A Transpersonal Festschrift to Honor Charles Tart on his 85th Birthday 1

: This summary honors Charles Tart on his 85th birthday by reviewing his contributions and the influence of his work in the subdiscipline of Transpersonal Psychology. Six contributions are reviewed, namely his vision of Transpersonal Psychology as: (a) a science of Mind and Spirit, (b) a critical psychology, (c) an empirical, non-churchly approach to religion as spiritual psychology, (d) a state-specific science of exceptional human experience, (e) an evidence-enriched science of spirituality grounded in the scientific foundations of experimental parapsychology, and (f) a psychology of human possibilities to help individuals overcome obstacles to growth.

Professor Tart tells us that he has led three professional lives: "One life was as experimenter and investigator of consciousness… My second professional life was as a parapsychologist… My third professional life was as a transpersonal psychologist" (Tart, 2009b, pp. 47-49). He notes, "identifying myself as a transpersonal psychologist, with a specialty in parapsychology, is one way in which I integrate my varied interests and try to broaden parapsychology. Under other circumstances, of course, I am quite happy to identify myself as a parapsychologist with a specialty interest in transpersonal psychology" (p. 40). His blog and website offer the interested reader free access to full texts of many of his scholarly works on various topics, including alternate states of consciousness, dreams, hypnosis, meditation, mindfulness, parapsychology, personal growth, spirituality, survival of death, and "how to be both a scientific person and a spiritual seeker" (https://blog.paradigm-sys.com/welcome/).
The idea that one can be both a scientist and a spiritual seeker at once is one of his most enduring contributions to Transpersonal Psychology. He tells us that his childhood religion, Lutheranism, and science were "two major forces in my becoming a transpersonal psychologist" and that the idea of applying "the methods of science to the phenomena of religion and spirituality…. has been the central theme of my professional work and personal life ever since" (Tart, 2016b, p. 3). He is a firm believer that science is not prohibited from investigating so-called "supernatural" claims and that "the methods of essential science can help us clarify many things in the spiritual area" (Tart, 2016b, p. 12).
Science and spirituality at their root are not isolated or specialized activities, in his view, 2023, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 228-247 and these two ways of thinking and living need not be contradictory or incommensurable unless you believe that they are. "I was proud," he said, "to be both scientific and spiritual in my professional and personal approaches to life" (Tart, 2009b, p. 32). Science can be a spiritual practice and spirituality a characteristic of any pursuit that searches for the nature of meaning and truth, including science (see also Anderson, 2018;Barušs, 2007).

Six Contributions to Transpersonal Psychology
The formal birth of Transpersonal Psychology (capitalized as a proper noun to emphasize its distinctiveness as a subdiscipline of psychology) has been traced to several events. Some point to September 14, 1967 when Abraham Maslow made first public reference to the emergence of a "'transhumanistic psychology' dealing with transcendent experiences and with transcendent values" in a lecture given under the auspices of the Esalen Institute at the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco (Maslow, 1969, p. 4). Others trace the field's beginning to 1969 with the publication of the first peerreviewed academic journal of the field, The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. For me, the emergence of the field fully dawned in 1975 with the publication of Charles Tart's book,

Transpersonal Psychologies: Perspectives on the Mind from Seven Great Spiritual
Traditions (Tart, 1975a). It is here that we find many of his key ideas that have served as fertile soil out of which the emerging subdiscipline of Transpersonal Psychology would grow into a psychology for the 21st century. These include his vision of Transpersonal Psychology as: (a) a science of Mind and Spirit, (b) a critical psychology, (c) an empirical, non-churchly approach to religion as spiritual psychologies, (d) a state-specific science of exceptional human experience, (e) an evidence-enriched science of spirituality grounded in the scientific foundations of experimental parapsychology, and (f) a psychology of human possibilities capable of helping individuals overcome obstacles to human growth. These six contributions and the influence of Charles Tart's work are briefly discussed below.

