Charles T. Tart

(1997, unpublished.)

Article

I get many letters from prospective graduate students who want to study human consciousness, parapsychology, transpersonal psychology, or some combination of these fields, either with me or somewhere: thus this form letter, trying to condense decades of experience into a few pages.

[Update note: Generally there is no way to major in consciousness studies, transpersonal psychology, or parapsychology at the undergraduate level, but I recently learned (Jan 16, 2000) that one undergraduate psychology program at Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire, offers a minor in parapsychology, taught through the psychology department and by Prof Bill Jack. Most PA-related websites have links to Franklin Pierce. [Learned in 2002 that Burlington College and Vermont College also have undergraduate majors in transpersonal psychology, so check around, I may not be as well informed as I should be.] The SSE (Society for Scientific Exploration) website has a "Young Investigators" section with suggestions and links that might be useful. It's at http://www.scientificexploration.org]

Because these areas are so important for real understanding of human nature and have so much to potentially contribute to making our world a better place, I am inspired by students' interest in working in these areas! I want to encourage your interests, but also give very practical advice about studying these areas in order to make a career in them.

[Please note that things can change faster than I can keep this letter up to date, so check out the links to various parapsychology sites in the links section as several of them also have career advice and up to date information on course offerings, etc., that may not appear in this letter.]

Because I am well known in these fields, people often believe there is an active graduate level program in one or all of those fields at the University of California at Davis where I taught for 28 years, but, unfortunately, the truth is that I was rather alone at UCD in being interested in consciousness, parapsychology and transpersonal psychology, and UCD had hardly any course work at all in them, much less a real program. Further, I retired from the UCD in 1993 in order to devote my time to more focused teaching in transpersonal psychology and to writing, so I no longer teach there at all and there are no courses at UCD in these areas.

If your interest in consciousness research can be focused on a relatively accepted aspect of it (cognitive psychology or biofeedback, e.g., or some area that is "legitimatized" in terms of current fashion, such as by appearing to have some physiological basis) you may be able to find professors at some mainstream universities doing research in areas that you could work with. Check reference sources like Psychological Abstracts, Psych Lit, MedLine and do internet searches to see who is doing work in these areas and what institutions they are at, then write them directly. In the last few years the study of consciousness, long considered taboo and unscientific, has gained a fair amount of legitimacy in various mainstream fields of science (although a main thrust still tends to be explaining consciousness "away" in terms of brain functioning). The University of Arizona has also started programs and occasional on-line courses in consciousness research: you can write Jim Laukes at the University of Arizona Extended University, PO Box 210158, 888 North Euclid Avenue, Tucson AZ 85721-1058, phone: 520-626-9061; Fax: 520-621-3269, email jlaukes@U.Arizona.EDU, web site at (http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu). This web site will also keep you informed about the biannual Tucson "Toward a Science of Consciousness" conferences (next one April 8-15, 2000) which are a must for the serious consciousness researcher. Seeing who is presenting what at the Tucson conferences is also one of the best and most current ways to see what is happening in relatively mainstream consciousness research.

If your primary interest is in transpersonal psychology or parapsychology, things get tougher. You can forget mainstream academic institutions if you really want to get involved during graduate school. A further complication arises from whether your interest originates primarily from your head or your heart.

Parapsychology:

First let me define some terms: When I say "parapsychology," I intend to mean the field of scientific research carried out by people trained in some recognized scientific discipline (almost none are trained in parapsychology per se, due to lack of specialized programs, but come from biology, physics, psychology, etc.), research focused on understanding the nature of phenomena like telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis (PK), psychic healing, etc. The emphasis here is on high quality, controlled laboratory experiments that produce experiments up to or (typically) exceeding the standards in other recognized fields of scientific inquiry, as well as a willingness to accept negative results (psychic functioning often fails to manifest in real life!), because the search for truth is far more important than one's own beliefs. Almost all investigators working in scientific parapsychology are members of the international Parapsychological Association , with full membership usually requiring a Ph.D. degree in some recognized field and evidence of published contributions to the field in refereed (meaning competent colleagues have judged the work to meet basic scientific standards), scientific journals. Fairly detailed information about scientific parapsychology and generally agreed on findings to date can be found via links from my web archives . Other important sources are the guide to parapsychology on the internet at http://www.ed.ac.uk/~ejua35/parapsy.htm , from the Parapsychological Association , and from the Parapsychology Foundation .

