Tart grew up with an interest in science and he believes that is it reasonable to be both scientific and spiritual in your approach to life. He explains how science works when we openly share our observations: “As an individual scientist, am biased in certain ways. I see some things too readily and exaggerate them; I don’t even notice other things. But we’re not all biased and crazy in exactly the same way. So, if we keep sharing what we see, what our thinking is, we can begin to compensate for each other’s limitations. We start out with crude ideas based on pretty imprecise observations and funny reasons that we think they happen and gradually we get clearer and clearer facts.” Our challenge is to not get too attached to our belief systems. This is most especially applicable when it comes to the field of parapsychology and psychic phenomena, which includes altered states, telepathy, and healing. Tart would like to see the scientific method applied to inform a deeper understanding of religious and spiritual phenomena. He states, “I would like to see what we might call an experimental spirituality.” For example, research might be conducted on different forms of meditation. He suggests collecting data on different personality traits to find which type of meditation would work best for each personality. He says, “It’s one thing to tell people to be good but how do you control the anger, the loneliness, the jealously, the one-upsmanship urges and so forth? There’s something about love and understanding that are more than just biological, which is part of the whole picture which gives meaning to life. Exactly what the meaning is needs a lot of figuring out . . . And we can learn more.”
