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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Charlie Tard, PhD was with us about

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Speaker 1: six years ago on Coast to Coast, internationally known where

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Speaker 1: psychological work on the nature of the human mind, particularly

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Speaker 1: altered states of consciousness. As one of the founders of

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Speaker 1: the field of transpersonal psychology and for his research and parapsychology,

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Speaker 1: his primary goal is to build bridges between the scientific

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Speaker 1: and spiritual communities, and not a lot of scientists do that,

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Speaker 1: and to help bring about our refinement and integration of

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Speaker 1: Western and Eastern approaches for knowing the world and for

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Speaker 1: personal and social growth. My pleasure to bring back to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast Charlie Tart Charlie, always a pleasure. Good

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Speaker 1: to have you back. It's been a while. It's a

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Speaker 1: pleasure to be here, George. And I was excited to

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Speaker 1: hear you mentioned Bob mon Rose Journeys Out of the

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Speaker 1: Body book. That's a fantastic book. Is Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: I love that book. And just to realize that you

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Speaker 1: had a part of that. I'll tell you a funny

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Speaker 1: story about okay. Uh. Bob Monroe was an ordinary American

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Speaker 1: businessman who started having out of the body experiences. So

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Speaker 1: of course he went to his doctor to be cured.

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Speaker 1: But the doctor couldn't do much. But he didn't find

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Speaker 1: me the send he should write it up and try

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Speaker 1: to get published as a book, And he sent it

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Speaker 1: off to an agent in New York who didn't do

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Speaker 1: anything with it. So find me, I said, let me

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Speaker 1: send it to my editor a double day and see

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Speaker 1: what happens. Well that my editor got it. He took

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Speaker 1: it home and he read the story about Bob and

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Speaker 1: rose out of the body experiences until he came to

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Speaker 1: the chapter on how to do it, at which point

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Speaker 1: he closed the manuscript because he was afraid it might work.

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Speaker 1: You know, it was just an amazing, amazing I mean

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Speaker 1: twenty one years old when I read it, Charles, when

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Speaker 1: it came out, just it changed my whole direction of thinking.

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Speaker 1: My aunt, who was a doctor of psychiatry, Dr Shafika Corregula.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever came across her. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: she wrote a book called Breakthrough the Creativity. She was

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Speaker 1: into esp and telepathy and things like that. So all

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Speaker 1: this was coming at me at a young age and

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Speaker 1: I just digested it. So it's great to know that

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Speaker 1: you were part of that. It's also great to know

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Speaker 1: that you, as a scientist, are in this direction because

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Speaker 1: a lot of scientists I don't want to talk about this.

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Speaker 1: You know that. Yeah, I know it. And you wrote

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Speaker 1: a book with our friend the late Edgar Mitchell, the Astronaut, too,

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Speaker 1: didn't you. I could I play a chapter in one

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Speaker 1: of his books. Yeah, but I wouldn't give myself too

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Speaker 1: much credit. All right, let us get into some things

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Speaker 1: here that have to do with what this is all about.

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Speaker 1: First of all, I mean you have been studying this

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Speaker 1: for years. You're very accomplished researcher and author. There's something

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Speaker 1: very special and unusual about us as human beings, but

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Speaker 1: something in the cosmos, something going on. People call it

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Speaker 1: a God connection. What do you think this is that

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Speaker 1: allows our mind, our consciousness to function the way it does. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's a good one, George. I wish I could really

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Speaker 1: answer it better. I wish you could work around it

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Speaker 1: a little bit, all right, your mind say, to oversimplify,

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Speaker 1: there are really kind of two views of what human

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Speaker 1: life is and what our purpose in the universe is

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Speaker 1: and so forth, And one of them is the old

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Speaker 1: one that various religions have have that, Yeah, we've got

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Speaker 1: a physical body and all that, but there's something spiritual

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Speaker 1: or something not the same as the physical, and that's

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Speaker 1: connected with higher purposes, God, mysticism and whatnot. And then

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Speaker 1: there's the modern scientific view, which has morphed over from

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Speaker 1: a strictly scientific view into a scientistic view. And what

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Speaker 1: I mean by that is that science is supposed to

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Speaker 1: be a continual search for getting better and better understandings things.

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Speaker 1: You don't find truth in science. You find a way

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Speaker 1: that is useful to explain things and let you work

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Speaker 1: with them, but that you wonder it, could it be

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Speaker 1: a little more accurate, or is there a different way

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Speaker 1: of doing it? Um it? But when your explanations start

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Speaker 1: to become automatic ways of thinking, they become sort of

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Speaker 1: like a dogmatic religion. Sociologist years ago coined the term scientism.

