Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality

So this is the background in which I read this book. I was most intrigued with William Rolls ruminations about a long soul rather than a personality survival. However his reasons for discounting personality survival seemed to me a bit premature. Roll states since mediums have never been able to get lock combinations or phrases from the deceased when only the deceased knew these phrases or numbers before hand, proves the personality and memory die with the brain. I say, wait ! When we come into life language (words) and numbers are concepts which we learn. They are abstractions and the brain does store these, but after death is it not possible our consciousness and individuality still may survive ? Although the memory secures language and numbers it may die with the body. Perhaps memory, if such exists, after death, could be an ability to view situations in past, present and perhaps future. No numbers or language is required for such a mind. We don't need to assume the mind is identical after death as it was in life for consciousness to survive.

So you can see this book has me thinking, and it will you as well. Happy readings.


Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituali   July 3, 2001
 14 out of 14 found this review helpful

Author and scientist Charles T. Tart presents his essays and those of ten other researchers in Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality. He describes his book as "a detailed exploration of the spiritual implications that can be drawn from modern scientific research in parapsychology." Tart leads with an essay outlining the current scientific evidence, stating that "using the best kind of scientific methodology, the human mind has occasional abilities to transcend space and time that are totally inexplicable in terms of the material world." This sets the theme for the remainder of the book.

Other authors look at subjects like the relationship between religion and consciousness, the existence of God, intuition and psi, life after death, and channeling.

Psychologist and parapsychologist William Braud writes that "parapsychological findings can be useful to those on a spiritual path as they can provide a certain degree of confidence and trust that at least some of the processes and concepts encountered are 'real' in a more traditional sense and are not delusions, projections, or misinterpretations."

Philosophers and researchers have long debated the split between science and spirituality. Body Mind Spirit provides evidence that, if read objectively, may finally start to heal that split.


Seriously Enlightening   June 1, 2001
 15 out of 15 found this review helpful

Charles T. Tart's "Body Mind Spirit" is a reasonably satisfying exploration of metaphysical matters. Eleven parapsychologists explain their beliefs about psychic phenomena and spiritual hypotheses. There's no hype here: these are serious scientists doing their best to test rare and subtle effects. Experimental parapsychologists claim to have proven that people can sometimes communicate nonphysically (telepathy), perceive distant objects or events (clairvoyance), foretell the future (precognition), and influence quantum events (psychokinesis). One can disagree, of course, but the experiments can be studied in parapsychology texts by Edge, Krippner, Kurtz, and Wolman (listed here in footnotes and a lengthy bibliography). Other parapsychologists try to rule out the above four influences when they study out-of-body and near-death experiences, past-life recall, apparitions, channeling, poltergeists, and dozens of other reported phenomena. As William Braud says, "A great deal of what is encountered along the spiritual path is quite beyond the reach of current science. Here, one must be armed with trust, faith, hope, love, discernment, and a tolerance for ambiguity and for contraries, rather than with the feelings of safety, certainty, familiarity, and understanding that science can provide." One of Tart's conclusions, after decades of such study, is that something spiritual probably does survive death, but that little of a separate, body-shaped personality is likely to survive for long. William G. Roll argues that souls attach not to our bodies so much as to our families, posessions, and all that we value and protect, overlapping with other such souls. I still don't know what to believe, but I had fun reading the book.


One of the better recent books in this field   March 10, 2000
 24 out of 25 found this review helpful

I read just about everything in this field, and this is one of the more serious and thought-provoking of the recent works. It brings together a variety of perspectives from serious researchers. None of the chapters (each by a different author) was a waste of my time, and several were excellent. In answer to the previous reviewer, I don't believe the intent of this book is to "convince" anyone of the reality of psychical phenomena -- I believe the intent is to provoke thought as to how these phenomena might be explained and what they may mean. The entire problem with modern psychical research is that it has moved away from studying the phenomena on their own terms and has tried to cater to scientific materialism by imposing laboratory controls, an effort which has proved largely (but not entirely) fruitless. Anyway, this book is not aimed at close-minded skeptics (if it was, it would be published by Prometheus -- right?). It is aimed at those whose minds are open enough to take the evidence at face value and consider what it may mean. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence (of which there is plenty) -- but they also demand extraordinary investigation and extraordinarily serious thought, efforts which the debunkers seem unwilling to make.


Exceptional clarity throughout ... brilliant ...   May 16, 1999
 18 out of 21 found this review helpful

... clear and to the point, BMS encapsulates the very essence of the current Consciousness debate with regards to the existence of a Spiritual Reality alongside the acknowledged Objective and Subjective Realitys. It pulls together some very clear and practical approaches to building a framework that will bridge the gap between contemporary science and religion, as they stand separated at the moment ... inspired ...