This file, "currentcontents", will be updated regularly as new material is added to this ftp service. The ASCII files on here are electronic reprints (and occasional preprints or lectures) of journal articles by Charles T. Tart, Professor Emeritus in Psychology of the University of California at Davis, in such areas as altered states of consciousness, hypnosis, sleep, dreaming, meditation, parapsychology, transpersonal psychology, etc. LATEST REVISION OF THIS FILE: October 10, 1994: first posting, 3/25/94 FILES: (alphabetical order by filename) "BOOKS-BY-CTT" - Current availability of published books by CTT. "CARD-GUESSING-LEARNING-OR-EXTINCTION" - Article, 1966, original presen- tation of method for enhancing ESP ability, abstract as follows: "The standard psychological procedure for teaching skilled behavior to an organism (whether human or animal) consists of administering immediate reward when the correct response is emitted by the organism, and/or administering punishment when the incorrect response is emitted. If reward and punishment cannot be clearly associated with correct and incorrect responses by the organism, the desired behavior is not learned or, if already present, is extinguished. An analysis of the typical card guessing test situation in parapsychology suggests that it is an extinction paradigm. Empirical support of this hypothesis is provided by the fact that the scores of even the highest-scoring subjects who have come into the laboratory have finally fallen off to chance in almost all cases, as would be expected if they were subjected to an extinction procedure. This article makes a plea that the basic principles of learning theory be applied to parapsychological tests in an attempt to have subjects learn to use their psi abilities more effectively rather than extinguishing whatever abilities they have." "CONSCIOUSNESS-ATHENS" - Consciousness: A Psychological, Transpersonal and Parapsychological Approach. Paper presented at the Third International Symposium on Science and Consciousness, Ancient Olympia, Greece, 4-7 January, 1993. "DEALING-W-FEAR-OF-PSI" - Article, 1984, abstract as follows: "Unacknowledged fears of psi can create unconsciously motivated behaviors that inhibit and/or distort the operation of psi in the laboratory. Observations suggest that unacknowledged fear of psi is widespread among parapsychologists, as well as others. The ingenious approaches of K. Batcheldor and J. Isaacs for producing psi may be effective because they bypass fears of psi, but have long-term limitations through not dealing directly with it. A social masking theory of psi inhibition and a primal conflict theory of psi inhibition are discussed, and 10 strategies for dealing with this fear are presented. Denial, avoidance of triggering circumstances, rationalization/distraction, and dissociation/repression strategies all have inherent psychopathological aspects. Desensitization and bypass defenses have healthy as well as psychopathological aspects. Cognitive/affective acknowledgement, learning adaptive coping skills, accepting responsibility, and personal growth strategies are the most desirable ways of handling the problem of the fear of psi." "EXPERIMENTER-BIAS-IN-HYPNOSIS" - Article, 1964, Abstract: Abstract. Eight hypnotist-experimenters administered a standardized suggestibility test to subjects under two separate experimental conditions. The experimenters understood the problem of experimenter bias, knew that they were being checked, and felt that they had treated both groups alike, yet judges were able to tell under which condition the subjects were tested by listening to the performances of the experimenters. "GAME-OF-GAMES" - Article, 1985, proposing a game format designed to train people to recognize and transcend their own cultural biases. "INFORATE-PRECOG-VS-REAL-TIME" - Journal article, 1983, abstract: Quantification of the amount of information acquired in successful, forced-choice ESP experiments is possible using a measure of the average number of bits per trial. Using this measure, 53 studies of present-time ESP, where the percipient attempted to call currently existing targets, and 32 studies of precognitive ESP, where the percipient attempted to call targets that would only be generated (by a random process) at some later time, were reviewed. A striking and robust performance dif- ference was found: present-time ESP can work up to 10 times as well as precognitive ESP in forced-choice tests. Three theories are proposed to account for this difference: a psychological theory that there are generally held biases against precognition in Western culture, so percipients don't try as hard: a two- process theory that present-time ESP and precognition are two basically different processes, with inherently different charac- teristics: and a temporal-break theory that ESP is a unitary process, but something about the nature of time itself attenuates ESP performance that extends into the future. "J-TRANSPERSONAL-PSYCH-ARTICLES" - Note on what articles of CTT's are available by ordering back issues of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Journal will not give permission to post to this ftp area. "MARIJUANA-AND-PSI" - Journal article, 1993, abstract as follows: General social beliefs that are acquired and operate in our ordinary state of consciousness usually deny the reality of psychic phenomena and thereby probably inhibit psychic functioning. Anecdotal reports, however, suggest that ostensibly paranormal phenomena often occur in association with altered states of consciousness. This study focuses on the altered state of marijuana intoxication. A questionnaire study of 150 experienced marijuana users found that 76% believed in ESP, with frequent reports of experiences while intoxicated that were interpreted as psychic. Sixty nine percent reported that they had experienced telepathy while intoxicated, 32% reported precognition and 13% reported psychokinesis. Fifty percent had experienced seeing auras around people and 44% reported out-of-the-body experiences. These findings suggest that marijuana, used under the proper psychological conditions, might facilitate the manifestation of psi. No studies are known in which ESP performance was tested under laboratory conditions while percipients were intoxicated with marijuana, but a 1975 study (Tart, 1975; 1976) found a positive correlation between laboratory ESP scoring and frequency of marijuana use outside the laboratory in a student population. This study also found a negative correlation between ESP scoring and frequency of alcohol use in everyday life. A 1977 laboratory study (Tart, 1977) failed to confirm these findings. Differences between the studies are discussed, as is the importance of the ostensible paranormality of various experiences associated with marijuana