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States of Consciousness, a classic by world authority Charles T. Tart, is a basic understanding of how the mind is a dynamic, culturally biased, semi-arbitrary construction and system. A systematic exploration of how and why altered states can come about and their possibilities. As a student of his remarked, "For the first weeks of class I didn't understand what those diagrams were about, but I've realized the book is all about the way my own mind works!" Useful in understanding some of the important ways your mind works before you start altering it.
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http://www.druglibrary.org/special/tart/soccont.htm
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States of Consciousness Charles T. Tart, Ph. D. Contents Introduction to the Web Edition Introduction
Section I: States 1. The Systems Approach to States of Consciousness 2. The Components of Consciousness: Awareness, Energy, Structures 3. Conservative and Radical Views of the Mind 4. The Nature of Ordinary Consciousness 5. Discrete States of Consciousness 6. Stabilization of a State of Consciousness 7. Induction of Altered States: Going to Sleep, Hypnosis, Meditation 8. Subsystems 9. Individual Differences 10. Using Drugs to Induce Altered States 11. Observation of Internal States 12. Identity States 13. Strategies in Using the Systems Approach 14. The Depth Dimension of a State of Consciousness 15. State-Specific Communication 16. State-Specific Sciences
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17. Higher States of Consciousness
Section II: Speculation 18. As Above, So Below: Five Basic Principles Underlying Physics and Psychology 19. Ordinary Consciousness as a State of Illusion 20. Ways Out of Illusion Bibliography
States of Consciousness ©1975 by Charles T. Tart First published by E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, in 1975. ISBN 0-525-20970-0 States of Consciousness appears in The Psychedelic Library by permission of the Author
Introduction to the Web Edition, 1997 I am very pleased that the Schaffer Library, through the kind efforts of Peter Webster, is now making this book available over the World Wide Web. The greatly increasing interest in the nature of consciousness in the last few years makes this material even more relevant than when it was originally published in 1975. Unfortunately too much of the current scientific and popular interest in consciousness tends to be simplistically reductionistic, a "Consciousness is nothing but……" approach, where the particular "nothing but" may be brain functioning, language, philosophical abstractions, etc. All these approaches have valuable things to offer our understanding, but do grave injustice to the richness and complexity of our consciousness with such oversimplification. My systems approach presented in this book is not simplistic, but tries to deal with the whole, rich range of conscious functioning, particularly as it is expressed in altered states of consciousness (ASCs) like hypnosis, dreaming, meditation, drug-induced states, etc. While my approach is primarily scientific, the book was written clearly to be accessible to all educated people (indeed, I have sometimes gotten in trouble with the University, which has "reasoned" that if my writings can be understood they must not be really scholarly….). Many of the students in my altered states classes over the years have also found considerable personal http://www.druglibrary.org/special/tart/soccont.htm (2 of 4) [5/1/2002 12:50:33 PM]
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relevance in this approach. As one young woman put it, at first she didn't understand what all these d