INTRODUCTION

<1>
It is with great respect that I venture to make a few comments on professor Tart's proposal for the creation of state-specific sciences. The overall content of Dr. Tart's paper is one that has been very closely related to my field of work, and I consequently became intrigued by Charles Tart's ideas. While there are many who would be very well qualified to comment on such topics as Tart's, in many cases much better than myself, I am still grateful for the opportunity to point out some threads of thought in Tart's article which I consider to be eminent concerning the progress within the large field of consciousness studies.

<2>
I have briefly met Dr. Tart a year ago. For a long time I have been very much impressed with his scientific expertise and knowledgeability in his field, and upon meeting him I found that his warmhearted personality adds the final note to the credibility of what he has been pursuing for over three decades now. As many readers of this forum will be aware, Dr. Tart is one of the pioneers of transpersonal psychology and consciousness studies, and he has over many years made several widely discussed, innovative and critical contributions to these fields and to scientific epistemology in general.

<3>
His proposal for the creation of state-specific sciences comes at a time when consciousness studies appear to be on the verge of penetrating what seem to be the final frontiers of the human capacity to understand the mystery of consciousness. Complementing the many approaches that are based on neurophysiological theories of consciousness, Dr. Tart's elaborations concentrate on data and insights gained from states of consciousness commonly named 'altered' or 'non-ordinary', states that have by and large been neglected in their explanatory power as regards mind, awareness and consciousness. Charles Tart has been working on this issue for several decades now, and so the below comments are made with the due respect toward an elder who has sparked and inspired the thought of a younger in the same field.

COMMENTS ON THE TEXT

<4>
The central focus of Dr. Tart's paper is the significance of such states of consciousness which he has called 'altered' in his writings (see, for example, Tart, 1975), and which by many are also being named 'non-ordinary'. While far from attempting to be critical, much rather in a supportive sense, I would like to start this commentary by taking a short look at this nomenclature: The terms 'altered state of consciousness (ASC)' or 'non-ordinary state of consciousness (NOSC)' seem to make sense only if they are understood as altered or non-ordinary in relation to states that are 'ordinary' or emerging without any 'alteration'.

<5>
While this might be a banal conjecture, it still serves to clarify that by the particular coining of such terms we must be aware that we are still introducing an implicit bias which, of course, is largely due to the limitations of our language, itself so closely related to the states of consciousness that are considered 'ordinary', 'normal', 'non-altered' in our culture. Stanislav Grof, another pioneer in the transpersonal field, once told the story of how he met with indigenous Americans to participate in one of their rituals, the core of which was the induction of ASCs. In the subsequent discussion, Stan Grof spoke about non-ordinary states upon which his indigenous friends were mystified, explaining to him that the states attained to during the rituals are perfectly ordinary to them.

<6>
This little anecdote serves to point out the relativity of the perspectives from which a particular state of consciousness can be considered ordinary or altered. Precisely this relativity is something that Charles Tart has pointed out early when he spoke of 'consensus trance', thereby alluding to a mind set and value system which is typical of Western civilization, but could well be looked at as displaying various neurotic symptoms if a shift in the observing perspective is allowed.

<7>
The shift of perspectives is what Tart suggests when he proposes state-specific sciences. He mentions the Journal of Consciousness Studies, an ambitious publication in its fifth year only, as an indication that the general interest in the exploration of consciousness is increasing. While the latter is undoubtedly a fact, and one that is fortunate, it is still very difficult, even in the case of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, to gain appropriately wide respect for ideas and theories that emerge from ASCs, as I have personally experienced over more than a year now. This only goes to show how eminently important such proposals as Dr. Tart's are at this point in time.

<8>
Tart mentions the experimentation with psychedelic substances in the 1960s as one of the reasons for the resurgence of interest in ASCs. Later, other phenomena such as meditation and yoga, near-death experiences, lucid dreaming etc. have added to the variety of ways to collect personal experience with states that have hitherto largely been known through second hand reports only. It is particularly interesting when he says that such experiences can ‘alter a person's life and values (for better or worse) far more than years of education or psychotherapy’.

<9>
This is quite a statement, but anyone familiar with ASCs will not hesitate to agree that this is quite possible. One of the more prominent persons that might be mentioned here is Roger Walsh, another leading figure in the transpersonal field. In an interview, Walsh, speaking about his personal practice of meditation, concedes: ‘I found that in my first ten day retreat I felt as if I had learned more about the nature of mind and depths of mind than I had learned in medical school and three years of psychiatric’ (see Seelig, 1997).

