The end of materialism: How evidence of the paranormal is bringing science and spirit together

285 Pages·2009·1.83 MB·English

by  Charles T. Tart

THE END OF MATERIALISM
by Charles T. Tart, Ph.D.
© 2012 BY CHARLES T. TART, PHD.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This book was first published in hard cover in 2009, ISBN 978-1572246454, a joint
publication of New Harbinger publishers, in Oakland, California, and the Institute of
Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California.
What Other Authorities Have Said about Charles Tart's
The End of Materialism
"Amid the flurry in science about genes, neurons, and neurotransmitters, another
quiet revolution has been building for several decades. It involves a view of
consciousness in which the mind is not confined to specific points in space or time,
such as the brain, body, and the present. In The End of Materialism, legendary
psychologist and psi researcher Charles Tart assembles the pieces of this new
picture. He is eminently qualified to do so, as he helped invent the new image of
consciousness through five decades of meticulous research. Tart's inspiring, majestic
image of consciousness will prevail because of two compelling reasons: it is built on
good science and it more fully accounts for who we humans are and how we
behave." ─ Larry Dossey MD, author of The Power of Premonitions and Healing
Words
"Prescient! This book represents the next step in the geotransformational processes
that are altering modern concepts of borders, social structures, wealth, and
governance. The precepts are at once omnipresent and historical, yet often elusive or
rejected. Buoyed by a confluence of cataclysmic socioeconomic upheaval, a growing
awareness of paradoxes not explained by traditional science, and an innate human
longing for understanding, Charles Tart succinctly provides a blueprint for
metamorphosis to an evidence-based spiritual awakening for Western cultures." ─
John B. Alexander, Ph.D., counselor at the Society for Scientific Exploration
"If you would like a clear, readable, and eminently fair-minded introduction to some
of today's most contentious scientific topics, here is a book for you." ─ Roger Walsh,
MD, Ph.D., professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Essential
Spirituality
"A remarkable tour de force that will hopefully end forever the argument that science
and the spiritual are opposed to one another. This wonderful collection of facts and
arguments, written in a good-natured, almost conversational style, makes it easy to
loosen yourself from your preconceptions and enjoy seeing reality more clearly and
completely. We have needed such a book for a long time." ─ James Fadiman, Ph.D.,
author of The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys
"A truly seminal work based on lifetime of research and careful thought that not only
challenges, but overturns the dominant scientific paradigm. Tart patiently explains
the reasons for scientific resistance to parapsychology and spirituality, providing a
comprehensive overview of the field and its implications for the nature of human
existence. Compulsory reading for scientists and spiritual seekers alike." ─ David
Lorimer, program director of The Scientific and Medical Network
"In The End of Materialism, Charles Tart has distilled a wealth of knowledge
derived from his empirical study of human experiences that points to the presence of
the spiritual in the world. Tart's characteristic humor and sense of fun shine through
the text again and again, but always against the background of his wisdom, acquired
over a lifetime of pondering the mystery of what it means to be human. This is the
book for those who value an approach to the spiritual that is both scientific and richly
personal in tone." ─ Adam Crabtree, author of Multiple Man and Trance Zero
"This beautifully written book is not only a masterful survey of parapsychology
and psychical research, but also a thoughtful analysis of scientific inquiry and how
it can be used to explore and explain the spiritual aspects of human nature.
Combining laboratory evidence, case studies, and his own extensive experience as
a scientist and spiritual seeker, Charles Tart skewers the postulates of a
materialistic worldview that for too long has ignored vast areas of the human
potential." ─ Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., coeditor, Varieties of Anomalous Experience
"This book is an outstanding contribution to the emerging dialogue between
science and spirituality. Tart makes a persuasive argument for questioning common
assumptions about the nature of reality, thoroughly grounded in solid research.
This is essential reading for anyone interested in the farther reaches of human
awareness. ─ Frances Vaughan, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Shadows of the
Sacred
"The End of Materialism is brilliant. This is the book Tart has obviously been
working up to all his life." ─ Colin Wilson
"An extraordinary accomplishment in "parapsychology by an enlightened
experimental psychologist in the tradition of William James." ─ Eugene Taylor,
Ph.D., executive faculty at Saybrook Graduate School, lecturer on psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School
Other books by Charles T. Tart
Altered States of Consciousness (editor and contributor)
On Being Stoned. A Psychological Study of Marijuana Intoxication
Transpersonal Psychologies
States of Consciousness
Symposium on Consciousness (with P. Lee, R. Ornstein, D. Galin, and
A. Deikman)
Learning to Use Extrasensory Perception
Psi: Scientific Studies of the Psychic Realm
Mind at Large: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Symposia on the
Nature of Extrasensory Perception (with C. Tart, H. Puthoff, and R. Targ, editors
and contributors)
Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential
Open Mind, Discriminating Mind.- Reflections on Human Possibilities
Living the Mindful Life
Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality
Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical People
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD by Huston Smith and Kendra Smith
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 Spiritual Seeking in a World That Thinks It's All Nonsense
CHAPTER 2 How Do We Know the Spiritual Is Real?
