PASCAL’S WAGER: To Believe or Not Believe in God. Or? Charles Tart Yesterday (9-28-15) there was an excellent opinion article by philosopher Gary Gutting in the NY Times on Pascal’s wager. I think my reflections on it, emailed to Professor Gutting, might spark some interesting thoughts. PASCAL’S WAGER: the argument that it is in one’s […]
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Grappling with the Angel/Devil of “Non-Duality” [An expanded version of this essay will be published in 2015 in the journal Creativity & Collective Enlightenment] As one outcome of my posting an essay on the origins of my proposal to create the state specific sciences, in the previous post, my friend and colleague, Russell Tart, physicist […]
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State-Specific Sciences: Altered State Origin of the Proposal Charles T. Tart Perhaps the most important and creative idea I’ve had in my half-century career as a psychologist has been the establishment of state-specific sciences. The basic idea is to greatly expand our ability to gain knowledge by practicing the essence of science in a variety […]
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A few years ago, I and a few other Western scientists had an opportunity at informal meetings with a number of Tibetan lamas to talk about how Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, might become more established and useful in modern, Western culture. I’ve just recently come across a preview of the brief talk I gave toward […]
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When I entered graduate school back in 1961, I signed up for the doctorate in clinical psychology track. I figured with my oddball interests in psychic phenomena, altered states of consciousness, spirituality, and the like, conflicting with the physicalism and conservatism in mainstream psychology, it might be hard for me to get a regular teaching […]
My wife sometimes tells me I limit myself too much in my role as scientist, even as a scientist genuinely interested in the spiritual. My usual response is that science is where I have some expertise, and so may say things that are helpful to others in understanding our minds better, which must be a […]
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One of the specialized online discussion groups I’m part of is composed of people who are supposed to be “spiritual leaders,” open to new ideas. I’ve never been quite sure why I was invited to join, as I’m certainly not a spiritual leader, but it turns out I’m the group’s only full-time scientist who is […]
There is a prayer that I’ve learned in similar forms from several Tibetan Buddhist teachers. It is normally used as a dedication prayer, a form to follow at the end of any kind of spiritual practice that dedicates the merit of your practice to the welfare of all sentient beings. The translation I’ve come […]
UNSUBSCRIBE INSTRUCTIONS AT BOTTOM OF MESSAGE The folks at GlideWing.com who make this mindfulness web workshop of mine available occasionally have created a nice little video describing it. If I understood how, I would fix it to run automatically here, but if you click on this link http://www.glidewing.com/ctt/mindfulness_home.html it will run. It promotes […]
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Is Meditative Observation Fast Enough? Charles T. Tart Initial Draft: May 11, 2015 One of my tasks as a transpersonal psychologist is to compare knowledge and theories about observations and beliefs/theories from traditional spiritual paths with modern scientific knowledge, hopefully to the mutual benefit of both. The following is some speculation along that line. I […]
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