<10>
ASCs can be induced by a variety of methods and by implementing a large number of different plants and substances. There can be no doubt that the exploration and scientific assessment of the states of consciousness attained to via these devices is not even fractionally investigated. As Tart mentions, this is largely due to a cultural hysteria which ensued after the 1960s. Subsequent legislation almost completely terminated all research into these areas. If we look at the questionable success of the 'war on drugs' we must say a few clear words about the predominant attitude of current legislation, and then come back to the main issue of this commentary.

<11>
The value systems and legislative structures of most governments officially support the consumption of alcohol and nicotine, severely harmful and addictive drugs that create tantamount health care costs. As opposed to these facts, the same legislature demonizes plants and substances that have been demonstrated to induce ASCs without any adversarial effects to the body whatsoever. This is followed by medical views which largely pathologize the states induced by these plants and substances. To this day it is poignantly and sadly true what Timothy Leary once uttered as a grim joke: ‘Psychedelic drugs cause panic and temporary insanity in people who have not taken them’ (quoted in: Grinspoon/Bakalar, 1997, p. 66).

<12>
Much more could be said about this issue, but that is not the focus of this commentary. However, taking into account the above statements it becomes obvious why Tart modestly calls his initial proposal for the creation of state-specific sciences from 1972 'premature'. The deeper reason is that a scientific epistemology which is based on a specific state of consciousness can only accommodate such data that fit into, and are understandable within the confines of this very epistemology. Anything beyond the specific paradigm will be considered 'unscientific' if not imaginary or even pathological.

<13>
With regard to these thoughts, it is perfectly consequent when Tart suggests the plural (state-specific science*s*), instead of just countering predominant epistemologies by proposing, for example, a 'non-ordinary state science'. Chances are that we will now be able to begin to do justice to all the states of consciousness which are reported to us from indigenous peoples and from the age old spiritual traditions of humanity. The sole regiment of one paradigm, as Tart shows in his discussion of Kuhn, can work as a 'set of blinders', and create what Ken Wilber has so aptly and provocatively called a 'flatland' view.

<14>
The confrontation of paradigms has in our time led to what Tart discusses in his section 'Paradigm Clash'. One of the key issues of this paradigm clash is the schism between those scientists who understand themselves as objective observers, implying that there is such a thing as independent objectivity and truth, and such scientists on the other hand who hold that observer and observed are changed during the process of observation. If we look at ASCs, the key to the understanding of such states obviously is that the scientist herself enters whatever states she wishes to explore and investigate. The clash will only happen if paradigms fight for truth. If, however, we begin to understand that newly emerging paradigms do not destroy the old ones, but 'transcend and include' them (Wilber), then the doors for state-specific sciences might open a lot wider.

<15>
With the above in mind, it is interesting to look at what Tart says in his section on 'The Nature of Knowledge'. He writes about the meaning of the word 'science' (from the Latin 'scire') and discusses a possible meaning of 'understanding'. Language is very interesting in its connotations: the English 'to understand' almost has a physical component, meaning that a person comprehends if she can 'stand under', i.e. fully support something with her whole being. The Italian, French and Spanish 'comprende'/'comprend' imply the association of 'putting something together' in order to grasp it. Additionally, the German 'verstehen' connotes the stepping aside and looking at something from an angle that is removed from the fixation on one's own center.

<16>
Precisely this ability and/or willingness to leave the fixations behind is what Tart clarifies as being an essential process of scientific observation. He takes the key step when he alerts the reader to the fact that the inquiry into ASCs follows precise scientific methodology. In the section headlined 'Essential Scientific Method' he states that (1) observation, (2) logical theory construction, (3) the testing of theory by predicting observable consequences, and (4) full communication are the essential procedures of the scientific enterprise, and allow for being applied to the study of ASCs. This consolidates an important premise: The scientific validity of the study of ASCs. Needless to say, that the researcher in this field will make the same discovery as quantum physicists: The observer will be changed by the observed, and vice versa.

<17>
But not only that. As Tart points out in the section on observation, the study of ASCs involves a particular situation in as much as firstly the observer is the experiencer of the ASC, plus secondly, the observer's data is the experience. Depending on the scientific presuppositions one chooses as a basis, this fact might either be considered a predicament which spoils the accuracy of data and renders them arbitrary, or - and this is the approach transpersonal and consciousness researchers like Tart would favor - this special situation could be considered precisely appropriate concerning the uncharted and unexplored territories of consciousness.

