States of Consciousness
Charles T. Tart, Ph. D.
States of Consciousness ©1975 by Charles T. Tart
First published by E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, in 1975.
ISBN 0-525-20970-0
States of Consciousness appears in The Psychedelic Library by permission of the Author
Introduction to the Web Edition, 1997
I am very pleased that the Schaffer Library, through the kind
efforts of Peter Webster, is now making this book available over
the World Wide Web. The greatly increasing interest in the nature
of consciousness in the last few years makes this material even
more relevant than when it was originally published in 1975.
Unfortunately too much of the current scientific and popular interest
in consciousness tends to be simplistically reductionistic, a
"Consciousness is nothing but……" approach,
where the particular "nothing but" may be brain functioning,
language, philosophical abstractions, etc. All these approaches
have valuable things to offer our understanding, but do grave
injustice to the richness and complexity of our consciousness
with such oversimplification. My systems approach presented in
this book is not simplistic, but tries to deal with the whole,
rich range of conscious functioning, particularly as it is expressed
in altered states of consciousness (ASCs) like hypnosis, dreaming,
meditation, drug-induced states, etc.
While my approach is primarily scientific, the book was written
clearly to be accessible to all educated people (indeed, I have
sometimes gotten in trouble with the University, which has "reasoned"
that if my writings can be understood they must not be really
scholarly….). Many of the students in my altered states classes
over the years have also found considerable personal relevance
in this approach. As one young woman put it, at first she didn't
understand what all these diagrams of mine were about and then
one day she suddenly realized that I had been talking about the
way her mind actually worked!
The basic systems approach I developed to understanding ASCs in
this book is still my basic approach to working with consciousness.
In my (undoubtedly biased) opinion, it is still superior in important
ways to the simplistic approaches that have preceded and followed
it. In the past 20 years I have developed this approach further,
using computer generated virtual reality systems to illustrate
how consciousness creates a biological-psychological virtual
reality (BPVR) in which we experientially live, a semi-arbitrary
construction, a simulation of the world,
which we naively mistake for straightforward and accurate perception
of external reality. This expansion of the systems model can be
found in my writings listed below.
For those who prefer the pleasure of a real book to reading from
a screen (I still do!), there are still some soft cover copies
of the second edition of States of Consciousness available
at $ 12.95 (plus sales tax for California residents) and $ 3 for
shipping within the US, $ 10 for air shipping outside the US.
Checks or money orders must be denominated in US currency. Other
books and tapes of mine are also available, and $ 1 will bring
a catalog. Write to PPI, Box 8385, Berkeley CA 94707-8385.
Incidentally I made a great literary mistake in naming this book
States of Consciousness after earlier publishing my Altered
States of Consciousness (1969), as readers get the two books
confused, If they've read the one, they think they've read the
other. Altered States of Consciousness is an anthology
detailing the rich variety of what can happen in ASCs. States
of Consciousness is my attempt to make some coherent sense
of this vast spectrum of experiences. Altered States of
Consciousness is also available from PPI for $ 16.95 plus
shipping (and tax if the book is shipped to a California address),
as above.
Charles T. Tart
Berkeley, California
September 1997 |
Further developments of the Systems Approach:
Charles T. Tart, An Emergent Interactionist Understanding of Human
Consciousness Brain/Mind and Parapsychology: Proceedings of
an International Conference, held in Montreal, Canada, August
24-25, 1978 under the auspices of the Parapsychology Foundation,
New York, NY. Available over the web from http://www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/
(66K)
Charles T. Tart, Consciousness: A Psychological, Transpersonal
and Parapsychological Approach Presented at the Third International
Symposium on Science and Consciousness in Ancient Olympia,
4-7 January, 1993. Available over the web from http://www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/
(27K)
Charles T. Tart, Mind Embodied! Computer-Generated Virtual Reality
as a New, Dualistic-Interactive Model for Transpersonal Psychology,,
Based on a speech given at the L. E. Rhine Centenary Conference
on Cultivating Consciousness for Enhancing Human Potential,
Wellness and Healing, Durham, North Carolina, November 9,
1991. A modified version was later published in K. Rao (Editor),
Cultivating Consciousness Enhancing Human Potential, Wellness
and Healing. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1993. Pp. 123-137.
Available over the web from http://www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/
(44K)
Charles T. Tart, The World Simulation Process Approach. Portions
of this paper were originally presented in an invited address
at the Seventh International Conference on Multiple Personality/Dissociative
States, November 7-11, 1990, Chicago, under the title, "Life
in the World Simulator: Altered States, Identification, Multiple
Personality and Enlightenment." This is the published version
of the paper, which appeared as Multiple Personality, Altered
States and Virtual Reality: The World Simulation Process Approach,
in the journal Dissociation, Vol. 3, 222-233. Available
over the web from http://www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/ (80K)
Many other publications of mine are available on my web archives
at http://www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/
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