Charles T. Tart
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto,
and University of California, Davis

(1999, Journal of Consciousness Studies-Online.)

Article

The extreme discussion positions, not really taken by anyone in this recent discussion, but useful to remember, as they often implicitly creep into discussions, are what we might call:

(1) - "Absolute Normocentric" - only our ordinary, "normal" state of consciousness permits rational thought necessary for sensible understanding and so all ASCs are combinations of diminished faculties, illusions, hallucinations and pathologies of a primitive sort. The so-called normal state is the center of investigation, the where, the standard by which to judge all ASCs, and the capacities of normal consciousness are the tools of investigation. (I treat the normal state as if it were a single, unitary state of consciousness for the sake of simplicity here.)

(2) - "Absolute Revelatory" - in one or some ASCs, a person sees The Truth in a way that obviously (to the experiencer) is far superior to what can be grasped in ordinary consciousness. The normal state is judged (as deficient) from one or more ASCs. The where to study from is various ASCs using, as the how, the capacities of the ASCs.

40+ years of professionally and personally researching both ordinary and altered states have led me to reject both formulations in their absolute form, although I understand their appeal.

Ordinary consciousness does give us marvelous abilities - being seriously ill for a while and then regaining the great "powers" of ordinary consciousness demonstrates this very well. Ordinary consciousness also produces a world where land mines from old wars cripple innocent children, etc. - so ordinary consciousness clearly has its good points and its bad points.

ASCs can sometimes give us new and wider perspectives on reality and consciousness but, as I argued last week (jcs-online, 22 April 1999, "ASC and Self-Experience"), ASCs, like ordinary consciousness, are mixtures of pluses and minuses, insights and delusions, genuine creativity and misleading imagination, so the observations and insights from ASCs need to be subjected to empirical test, just as those of ordinary consciousness do. Kekule's dream ASC of a snake biting its tail, to use one well-known example, led him to discover the structure of benzene and so advance chemistry considerably, but other ASC revelations have led people to begin holy wars and kill those who disagreed with their vision.

(Sorry to let my personal values show in a scientific discussion, but I must admit to valuing kindness and compassion much more highly than killing people.)

Jonathan Reams (25 Apr 1999, "ASC and Self-Experience") has correctly and usefully pointed out that subjecting the insights of ASC experiences to empirical test is not always easy, and I agree. The way my personal values slipped into the previous paragraph without my intending it demonstrates this. Whether Kekule's new understanding of benzene helped chemistry was easy to test, but questions I and Reams discussed, like whether an ASC that seems to produce greater compassion and empathy helps you understand another person better, are more difficult - but not impossible.

I think Reams perhaps misunderstands my call for empirical testing of ASC insights, though, for a number of his thoughts seem to imply that by "empirical" I mean only observable physical actions and objects, i.e. that I value only physicalistic reductionism. This is a common usage of what is a wider term, a usage that tends to happen when one moves toward an absolute normocentric view. Let's remember the dictionary definition of empirical:

EMPIRICAL: 1. relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory; 2. originating in or based on observation or experience (e.g., empirical data); 3. capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment (e.g., empirical laws). - Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1980

In all my writings on investigating ordinary and altered consciousness (brief list below) I have always abided by this proper meaning of empirical: experience is just as much data as physical observation is. If we want to know whether an ASC makes us more empathic, e.g., I'm fascinated by such procedures as, say, using physiological responses as *one* measure of both interacting people's emotional reactivity and seeing whether they correspond more than they normally do. But the kind of deep, honest dialog about what those people experienced that Reams mentions, while often difficult to get among defensive people in a society that produces great pretense in relationships, can give us reports of inner experiences which are just as much *data,* just as *empirical,* as physiological measures.

In everyday life I am what we might describe as Relativistically Normocentric: my ordinary consciousness has shown itself to be a useful tool for understanding and dealing with most aspects of ordinary life. But, as shown in my systems approach to consciousness and my proposals for the creation of state-specific sciences (listed below), what's convenient for everyday life is only one tool among many (ASCs) for investigating the world. Ultimately *every* stable ASC we can reliably produce needs to be taken as a center point, a where-to-start-from, and its capacities (the how) used to look at the rest of reality, including ordinary consciousness.

I will not be foolish enough to predict, from my ordinary consciousness, what kind of knowledge structure we may end up with when we have done that, except to say that it will be a much wider and more comprehensive view that includes many vital elements left out of our reductionistic approaches - and it will include ordinary consciousness as a valued, but quite specialized tool.

References:

Systems approach to consciousness:

States of Consciousness. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. Available in book form (El Cerrito, California: Psychological Processes, 1983 edition) from my web archives (www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/). Available in toto on line at www.druglibrary.org/special/tart/soccont.htm

Several shorter versions are at my web archives, as above.

Calls for the creation of state-specific sciences:

Scientific foundations for the study of altered states of con-sciousness. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 3, 93-124.

States of consciousness and state-specific sciences. Science, 176, 1203-1210. [available at my web archives, as above]

Investigating altered states of consciousness on their own terms: A proposal for the creation of state-specific sciences. Ciencia e Cultura, Journal of the Brazilian Association for the Advancement of Science. 50, 2/3, 103-116. Available online at http://www.nscee.edu/unlv/Colleges/Sciences/Consciousness_Studies/SSS_South_America.html and at my web archives.

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