The Heart of the Mind: How to Experience God Without Belief
By Jane Katra '70 and Russell Targ
New World Library, 1999 * 196 pages * $21.95
Traces of God
In The Heart of the Mind: How to Experience God Without Belief, Jane Katra '70 and co-author Russell Targ take on an enormous and seemingly thankless task: trying to convince hardened nonbelievers and spiritual skeptics that there is a universal consciousness that can be loosely termed "God."
The authors take pains to point out that they are not arguing for any traditional religion or any particular conception of God. "Wisdom teachers throughout history," they say, "have shown that the experience of God is possible without belonging to a church or following a religion, as long as one's basic motive is to discover truth."
As part of their argument, however, they cite teachings from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam to show that common threads run through the world's religions. These threads concern the mystical experience of an all-encompassing consciousness. The commonality of these experiences, the authors say, is powerful evidence of their validity, while the doctrines of these religions can be viewed as the "sacramental software" for booting ourselves up to talk with God.
Scientific evidence backs their claim, the authors argue. Katra, a practicing spiritual healer for 25 years, holds a doctorate in health education. Targ is a retired scientist for Lockheed Missile and Space, and now pursues ESP research in Palo Alto, Calif.
The authors recount numerous studies of ESP phenomena, some of which Targ participated in as co-founder of the Stanford Research Institute's investigation into psychic ability in the 1970s and '80s. The research included testing subjects for "remote-viewing" abilities--the power to see and describe places without being there.
Successful instances of remote viewing, the authors say, demonstrate that an interconnected consciousness exists.
In another chapter, in which they endeavor to show that life goes on in some form after death, Targ and Katra describe cases in which children have produced detailed memories of past lives, even to the point of disclosing where their former selves had secreted money and valuables.
The book also explores spiritual healing and prayer. In one reported study, red blood cells were immersed in saline solution, where they tend to swell and burst. The authors maintain that healers were able to slow the rate at which the cells died.
"The Heart of the Mind" was written partly in response to a book by the late scientist Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, and the questions that Sagan raised about belief in God. But sweeping assertions about the nature of the universe seem unlikely to sway those who resist religion. And the flip-flopping conclusions of many modern scientific studies limit the persuasive impact of the authors' ESP statistics.
The conclusion that Katra and Targ want readers to derive from all this is that we are all interconnected in a vast universal consciousness; our separateness is only an illusion. The way to experience the true state of universal consciousness, the authors say, is to quiet our individual minds--in effect, to meditate.
The authors present an eloquent argument for the value of meditation as a cure for the ills both of an individual and of the world: "The purpose of this book is to demonstrate that our minds are joined. As such, any personal transformation can and does have global effects. Just one person experiencing true peace for just one moment affirms our human potential for transformation."
The book also contains a foreword by Marianne Williamson '74, herself an author and spiritual teacher.
--Michael Balchunas