<18>
To accept this sort of view certainly is a major challenge for traditional scientific epistemologies. Today's predominant tendency still is to consider such experiences as either fantasies and hallucinations, or even worse as pathological phenomena. State-specific sciences, however, would allow for an unbiased study of any kind of phenomenological occurrence, provided that we step aside from our habitual world view and adopt the position Tart suggests. If we look at consciousness studies, we almost have no other choice but to include the data gained via personal experience because only then can we build a theory that, as Tart says, ‘may be based on data that have no external, physical existence, but are observable by consciousness’.

<19>
In the section headlined 'Communication/Consensual Validation', Tart discusses one of the difficulties that arise from experiential data: we might easily be able to trace physical data back to the pertinent models which already exist, but we do not have any models for those data that do not consist of physical evidence in the hard sense, as in the study of ASCs. Fortunately however, we can mention here that the assessment of such models is underway. Besides Tart himself, we could definitely consider Ken Wilber's four-quadrant theory as such an attempt (Wilber, 1995). Furthermore we can mention Stanislav Grof and his theory of the 'perinatal matrices' (Grof, 1975 and 1980), then Michael Washburn's 'The Ego and the Dynamic Ground' (Washburn 1995), and Roger Walsh's paper on 'phenomenological mapping' (Walsh, 1995).

<20>
These models are all of Western origin, and it is therefore justified when Tart goes on to ‘look at the question of whether a tradition like Buddhism is a state-specific 'science' ‘. To be fair, we must say that Buddhism would never consider itself a 'science' in our common understanding of the word. It is not at all clear, however, whether this should be considered a disclaimer or maybe much rather as indicating Buddhism to be capable of holding information that possibly exceeds Western scientific data by comprising insights from various states of consciousness, including ASCs.

<21>
As Tart goes on to mention, one of the problems concerning data gained from ASCs frequently is that it presents the researcher and her colleagues with the necessity of a state-specific communication. We can imagine what this means by looking at the specific jargons used among a group of people who are pursuing the same interest, e.g. quantum physicists, latter day saints, security personnel etc. Portions of the jargon will be incomprehensible to the outsider and will create the impression of a 'secret language'. Indeed, as can be studied in the well known writings of Carlos Castaneda, language can confuse the listener/reader as regards the question from which state of consciousness a certain collection of words emerges. With respect to these different strata of meaning, it is definitely necessary to create a kind of communication that serves state-specific science in a state-specific wording. This might well be a task that is not easy to accomplish within a syntax pattern that has largely been dominated by one particular state of consciousness only, i.e. the 'objective' and 'rational'.

<22>
Just because a different language might be in order for state-specific sciences shouldn't, however, lead us to the conclusion that we are leaving the premises of accurate scientific inquiry. In the section headlined 'state-specific sciences', Tart emphasizes that ‘the particulars of research would look very different, but the essential scientific method potentially running through all is the same.’ In other words: nomenclature can vary, but the basic methodology follows common principles which comply with scientific standards. This is important to mention, as research focusing on ASCs is frequently disqualified or ridiculed on grounds of the words used for describing the states, and the experiences people had in these states.

<23>
However, neglecting data because of a wording which doesn't fit one's favored scientific pattern of understanding is more likely to expose a hidden belief in certain premises than dismounting the validity of evidence gained, say, in ASC research. Tart makes clear, for example, that ‘the hypothesis that everything can be reduced to material interactions is highly useful, but when it becomes an automatic paradigm it is a faith that blocks observations’. In this regard it is very interesting to take a look at what Ken Wilber has called 'performative contradiction', an implicit logical error such as in the sentence 'there is no last truth', implying that this dictum utters a 'last truth' (Wilber, 1995).

<24>
With respect to the above discussed problem of language, it might be important to mention that transpersonal and/or consciousness researchers who study ASCs and other non-linear and non-local phenomena are quite often accused of wanting to abandon reason and logic, the cherished strongholds of Western scientific tradition. Frequently, such criticism goes along with an astounding amount of emotionality, which exposes the fact that the criticism is not really of scientific nature but instead conveys a sense of a rationalized defense of a personal belief system or 'automatic paradigm', as it were. Here, then, we run into conflicts which touch upon what has often been called 'the clash of paradigms' (see above), a shift in epistemologies, the symptoms and consequences of which have been excellently laid out by Thomas Kuhn in his still widely discussed book 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' (Kuhn, 1970).