CHAPTER 3 Ways of Not Knowing: Distortions of Science and Intelligence
CHAPTER 4 Starting from the Natural World: A Psychic Coup d'Etat?
CHAPTER 5 Extended Aspects of Mind: The Big Five
CHAPTER 6 Telepathy
CHAPTER 7 Clairvoyance, or Remote Viewing
CHAPTER 8 Precognition
CHAPTER 9 Psychokinesis
CHAPTER 10 Psychic Healing: PK on Biological Systems
CHAPTER 11 Postcognition and Extended Aspects of Mind: The Many Maybes
CHAPTER 12 Out-of-Body Experiences
CHAPTER 13 Near-Death Experiences
CHAPTER 14 Postmortem Survival: After-Death Communications
CHAPTER 15 Mediumship: Experimental Approach to Postmortem Survival
CHAPTER 16 Reincarnation
CHAPTER 17 So What Have We Learned?
CHAPTER 18 If I Believed the Western Creed
CHAPTER 19 Bringing It All Back Home: Personal Reflections
CHAPTER 20 Returning to Mystical Experience
APPENDIX 1 Recommended Reading in Parapsychology
APPENDIX 2 Online Sources of Scientific Information About Parapsychology
APPENDIX 3 The Archives of Scientists' Transcendent Experiences (TASTE
APPENDIX 4 Transpersonal Psychology
REFERENCES
Acknowledgments
This book is the culmination of a career spanning more than fifty years of work on
the nature of consciousness, particularly altered states of consciousness,
parapsychology, and transpersonal psychology, so there are many people I'm grateful
to for support and guidance! I'll mention only the more obvious ones: my wife, Judy,
who has given me such loving support and stimulation for so many years; Palyne
Gaenir, my webmaster and computer guru; the late Irene Segrest, my devoted
assistant for a decade; and the students in my Introduction to Parapsychology course
at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in winter 2007, Jamal Granick, Maureen
Harrahy, Josh Maddox, Daniela Mafia, Laurel McCormick, Matthew Metzger, Sean
Saiter, Heather Schwenn, Goolrukh Vakil, Alison Wattles, and David Wilson, who
gave me detailed feedback on an early draft of this book.
A number of institutions have supported my work over the years, so alphabetically,
my thanks to the Fetzer Family Foundation; the Institute of Noetic Sciences; the
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology; the National Institute of Mental Health; the
Parapsychology Foundation, Inc.; and the University of California, Davis.
Various psychological and spiritual teachers have helped me become a little more
insightful and mature over the years. I'll give thanks here to just the major ones
whom I've had personal contact with, again listed alphabetically: Ernest Hilgard,
Henry Korman, Claudio Naranjo, Jacob Needleman, Sogyal Rinpoche, Tsoknyi
Rinpoche, Kathleen Riordan Speeth, Tarthang Tulku, and Shinzen Young.
Foreword
Charles Tart devotes so much of this interesting and absorbing book to substantiating
its title—that is, to arguing that materialism has had its day and is done for—that we
think this foreword can best serve the reader by reversing the usual order and
beginning by telling the reader what the author is for.
Tart wants to reinstate the dignity and freedom of the human mind, defending it
against the view that our noblest thoughts are simply secretions of chemical and
electrical events in our brain tissue, and that our notion that we have some freedom
of choice is an illusion. He contends that body and mind interact; it’s a two-way
street. Simply defined, materialism (also called reductionism) and scientism is the
idea that everything will eventually be explainable in terms of electrical currents,
chemical reactions, or yet to be discovered physical laws. Mind and spirit are mere
epiphenomena.
Science begins when experience doesn’t jibe with what we know or think we know.
From that, an explanatory theory is spun, with hypotheses that can be tested under
controlled conditions. Materialism is a theory that has been enormously fertile in the
physical sciences, but its success in that realm has caused theory to harden into the
dogmatic belief in materialism that dominates much of our culture. It’s not a theory
that accounts for all of human experience, such as the healing influence of loving,
caring relationships. It’s in such relationships that spontaneous psi events occur, but
scientific tests for psi phenomena require laboratory controls, not simply personal
narratives.