A Science of Mind and Spirit
On the occasion of his reception of Division 32's (Humanistic Psychology) Abraham Maslow Award in 2004 for his work in "the furtherance of the human spirit," Tart articulated his vision for both Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology: "To help move psychology in a direction where it is once again, both theoretically and in applied ways, a science of the mind. Indeed, to move far enough that psychology also becomes a science of the spirit and, perhaps, to use that uncomfortable word, a science of the Spirit" (Tart, 2005, p. 133). He contends that mind and spirit have a reality of their own that need to be studied on their own terms and emphasizes the primacy of experiential data in their investigation (i. e., data of sense and data of consciousness). The challenge for psychology in implementing a viable and authentic science of Mind and Spirit is to discover and explore the operation of a spiritualized element in ordinary life and make it accessible in people's conscious experience so that empirical (i. e., experiential) evidence of its reality can be obtained and replicated in the experience of others (Tart, 2001(Tart, , 2019. As part of that project, he urges further research into: "(a) how to induce healthy transpersonal experiences, (b) how to maximize healthy integration of transpersonal experiences into everyday life, and (c) how to treat and minimize transpersonal pathology (everything that appears transcendent is not necessarily true or healthy)" (Tart, 2006, p. 85).
In Charles Tart's view, "transpersonal psychology is a discipline working toward developing an evidence-based spirituality…. Creating an evidence-enriched spirituality is one of the most important activities we can undertake, if not the most important!" (Tart, 2009b, pp. 40, 53). In alignment with the radical empiricism tradition of American philosopher-psychologist William James, he argues that it is the field's "insistence that data-observation, direct experience-is always primary, always takes precedence over 2023, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 228-247 theory [that] will provide a firm foundation for advances in understanding and application in the field" (Tart, 2006, p. 85). The science of Mind and Spirit that he proposes is an empirical science (i. e., from Greek ἐμπειρία empeiría, meaning "experience") that regards "experience as one kind of fundamental data just as fundamental as physiology or behavior" [emphasis in original] (Tart, 2019, p. 366).
He recognizes that "there are many kinds of spirituality and spiritual experiences that must be considered as data in developing a more comprehensive theory of the spiritual" (Tart, 2009b, p. 45). By "spiritual," he refers to that which "points toward ultimate values and meanings primarily involving nonphysical aspects of reality" (p. 43). In Tart's view, "total, blanket dismissal of any possible reality to the spiritual is bad science" (p. 50).
We "must deal with all the data, not just the convenient parts," he states, and remain "faithful to the full range of human experience" (Tart, 2005, p. 134). This includes experiences whose content seem to reveal that there is a transcendent dimension to reality that exists independently of the material world and sensory human experience (Tart, 1989(Tart, , 1997b.

A Critical Psychology
Charles Tart is one of the first transpersonal psychologists to call attention to a particular brand of science grounded in what he termed the "Western Creed" (Tart, 1992, pp. 78-82)-also known as "materialistic scientism" (Tart 2004) and "Dismissive Materialism" (Tart, 2009a)-that rejects any possible reality to the spiritual. It is a philosophic stance consisting of a set of assumptions about the nature of reality, human knowing, and value-fulfillment that have come to dominate much of orthodox, mainstream Western psychological thinking and which have practical consequences on the human spirit. These assumptions (for example, only physical reality is real; all perception is through the physical senses; life, mind, and consciousness are nothing but the chance byproduct of lifeless chemical elements mindlessly coming together in an

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Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition (JAEX) uncaring, purposeless, and mechanical universe that was itself accidentally created) often go unquestioned because of prior socialization and conditioning and subsequently take on the appearance of facts of existence rather than beliefs about existence. By making those assumptions explicit, Charles Tart has helped students of psychology become better able to consciously examine and critically evaluate their practical consequences and theoretical implications so that alternative understandings of life, mind, and consciousness can be conceived and explored.
"Too many professional scientists," he states, "have too narrow a view of reality and practice scientism [i. e., materialistic science functioning as dogmatic religion] rather than essential science [i. e., the open-ended cycle of observation, theory/prediction, testing, intersubjective validation]" (Tart, 2005, p. 131). He came to recognize that psychology's determination to be like the physical sciences has brought about a relatively narrow kind of science that has resulted in a certain artificial shrinking of the basic reality of subjective life to those aspects that can be studied in an exterior fashion and a scaling down of those creative (paranormal) abilities that lie latent but active within each person and within the species. The more he explored the profoundly rich and multifaceted phenomenon of consciousness, the more he realized that orthodox Western psychology, by what it said and neglected to say, has helped to create insanities that otherwise would not have plagued our world. By denying our species the practical use of those very elements needed to remain heathy in body and mind-the feeling that we can trust ourselves and that our being and our actions have meaning and purposemainstream psychology has played an important negative role in undermining personal integrity and contributing to the troubles of society. His life's work has been devoted to remedying this unfortunate situation and inspiring the younger members of our profession to "look at what's implicit or assumed in questions and ideas" (Tart, 2016b, p. 7). Tart's open espousal and promotion of this critical stance is another important contribution that has made Transpersonal Psychology one of the critical psychologies (Friedman & Hartelius, 2013).

