Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential

by Charles T. Tart

Based on Gurdjieff's notion that most people are automatons controlled by mechanical habits of thought, perception and behavior.

Genres: Psychology, Spirituality, Nonfiction, Personal Development, Self Help

323 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Charles T. Tart was an American psychologist and parapsychologist known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness (particularly altered states of consciousness), as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology, and for his research in parapsychology.

Reviews

[RayDavis]

Long development on theory, but good examples of cognitive structures and processing. Interesting exercises to begin "waking up," like Self-remembering, Self-Awareness, and Body Scanning.

[Lucas Maimone]

For me, that never had previous contact with Gurdjieff ideas, this was a truly interesting book and i risk to say, life changing in some ways. Also liked the skeptical and grounded way on which the author constructed his arguments. After all, it's not so easy to talk about mysticism without sounding like a flake hippy, and Charles Tart delivered it.

[Paul]

The author writes clearly, mainly from a psychological point of view, about enlightenment. He presents his own analysis, and methods he has taken from Gurdjieff's school.

[Chris]

Smart, if you can get passed the wind-bag-ish-ness. The dude is an academic of the highest order. So . . . you know. Total smarty-pants. Loved the content. Hated the style.

[Elrik]

Very enjoyable read for it's time. Not so sure how useful or relevant the material would be in 2020. I remember that as someone who can be quite skeptical it had some interesting and useful viewpoints shared.

[Keith]

Informative and entertaining. Inventive and exploratory

[Y]

I think this was a good introduction to Gurdjieff’s ideas, with the target audience being those that might need them firmly grounded or at least framed in modern science. He lays a lot of psychological groundwork before he gets to the main event of Gurdjieff. Seeing a psychologist blending modern science and Gurdjieff was interesting, but I am not fully convinced Tart understood him or it could be he just has a different objective and is using his teaching as a tool to get to where he’s wanting to go.

[Joel Gray]

In an ordinary state there is an enormous amount of automatic association of previous knowledge to incoming stimuli.