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).
This book is a scientific, rather than a scientistic, answer to the Dalai Lama’s questions. The difference between science and scientism, and the differing consequences of these approaches, will become clear as you read on.
Before I give a more formal introduction to this book, read and think about the following: In 1872 Richard Maurice Bucke, a Canadian physician and psychiatrist, had the following overwhelming experience. Since he thought of himself as a man of science, devoted to factuality and accuracy, he wrote about this experience in the third person in an attempt to be as objective as possible. Bucke coined the term “Cosmic Consciousness” to describe what happened to him as well as similar experiences of others. This is his account of his experience (Bucke 1961, 7–8):
It was in the early spring at the beginning of his thirty-sixth year. He and two friends had spent the evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman. They parted at midnight, and he had a long drive in a hansom (it was in an English city). His mind, deeply under the influences of the ideas, images, and emotions called up by the reading and talk of the evening, was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around, as it were, by a flame-colored cloud. For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city; the next he knew that the light was within himself. Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness, accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his brain streamed one momentary lightning flash of the Brahmic Splendor which has ever since lightened his life; upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an aftertaste of heaven. Among other things he did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure, all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of everyone is, in the long run, absolutely certain. He claims that he learned more within the few seconds during which the illumination lasted than in previous months or even years of study and that he learned much that no study could ever have taught.
The illumination itself continued not more than a few moments, but its effects proved ineffaceable; it was impossible for him ever to forget what he at that time saw and knew; neither did he, or could he, ever doubt the truth of what was then presented to his mind.
Here are the kinds of questions this book is concerned with and moves toward answering, even if not answering in any final sense:
• How would you feel if you had such an experience?
• Would you like to have such an experience? I certainly would!
• What if…
…Bucke’s experience is literally true?
…the cosmos is indeed not dead matter but a living presence?
…we have souls that are immortal?
…the universe is so built and ordered that, without any doubt, in spite of all the apparent evil in the world, all things work together for the good of each and all?
…the foundation principle of the world is what we call “love”?
…and the happiness of every one of us is, in the long run, absolutely certain?
• But what if, as contemporary science seems to tell us with certainty,…
… Bucke’s experience resulted from disordered brain functioning?
… the cosmos is basically dead matter, and life is merely an accidental, ultracomplicated chance arrangement of that dead matter?
… we have no souls or spirits; instead, we’re but material creatures who’ll die?
… there’s no order in the universe but that of physical laws; no purpose, no working together other than what’s forced by physical laws; and certainly no coordination or coordinator of these blind physical forces that cares a bit about the good or bad of each and all?
… the foundation principle of the world is nothing but mindless physical laws and properties?
… and the happiness of every one of us is nothing but the effects of chance events and various biochemicals circulating in our bodies?
Wouldn’t you like to believe some version of Bucke’s experience? I certainly would! On the other hand, do you hate to be fooled or feel foolish? I certainly do! We’ll return to a modern version of Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness experience and our “what if?” questions at the end of this book.
Now, for my more traditional introduction.
“Seeking” is a word commonly associated with spiritual pursuits, but “science” and “scientist” are usually associated with a materialistic view of the universe in which there’s nothing real to the “spiritual,” so how could a scientist seek the spiritual? Wouldn’t such seeking lead to intellectual and emotional conflicts that could be confusing and invalidating, as well as a waste of time?
Indeed, that’s how it is for a lot of people today. Something in them seeks, often desperately, something “spiritual” (so far, I’m being deliberately general as to what “spiritual” means) to make their lives authentic and worthwhile, yet no intelligent person can disregard modern science and its understandings without mentally harming themselves in various ways. But modern science, which has given us so much materially, tells “spiritual seekers” that they’re, at best, softheaded folks unwilling to be completely scientific and, at worst, superstitious fools, perhaps having a serious psychopathology that drives them to seek the “spiritual.”
This all-too-common situation easily makes for an ineffective and stuttering kind of spiritual search, two or three steps forward (that spiritual idea or experience rings true in my heart!) and two or three steps back (scientifically ridiculous—I must be stupid or crazy!). One day your heart and head open toward the spiritual, and then the next day your (apparently) scientific mind rules it out as illusion and delusion.
