Monroe Institute Research Files: Out-of-Body Experience

I can schematize my best scientific and personal understanding of our nature at this point with the diagram shown in Figure 1. Being a product of my culture, at the top of the figure I have put the transpersonal or spiritual realm, shown as unbounded in extent. A part of that transpersonal realm, designated as mind in Figure 1, is in intimate relation with our particular body, brain, and nervous Transpersonal 5,Realm it Mind Body and Senses Brain/Nervous System ME! Biopsycho VR Physical World Fig. 1 96 JOURNAL OF NEAR-DEATH STUDIES system. As I mentioned briefly above, although this mind is of a dif ferent nature from ordinary matter, psi phenomena like clairvoyance and PK are the means that link the transpersonal and the physical; that is, our mind has an intimate and ongoing relationship with our body, brain, and nervous system through what I have termed auto clairvoyance, where mind reads the physical state of the brain, and auto-PK, where mind uses psychokinesis to affect the operation of the physical brain. The result of this interaction is the creation of a biopsychological virtual reality that I have labeled ME! in the figure, to stand for Mind Embodied, with the boldness of the type and the exclamation point added to remind us of the intensity of our identification with and attachment to ME! This ME! is a simulation of our ultimate, transpersonal nature, our physical nature, and the external physical world around us. We ordinarily live inside this simulation and take it for the direct perception of reality and our selves, but, as noted above, our ordinary self is indeed just a limited point of view, not the whole of reality. There is an immense amount of research needed to fill in the details of this general outline, but I think this conveys a useful general picture. Summing Up Let me close with some of the key points of this wider, higher-fi delity model. First, there is no doubt that the physics and chemistry of body, brain, and nervous system are important in affecting our experience. Further research on these areas is vitally important, es pecially if it is done without the traditional scientistic arrogance that physical findings automatically "explain away" psychological and ex periential data. Second, the findings of scientific parapsychology force us pragmati cally to accept that mind can conduct information-gathering proc esses like telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, and can directly affect the physical world with PK-processes that cannot be reduced to physical explanations with current scientific knowledge or reason able extensions of it. Therefore, it is vitally important to investigate what mind can do in terms of mind, rather wait for these processes to be "explained away" someday in terms of brain functioning, a form of faith that philosophers have aptly called promissory materialism, since it cannot be scientifically refuted. You can never prove that CHARLES T. TART 97 someday everything will not be explained in terms of a greatly ad vanced physics-or a greatly advanced knowledge of angels or dows ing or stock market movements. Recall that if there is no way of disproving an idea or theory, then you may like it or dislike it, believe it or disbelieve it, but it is not a scientific theory. Third, the kind of research on the nature of mind called for above is vitally important, because most forms of scientism have a psycho pathological effect on people by denying and invalidating their trans personal experiences. This produces not just unnecessary individual suffering, but also attitudes of isolation and cynicism that worsen the state of the world. Fourth, two of the most important kinds of transpersonal experi ences people can have are OBEs and NDEs. They have major effects on experiencers' attitudes toward life. Both seem to constitute a reve lation of a more ultimate or higher understanding of who we really are. While this is important, it is also important to investigate these phenomena extensively, as they themselves may be, at least partially, simulations of even higher-order truths. The genuine scientific ap proach to them, then, is to take them seriously indeed, but, with humility and dedication: (a) try to get clearer data on their exact nature; (b) develop theories and understandings of them, both in our ordinary state and in appropriate altered states of consciousness, along the lines of state-specific sciences that I have proposed else where (Tart, 1972b); (c) predict and test consequences of these theo ries; and (d) honestly and fully communicate all parts of this process of investigation, theorizing, and prediction. Genuine and open scien tific inquiry has a lot to contribute to our understanding of our na ture. References Alvarado, C. S. (1982a). Recent OBE detection studies: A review. Theta, 10(2), 35-38. Alvarado, C. S. (1982b). ESP during out-of-body experiences: A review of experimental studies. Journal of Parapsychology, 46, 209-230. Alvarado, C. S. (1984). Phenomenological aspects of out-of-body experiences: A report of three studies. 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