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

Lecture 4, Part 6 of 17 parts. To start class from beginning, click here.

Student: In the New Age-y interpretation they talk about, “Oh yeah, you need to stop rushing around doing and start being.” And then, well, what does that mean? Sitting still? And it doesn’t really mean sitting still.

CTT: Well, you see, it’s the human dilemma. We have a language, and we think we know what we mean, and then something really interesting and rewarding happens to you and you want to tell people about it, and you seize on the words that you know, and they may convey a very special meaning for you, and other people don’t know them or understand them at all.

I’m thinking of a very funny instance. It’s probably not politically correct, but it’s so damn funny. In a group I was in once, we had a Chinese Tai Chi teacher come in who was very, very good. He gave us a lot of lectures, as well as showing us his Tai Chi exercises. He really confused me at one point, though, when he talked about the importance of “keeping the tongue on the parrot.”

Now I really tried to figure that out. I figured the dragon is a very important mythological animal in Chinese. What did the parrot represent, right? What’s the deep symbolic meaning of keeping your tongue on the parrot?

Well, of course he meant palate.

(Laughter)

It took me months before I finally realized, oh – what a stupid mistake! But I’m sure he thought he was explaining it very clearly, and I thought I knew what he was talking about.

Student: All that time you didn’t know?

CTT: Some of you are still just getting it, right?

Student: You like, show up with this parrot.

(Laughter)

Student: I got it, guys. So whatever.

CTT: Yeah. It seemed a very powerful symbol. You know? A very dramatic bird.

Student: It is powerful, because a parrot just regurgitates what it’s learned to express, and doesn’t necessarily add anything of the tongue.

CTT: And so by keeping your tongue on there, you were –

(Laughter)

Student: Yeah, you can’t talk when you got your tongue on a parrot

Note added in 2010: I should have explained to my students at the time that keeping the tip of one's tongue on the upper palate, just behind the teeth, is to aid the microcosmic circulation of ki or chi energy postulated/experienced in Taoism.  To this day I still do that most of the time and can feel a subtle shift in the quality of my consciousness toward more clarity when my tongue is on my palate…..

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Too many times I'm so busy producing new material that I forget to tell people that it exists. Since my aim is to communicate material that may interest people, that kind of defeats the purpose if they don't know of it…..

I'm also shy about seeming to “promote myself,” seems like an egotistical thing to do, but that's kind of silly when you want to communicate.

Anyway, I have now produced ten 10-minute videos, going up on YouTube, with the series title “Questions of Consciousness.” My initial motivation was to simultaneously share some information and questions about the nature of our minds and parapsychology, and also to promote the forthcoming June 24-28 2010 meetings of ISSSEEM, the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine, in Colorado (website info at www.issseem.org) I'm honored to be the President of ISSSEEM this year, and setting the theme of the conference – Evidence-Based Spirituality for the 21^st Century – has been a privilege. I'll center my Presidential Address on that and our keynote presenters will also touch on that theme.

Think about the possibilities – a practical spirituality that works for most people, based on scientific and scholarly research to separate the wheat from the chaff, rather than “You better believe this or you'll go to Hell!” traditional kind of approach. Ambitious? Yes! Possible? Maybe, it's certainly worth a try. The sad reality is that traditional spirituality and religion don't work very well for far too many people.

Four of these videos are up on YouTube already (just go to YouTube and search for Charles Tart), six more will be posted soon, maybe all at once, maybe over the next six weeks.

Response has been enthusiastic so far, so after the June meeting I may continue producing videos to stimulate thought about consciousness.

In many ways I'm old-fashioned and come from a time when slow, thoughtful readings of sophisticated text was the way to communicate, but I know video is much more useful for a lot of people now.

Anyway, enjoy them and, if you find them useful, tell your friends about them. You might also want to come to the ISSSEEM meeting in June!

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This is a stimulating and interesting venture to me.  I prefer to think of myself as an old-school exponent of the well-crafted written word, that readers take in slowly and mindfully….but I have noticed that video is big nowadays!     

The first of these videos, now up on the web, is about what we mean by “subtle energies.” ISSSEEM expects to post a new video about every two weeks up to, and possibly beyond our late June conference.

The second video will discuss the confusion between genuine science (friendly to subtle energies and spirituality) versus the too prevalent scientism (automatically dismisses subtle energies and spirituality as nonsense, without actually examining them).  This is the theme of my recent book, The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together, which shows that it is actually reasonable and healthy, based on scientific evidence, to be both scientifically oriented and spiritually oriented.

My third video discusses evidence for psychic or subtle energies induced healing, and how we can begin building an evidence-based spirituality for the 21^st century, the theme of ISSSEEM’s June conference.  Suggesting one direction we could go in, the fourth video is an emotionally moving author’s reading from my The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together on the experience of Cosmic Consciousness, a description by the originator of the term, Canadian physician Richard M. Bucke.

More videos are in preparation, and ISSSEEM will send out an announcement to its members (and I to this list) as each goes on line, approximately every second week.  As these videos are of wide interest, feel free to pass this announcement or subsequent ones on to friends and colleagues.  As I argue in my book, multitudes of people are psychologically and spiritually damaged – in a useless way – because Scientism, Scientistic Materialism, Dismissive Materialism, arrogantly dismisses their spiritual urges and experiences as nonsense.  As people realize that, while of course you need to be discriminating, genuine science and genuine spirituality are very compatible and can aid each other, this suffering can be reduced and the world can benefit.

[In case anyone doesn’t know me, here’s the description sent to ISSSEEM.

Professor Tart is an internationally known researcher, writer, lecturer and educator.  His classic Altered States of Consciousness book in 1969 was largely responsible for legitimatizing the study of altered states in psychology and psychiatry, and his Transpersonal Psychologies book in 1975 helped found the field of that name.  He has contributed more than 200 research and scholarly articles in refereed journals, but is known for his friendly, understandable, relaxed-but-stimulating style of lecturing.]

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