June 03, 1998: Life After Death - Dr. Charles Tart

Art Bell interviews Dr. Charles Tart, the first holder of the Bigelow Chair of Consciousness Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a founding figure in transpersonal psychology. The two bond over their shared backgrounds in ham radio before Tart makes a bold declaration: five paranormal phenomena are proven beyond reasonable doubt. He names telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and healing as established through hundreds of experiments, criticizing colleagues who reject the evidence without examining it.

Tart explains that the mind operates as a virtual reality generator, constructing experience from sensory input during waking hours and creating dream worlds during sleep. He describes experiments showing that psychological expectation shapes altered states of consciousness more powerfully than sensory deprivation itself. Art shares his experience with a software program called Shape Changer that demonstrates psychokinesis, reporting scores of 70 to 90 percent when concentrating versus 15 to 20 when absent.

The discussion turns to survival after death, with Tart citing cases where deceased individuals communicated information no living person could have known. He argues that the mind is fundamentally different from the brain, noting that telepathy shows no inverse square law degradation with distance and may even be amplified inside electrically grounded Faraday cages.