The Subtle Body

Dr. Charles T. Tart (born 1937) is an American psychologist  known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness (particularly altered states of consciousness), as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology, and for his research in scientific parapsychology. He earned his Ph. D. in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1963.

His first books, Altered States of Consciousness (1969) and Transpersonal Psychologies (1975), became widely used texts that were instrumental in allowing these areas to become part of modern psychology.

The eminent Dr. Charles T. Tart, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, recently took a moment in his blog to retrospect on decades of work in psychology and transpersonal thought and encapsulate it all in about 900 words.

Here’s a snip from “What I Understand about Mind and Reality 50 Year Perspective”:

High quality scientific data. as well as human experience. make it clear that some kinds of psi are real, and. while interpretation of the data are complex, there is excellent evidence for some kind(s) of post-mortem survival and reincarnation, so these should be treated as facts of nature, and an empirically adequate metaphysics must somehow accommodate them.

As to the kinds of psi that are real or maybe real, see the distinctions I ve made between the Big Five (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis and psychic healing) and the Many Maybes in my The End of Materialism:

How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together.Existing data and theorizing suggest it would be worth while to postulate that reality is, at bottom, in some sense, mental  in character, and the inescapable everyday phenomenal distinction between mind and matter vanishes at some level beneath or beyond that of everyday appearances.

Investigations conducted from this premise will probably be very fruitful.It is classical, Newtonian physics that seems to say psi phenomena can t happen, but in some versions of quantum theory, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, consciousness is an inherent part of reality and psi, in some versions, either is possible or, indeed, is required.

Ordinary consciousness, a semi-arbitrary construction emerging from the brain and the ultimate nature of mind, is very useful in myriad ways but may not be capable of some kinds of needed understandings.

Thus observations and ideas obtained from investigation in various altered states of consciousness (ASCs) need to be refined, expanded and tested for their usefulness in further understanding the nature of mind and reality, along the lines of creating state-specific sciences, as proposed by me in Science in 1972 (article available on my www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/ site.