of each week.  Note then that all of your paper is readable and commentable on by the other class students, which is fine.  This brings a broader range of knowledge to bear on the ideas expressed in each paper, as well as providing training for your future role as an instructor.  I will later highlight what I think are some particularly provocative points in your papers and invite others to specifically comment on them, but I will undoubtedly miss things which are important or exciting to you.  By reading each others’ papers, we serve as instructors to each other, I am not the sole teacher of this material.

Note that for reading on screen, I much prefer to have things in Comic Sans Serif, 12 points, it’s easier on my old eyes than most other fonts and sizes.  That’s the font this document is in.

I’m still working out the details of how we do this discussion since Angel is a new platform for me to work on.

Personal Experiences and Feelings:

I will respect your personal experiences in these papers, as should other students commenting on them, but may provide critical intellectual feedback on content and style as part of my educational responsibility.

Not Book Reports: Grapple with the Ideas:

Your papers should not be "book reports," on the order of "…the chapter said A, B, C, D… and the discussion covered M, N, O,… etc."  I already know you can write book reports.  Nor should they be just emotional reactions, "I was offended by X, I loved Y…."  In each paper I want you to work with one or two points from readings and lectures that stimulate you and show me you're thinking about them, working with them, relating them to other things you know, exploring *why* you have an emotional reaction to them if you have one, etc.  Grapple with the material.

Another thing you may do in these weekly papers is raise important questions about the material of the textbooks or discussion.  By important I mean not just space filling questions of what is A, what is B, etc., but material you have thought about, tried to figure out on your own but not reached a satisfactory answer, etc.  You can even question my authority on specific issues if you feel you can make a good case:  I will be greatly disappointed if you go away from any of my courses thinking I know everything!  These kind of thought-provoking questions can provoke useful answers from me and/or your fellow students.  The latter responses are especially important, as it’s not just me who knows something about this subject, the cumulative life-experience of the class is very big!

Note that one of the reasons for these papers is to give you practice in professional level writing.  Thus, parallel to the ITP rule for the major paper that shows competence for advancing to the PhD level, you should carefully proof your papers for grammar and spelling or other composition errors before posting them.  If a paper has more than 5 such errors, the first time it will be turned back with instructions to rewrite it.  After that such papers will be marked unacceptable.

The last paper of the course should be a 1,000-3,000 word "What have I learned in this course" type paper.

Late turning in of assignments is strongly discouraged – I may require extra papers from you if you do this.  Similarly, ITP policy is to strongly discourage Incomplete grades, so don't be late!

Auditing Policy:  Auditors are not allowed unless they plan to read the material in all weeks.  People who just drop in occasionally are disruptive to the group spirit of the class.  Also, auditors, if any, and Significant Others do not have the privilege of writing papers for the instructor or other students to read and comment on.

Overload Contingency: A graduate course should ideally really not have more than 8-10 students in it, to allow the instructor to give adequate individual attention to each student's work.  But it's hard to turn away students who want and need to know this material when there are so few opportunities to get decent information on parapsychology.  So if more than 10 or so students enroll, the paper assignments may be modified so you will still turn in papers each week and get comments from fellow students, but the instructor will not always comment on them.

Attendance: Our class weeks are sequenced for optimal learning, and the discussions online are an important part of that learning and integration process, so please read the material and turn in your papers for all weeks. I don’t fully understand this feature yet, but note that there is a part of Angel Learning System keeping track of what you do and when you do it!  (Those of you old enough will wonder if Big Brother is watching  you…..[grin])  Life does interfere at times, though, so if you should miss a week, please study and reflect on the assigned readings and keep up with the regular writing assignments.  You can miss one week in a quarter with no problem as long as your regular writing assignments are completed in a timely way, but if you miss more than one week, you should write an extra paper in addition to the one due for that missed week, commenting on the readings assigned for that class, for each class you miss.  Please indicate at the top of this paper that it’s a makeup for a particular week (which week?) you missed. These papers must be turned in before the end of the quarter.  If more than two weeks are missed and not satisfactorily made up, ITP policy is that you cannot receive credit for the class.

Makeup Classes:  One advantage of the online format is that I can keep up with the class even if I’m traveling, so my usual notes for in-person classes about makeup classes if I’m traveling don’t apply here.

Office Hours: Another advantage of the online format is that you can email me any time.  I’m usually pretty good about replying within a day or two.  To discuss more complex issues with me, we can arrange in advance, by email, a telephone call or a Skype (with video if you have it) conversation.  I prefer weekday afternoons for this.  My email is ctart@itp.edu.  As I haven’t mastered Angel yet – indeed I think it’s a Devil sometimes! – direct email to me at the above eddress is preferable to sending it thru Angel.