It was probably simpler in the old days: you believed or disbelieved the one religion given you in your village, and that was it. There wasn’t much in the way of competing views. Now we have so much information! Here I am, for example, a constantly fluctuating mixture of scientist; father; husband; psychologist; parapsychologist; teacher; writer; carpenter; bulldozer operator; liberal; conservative; skeptic; and serious off-and-on student of Buddhism, Christianity, Sufism, Yoga, the Fourth Way, and aikido, believing we have the potential of gods, believing we’re usually practically mindless robots, and so on. That’s a lot of information and roles to balance! And besides just the ideas, many of these spiritual paths say it’s not enough to just think about and believe or disbelieve their ideas but you can and should live your life so that you can have direct personal experience of them.
I’ve written this book to help those who’ve experienced conflicts between their spiritual and scientific sides, or who are simply interested in aspects of science and the spiritual. In my own life I’ve not only finally become comfortable with (and proud of!) being both scientist and spiritual seeker, but I also have a dream that someday these two aspects of human life will help each other rather than be in conflict.
This book is not a scientific book per se as are most of my earlier books and articles; I haven’t loaded it down with hundreds of scholarly and scientific references to buttress every point, sophisticated caveats, or the very latest news about all sorts of things that might be relevant. Nor is it a spiritual book per se; I’m not a natural mystic inspired by deep experiences. This book is a product of seventy years of my full humanity and complexity: scientific, humanistic, spiritual, skeptical but open—and personal, when that helps illustrate points. What’s worked for me is certainly not “The Way,” but the conflicts I’ve experienced and the insights I’ve had are those of many others, so they can help some people, and are worth sharing.
In the following chapters we’ll look at the ongoing conflict between spirituality and science (the conflict is actually between second-rate spirituality and second-rate science) and see how the implications of the most rigorous kind of research in scientific parapsychology shows that we humans have qualities that open to a reality of the spiritual. That’s why we can be both scientific and spiritual, and not have to artificially separate the two. We’ll look at research findings about most major parapsychological phenomena and some less-researched but farther-out phenomena, and think about their implications for creating a spirituality anchored in scientific facts. We’re still at the very beginnings of applying science to the spiritual and a long way from making recommendations like, “Being a Baptist will produce more spiritual growth for this particular kind of person than being a Buddhist,” but we know enough to say that it makes a lot of sense to seriously work on your spiritual growth. Knowing that, our growth may still be difficult but not so stuttering and not so deeply undercut by useless conflicts about whether or not we’re totally deluded.
In the end, I hope that you, gentle reader, like me, can be comfortable with, indeed proud of, being both scientifically oriented and spiritually seeking. The combination makes for an interesting life.
With this book as a basis, I later hope to write another one sharing some of the things I’ve explored about actually practicing a spiritual life in modern times.
Before turning to our central subject matter, there’s an important distinction to make: this is a book about science and spirituality, not about science and religion. What do I mean by that? There are at least two levels at which we can think (or, just as importantly, feel) about that. Let’s take the scholarly or rational level first and then briefly look at the more-difficult emotional level.
Although they can’t be totally separated in reality since the distinction oversimplifies a complex human situation, as I and many other writers use these terms, spirituality is primarily about life-changing, primary experiences that happen to individuals, experiences like Bucke’s “Cosmic Consciousness,” while religion is primarily about the social organizations and beliefs that develop and become relatively fixed and institutionalized. Such organizations and belief systems are usually initiated by spiritual experiences of the religion’s founder, and these organizations and belief systems incorporate and develop (with more or less fidelity) those basic experiences into ongoing social structures, relationships, beliefs, needs, and customs.
Someone, let’s call him John Everyman, for example, almost dies and, while apparently dead, has a numinous, “realer-than-real” vision of meeting a nonphysical being. Let’s call this being Angelicus. Angelicus communicates with John telepathically and tells John the deep meanings of existence and how embodied life should be lived once he comes back to it. This is a “realer-than-real” revelation to John, the most powerful single experience of his life.
