by Charles T. Tart
To be human is an incredible opportunity. We each have a creative mind embodied in a fantastically engineered body, and we live in an exciting, mysterious, alive world.
Although we live in a reality with laws of its own, our minds have enormous powers to alter our perception of and reaction to that reality and thus to strongly control the way we live in it. We have the potential to live either in "heaven" or in "hell"—now, not later. Heaven is a meaningful life with a touch of the eternal present that enlivens all.
Hell is pointless, stupid suffering. Yes, there are real problems in the world, but the great tragedy of human life is that so many people waste so much of their lives in useless suffering generated by their own minds.
Modern psychological research has now detailed the long and arduous "developmental" process we have all gone through in "growing up." In too many ways it squeezes out the light of life, inhibits our life energy, and destroys the openness and the simple joy of being alive.
The result, as the philosopher and mystic G. I. Gurdjieff observed, is that some of the "normal" people we see on the street are in fact the walking dead, joyless automatons.
Fortunately this deadening process is only partially effective for most of us: That's why I wrote this book and why you are interested in reading it. A vital spark remains in us and we want it to grow. When we enlarge our ideas of what we can be we create an opportunity to grow beyond our present limits. Remember the four-minute mile? That was considered "impossible" until one person ran it. Suddenly lots of people discovered they could run it too—and faster.
To be human is an incredible opportunity. We each have a creative mind embodied in a fantastically engineered body, and we live in an exciting, mysterious, alive world.
Although we live in a reality with laws of its own, our minds have enormous powers to alter our perception of and reaction to that reality and thus to strongly control the way we live in it. We have the potential to live either in "heaven" or in "hell"—now, not later. Heaven is a meaningful life with a touch of the eternal present that enlivens all.
Hell is pointless, stupid suffering. Yes, there are real problems in the world, but the great tragedy of human life is that so many people waste so much of their lives in useless suffering generated by their own minds.
Modern psychological research has now detailed the long and arduous "developmental" process we have all gone through in "growing up." In too many ways it squeezes out the light of life, inhibits our life energy, and destroys the openness and the simple joy of being alive.
The result, as the philosopher and mystic G. I. Gurdjieff observed, is that some of the "normal" people we see on the street are in fact the walking dead, joyless automatons.
Fortunately this deadening process is only partially effective for most of us: That's why I wrote this book and why you are interested in reading it. A vital spark remains in us and we want it to grow. When we enlarge our ideas of what we can be we create an opportunity to grow beyond our present limits. Remember the four-minute mile? That was considered "impossible" until one person ran it. Suddenly lots of people discovered they could run it too—and faster.
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