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Speaker 1: You take the science of the time and it starts

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Speaker 1: becoming an unquestionable doctrine. I got a question for you.

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Speaker 1: When you were a kid taking science classes in school,

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Speaker 1: did anybody ever teach you about the theory of gravity?

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Speaker 1: Now they taught you about the law? Yeah, well, when

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Speaker 1: when when did gravity become a law? Was there a

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Speaker 1: meeting of the cosmic family or something. Uh, that's just

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Speaker 1: an illustration that we stopped really thinking about something and

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Speaker 1: get stuck in a certain way. Now we get stuck

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Speaker 1: on something that works, that's good, But to stay stuck

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Speaker 1: there forever not so good. My big concern is that

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Speaker 1: this view that the mind is nothing but the action

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Speaker 1: of the brain, and of course you're going to die

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Speaker 1: and the brain is gonna rotten, that's the end of it.

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Speaker 1: That kind of takes an awful lot of meaning out

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Speaker 1: of life. It sure does. And you know, raw science

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Speaker 1: will tell you when you die, that's it. There's no

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Speaker 1: life after death. The brain starts stops the function in

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Speaker 1: that set. Yeah, I got a picture of a of

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Speaker 1: a decomposing brain. I use in lectures sometime. It's pretty disgusting.

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Speaker 1: It is just science that tells us that it's scientis

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Speaker 1: um it's takes you know. The physical sciences have been

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Speaker 1: incredibly successful, you know, and I love it. I'm a

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Speaker 1: gadget to hear that's great, But they forget that this

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Speaker 1: is just the best we can do at the moment,

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Speaker 1: and we got to keep looking at stuff. Charlie, what

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Speaker 1: was it that got you as a scientist convinced that

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Speaker 1: this other part of it exists. Well, you know, I

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Speaker 1: was very lucky that way. I was raised as a Lutheran.

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Speaker 1: You know, my grandmother took me to church. You know,

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Speaker 1: grandmother's spoil, you're rotten, you know her. It was good

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Speaker 1: enough for me. And then by the time I got

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Speaker 1: to be a teenager, two things happened. One is that

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Speaker 1: I noticed that the adults in this church were pretty

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Speaker 1: hypocritical about what they actually practiced. I mean, teenagers are

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Speaker 1: very good at spotting that sort of stuff. And also,

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Speaker 1: I'd really fallen in love with science and read lots

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Speaker 1: of stuff, and so I saw stuff that claim to

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Speaker 1: be scientific, that that religion is all nonsense, it's all

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Speaker 1: an illusion, and I thought, well, yeah, that's too bad

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Speaker 1: if it is. But they certainly have a lot of

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Speaker 1: instances of crazy stuff coming out of religion. But very

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Speaker 1: luckily I came across books about parapsychology and psychical research

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Speaker 1: as it used to be called the old days, and

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Speaker 1: it said, you know, stuff happens to human beings that

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Speaker 1: doesn't fit into this model that it's nothing but the brain,

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Speaker 1: that it's nothing but material. We have evidence that the

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Speaker 1: mind can do things that matter as we know it

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Speaker 1: can't do. So let's be more open to the spiritual.

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Speaker 1: That doesn't mean go out and believe anything that's labeled

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Speaker 1: spiritual or religious, lots of nonsense. They're like in all

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Speaker 1: areas of human life. But I think we could become

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Speaker 1: more sensible about religion in this spiritual We could test

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Speaker 1: various aspects of spirituality and say, yeah, this is all

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Speaker 1: right if you believe it, but it doesn't work except

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Speaker 1: under certain conditions, and here's a better way of understanding it.

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Speaker 1: I'd like to see people being able to be trained

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Speaker 1: to have deep religious, deep spiritual experiences themselves. You know,

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Speaker 1: I don't want to be good because somebody threatens me

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Speaker 1: with hell if I'm not good. I'd much prefer to

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Speaker 1: be good because, as I've known directly, the kind of

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Speaker 1: mystical experiences that say we're actually a part of something greater,

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Speaker 1: and of course we're related. If I hurt you, I'm

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Speaker 1: hurting me. It's only sensible to be more decent. I'd

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Speaker 1: like people to have those direct experiences, not just be

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Speaker 1: preached at Charlie, do you think people are generally born

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Speaker 1: good and then become bad? I think for the most part.

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Speaker 1: But you know it's hard to tell. You know, a

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Speaker 1: lot of our Western religions started out with an idea

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Speaker 1: of original sin, and you know that's something of a downer,

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Speaker 1: you know, a certain no matter how hard I try,

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Speaker 1: I'm basically flawed. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM

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Speaker 1: every weeknight at one a m. Eastern and go to

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