John revives, and is a changed man. He begins telling others about his vision and how they should live. John has enough charm, charisma, or whatever it takes in the particular times he lives in, to strongly influence many people, and a small religious group, technically a cult, forms around the Laws of Angelicus and his prophet John Everyman.
Since any change in the social status quo threatens some who already have favored positions, and appeals to others who want to change their status, accommodations in action and doctrine develop to alleviate these tensions so that Angelicusism starts to fit into society even while changing it. By the time John Everyman has been dead for a few generations, his original teachings and those of his close, early followers have been worked over to various degrees (lots of committee meetings and politics), and Angelicusism is now a distinct religion, with its theology, rites, customs, political affiliations, and social agenda. Unapproved interpretations of John Everyman’s visions are called heresy and condemned. If Angelicusism becomes politically powerful enough, this condemnation and suppression of other views can easily lead to violence.
The degree to which John Everyman, if he could come back a few hundred years later, would recognize his original spiritual vision in this new religion is an interesting question.
This book, then, focuses on the degree to which you can be scientifically oriented and yet seek and value personal spiritual experience and growth without the doubt and conflict generated by regarding yourself as “irrational,” “unscientific,” or “crazy.” I won’t attempt to work with all the psychological and social factors that enter in once spirituality becomes religion, but note that the distinction isn’t quite as clear-cut as we might like it to be. We humans are social creatures, and this can affect, to some degree, the very spiritual experiences we have in the first place, as well as our ongoing interpretation and understanding of them afterward. Most of us, too (and I certainly include myself here), need some ongoing social support in our spiritual lives, so I doubt we’ll ever have a “pure” spirituality unaffected by religion. It must also be the case that even religions that have changed considerably from the spiritual experiences that started them must still satisfy at least some people’s spiritual longings if the religions are to survive.
That’s the rational part of the distinction between spirituality and religion. Now, let’s move on to the more difficult emotional level. I’ll talk about my own feelings here, but I know that large numbers of people have similar feelings. Those who don’t are probably lucky.
For me, the word “religion” connotes the particular church I was raised in (Lutheran), its doctrines, and the effects on my personality or self that I can now recognize from a wiser (I hope!), adult perspective. On the one hand, there were many good effects: a concern for the welfare of others; a basic belief in some kind of wise, loving, and caring intelligence in the universe; and numerous instances of experiencing kindness and care from adults in the church that helped shape me. On the other hand, a lot of my neurotic shortcomings stem from or were reinforced by church doctrines, such as feelings of being inherently sinful, a nagging feeling that no matter how good I am it’ll never be enough, and a pervasive shame about my body and sexuality that has taken many years to largely overcome. In many ways I was forcibly brainwashed in being taught my religion when I was too young to really understand and make choices. So “religion,” for me, is a complicated category with conscious, semiconscious, and undoubtedly unconscious strong feelings, positive and negative, that can create conflicts and tension. Do you recognize yourself in this description?
“Spirituality,” on the other hand, has been a matter of relatively conscious choice on my part as an adult, and the aspects of it I’ve chosen to make central in my life have given me goals and guidance that have added much meaning and satisfaction.
So the rational distinction between spirituality and religion—primary, life-changing experiences of the spiritual versus institutionalized, socialized doctrines and practices—is important to make. But lurking in the background are all these emotional elements, tending to make spirituality a “good” word and religion a “bad” word for many of us. At bodily and emotional levels, when I hear “religion,” I tend to get a little tense and defensive, and when I hear “spirituality,” I relax and open. To the degree that I recognize these complexities and work on healing the emotional angles, I can be more rational and effective in what I write about and do.
I won’t generalize more here, because there are so many varieties of religion, and aside from their formal beliefs and structures, there are enormous variations in the way different individuals absorb and react to particular religions. By the time some of us reach adulthood, our childhood religions are a useful, and perhaps the best, vehicle for promoting and integrating our individual spiritual experiences, which in turn would further enliven our religions. For others of us, our childhood religions are the enemy of our spiritual growth. How it is for you is a matter for you to discover and work with. In this book, though, we’ll focus, as I said, on science and spirituality, not science and religion.