<25>
Concerning the study of ASCs and the above mentioned fact that the researcher is also the experiencer and interpreter of these states, the paradigm shift is actually of a simple, if not profane nature. It simply goes like this: One cannot discuss data gained in ASC research, or have critical leverage against data from such research, unless one has experienced the respective ASC. Now, make no mistake here: this is no global call to all scientists to enter ASCs; it only is a respective acknowledgment of competence and expertise. In other words: causal and linear theories are necessary and invaluable when applied to causal and linear phenomena. Likewise, if we study non-linear and acausal phenomena such as those appearing in ASCs, we obviously need theories accommodating non-linear and acausal principles. The non-linearity of the latter, or the linearity of the former is at best a truth claim for the respective field, not however, an overall dictate for every field of research.

<26>
These remarks address an issue the importance of which cannot be overemphasized: not only quantum physics, but also state-specific sciences involving personal experience of the ASC researcher, fundamentally challenge predominant concepts of scientific 'objectivity'. They challenge a view of the world which consists of the notion that nature and all observed phenomena can be made subject to 'independent' study and subjugated under human control. It would require a separate discussion to look at the relationship between such a world view and the current evolutional state and stage of the human race.

<27>
It must be noted - and credited - toward the end of this comment that Tart doesn't stop short of mentioning the difficulties of state-specific sciences. One of them is the fact that experiencers of ASCs, during their ASC, are temporarily not too preoccupied with the observational concepts of the scientific premises they have based their inquiry upon. Consequently, the collection of data might suffer from this predicament. Stan Grof reports from his early research days in Prague, how he ingested a full dose of LSD for research purposes, after having been covered with all sorts of electrodes connecting him to gadgets measuring brain waves etc. When entering the ASC, Grof was asked all kinds of questions by the research personnel which made him laugh and wonder what kind of a 'strange space' his colleagues were in, and why they would be interested in these petty technical questions, when really 'the whole universe was full of god'.

<28>
These are challenges that will have to be dealt with in state-specific sciences, but they will surely serve to build effective theory. Such difficulties do not allow for discarding ASC research as a futile endeavor, even though it seems so to many who would like to refrain from such studies or to seriously question their scientific validity. Along these lines Tart warns that ‘it should be made clear that the development of each science should result from empirical trial and error, and not from a priori decisions based on reasoning in our ordinary states of consciousness’.

<29>
Given Tart's above comment, it is certainly time for the emergence of state-specific sciences. The influence of Eastern spiritual traditions on Western industrial societies calls for the incorporation and explanation of experiences reported in these traditions, which often leave predominant Western patterns of understanding reality at a loss. The sad consequence often is to neglect or pathologize such experiences or even the traditions from which they have been reported. Furthermore, the phenomena observed in psychopathology have for a number of years drawn increasing attention of consciousness-, transpersonal-, and ASC researchers. This is partly reflected by amplifying the American DSM IV to include the category 'psychospiritual and religious problems'.

<30>
It is definitely appropriate when Tart deplores that ‘in all the time that Western science has existed, no concerted attempt has been made to understand these ASC phenomena in essential scientific terms’. This predicament, however, is clearly changing. Tart himself has practically made this change the calling of his life's work, and I believe that younger scientists do well in opening up to his proposal of state-specific sciences.

CONCLUSION

<31>
The mystical traditions of the world exert an amazing influence particularly on the younger generations in Western societies. Most probably this fascination has to do with what has often been called the 'spiritual emptiness' of Western society. Likewise, so called 'cults' or 'new religious movements' promise something which younger people cannot seem to find in their regular lives. The same is true for those plants and substances which have been subsumed under the somewhat inappropriate label 'drugs'. ASCs play a key role, if not the very essential one, in these developments. Another field including experiential inquiries is rooted in the native traditions that are often active within these Western societies. the study of Indigenous Science and Sacred Traditions is incorporated into more and more academic institutions, which reflects a need that has long been neglected.

<32>
With respect to these and other developments, Tart's proposal seems to be an urgent demand. It is utterly necessary to incorporate a combination of theory and experiential inquiry into academia, and create what I have called an 'experiment-field' (Seelig, 1995, 1998), an academic atmosphere that allows to assess the patterns of ASCs by entering into them in a protected environment. The 'workshop-culture' of the past decades must climb the steep latter of academia and enter the universities. As Tart has hinted at, a new kind of scientist will emerge, one that will change his self-understanding from one being based on theoretical knowledge to a 'knowing' based on the combination of personal experience and theoretical expertise. These scientists will look at Charles Tart as their forefather who has significantly contributed to paving the way for an amplified understanding of science, an understanding that is most likely to serve current needs of humanity in a much more effective manner.

REFERENCES

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