Goals, Structure and Objectives of the Course: The objectives of this course are, (1) on the academic level, to familiarize the student with the nature of basic parapsychological phenomena and their implications as a foundation for transpersonal psychology,  (2) on the professional level, to sensitize the student to recognize the occurrence of parapsychological phenomena in everyday life and their implications for affecting peoples' views of reality, and, (3) on the personal level, to foster sensitivity to parapsychological events and so be able to discern more appropriate and mindful styles of reaction to them.  The goals and learning outcomes of this course are that each student should be able to intelligently orally discuss and write about the above three objectives.

Student Disabilities:  If you need accommodations for a disability, please write me before the course or by the end of the first class.

Abbreviations:  Radin = The Conscious Universe, The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena; and EoM = Tart, The End of Materialism

Note: I may occasionally put brief videos on the web for you to watch – I’ll let you know by email if and when this happens.

Required Textbooks:

Radin, D. (1997).  The Conscious Universe:  The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena.  San Francisco: Harper.  Later softcover editions are fine.

Tart, C. T. (2009).  The End of Materialism.  Oakland, California: New Harbinger.

Recommended, but not Required Books:

Kelly, E. F., Kelly, E. W., Crabtree, A., Gauld, A., Grosso, M. & Greyson, B. (2006).  Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century.  Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Rowman and Littlefield.  Indispensable reference book as to the many reasons why Dismissive Materialism is inadequate.

Radin, D. (2006).  Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality.  New York: Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster).

Tart, C. T. (Ed.). (1997).  Body Mind and Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality. Charlottesville, Virginia: Hampton Roads Press.  An anthology I edited with leading parapsychologists speculating on the meaning of parapsychological findings, has many ideas I didn’t have time to cover in The End of Materialism.

Clarifications: What my Parapsychology Course Is and Isn't

Charles T. Tart

In a school with a recognition that learning and growth involves emotional, bodily and spiritual, as well as intellectual, creative and community  processes, there is sometimes confusion over what is expected and appropriate in a particular course.  This note is to clarify this matter for my course on Basic Parapsychology, in the hope of maximizing learning and minimizing misunderstandings and inappropriate expectations.

Basic Parapsychology is a course that is almost exclusively intellectual in terms of readings and classroom lecture and discussion, although most students bring their own personal previous experiences of psychic events to bear on their understanding of the material.  Students are not required to experience any parapsychological phenomena as part of the course work, and any suggestions about what might be interesting to try in this regard should be evaluated by you in terms of your personal needs, understanding, and boundaries.

The course work contains some exciting ideas for personal growth,  but the course is not intended to be or represented as a form of therapy, spiritual growth, or emotional process work, although I certainly hope that the intellectual content of the course may sometimes contribute to your personal growth.  I state these limitations here because, among other things, I am a scientist and educator, not a psychotherapist, psychic, or spiritual teacher.

I do not intend to denigrate nor disregard individual experiential, emotional or spiritual knowledge, resources, growth challenges or problems.  I respect and honor your personal process!  Indeed when your individual knowledge of this sort is relevant to expanding or clarifying the conceptual or experiential material we discuss, it is welcome and enriching, both in class discussions and papers.  I would also suggest that, like me, you regard what you think you already know about these matters as your best guess at this time, but be open to thinking about options and learning more.

I also ask you to consider and honor the following points, adapted from standards of personal responsibility that were used by Professor Jill Mellick (now retired from ITP) in her classes at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.  While they are phrased for courses deliberately involving fairly powerful emotional and growth work, they are relevant in the context of all ITP courses.

ª       Be aware of the context in which you are experiencing your own growth, both personal and intellectual. This is a class; while I hope it will be beneficial to you personally as well as academically, the class is not individual or group therapy.

ª       Please set clear protective boundaries for yourself.  Some of the topics or exercises in this class may evoke personal issues with which you need/want to deal.  You are welcome to clarify these issues in your papers or class discussion if they are relevant to the class, and you might reach new understandings through doing so.  But remember that the class is not an appropriate context in which to actually work through your personal issues.  Such issues are best worked through with a qualified psychotherapist or spiritual teacher.

ª       Please respect your own material and the limitations of your peers.  In class discussions and experiential exercises you are often including your personal history, implicitly if not explicitly.  In the case of conflictual, emotional, unresolved material, respect yourself by sharing only material which is reasonably well resolved or which you are comfortable not having resolved.  A statement that an area under discussion is very difficult for you may be a useful contribution, but don't bring it up if it's too difficult for you to handle in the intellectual context of the class.