To adequately deal with our broad topic of science, spirit, and reality, we’ll cover a lot of material in this book; we have to in order to adequately deal with this broad topic, and as I so often tell my students, in extensive writing, one has to be careful to not let the reader lose the forest for the trees. But here’s a quick overview of what’s coming. If you get too fascinated by the “trees” in this book—the very interesting facts and ideas—and lose track of the “forest,” come back and review this guide.
We began by looking at the powerful “Cosmic Consciousness” experience of Canadian psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke, an experience many of us might like to have but whose validity modern science discards. From that perspective, reality isn’t the way Bucke perceived it, loving and intelligent, no matter how inspiring or comforting his vision, so forget the spiritual; it’s all nonsense. Science and spirituality—or its socialized form, religion—don’t go together, on either an intellectual or emotional level.
I bring this dismissal home more strongly in the first chapter with Bertrand Russell’s negation of spirit, noting that such dismissals by prominent authorities bias our perceptions so that we’re even less likely to have spiritual experiences. It’s so important to begin to realize how deeply this affects us moderns, even when we think we’re spiritually oriented, that I introduce the Western Creed exercise, hopefully actively done with the online video (see chapter 1) rather than just considered intellectually. It’s what I think of as a sadder-but-wiser exercise.
If science is wrong to so thoroughly dismiss the spiritual—and some of our traditional religious beliefs are undoubtedly wrong, so there’s a reality basis in this dismissal—how would we find evidence for any reality to the spiritual? Chapter 2 discusses the nature of the essential scientific process, which is really refined common sense. The ways of knowing that I characterize as the Way of Experience, the Way of Authority, the Way of Reason, and the Way of Revelation can be skillfully combined to keep refining our understanding of anything, including the spiritual, and I give an example of how we might study whether prayer or psychic healing has any effects other than material and psychological ones. Essential science and common sense keep coming back to data, fact, and observation. Direct experience is always the final arbiter of what’s the best truth. I argue that by using essential science, human beings occasionally have experiences and show certain behaviors that cannot be reduced to materialistic explanations, and that appear to be fundamental aspects of a spiritual nature.
I understand that some people would prefer to get right to what essential science has found that indicates we have spiritual aspects rather than look at how science works. But if you don’t have some understanding of this, you remain a victim of misuse of the Way of Authority, with the scientists telling you that you’re deluded.
But science is practiced by human beings, beings who, like the rest of us, are fallible, so chapter 3 looks at ways of not knowing, ways in which essential science ossifies into scientism, a rigid belief system, and in which genuine skepticism, an honest search for better truths, turns into pseudoskepticism, or debunking. As I've observed it in my career, and as I think psychologist Abraham Maslow would have agreed, science can be practiced in a way that makes it an open-ended, personal-growth system for the practitioner or one of the most effective and prestigious neurotic defense mechanisms available.
Having looked at how we refine our knowledge and how we avoid learning, we’re ready to look into the psychic phenomena that undercut the materialistic rejection of spiritual possibilities. Since I intend this book as a personal story of how I, and potentially you, can be both spiritually seeking and scientifically oriented, I start with an example of a psychic experience of my own, the “coup d’état” case, showing the kind of psychic phenomena that can happen in ordinary life. To give a little idea of how deeply our psychological characteristics can affect such phenomena, I go into some analyses and speculations of how my hopes, fears, and conscious and unconscious conceptual processes may have affected my reactions and interpretations.
Now having looked at the science-versus-spirit conflict on several levels, seen how to use science and common sense to refine knowledge, and been reminded of some of the kinds of psychic events that happen to a majority of people, we’re ready to begin looking at the body of actual scientific experimentation on psychic phenomena. In chapter 5 we look at the basic way such experiments are done, particularly how we exclude alternative normal material explanations for any effects we get and the importance of objectivity in assessing results. Then we’re ready to look at the psychic phenomena, or psi phenomena, that I call the “big five”—telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and psychic healing—for which we have so much experimental evidence that we can take them as basic possibilities for humans. Later we’ll also look at some of the possible psi phenomena that I call the “many maybes,” ones with enough evidence to indicate they may be real, but which aren’t as well established as the big five.