Religions as Spiritual Psychologies
A third contribution to Transpersonal Psychology is Tart's construal of world religions and various spiritual systems as forms of "psychologies" that offer alternative assumptions to those of materialistic scientism (Tart, 1975a, Chapter 2). In his view, spiritual psychologies are "transpersonal" in the sense of "temporarily transcending our usual identification with our limited biological, historical, cultural and personal self and, at the deepest and most profound levels of experience possible, recognizing/being 'something' of vast intelligence and compassion that encompasses/is the entire universe" (Tart, 2002, p. 39). Maslow (1968) characterized such psychologies "centered in the cosmos rather than in human needs and interest, going beyond humanness, identity, self-actualization, and the like" as transhumanistic (pp. iii-iv). Bridging transhumanistic spirit and psychological science has long been an important element in Tart's transpersonal vision for the field. One concrete application of his vision of "building bridges between essential science and essential spirituality" was his The Archives of Tart is not afraid to speculate about the existence of a spiritualized element of human personality or to actively probe possible realities that underlie human spirituality (Tart, 1989(Tart, , 1995(Tart, , 1997b. Some transpersonal scholars may believe that such speculation has no place in any psychology that would call itself "scientific" and prefer to remain agnostic about whether anything real is happening. Not so Charles Tart telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, psychic healing) that seem to reveal something of the essential nature of being or existence (Tart, 2009a). In his view, it is through following the data and remaining open to all avenues of productive scientific speculation and intuitive possibilities that the knowledge quest will be fruitfully advanced.
This requires that we keep an open mind because, as he put it, "accepting any worldview and spiritual goal as final, ultimate Truth, may seriously discourage you from looking for alternatives that might even be more valuable, and certainly a part of reality" (Tart, 2016b, p. 13ff). His advice remains psychologically sound: "Practice a little humility and remember that we may not be smart enough to figure everything out" at this stage in our knowledge of the transpersonal nature of human psychology (p. 7).

State-Specific Sciences of Transpersonal Experience
A fourth contribution to Transpersonal Psychology is Tart's proposal of "statespecific sciences" that utilizes the method of essential science to advance understanding of the basic reality of subjective life (Tart, 1976(Tart, , 1995(Tart, , 2008. He tells us that he considers this proposal to be his "most creative contribution" to the study of consciousness and a way of doing scientific work that expands our view of reality by using the different perspectives available to us in various alternate states of consciousness (Tart, 2009b, p. 47 entering into the state of consciousness that they wish to investigate as participantobservers and studying it from the inside out, and not the other way around (Tart, 1972(Tart, , 1975b. Always the pragmatic scientist, Tart recognizes that his proposal for state-specific sciences was likely ahead of its time (Tart, 2009b, p. 47). Although it has yet to gain much traction in the psychological sciences or receive much practical application in consciousness studies, I believe that the situation is likely to change with the recent renaissance of psychedelic research in mainstream psychology. I also think that his state-specific sciences proposal offers a plausible way forward for the development of an empirically (experientially) controlled metaphysics of a science of Mind and Spirit that takes experience in various states of consciousness as its empirical starting point and is capable of pointing out directions in which explanatory scientific theories might be found (Tart, 1989(Tart, , 1997b. The method of disciplined inquiry of the kind proposed by Tart expands psychology, not only by enlarging its toolbox of research technologies, but also by placing the hypothesis formation, research design, data gathering, and data analysis process (i. e., the data-theory cycle) within a larger framework that considers the basic reality of subjective life in a greater context, with greater motives, purposes, and meanings than traditionally assigned to it by orthodox, Western psychological science.
Early in his career, Tart recognized that unlike experiments using inanimate objects, experiments that involve active and reactive human beings who are trying to understand what is happening to them never turn out exactly the same way twice (Tart, 1977). He tells us that Humanistic-Transpersonal Psychology today has a major advantage here by recognizing "the personal equation" in scientific research and that the subjectivity of the researcher is always a variable in any research programmme" (Tart, 2010). For scientists, the physical world would have little meaning for them were it not for their subjectivity. Research is a subjective act and the researcher's personal

Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition (JAEX)
qualities inform all aspects of a scientific study, especially given the self-reflexive nature of psychology's subject matter (i. e., we are what we study). "By recognizing this," Tart notes, "we have a chance to control for bias and so be more objective" in our evaluation of the evidence that provides a basis for validating the legitimacy of spiritual experience (Tart, 2005, p. 138).