Because skeptics insist that there must be some physical agent that has been
overlooked in the experiments, Tart describes experiments in extensive detail.
Readers can scrutinize them for anything that might’ve been overlooked. Informed
skeptics are taken seriously. When one suggested that the information in an
experiment with telepathy or clairvoyance must’ve been transmitted by
electromagnetic waves, for example, Tart’s colleagues consulted physicists, who
assured them that electromagnetic waves do not penetrate to five hundred feet below
the surface of the ocean. The experimental subjects descended five hundred feet in a
sub to repeat the experiment! The data was the same.
Science is an open-ended inquiry, not an answer, and yet it’s in our nature to look for
explanations. Materialism doesn’t have all the answers: some can be found in the
great religious traditions. Although such traditions use various names, they all teach
that “being,” “mind,” or “spirit” is larger than the human mind—something larger
than can be subjected to the laboratory, but it can be considered, and Tart is
refreshingly open about his reflections on the great spiritual teachings and his own
spiritual practice.
Not surprisingly, I (Huston) am reminded of some of my students at MIT, because
Tart, too, was a student at MIT, and is thoroughly grounded in science and
technology. I learned that some students were experimenting with water dowsing,
trying to see if they could trace the water pipes under the university bookstore by
moving a dowsing rod over the floor, and also experimenting with psychokinesis.
For the latter they were floating buttered needles on water and attempting to
influence the needles’ movement by mental concentration. For MIT students this was
play, and they would’ve acknowledged cheerfully that their experiments weren’t
flawlessly designed. When I expressed surprise that students dedicated to hard-nosed
science were amusing themselves in this way, one of them said, “Oh, I know science.
I got my first chemistry set when I was five years old. I do science. I just want to
know what else is out there.” They were like Aldous Huxley, who once commented
to us that he was interested in the interstices between the pigeonholes of knowledge,
those big questions for which we don’t have equations, much less theories. Anyone
who is equally curious and open minded, and likes an intellectual challenge will like
this book.
The End of Materialism is the work of a complete human being sharing the breadth
of his interests, speculations, and experiences as a scientist. There’s a lighthearted
seriousness about the author that sustains him in a discipline that’s difficult because
it’s controversial and consequently poorly funded. No one is burned at the stake for
questioning conventional “truth,” but professional journals are wary of publishing
research papers that imply the existence of psi phenomena or legitimatize it as a
topic for scientific study. Yet Charles Tart is irrepressibly cheerful, sustained by his
delight in finding out “what else is out there,” and he retains his capacity for love and
laughter.
—Huston Smith and Kendra Smith
Introduction
Noted science writer Sharon Begley, in her recent book Train Your Mind, Change
Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform
Ourselves (2007, 131–32), reports how, while on a visit to an American medical
school, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the highest ranking lama in Tibetan Buddhism
and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, watched a brain operation. His Holiness has
always been fascinated with science. He has enjoyed hours of conversations with
neuroscientists over the years, and was fascinated by ways they had explained to him
that all our perceptions, sensations, and other subjective experiences represent and
are produced by chemical and electrical changes in our brains. If patterns of
electrochemical impulses surge through our brain’s visual cortex, for example, we
see, and when such impulses travel through our limbic system, we feel emotions.
These rivers of electrochemical impulses may be generated in response to
stimulation from happenings in the external world or result from just thoughts in the
mind alone. Consciousness, His Holiness remembered various scientists explaining
with great conviction, is nothing more than a manifestation of brain activity. When
the brain stops functioning, from injury or death, our mind vanishes—period, end of
story.
But Begley reports, the Dalai Lama had always been bothered by the seeming
certainty of this kind of “explaining away” of consciousness. Even if you accept the
theory that our minds are what our brains do, that our emotions and thoughts are
expressions of brain activity, isn’t there more? Isn’t some kind of two-way causation
possible? Perhaps some aspects of whatever mind ultimately is might act on the
physical brain, modifying its activity? Could it be, as common sense seems to tell us,
that mind might have an active reality rather than just be a by-product of brain
activity? His Holiness voiced this question to the chief surgeon.
Begley reports that the brain surgeon hardly paused before authoritatively answering
no—period. What we call consciousness or mind is nothing but a product of the
physical operation of the brain.
The Dalai Lama is a very polite person, and he let the matter drop. He was used to
hearing such absolute statements from people who were (supposed to be) scientists.
But, as Begley notes, “I thought then and still think that there is yet no scientific
basis for such a categorical claim,” His Holiness wrote in his 2005 book The
Universe in a Single Atom. “The view that all mental processes are necessarily
physical processes is a metaphysical assumption, not a scientific fact” (Lama 2005,
quoted in Begley 2007, 132).