ª       Please respect your own privacy and the overall purpose of the class.  Share only material you are willing to have become part of current and later class discussions.  Note too that in spite of the following point, privacy of your discussion contributions cannot be guaranteed.

ª       Please respect your peers' privacy.  If a classmate shares important personal material, please do not talk about it to anyone outside the class unless (a) it is intellectually or compassionately useful to do so AND (b) you can disguise the identity of the person sufficiently so that they cannot be recognized.  If in doubt about your ability to adequately disguise the identity of the person from others who may know them, don't mention the material.   To put it another way, avoid gossip or story telling that may hurt someone else.  Of course if you think a classmate is at serious risk and is not receiving professional help outside the classroom (such as being in therapy), do notify appropriate administrative authorities who may be able to help.

ª       Please recognize and respect your own and others' capacities.  If a certain part of the discussion or an experiential exercise looks as if it will be too difficult for you emotionally, please inform me (no explanation is needed) that you don't want to take part in that part of the discussion or participate in that exercise.  If much of the class causes this kind of problem, of course, we should discuss whether you should be in the course.

This note is meant to create an atmosphere conducive to learning, not the final word on human life, so please take it in that spirit.  Class discussion of these considerations is appropriate.

Writing Comments on Classmates' Papers

After class one night, someone asked me what kind of comments she should write on classmates' papers.

This was an interesting question, for in more than 10 years of having students do this, nobody ever asked me anything like this, and it never occurred to me to say anything….   

I suppose that's partly because I was educated in an old style in which you learned how to be a teacher by, as it were, osmosis.  Nobody ever instructed us on how to teach, even in graduate school, but implicitly assumed that we'd all been exposed to good, middling and poor teachers in our educational career and we had hopefully picked up the qualities of the good teachers by osmosis or imitation or something….   In retrospect, I see that system doesn't always work, although there's a lot to be said for it….

So here's some first-level comments on how to write comments.

Imagine yourself in the role of instructor, and these are your students.  You're likely to be in that role officially in a few years, so this is good practice.

What do you want to do as an instructor?

You want your students to learn the material, and learn it as well as possible.

A most basic level of learning is simply remembering what was said in class and what was in the readings, but by graduate school level we can generally assume people have mastered that skill.  We want a deeper level of learning, where they can think about the material in both a critical and an expansive way.  That's what I look for when I read a paper: is the writer thinking about, grappling with some aspects of the material?  Are they understanding it better as a result?  Or if they are puzzled by some of the material, are they puzzled in a more sophisticated manner as a result of grappling with it because they have a more specific understanding of what does not make sense to them?

Part of helping students learn is encouraging them when they are doing so.  Thus when I see a student is seriously working with the material I usually write some sort of encouraging comment(s) to that effect.  If I see real interest in some aspect of the material, I may give some directions to sources the student could get more info from.  Sometimes I may just say some version of "Right on!" or, say, writing something briefly about my own interest in that particular topic, a kind of teacher-student bonding.

Another part of helping students is giving them feedback about standards.  We're learning to be professionals.  If a paper has been printed out with a worn ribbon, e.g., and is hard to read, that's discourteous and unprofessional and I will make comments about that.  Same deal with spelling (an "SP" beside misspelled words) and grammatical errors("a "GR"), or typos that indicate the paper was not proofed after being written.  I don't like to tell someone that they are being sloppy, vague, unprofessional, etc., but it's part of my job as an instructor.  You should be the same way.  You're not being genuinely friendly to a classmate if you let them get by with low quality, unprofessional behavior, it's going to hurt their future career.

One other point to stress.   As mentioned earlier, your papers should not be "book reports," on the order of "…the chapter said A, B, C, D… and the lecture covered M, N, O,… etc."  I already know you can write book reports.  Nor should they be just emotional reactions, "I was offended by X, I didn't like Y…."  I want you to work with one or two points from readings and lectures and experiential practices and show me you're thinking about them, working with them, relating them to other things you know, exploring *why* you have an emotional reaction to them, etc.

OK, write away!  Hope this helps.

Info on Consciousness, Parapsychology, Transpersonal:

If you go to my primary web page, www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/ , you can sign up to receive occasional (as few as once a month, as often as several times a week) studentnotices, email notices from me about interesting developments on consciousness, parapsychology, transpersonal psychology, and the like, conferences about them, etc.  This is open to anyone who thinks I may recommend interesting stuff, not just ITP students, even though it’s named Studentnotices, so feel free to pass this info on to anyone you think might be interested.  You may also find some of the reprints on my web site of interest, or the writings on my blog (accessed from the above web site) of interest.