Chapter 6, on telepathy, is the first of the big five, the transmission of information from one mind to another when there’s no ordinary way for that to happen. We see how a basic telepathy experiment is done and then review the research findings. To make this more concrete, I describe one of my own studies of telepathy, designed to make it more reliable and then, to illustrate the process of discovery in science, note how psi abilities seemed to sometimes function unconsciously in my experiments. Sometimes my fellow experimenters and I wanted to give an electrical shock to the percipients, since it was obvious to us that some part of them knew the correct answer and they weren’t giving it! We also look at why telepathy (and this applies to the other phenomena in later chapters too) is “nonphysical,” or doesn’t make sense in the ordinary view of materialism, and thus requires us to consider a spiritual, nonphysical aspect to reality, rather than wait around with faith in what philosophers have termed promissory materialism to eventually explain these phenomena away.
The next four chapters on the big five describe findings about clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and psychic healing. In each case I overview the research findings and give examples. These chapters include instances where I’ve had to struggle with the basic rule of science that data always takes precedence over what you prefer to believe, such as when strong precognition sneaks into my own laboratory and I discover that I’ve totally forgotten what was probably a demonstration of very strong psychokinetic, mind-over-matter effects, because while I accepted these things intellectually, on a deeper level I have irrational resistance. Essential science isn’t easy; our perception and thinking can be distorted by strong attachments to beliefs that we don’t even know we have! Thus the scientistic materialists’ rejection of the spiritual isn’t a simple intellectual matter of assessing the evidence and finding it wanting.
This review of the big five leads me to conclude that rigorous essential science has collected hundreds of experimental findings showing that human beings can sometimes show mind-to-mind communication, clairvoyantly know about distant aspects of the physical world, precognize the future, and affect both nonliving and living things by willing alone. That is, human are the kinds of creatures that we might describe as having qualities of a spiritual nature.
With chapter 11 we start looking at some of the many maybes, those apparent psi experiences with enough evidence for them that it would be unreasonable to offhandedly reject them but not enough evidence for many folks to declare them definitely real, like the big five. This chapter starts with a fascinating case of apparent postcognition, psi perception of information from the past, and then looks at potential uses of psi abilities in archeology.
Chapter 12 focuses on one of the most powerful experiences you can have that would convince you that you’re spirit as well as body, the out-of-body experience (OBE). We start with an example from my case files of a fairly typical OBE, and I then discuss six studies of OBEs I’ve carried out over the years. Some suggest that some OBEs are only simulations of being out of the body, that nothing has really left the body; others suggest that sometimes the mind may truly perceive the world from an outside location.
Even more powerful than OBEs in changing people’s views are near-death experiences (NDEs), now experienced by millions of people due to advances in medical resuscitation technology. NDEs involve an altered state of consciousness, different ways of perceiving and knowing, as well as OBEs. A particularly striking case reviewed is that of Pam Reynolds, who was undergoing surgery that involved draining all the blood from her brain at the time she apparently had the most significant parts of her NDE. Materially, she was dead, with no brain functioning whatsoever, yet some of her perceptions of events in the operating room were accurate. We can theorize that the mind has a spiritual, nonphysical, transpersonal aspect, even though it’s normally deeply enmeshed in the workings of the brain and body.
Chapter 14 opens the topic of postmortem survival, one of the “many maybes” of enormous importance to us all. Some can take comfort in a traditional religious or spiritual belief system, but many can’t in this modern world. We want evidence, not just faith. The big five provide a picture in which the mind is something more than the brain but that’s only indirect proof of survival. Is there more-direct evidence? In this chapter we look at ADCs, after-death communications, where spirits of the deceased apparently appear to the living. ADCs are much, much more common than believed but still aren’t quite direct evidence of survival, and of course, some of them, if not many, may well be just wish-driven hallucinations, yet they’re quite powerful to those who experience them.
In chapter 15 we look at the most direct evidence that some aspect of our minds and personalities survives death: claims by spiritualist mediums that they can contact the dead. I describe a case involving one of the world’s greatest mediums, the late Eileen J. Garrett, in an event that, though now almost forgotten, in its time shook the world as our Challenger space-shuttle disaster did, namely the crash of the British R-101 dirigible. But the mediumship evidence is actually very complex, as the German diplomat case I review shows, especially given the fact that our unconscious minds can use psi phenomena to support beliefs that may not be true.