A fifth contribution to the field is Charles Tart's open espousal of parapsychology as
providing an interface between science and spirituality and the necessary evidence for empirically validating the ontological reality of certain categories of transpersonal experiences. His active promotion of this experimental science has greatly benefited its reputation within Transpersonal Psychology (Tart, 2009a(Tart, , 2019. As a transpersonal parapsychologist, Charles Tart has consistently argued that parapsychological research has important implications for Transpersonal Psychology because of the scientific evidence it provides for the existence of many of the exceptional experiences that transpersonal psychologists study (Tart, 2002). He notes that many transpersonal experiences-such as near-death experiences, past-life memories, mediumistic communications, apparitions and deathbed experiences, and yogic Siddhis-constitute research areas common to both Transpersonal Psychology and parapsychology. The family resemblance between parapsychology and Transpersonal Psychology is emphasized in strong terms in his book Body Mind Spirit: The Parapsychology of Spirituality, where he discusses "how we have strong scientific evidence in parapsychology and why that gives general support to some kind of reality to a spiritual world and a spiritual life" (Tart, 1997a, p. 25). 2023, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 228-248 From Charles Tart's point of view, much the same as physiology and neurology underlie medicine and physics provides the foundation of engineering, "the basic parapsychological findings of the reality of psi give a solid, scientific reality basis to our fields of humanistic and transpersonal psychology and without this backing our fields are too easily dismissed by materialists as being nothing but illusions and delusions" (Tart, 2005, p. 142). He notes that some progress has been made in gaining Transpersonal Psychology some respectability in the eyes of mainstream psychologists who may have initially looked upon the field as "Kooky California Psychology" that deals with psychic and spiritual stuff (Tart, 2009b, p. 41). More needs to be done, however, in terms of addressing the political marginalization of Transpersonal Psychology within "official" psychology, ending the perpetuation of inaccurate stereotypes of the field as unscientific, and dealing with the irrational resistance by mainstream psychologists to scientific discoveries concerning the facticity of certain transpersonal phenomena. "Mapping out these defenses, their costs, and their consequences," he observes, "will be a very useful line of future research" (p. 37).
Tart has devoted a significant part of his own professional career trying to understand why scientists resist scientific discoveries related to psi functioning and other phenomena that appear to involve an expansion of consciousness beyond usual ego boundaries and limitations of space and time (Tart, 1982(Tart, , 1984. In certain respects, this resistance is understandable since both parapsychology and Transpersonal Psychology investigate phenomena that shatter the foundations of materialistic science's philosophical stance (e. g., mind affecting matter, action at a distance, nonsensory perception). Those whose job it is to maintain and defend the status quo and worldview of current scientific orthodoxy cannot afford to rebel. The problem of anticipatory fear (i. e., anticipating the worst possible outcome of any action) that Tart draws attention to in the context of psi functioning is not trivial. It may be one reason why transpersonal

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Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition (JAEX) experiences, human transformative capacities, and self-actualization are not more frequently reported in the general population. When people are frightened of themselves, frightened of their impulses and of the self who has them, fear their emotions and the opinions of others, fear looking weak or fear looking too strong, fear fear, or make fear a habit, then they can easily become immobilized and afraid to recognize, acknowledge, or use their abilities, including psi. Tart recognizes, however, that it is a fear that eventually everyone must face and a journey-the journey of the personal self through fear of the unknown-that everyone must take and its benefits used, if we are to overcome the obstacles to human potential and achieve maturity as a species.

A Psychology of Human Possibilities
This brings me to Tart's sixth contribution: His vision of Transpersonal Psychology as an applied psychology of personality growth and spiritual development. As he put, it, "I am not simply interested in a psychology that is all theory and study, I want application and personal growth to come from its knowledge" (Tart, 2005, p. 140). From his transpersonal perspective, "our ordinary 'normal' biological, historical, cultural and personal self is seen as an important, but quite partial (and often pathologically distorted) manifestation or expression of this much greater 'something' that is our deeper origin and destination" (Tart, 2002, p. 39). His book, Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential (Tart, 1986), reminds us that the expression of this "greater something" is not beyond us, its manifestation in our work-a-day life is not illusory, and we can overcome whatever obstacles may stand in our way of "waking up"-if we give ourselves permission to do so and are flexible enough. His vision of human possibilities includes the recognition that not everything called "spiritual" is necessarily true or good. He proposes that we use the method of essential science to sort it out, find out which parts are real and healthy, investigate those, and then help people learn to have authentic spiritual (transpersonal) experiences that challenge them to act with compassion and wisdom in their private life and take responsibility for their part in the current global crisis of our times and choose to change it.
Always the empirical and pragmatic transpersonal psychologist, Tart puts his vision of human possibilities to the test of action and further development in his book, Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical People (Tart, 2001). Here he explains how a mental practice that is designed to expand awareness and perception can be an effective means of de-conditioning and a way of "waking up" from the consensus trance of ordinary waking consciousness. Using practical exercises, he demonstrates how a flexible yet disciplined ego is quite capable, with training, of relinquishing its dominancy during experiences of dissociation and expansion of consciousness so that information from more subliminal regions of consciousness can be meaningfully communicated and efficiently used by this most physically oriented portion of the personality. Importantly, his advocacy of meditation as a vehicle for overcoming obstacles to personality growth reflects his recognition that the personal self is capable of much more attentional capacity, open awareness, and intuitional realizations than it is usually given credit for. He does not consider the personal self as something that needs to be banished from participation in the spiritual quest or regard it as some separate, inferior portion of the Self to be booted aside by an indifferent spiritual foot. Tart's notion that we need to recognize and honor the needs of the personal ego in any spiritual path, while not limiting the type of expansion of identity possible, is an idea that has given the field of Transpersonal Psychology a necessary balance that a narrower approach, which views the ordinary self as something that needs to be overthrown in order to reach Enlightenment, does not permit. It is a realistic approach to transpersonal development that has helped to promote the use of meditation training as a way of teaching ordinary people how to live 2023, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 228-247

