Altered States of Consciousness [Paperback]

Charles T. Tart (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 691 pages
• Publisher: Psychological Processes; 3 Revised edition (June 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0685596842
• ISBN-13: 978-0685596845
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,510,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles T. Tart, Ph.D., is internationally 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 parapsychology. His two classic books, "Altered States of Consciousness" (1969) and "Transpersonal Psychologies" (1975), were widely used texts that were instrumental in allowing these areas to become part of modern psychology.

Dr. Tart was born a few years before the Second World War and grew up in Trenton, a mid-sized East Coast city. An episode of rheumatic fever when he was 9 kept him from school and in bed for months, but a visiting teacher gave him a love of learning that he is eternally grateful for. While still a teenager he fell in love with science, especially electronics, He was active in ham radio (call letters K2CFP), and learned enough electronics to work his way through college as a radio engineer (First Class Radiotelephone License). He was raised as a Lutheran, and his personal struggles with the conflict between religion and science he experienced as a teenager created his lifelong career focus of trying to build bridges between genuine science and genuine spirituality.

Charley, as his friends call him, went to college to study electrical engineering at MIT, but while there discovered that he could become a psychologist and thus, he hoped, pursue his deep interests in the nature of the mind and parapsychology. He received his Ph.D. in psychology, with research on influencing night time dreams by posthypnotic suggestions, from the University of North Carolina in 1963, and then received two years of postdoctoral training in hypnosis research at Stanford.

He was a Professor of Psychology at the Davis campus of the University of California for 28 years, where he conducted his research and was a popular teacher, and is now a Core Faculty Member at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, a unique Ph.D. granting institution that believes you should educate a person's body, spirit and emotions as well as their intellectual mind. In the 1970s Dr. Tart consulted on the original remote viewing research program at Stanford Research Institute, where some of his parapsychological work was instrumental in influencing government policy makers against the funding of the proposed multi-billion dollar MX missile system.

In addition to "Altered States of Consciousness" (1969) and "Transpersonal Psychologies" (1975), Dr. Tart's other books are "On Being Stoned: A Psychological Study of Marijuana Intoxication" (1971), "States of Consciousness" (1975), "Symposium on Consciousness" (1975, with co-authors), "Learning to Use Extrasensory Perception" (1976), "Psi: Scientific Studies of the Psychic Realm" (1977), "Mind at Large: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Symposia on the Nature of Extrasensory Perception" (1979, with H. Puthoff & R. Targ), "Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential" (1986), "Open Mind, Discriminating Mind: Reflections on Human Possibilities" (1989), "Living the Mindful Life" (1994) and "Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality" (1997), which looks at the implications of hard scientific data on psychic abilities as a foundation for believing we have a real spiritual nature. His 2001 book, "Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical People" (2001) presents mindfulness training in a way that makes sense for science professionals, and his most recent book, "The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together," integrates his work in parapsychology and transpersonal psychology to show that it is reasonable to be both scientific and spiritual in outlook, contrary to the widely believed idea that science shows that there is nothing to spirituality.

He has had more than 250 articles published in professional journals and books, including lead articles in such prestigious scientific journals as Science and Nature.

Not just a laboratory researcher, Dr. Tart has been a student of Aikido (in which he holds a black belt), of meditation, of Gurdjieff's Fourth Way work, and of Buddhism. He has been happily married for more than 50 years and has two children and two grandchildren. His primary goal is still to build bridges between the genuinely scientific and genuinely spiritual communities, and to help bring about a refinement and integration of Western and Eastern approaches for knowing the world and for personal and social growth.

Customer Reviews

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A WIDE-RANGING COLLECTION OF READINGS, July 27, 2011

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Altered states of consciousness (Paperback)

Dr. Charles T. Tart (born 1937) is an American psychologist and parapsychologist, and one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology (he formerly taught at UC Davis). He is currently a Core Faculty Member at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and a Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He has also written The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal Is Bringing Science and Spirit Together, Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality, Transpersonal Psychologies, etc.

He wrote in the Introduction to the First Edition (1968) of this book, "An altered state of consciousness for a given individual is one in which he clearly feels a QUALITATIVE shift in his pattern of mental functioning... This book is concerned with those states of consciousness in which the individual feels one or more qualitative ... shifts in mental functioning, so that he believes himself to be in an ASC."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"When I created the first edition of (this book) back in 1968, I had some ambivalence about including this paper... I had some concern about its factuality... What mainly convinced me to include the paper, though, was the fact that as a child I had independently discovered and practiced the essence of dream control work..." (Pg. 202)
"Some ... artists, however, were wildly enthusiastic about their apparently increased sensitivity during the drug experience, only to discover, once the effects wore off, that the production was without artistic merit." (Pg. 339)
"...many psychologists, myself included, had high hopes that the INTELLIGENT use of psychedelics would be a major boost in the intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual evolution of humanity. This book introduced many educated people to these possibilities: some of them tried psychedelics, with great personal gains. I am pleased with that outcome. On the other hand, we had no real conception of the degree to which people could and would take these potential gifts and turn them into paths of personal and social destruction." (Pg. 389)
"One may conclude the passage of time by observing changes in experience, but it is not really an inference either. What seems to be described is the mental reviewing of the preceding changes which led up to the present point. Rerunning the succession in memory from some point up to the present gives the sensation of passing time." (Pg. 415)
"I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality..." (Pg. 436)
"I still find the books of Carlos Castaneda ... quite useful and provocative in thinking about and applying ASCs, in spite of the controversy ... over whether there really was a Yaqui Indian shaman named Don Juan who taught Castaneda this material..." (Pg. 460)
"The mystical experience seems the most difficult to facilitate, perhaps because of the as yet undermined roles of personality variables; but nonetheless, these phenomena are now sufficiently reproducible to allow mysticism to be studied under laboratory conditions." (Pg. 501)

10 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An eye opening explanation of the altered states, January 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Altered states of consciousness (Paperback)

This selection stirred my couriousity and sparked my interest in finding the ultimate reality. We are all on a quest man. A quest to reveal what we lies in our thoughtless minds. An informational and enjoyable read.