Reincarnation is another way of thinking that a self might survive in some form. Chapter 16 begins with the story of a best-selling book in the 1950s, The Search for Bridey Murphy (Bernstein 1956), which created enormous controversy. I then describe a much more recent case from a collection of thousands of such cases at the University of Virginia, cases in which a very young child starts talking about events in a previous life. Is reincarnation proven? I don’t think so, but it’s a fascinating example of a “maybe,” and, again, one that has a lot of implications for how to live our lives. It’s one thing if that nasty habit you have now might get you into trouble a few more times but then you die and it’s all over, and quite another if it might get you into trouble lifetime after lifetime.
We’ll have covered a lot by then, so it’ll be time to bring the many threads we’ve followed together. I wish I could say I weave them all into a single, coherent tapestry of elegance, truth, and beauty, but reality is more complicated than that! So I close with several chapters emphasizing different aspects of our explorations.
Chapter 17, “So What Have We Learned?” is a fairly straightforward summary. We looked at how we gain and refine knowledge, distinguished essential science from scientism, applied essential science and found the big five and the many maybes, and thus got massive amounts of data pointing toward a picture of humans as having a lot of qualities that partially constitute what we mean by spiritual. (There are many vital aspects of spirituality not touched on in this book, of course, but here our focus is on whether “spiritual” means more than “imaginary.”)
Chapter 18, “If I Believed the Western Creed,” comes back to considerations of whether scientistic materialism is indeed a total truth, whether this inherently meaningless chemical accident we call ourselves is all there is. How would we live then? This isn’t just abstract philosophy; this is about how you live your life. I focus on the implications for me, and things don’t have to be exactly that way, but a lot of it will apply to you.
In chapter 19 I continue to reflect on what this all means to me, not that I’m the model for how everyone should be—far from it! But I want to further illustrate that we haven’t been talking about abstract philosophy and science; this material is about how we want to live. I have to, for example, honor my childhood religion but grow beyond it, discovering the negative psychological uses I’ve made of it, the projections onto the world that have distorted my perceptions and interfered with my being a fully functioning human. Being a “child of God” was fine when I was a child; now it’s time to be an “adult of God.” I give an example of my coming close to death and finding that the scientific data about postmortem survival discussed in this book helped me cope with the stress, and looking to the future, I give an example of how a more enlightened science could help make genuine spirituality more effective.
Finally, in chapter 20, I come back to Bucke’s fantastic experience of Cosmic Consciousness that we began this book with. Could it literally be true that, for example, “… the happiness of everyone is, in the long run, absolutely certain” (Bucke 1961, 8)? This is too big a question for me to even venture to answer, but I present a modern-day case of Cosmic Consciousness by an agnostic physician, Allan Smith, that has so many parallels to Bucke’s experience that one can’t help but wonder.
And finally? I’ve said that I’ve written this book as a whole, complex human person, not simply as a scientist, but the scientist and professor in me wants to help you find more information, reliable information, if you wish, so that’s why we have four appendixes. The first lists some recent, authoritative books on parapsychological findings, the second some reliable websites. The third is a pointer to my TASTE website, where you can read the transcendent and psychic experiences of scientists, and the fourth is a brief introduction to the field of transpersonal psychology and its leading center, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. This shows some of the directions in which a properly used science could go in exploring and developing spirituality.
I can’t emphasize enough that wherever you look for information, use your discrimination. A lot of opinions are out there, pro and con, but remember the foundation of essential science and common sense: keep coming back to data, to what actually happens, and make the theories and beliefs secondary. Make your best bets on that basis. As much as you can, ground your science and your spirit in reality.
—Charles T. Tart
Berkeley, California 2008
(A note on the Footnotes: Informational footnotes in this text are denoted by numbered hyperlinks in parentheses, i.e., “(#)” To read a footnote, click on the hyperlink and, upon completing it, click the “RETURN” hyperlink to resume reading text where you left off.)