[2] APA style is very important at ITP, the quicker you learn to write that way, the better.  There might or might not be an error in this reference…..

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These are various lines of thought that deserve more thinking, not final answers to anything…..An internal "debate-in-progress" as it were…..

Many Buddhist teachings do not create conflicts for me.  By and large, I can think of the Buddha as an early psychologist, and the central core of his teachings about why we go through a great deal of unnecessary suffering and what to do about it make excellent sense to me, as both a person with extensive life experience and as a modern psychologist.  I can confirm the usefulness of various Buddhist ideas and practices in my own experience, as well as drawing on the psychological literature.

One of those Buddhist teachings I'm thinking a lot about is how many of our doubts are intellectually bankrupt.  That is, we automatically and habitually doubt many ideas not because we have thoroughly, logically and carefully thought about them and studied what evidence there is for and against them, and reached the most rational conclusion possible, but because our society doubts these ideas and we have been conditioned to doubt them too, without actually thinking about them.  By (automatically) going along with our social conditioning we gain social acceptance, and think of ourselves as smart or "normal."  I think of this as mechanical doubt: it has the same truth value or moral value as programming a computer to recognize, say, the word "Jesus," and play a recording that says "He has risen" or "He's a myth," reflecting what belief you were brought up in.  Mechanical and meaningless.

There is also what I call, as a psychologist, emotionally-invested, defensive doubt.  Besides elements of mechanical belief or doubt, we have emotional investments in believing or denying A or B, and this makes us irrational when A or B comes up.  We may pretend that we are rationally supporting or denying the truth of A or B, but actually we hope or fear strongly and this warps our reasoning.

Bringing this back to a lot of my thinking on this retreat, Sogyal Rinpoche published The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying in the 70s, and it has sold over a million copies in more than 30 languages.  As with most Buddhist ideas, I find most of the ideas in the book quite sensible, especially advice on how to live a good life, and can confirm their truth in my own experience.  But then there are many ideas – presented as truths rather than "ideas" – about the nature of the dying process, the after death state, and various ways of working toward liberation for oneself using the high-leverage process of dying, and/or helping those who have already died through prayer, phowa practice and the like that I cannot support or deny through my own experience.  Perhaps if I become a very accomplished meditative practitioner I will see the truth of these in my own dying process – but that possibility casts no light on things now, when I'm certainly not an accomplished meditator, and I'm not dead, surviving in some form and reflecting on how well these ideas were formulated.

At the same time, the Tibetan teachings on death maintain that it is of the utmost importance to practice meditation and related practices if I am to have any hope of getting a good (good conditions for spiritual progress) incarnation next time around or getting enlightened, so I'm not really offered the option that "These are interesting ideas, no need to think much about them or act on them."  Do these or else!

As I've written in many places, while I'm not idolatrous about essential science, thinking it's the only way to gain valid knowledge about things, it is very useful in so many ways, so I can't help but think about these Buddhist ideas in scientific terms.   Buddhist beliefs and teachings on the nature of life, consequences of living in various ways, reincarnation, the death and dying process, etc., are theories about the way the world is.  As a scientist (and psychologist) I know that theories can be intellectual intoxicants, we get carried away with ideas we like, so the discipline of being a scientist is that you must keep coming back to examining the evidence bearing on theories and treat all theories as tentative, perhaps the best explanation we can give at this time, but always subject to rejection, modification or expansion as new evidence comes in.

So what is the evidence for these Tibetan Buddhist theories on the nature of death and dying and how to use them to become enlightened?

Unfortunately there is little evidence from a Western view.  The primary authority for these teachings is just that, Authority.  "The Masters say that…."  But basic science wants observable, empirical evidence for theories: that people designated Authorities in some social system believe them is not enough.  Indeed the emergence of science with pioneers like Galileo was due to a recognition that we must be able to examine phenomena and test theories, not simply believe authorities, as authorities can be wrong.  As to empirical evidence for the Tibetan beliefs here, there are stories that some of the Masters who died while carrying out these practices had their deaths surrounded by "miraculous" events.  Because of my knowledge of scientific parapsychology, I do not automatically dismiss these stories and I give them some weight, but it's little weight by usual scientific standards.  And a general idea I apply to parapsychological events is that having a belief system that allows them makes them more likely to happen, regardless of the truth or falsity of the belief system.

