Professor Andrew Fort wrapped up the Last Lecture Series with a discussion on mental migration on Thursday night.

Fort, a professor of religion, said people’s worldview is like a “lazy river,” as children people are given a flow of a culture and they tend to stay in it.

“Understanding mental migration starts with openness and appreciation, but should include temporarily seeing the world in another’s way,” Fort said.

Fort said one way of looking at mental migration is the empathetic understanding of why others think the way they do. Understanding that there are many religions and world views helps people to appreciate and respect others on their own terms, he said.

Being able to understand people instead of just agree with them is when people start to grasp mental migration, Fort said.

Fort discussed how the world and society gets stuck in their ways of living and that mental migration helps people to step out of their comfort zones to understand the differences in the world.

“There is so much that religion can teach us if we aren’t stuck in this little box only understanding one certain thing,” Fort said.

Fort said mental migration is one of the keys to a greater understanding of others.

“It expands our horizons, shows human complexity and enhances our humanity and self-knowledge and breeds humanity,” Fort said.

Charles Dunning, director of senior year experience in student development, was in charge of the series and coordinated it with faculty.

“When you begin to practice mental migration and critical thinking, it creates a disenchanting effect; and that’s the feeling of ‘Oh my gosh, now the world is not like I thought it was,” Dunning said. “But what we learned tonight was there is something on the other side of that mystery, and if we embrace all the wonderful possibilities of that mystery, then life is so much richer.”

Students, like Drew Pressly, senior liberal arts general studies major, also took something specific away from the lecture.

“Dr. Fort said you know what you know, and you know what you don’t know, and then there are all the things you don’t know you don’t know,” Pressly said. “So you have to be willing to be open to new thought and new knowledge like what we talked about tonight.”

Fort ended his lecture discussing the greatness that comes from mental migration and how he believes it causes life and death and civilization to rise and fall.

Fort calls himself a “lifer” at TCU; he has been teaching here since 1982. He is a professor of Asian religions but has taught courses on Hindu and Buddhist traditions, comparative mysticism and other courses on the world’s religions.

He was also the first non-Christian to teach in the religion department.

Fort has traveled the world and has spent his life studying and appreciating many religions. Some of his travels have been to India, Turkey, Pakistan, Thailand, Singapore, China, Taiwan and Japan.

This was the first time the Last Lecture Series has been brought back to TCU in more than 15 years, Dunning said. He said he saw that this type of series was popular at other campuses and wanted this series to be seen as an important tradition at TCU for students and faculty.

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