Well, speak of the devil! :) I just received the following message. If
anyone on the list has any interesting personal "religious" experiences
they've always wanted to report, here's your chance.
THE ARCHIVES OF SCIENTISTS' TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCES (below)
Charles T. Tart, Ph.D., Editor
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 21:52:33 -0700
From: "Vera M. Lind" <veralind@issc-taste.org>
To: billb@eskimo.com
Subject: Charles Tart's TASTE Project
<snip>
We are also running this project with very little financial resources,
and so can't afford to buy advertising; thus, we're asking a favor of
you. Would you email this notice on to everyone you know who you think
might be interested, lay-people or scientists?
Thank you!
Vera M. Lind
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
Palo Alto, California
veralind@issc-taste.org
THE ARCHIVES OF SCIENTISTS' TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCES
(TASTE)
Over the years many scientists, once they've realized I'm a safe person
to talk to, have told me about unusual and transcendent experiences
they've had. Too often I'm the first and only person they've ever
spoken to about their experiences, for fear of ridicule from their
colleagues and adverse, prejudicial effects on their career. Such
fears have, unfortunately, too much of a basis in fact. It's not that
there are a lot of scientists with nasty intentions deliberately trying
to suppress their colleagues, it's just the social conditioning of our
times. I want to change that, and I ask your help in doing so.
Scientists today often occupy a social role like that of "high priests,"
telling laypeople and each other what is and isn't "real," and
consequently what is and isn't valuable and sane. Unfortunately, the
dominant materialistic and reductionistic psychosocial climate of
contemporary science (what sociologists long ago named scientism, an
attitude different from the essential process of cience), rejects and
suppresses a priori both having and sharing transcendent, transpersonal
and altered states (or "spiritual" and "psychic," to use common words, in
spite of their too vague connotations) experiences.
From my perspective as a psychologist, though, this prejudicial
suppression and rejection psychologically harms and distorts both
scientists' and laypersons' transcendent (and other) potentials, and also
inhibits the development of a genuine scientific understanding of the full
spectrum of consciousness. Denial of any aspects of our nature, whatever
their ultimate ontological status, is never psychologically or socially
healthy.
The Archives of Scientists' Transcendent Experiences (TASTE), that I have
just opened, is intended to help change this restricted and pathological
climate through the operation of a World Wide Web site in a journal form
which will allow scientists from all fields - from anthropology through
botany through mathematics through physics through psychology through
zoology, to name just a few - to share their personal transcendent
experiences in a safe, anonymous, but quality controlled space that almost
all scientists and the general public have ready access to.
Specifically TASTE will, to various degrees:
- allow individual psychological growth in the contributing
scientists by providing a safe means of expression of vital experiences;
- lead toward a more receptive climate to the full range of our
humanity in the scientific professions which, in turn, would benefit our
world culture at large;
- provide research data on transcendent experiences in a highly
articulate and conscientious population, scientists;
- facilitate the development of a full spectrum science of
consciousness by providing both data and support for the study of
transcendent experiences.
- help bridge the unfortunate gaps between science and the rest of
culture by illustrating the humanity of scientists.
Please take a look at the TASTE site, whose URL is http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/tart/taste (if
the Psychology server is off line you can use www.issc-taste.org). If
you find it valuable, please pass this information on to friends and
colleagues. I have no budget for advertising, so must depend on word
of mouth to get this information around.
If you have a web site of your own that it would be suitable to link
from to TASTE, thank you! Feel free to copy one of the TASTE
experiences as an example on your web site, if you like.
In terms of more conventional, slower publicity, if you can recommend
any journals I should send notices to, please let me know. If you are
the editor of any publication, you have my permission (and thanks!) to
print this notice in your publication.
Thank you!
Charles T. Tart, Ph.D., Editor
Professor Emeritus, Psychology,
University of California at Davis
Professor, Core Faculty, Institute of Transpersonal
Psychology, Palo Alto, CA