In an ideal world (at least by my and most of my colleagues' preferences), anyone identified as a "parapsychologist" would meet these scientific standards, but the reality is that some people popularly identified as "parapsychologists" do not have graduate degrees in the sciences, often do not understand what the discipline of science is about, and, if they have any publications, they are not in refereed journals but in popular books and magazines where some of the few truths we know about parapsychological phenomena are too often indiscriminately mixed up with personal beliefs, careless and sometimes incorrect reporting of events, and sometimes just plain fraud. There is no legal restriction on who can call themselves parapsychologists. Because of this, the few of us who have tried to do quality scientific research on the field get considerable extra rejection from mainstream science because we are ignorantly lumped in with these others. In spite of all the work I've done in parapsychology, for example, work I'm scientifically proud of, when I'm introduced as a parapsychologist I almost always try to correct this to my identity as a psychologist (where there are some legal standards), part of whose research has been in parapsychology.

I am not saying that only someone with a Ph.D. should be allowed to be interested in parapsychological phenomena: that would be silly. Many interested people are operating more from their feelings rather than from the intellectual discipline of science. As in any area of life, such feelings may be mature sensitivities of the heart, or may be neurotic distortions of reality in the service of personal needs. Some of these people are very intelligent and discriminating in spite of lack of formal scientific training, others believe and promulgate any sort of dubious reports and ideas if they're called "psychic." I just wish people working primarily from feelings or some spiritual belief system would clearly identify themselves as such, not act as if they were scientists, and not make it so much harder for those of us trying to do scientific work. By analogy, I am all for people who are unconventional healers (if they get results that physicians can't get), but I'm also all for putting such people in jail if they falsely call themselves physicians. "Physician" is well understood by people to mean many years of intense training in conventional medical disciplines, and those who aren't so trained shouldn't mislead others.

I've gone on this long to make it clear that my advice about careers in parapsychology is primarily for those who want to do scientific research. If this isn't your primary interest, that's OK, let's just not be confused about it. Perhaps transpersonal psychology (which is also one of my careers) is a more appropriate professional interest for you, for while much scientific research needs to be done in it, most of its current practitioners are working as therapists and counselors, helping people with emotional and spiritual problems, a necessary and noble undertaking. Of course it would be better if we had much more scientific knowledge in transpersonal psychology, but meanwhile real people have psychological and spiritual needs that they can use assistance with! And I have a heart too, as well as a head...

Transpersonal Psychology:

To partly define transpersonal psychology, here are parts of the definition from the catalog of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology (ITP):

Transpersonal psychology is a fundamental area of research, scholarship and application based on people's experiences of temporarily transcending our usual identification with our limited biological, historical, cultural and personal self and, at the deepest and most profound levels of experience possible, recognizing/being "something" of vast intelligence and compassion that encompasses/is the entire universe. From this perspective our ordinary, "normal" biological, historical, cultural and personal self is seen as an important, but quite partial (and often pathologically distorted) manifestation or expression of this much greater "something" that is our deeper origin and destination………Transpersonal experiences generally have a profoundly transforming effect on the lives of those who experience them, both inspiring those experiencers with an understanding of great love, compassion and non-ordinary kinds of intelligence, and also making them more aware of the distorting and pathological limitations of their ordinary selves that must be worked with and transformed for full psychological and spiritual maturity…….

(I also taught for a year in the transpersonally oriented East West Studies program of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) (9 Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109, 415 674-5500, web site at http://www.ciis.edu), although I no longer work there.)

Careers in Transpersonal Psychology:

In terms of realistic career advice, I should note that transpersonal psychology is a relatively new area and still considered "marginal" (at best) or "pseudo science" (at worst) by many in (biased) mainstream psychology. If your goal is a tenured faculty position at a major university, with the ample time for research that the low teaching loads in these institutions allow, please understand that a degree from a transpersonal school will not be looked upon with favor, indeed will probably give you much less chance of being hired than a degree from most mainstream institutions. Being new and poor, transpersonal psychologists usually make a living teaching (often part-time, due to lack of positions) or doing clinical-like counseling practice or leading growth oriented work. (A fair number of our graduate students already have a career that they go back to, adding a transpersonal touch to it.) Of course if your interests in parapsychology and/or transpersonal psychology arise primarily from your heart, this is no disadvantage at all! If you can work well from both heart and head, wonderful! Interestingly enough, ITP tries to educate its students' emotions, body, social skills, spiritual life and creativity as well as their heads, which is unique in higher education, where putting clever words in ones head is the main and usually the exclusive program.