intoxication on belief systems, irregardless of whether such experiences are actually paranormal. "OLYMPIA-DECLARATION" - formal declaration of importance of consciousness studies if the world is to survive, promulgated by 100+ scientists at a 1993 conference near Olympia, Greece. "PHYSIOLOGICAL-CORRELATES-OF-PSI" - Journal article, 1963, summary: "In individual sessions, eleven college students sat in a soundproof chamber and tried to guess when "subliminal stimuli" were presented. At random intervals either: (a) an agent in another soundproof room was electrically shocked; or (b) the shock was delivered to a resistor. The subjects' skin resistances, finger pulse volumes, and EEGs were continuously recorded, and the EEGs were electronically analyzed. The physiological responses of the subjects were significantly related to the occurrence of both types of events, showing a pattern for the group generally indicative of a higher level of activation during the trials, viz.: (a) a faster and more complex EEG pattern; (b) more frequent galvanic skin responses; and (c) more frequent changes in finger pulse volume. As the subjects' conscious guesses of when trials had occurred did not differ from chance, they may be said to have responded on an "unconscious" level." "PSI-FUNCTION-AND-ASC" - Book chapter, "Psi Functioning and Altered States of Consciousness," with a systems theoretical approach to understanding the nature of altered states and discussion of why this might facilitate psychic functioning. "PSYCHICS-FEARS-OF-PSYCHIC-POWERS" - 1986 journal article, abstract as follows: Preliminary research suggests that ordinary people, as well as parapsychologists, may have pre- or unconscious fears of psi that affect their thinking about and reactions to it. What about people who are very heavily involved with psi in their daily lives, that is, psychics? This paper surveys the fears and ambivalences about psi of people who have worked on becoming psychic in the context of an interest in personal growth. Fears expressed focus on the unknown quality to which psi opens one, loss of control, giving power to others to validate or invalidate one, confusion resulting from malicious invalidation, distortions of self and psychic functioning resulting from the need to please, forced self-changes, succumbing to others' emotions, lack of criteria for validation of unusual experiences, maladaptive loss of ordinary fears, fear of success, isolation resulting from an inability to communicate, invalidation of conventional work ethic values, frightening others, becoming ill from taking on others' problems, and problems in handling new sorts of power. "REPRINTS-PAPER" - a copy of CTT's Curriculum Vitae, to use for making requests for paper reprints while they last. July 5, 1994: all paper reprints are now gone, so use this file as a general guide to CTT's publications, most of which can be found through libraries, and some of which will be added to this ftp server eventually. "SCIENCE-SOURCES-OF-VALUE" - journal article, abstract as follows: While values may be conditioned by known psychological techniques, such values are mechanical, relative, and may yield readily under stress. Mankind's deepest values have sprung from the direct experiences of the founders of various religions, experiences occurring in discrete altered states of consciousness (d-ASCs). However the subsequent adaptation of these experiences to cultures and religions-as-social-institutions makes them relatively ineffective unless there are technologies for experiential reaffirmation of such values. Values formed from d-ASC experiences are extremely powerful, yet our scientific understanding of d-ASCs is still very fragmented and poor. To acquire an adequate understanding of d-ASCs and the "mystical" and value experiences resulting from them requires a large expansion of conventional research, but, even more importantly, it requires the development of state-specific sciences, the practice of scientific method by investigators who are experiencing the d-ASCs themselves. The development of such sciences will provide the ground-work of an adequate understanding that in turn can lead to practical implementation by creating deep value experiences such as the unity of life and an ecological ethic, values which will be powerful because they are based on deep personal experience rather than being shoulds that are taught externally. Practical problems of such implementation are also discussed. "SPACE-TIME-AND-MIND" - Presidential address to Parapsychological Association discussing discovery on an information processing mechanism, "trans-temporal inhibition," analogous to lateral inhi- bition in neural processing and contrast enhancement in computer graphics, that facilitates the functioning of ESP. "STATE-SPECIFIC-SCIENCES" - Originally published in "Science," 1972, Vol. 176, pp. 1203-1210 as States of Consciousness and State-Specific Sciences. Describes the nature of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) in general and the basic nature of scientific method, and proposes that an adequate scientific understanding of consciousness must be a multi-state, multi-perspectival understanding. In addition to working to understand some altered state in our ordinary, so-called "normal" state, researchers must learn to enter and stabilize various altered states and conduct observation, experimentation, and theorizing in those states in order to broaden ordinary perspective with the state-specific perceptions, styles of thinking, and styles of observation only available in ASCs. "TRAINING-OF-PSI-INTERNAL-PROCESSES" - journal article, 1977, abstract as follows: To achieve conscious control of psi, a motivated, active participant in a repeated-calling psi test must learn to scan and categorize the contents of his experiential field on each trial before making a response. If immediate feedback as to the correct target is then provided, he can form hypotheses as to which aspects of his experiential field (operating signals) are associated with correct psi responses and what sorts of control strategies are likely to produce useful operating signals. Immediate feedback allows testing and refinement of these hypotheses. The common decline effect in psi performance is seen as caused by the confusion resulting from lack of immediate feedback in most earlier studies. Conscious control of psi would eventually involve recognition by the person of momentary operating signals associated with success, such that he would go ahead and respond, and/or recognition of operating signals (or lack of them) associated with failure, such that he would not respond, but would wait for or induce a change in his internal condition that was associated with success. Various factors affecting immediate feedback training are discussed.