States of Consciousness
Charles T. Tart
Introduction
This is a transitional book.
It is transitional, first, because our society is in the
midst of many vital transitions. As this book shows, our ordinary
or "normal" state of consciousness is a tool, a structure,
a coping mechanism for dealing with a certain agreed-upon social
reality—a consensus reality. As long as that consensus reality
and the values and experiences behind it remain reasonably stable,
we have a fairly good idea of what "normal" consciousness
is for an individual and what "pathological" deviations
from that norm are. Today, as many of the religious, moral, and
emotional underpinnings of our civilization lose their guiding
value for our most influential people, the concepts of normal
and pathological begin to lose their meanings.
Because we have begun in recent years to question the foundations
of our consensus reality and the value of our normal state of
consciousness, some of us have tried to alter consciousness by
experimenting with drugs, meditation, new kinds of psychotherapies,
new religious systems. My own reading of history suggests that
some of the experiences people have had in altered states of consciousness,
generally called mystical experiences, have formed the underpinnings
of all great religious systems and of the stable societies and
consensus realities that were formed from them. Now we not only
question our inherited social systems, we go directly to the sources,
to altered states of consciousness, in our search for new values
and realities. This is a very exciting, very dangerous, and very
hopeful undertaking. We are in a social transition, and no one
of us knows precisely where it is going. Yet we have, perhaps,
a chance to understand our own transition and possibly to guide
it—things no society in the past has been able to do.
This opportunity is granted us by science, particularly the
young science of psychology. Instead of being blindly converted
to ideologies created by the powerful experiences encountered
in altered states of consciousness, or avoiding them because of
fear, we may be able, through science, to gain a broader understanding
f our own minds and of these forces and to exert some intelligent
guidance.
This book is transitional in a second way because psychology
itself is entering a state of rapid transition. Once defined
as the study of the mind, psychology made little headway as a
science; it lacked the elegance, precision of understanding,
and power of doing of the physical sciences. So it was redefined
by many of its practitioners as the study of behavior. Overt
behavior is easier to study than experience, and the examination
of overt behavior has given us many useful tools for predicting
and changing behavior.
Now I see psychology once again becoming a science of or
the study of the mind. This trend seems undesirable to many of
my older colleagues, but is welcomed by many younger psychologists
and by most current students of psychology. We cannot shun the
study of the nature of the human mind simply because it is difficult,
and confine ourselves to the easier analysis of overt behavior.
We are now developing many tools for more precise study of the
mind.
Yet this second transition is unfinished. At the moment
I am optimistic that a science of consciousness and states of
consciousness will be developed within this decade. But I cannot
be certain that this transition in contemporary psychology will
definitely lead to a science of consciousness. The interest among
younger psychologists and students is not simply a function of
some linear progress in the psychological knowledge available
to s; it is also a reflection of the transition in our society
that has prompted our search for values. If there is a marked
change in society, such as an authoritarian, repressive shift
to buy security rather than to endure the stress of transition,
the new science of consciousness may be aborted.
This books presents a new way of viewing states of consciousness—a
systems approach. it is a way of looking at what people tell
us about and how they behave in various altered states of consciousness
that I have been slowly developing in a decade of research. I
have worked out the major dimensions of this way of understanding
to a point of great usefulness to myself, and I believe the method
can be useful to others, as well. It is now clear to me that
the need is great for some kind of paradigm to make sense of the
vast mass of chaotic data in this field, and I offer this systems
approach to others even though this approach is still in transition.
It will take me another decade to think out all the ramifications
of this approach, to begin the broad-scale experimental tests
of its usefulness, to adequately fit all the extant and evolving
literature into it. But I do not think we have time for such
slow and orderly work if, given the first two transitions, we
are to understand enough scientifically about states of consciousness
to have some influence on the powerful transitions occurring in
our society. Thus I present this systems approach now, even though
it is unfinished, in the hope that it may lead us toward the understanding
we need.
This book is transitional in still another sense; it represents
a variety of personal transitions for me. One of these transitions
is a professional one—from experimentalist to theoretician.
I am not entirely comfortable with this change. My style has
been to conduct small-scale experiments in various areas of the
psychology of consciousness where I can stay personally involved
with the factual data and not lose track of them in the course
of pursuing intriguing abstractions. Yet the systems approach
presented here has evolved in the course of that experimentation,
and it seems so promising that I have chosen to de-emphasize my
immediate involvement in experimentation to look at the larger
picture of the nature of states of consciousness. A forthcoming
book, Studies of States of Consciousness [132], will collect some
of that research for convenient reference. References to all
of my research can be found in the Bibliography [61-139].
Another personal transition is that I have lately given more
attention to direct experience of some of the phenomena associated
with altered states of consciousness. While much of what I write
about here is intellectual or theoretical knowledge based on reports
from others and on the experimental literature, some of it comes
directly from my own experience—enough so that the systems approach
I describe clearly makes basic experiential sense to me, even
though many of its ramifications are beyond the scope of my personal
experience.
My personal experience of some of the phenomena associated
with altered states of consciousness may be both advantageous
and disadvantageous. In the early days of research with LSD (lysergic
acid diethylamide), scientists often downgraded the work of a
researcher who had not taken LSD himself on grounds that he did
not really understand the phenomena he was researching. On the
other hand, if he had taken LSD himself, his research was suspect
on grounds that his judgment probably had been warped by his personal
involvement. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.
So I have tried to steer a middle course—not presenting a personal
theory, but also not presenting ideas that have no experiential
basis at all for me. Whether this is an advantage or disadvantage
must be judged by the long-term usefulness of these ideas.
This book is addressed to everyone who is interested in states
of consciousness, whether that interest is personal, professional,
or both. Each of us lives in his ordinary state of consciousness,
each of us experiencers at least one altered state of consciousness
(dreaming), and few of us are immune to the currents of social
change that make us ask questions about the nature of our mental
life. Understanding consciousness is not the exclusive task or
desire of scientists or therapists. Because this is a subject
of interest to all of us, I have tried to keep my writing straightforward
and clear and to resist the temptation to talk in scientific jargon.
I introduce only a few technical terms, usually where the common
words we might use have acquired such a wide range of meaning
that they are no longer clear.
This book is also addressed to practitioners and researchers
who will see where this way of looking at consciousness is helpful
and will refine and expand it, and who will also see where this
way of looking things is not helpful and does not fit their experience
and so will alter it. I believe what is presented here will be
useful to many of us now, but I hope that in a decade the progress
made by others in the refinement and application of this approach
will allow a far more definitive book to be written.
The book is organized into two sections. The first section,
"States," describes my systems approach to states of
consciousness, discusses some of its implications, and gives an
overview of what we know about states of consciousness today.
The second section, "Speculations," presents ideas
that, while consistent with the systems approach, are not a necessary
part of it and are more unorthodox.
My own thinking in evolving this systems approach has depended
heavily on the contributions of many others. To name only the
ones most prominent in my mind, I am indebted to Roberto Assagioli,
John Bennet, Carlos Castaneda (and his teacher, Don Juan), Arthur
Deikman, Sigmund Freud, David Galin, George Gurdjieff, Arthur
Hastings, Ernest Hilgard, Carl Jung, Thomas Kuhn, John Lilly,
Abraham Maslow, Harold McCurdy, Gardner Murphy, Claudio Naranjo,
Maurice Nicoll, Robert Ornstein, Peter Ouspensky, Idries Shah,
Ronald Shor, Tarthang Tulku, Andrew Weil, and my wife, Judy.
I also wish to express my particular to Helen Joan Crawford, Lois
Dick, and Irene Segrest, who have done so much to aid me in my
research.