So how do I and others prepare for death?  Western science offers no useful information or hope here at all.  Consciousness is nothing but the electrochemical action of your brain, your brain dies, life and mind are over, end of story.  Death is the final failure.  The best you can hope for is to die with good medical facilities available, so your personal death will be less painful than it might otherwise be.

The Tibetan Buddhist approach, on the other hand, offers a magnificent and appealing story of how we are inherently Buddhas, we survive physical death and reincarnate, albeit in different forms, that we can become enlightened through practices in life and/or during the dying process, and we can become bodhisattvas, enlightened beings who keep right on helping the rest of beings become enlightened themselves so they can stop suffering.  To say this is a more noble and appealing picture to me and to many people is to put it way too mildly!

But am I just kidding myself because believing this view lessens my fear of death and makes me feel better?

I certainly like to feel good, and I have observed innumerable instances in my life where wanting to feel good has warped my perceptions and judgments.  Is it happening here?

I also have a genuine desire to know more of the truth, whatever it is, and I have a genuine desire to help other people.  These desires can be warped or suppressed by hopes and fear and conditionings at times, but they are there, they are real.

I wish I had a perfectly clear answer to my questions.  Be a "normal" member of my materialistic Western culture and keep my medical insurance paid up to get the good drugs which will lessen my pain as I go into oblivion?  Take a chance on believing the Tibetan ideas and investing a lot of time in the recommended practices?

Doubt the Doubt!

Sogyal Rinpoche recognizes the existence of mechanical doubt and defensive doubt, and often admonishes students to "doubt the doubt," to examine just why you tend to automatically reject some ideas.  He particularly wants students to apply this to the fashionable, automatic modern materialist doubting of spiritual realities.  I couldn't agree more with this advice.  Whatever the ultimate nature of reality, being stuck in the automatic operation of beliefs you never examined or consciously chose in the first place will always be a hindrance to coming closer to truth.  To just mechanically accept what's been conditioned in you is to be asleep, in Gurdjieff's sense, to live in samsara in the Buddhist sense.

So I can readily see, after a long life, that many, if not most, if not practically all, of my beliefs and doubts have been mechanically or defensively conditioned in me in the course of socialization and in being a member of contemporary society.  And, perhaps even more importantly, I know that when science is properly applied we actually have lots of empirical evidence for a basic reality to the spiritual – that what my recent The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together book was all about.  But there's still a big gap between general support for the spiritual and the specific theories and practices of Tibetan Buddhism…..

Looking at this from a practical angle, I have no doubt that many Tibetans over the ages, practicing Tibetan Buddhism, became extraordinary people, spiritual people that I would like to emulate.  But how well are these practices, designed for a very different culture and time, going to work for me and my friends?

Ah, I suddenly realize one of the main things that has been bothering me is that the "doubt the doubt" injunction is not being applied evenly.  Yes, doubt the Western conditioning, the Western authorities.  How about doubt the Masters?

In his Sutta to the Kalamas, the Buddha takes a perfectly empirical and scientific approach to spiritual beliefs and practices, enjoining us to test everything, to take nothing on authority.  That attitude has been one of the major reasons I find Buddhism interesting and attractive, as opposed to the "Believe this completely or you will go to Hell!" attitude too often found in other religions.

Now I can understand that Tibetan lamas are under enormous pressure to preserve their ancient traditions: since the Chinese conquest, Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism has slowly but steadily been being deliberately destroyed.  So it's all too human to doubt those who undermine what you think of precious, and not doubt those who support it much: I do this all the time, in spite of an intellectual commitment to examine all my beliefs….

So much of the Tibetan Buddhist (or any religion's) approach to dying has not been subjected to scientifically satisfactory examination and refinement by Western standards.  Perhaps some or much of it involves imaginary, unreal elements.  And yet compared to what the modern West offers – take your pills and get on with dying before your insurance coverage runs out – what a wonderful alternative!

I've done moderately serious, personal study of several spiritual paths now.  I've never found any that triggered a total belief and ecstatic embrace by me, although they've all offered me much of value, both personally and for my work.  I'm 73 now, I don't know how much time I have left, so I'm not going to be off hunting for some spiritual path that might be more satisfactory, especially in terms of preparing for death.  I'm not looking forward to death, but I do think the Tibetan approach will, at the very least, make it much more interesting as it nears, rather than just a "medical failure."  And if I get more enlightened and spiritual before I die, avoiding thinking just what that means for now, all the better…..

These lines of thought to be continued in the future…..

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