(If this sometimes sounds like a commercial for ITP, sorry, but I am enthusiastic about this marvelous experiment in education, even if we lack perfection!)

If you are primarily interested in doing research, realize that very few transpersonal psychologists can afford to devote more than a small part of their time to research (even though it's desperately needed). I was luckily able to do a lot of research in my career because I taught at a mainstream school like UCD where faculty teaching loads are light, so faculty have time for research. ITP gives a basic, graduate level education in research methods, including exposure to many methods more suitable for transpersonal research, but it is sometimes not up to the level of methodological sophistication found in specialized mainstream schools: there's only so much time in a program.

Some people solve the problem of wanting the advantages of a mainstream position (they are real, even if the costs are high) versus the greater importance of the depths of transpersonal psychology by going to a mainstream school (where they are wisely discrete about their deeper interests - many prejudiced mainstream professors will write you off as crazy if you let them know of all your interests - it shouldn't be this way, but it is), but keep up with transpersonal psychology or parapsychology by joining the Association for Transpersonal Psychology (address below), which holds an annual meeting (probably now alternating between face to face meetings and cyberconferences: their first, exciting cyberconference can be accessed at ATP 1999 Cyberconference ) and publishes the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, and/or reading the parapsychological journals (see ASPR address below, e.g., and other listing on my paradigm-sys.com website). Membership in the Institute of Noetic Sciences is also very helpful for keeping up via their annual meetings and publications.

In terms of other possibilities (few, unfortunately), especially in parapsychology, you might write the American Society for Psychical Research at 5 West 73rd St., New York, NY 10023, 212-799-5050, for their current list of schools offering some (usually one) parapsychology courses or programs, and the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, Box 3049, Stanford, CA 94305, 650 327-2066, for schools offering courses or programs in transpersonal psychology. But please note that scientific parapsychology is a minuscule field, with only a few dozen people in the entire world working in it, most only part time. Unless there is an unexpected change that infuses a lot of money into the field, I must warn you that chances of a decent job, if you can find training, are small indeed. If you are so dedicated that this news won't stop you, that's wonderful! But be realistic.

The Rhine Research Center (formerly the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man), the successor of J. B. Rhine's parapsychology lab at Duke University, offers an 8-week summer training program each year that is very good (and usually the only thing available) for getting a solid introduction to scientific parapsychology. You can write them at RRC, 402 N. Buchanan Blvd., Durham NC 27701 (phone 919 688-8241. They are also a good source of advice about training and careers in parapsychology. An email address for information on their summer training program is ssp@rhine.org. [Note added 2003: a graduate program in parapsychology which looks like it will be excellent has just started in Britain at University College Northmapton, write the Director, Professor Deborah Delanoy at deborah.delanoy@northampton.ac.uk for information] [The outstanding parapsychology program at the University of Edinburgh is Scotland continues also - Europe may become the leader in parapsychological research.] There was briefly a graduate level parapsychology training program from 1994 at the Rosebridge School of Integrative Psychology, but it has been discontinued. A successor, on-line program has recently started: contact is Professor Jon Klimo (JonKlimo@aol.com) to see how this will develop.

In terms of keeping up with my work in consciousness, parapsychology and transpersonal psychology, you can go to my web site (http://www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart) where reprints of many of my articles are available, as well as instructions on mail ordering (and, hopefully, eventual online download purchase) some of my books that are otherwise listed as out of print. The site also list my speaking and media appearances.

There are so many other things I could say, but I'm sure you're overwhelmed by now, so I'll stop. Again, I really appreciate your ambition and idealism in wanting to work in these fields! We need you, but the opportunities are, as I've sadly said, rather limited.

Parapsychology, transpersonal psychology and consciousness research in general are vitally important fields for understanding our nature and possibilities. It's too bad there's so much prejudice to fight in scientists who should know better. Whatever you do, good luck!

Please feel free to forward this information to anyone you think may be interested.

With best wishes for your career,

Charles T. Tart, Ph.D.

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