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Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition (JAEX) more fully in the present, face their fears, and discover a source of support and insight in themselves that is arguably transpersonal (beyond ego) in nature.
His insistence that we must always make room for the individual idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of the personal self in any pursuit of so-called "ultimate states" is clearly given voice in a poem he wrote in 1992 over the course of four days as a participant at a Vipassana Retreat (Tart, 1998 promise" reminds us that our familiar ego-self lives within the framework of the psyche's greater existence, not outside of it. It may be only one segment of our larger identity, but is still nevertheless made up of the same vital energy that composes its source and can hardly be inferior to the "greater something" that is its origin and of which it is a necessary and vital part. Its clear and exquisite focus creates a given kind of experience that is valid, real, and necessary to the life of the body and it is a portion of our identity that needs to be a brought along on any journey into post-conventional (transpersonal) stages of development if the entire personality, considered as a gestalt, is to benefit.

Conclusion
In preparing this essay to honor the many contributions of Charles Tart  Charles Tart is that kind of phenomenon and, as one of the pioneering theoreticians and researchers in the field of Transpersonal Psychology, he is clearly one of its most gifted and creative thinkers. Although the notions of "science of Mind and Spirit," "critical psychology," "spiritual psychologies," "state-specific sciences," "parapsychology of spirituality," and "psychology of human possibilities" may sound esoteric, they are highly practical constructs and, in certain terms, we are dealing with the very nature of creativity itself. By looking outside established frameworks, Charles Tart came to perceive science and spirituality in a completely new way. By going beyond previous learning and accomplishment, he opened up new areas of critical thought previously ignored in mainstream psychology. By transcending disciplinary boundaries and overcoming conceptual limitations, he gave birth to a new understanding of religion as spiritual psychologies. By trying some new venture never before attempted, he brought into existence a state-specific method of disciplined inquiry that did not exist at that time 2023, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 228-247

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Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition (JAEX) which discloses channels of awareness and experience previously overlooked. By searching for something not believed possible, he found new sources of evidence for the interface between science and spirituality in a transpersonal parapsychology. By daring to better the existing situation, he drew attention to possibilities of growth and development not believed possible for the individual and the species. By giving birth to the new and untried, he opened up opportunities for an expanded psychology that might have otherwise gone unknown.
The six contributions to Transpersonal Psychology that I have reviewed here are only a few of the many contributions that I could have highlighted. Charles Tart always considered his contributions to be works-in-progress. As he put it, "I have no delusions that this is the final word on these subjects, of course; it's just the best sense I can currently make of the relationship between science and spirituality, mainly through implications of the data of parapsychology. I'm a pragmatic empiricist, though, so any ideas…are always subject to change as further data comes in" (Tart, 2009b, p. 49). By his own admission, it is his curiosity-a characteristic that he considers "the heart of science, psychology, and spirituality"-that brought him into Transpersonal Psychology (Tart, 2016b, p. 15).
Throughout his lifetime, he was never afraid to ask the further question. For this, Transpersonal Psychology is forever in his debt. A lifetime is basically not important in terms of years, but in terms of intensity and value fulfillment (although being 85 years young in these days and times is certainly something to celebrate!). The lifetime of Charles Tart is significant in those terms and in the creative enjoyment of his life he has furthered the vision of Transpersonal Psychology as a science of Mind and Spirit and a psychology of human possibilities that he pioneered so many years ago. Happy Birthday, Charley, and Thank You!