Paperback: 320 pages

Publisher: Backinprint.com (January, 2001)

Language: English
ISBN: 0595151965
Subjects > Religion & Spirituality

States of Consciousness

Charles T. Tart

1. The Systems Approach to States of Consciousness

There is a great elegance in starting out from simple ideas, slowly

building them up into connected patterns, and having a complex,
interlocking theoretical structure emerge at the end. Following the
weaving of such a pattern, step by step, can be highly stimulating.
Unfortunately, it is easy to get bogged down in the details, especially
when the pattern has gaps to be filled in, and to lose track of what the
steps are all about and what they are leading toward. This chapter gives a
brief overview of my systems approach to state of consciousness—a brief
sketch map of the whole territory to provide a general orientation before
we look at detail maps. I do not define terms much here or give detailed
examples, as these are supplied in later chapters.
Our ordinary state of consciousness is not something natural or given,
but a highly complex construction, a specialized tool for coping with our
environment and the people in it, a tool that is useful for doing some
things but not very useful, and even dangerous, for doing other things. As
we look at consciousness closely, we see that it can be analyzed into
many parts. Yet these parts function together in a pattern: they form a
system. While the components of consciousness can be studied in
isolation, they exist as parts of a complex system, consciousness, and can
be fully understood only when we see this function in the overall system.
Similarly, understanding the complexity of consciousness requires seeing