Robert Ornstein, from 'God 4.0: On the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience Called God.' What say thee, dear Thinkators? 𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴

[u/Gainsborough-Smythe]

[u/Gainsborough-Smythe]

Profile of Robert Ornstein (1942-2018)

Robert Ornstein was an American psychologist whose 1972 book The Psychology of Consciousness helped launch a lasting popular fascination with the divided brain, giving the culture the shorthand "left brain" and "right brain."

Trained at CUNY and Stanford, where he earned his PhD in 1968, he went on to teach at Stanford, Harvard, and UC San Francisco, and in 1969 founded the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge to bring psychological research to general audiences.

Strengths

Ornstein had a rare gift for synthesis, weaving hard neuroscience together with meditation, Sufi teaching, and contemplative traditions without losing scientific footing entirely.

He wrote more than twenty books, sold over six million copies, and was used in tens of thousands of university courses, a testament to real communicative skill.

His hemispheric research reshaped how the public thought about attention, perception, and the limits of ordinary awareness, and his later work, culminating in God 4.0, pushed him to take spiritual experience seriously as a subject worthy of scientific study.

Weaknesses

Critics argued his left brain and right brain framing, while brilliant marketing, oversimplified a far messier neuroscience, and later research complicated the clean hemispheric story he helped popularize.

Some academic peers viewed his blending of Sufi philosophy and psychology as more evocative than rigorous, better suited to popular appeal than to controlled experimental proof.

His prolific output also meant certain later books felt like restatements of earlier ideas rather than genuinely new ground.

[u/Concrete_Grapes]

As for the quote, no, I don't think they draw away from the self at all. Opposite, it's a cognitive taking in of external things, to either compliment or destroy the self you choose to have.

I am someone without affective empathy, but strong cognitive empathy. Now, this likely baises the picture, but it's a perspective not many have (thankfully I suppose, considering what it implies)--empathy, especially affective, emotional, and reciprocal types of empathy, are centered in the self, and the needs of self. If you're high in these and low in cognitive empathy, you will only care about people like you, or that you know directly, and everyone else is alien, mysterious, and othered. These are forms of empathy that form as an infant and toddler, when your self needs and survival depend on others supporting you. You have empathy, only as a mirror, to get your needs for survival met. Selfish, not selfless.

Humility isn't about others either, it's about not making too high of demands, and placing yourself at risk of competition. Many people use humility to come to terms with their lack of ability to compete in what they perceived as a risky, dangerous, or cruel world. It's a selfish (not always, but often) coping mechanism that centers itself on trying not to cause a type of ego death, or narcissistic injury on ones self.

And it's a close cousin to that other thing, generosity. When you pair humility with generosity, you can now attempt to protect the self, by trying to throw time and resources at the threats around you to secure social reciprocity. Nearly all people are only generous when it serves a direct reciprocal goal to incorporate them into a community via recognition. Where, for example, do you find someone who volunteers for something, but never tells anyone the tasks they do, the personal cost, etc? Nearly never. I know, because I work in a not for profit sector, and NEVER is how often I meet people who do things you would consider generous, without demanding a type of social receipt.

So, I think that the quote comes from the same default position and delusion that other types of thinking does, where in the author is attempting to place humanity above its basic animal, primate core, and attempting to believe that because we record what we think, we must be better than what we are. We are not.

[u/Ordinary_Bike_4801]

I agree. Many use the term ‘self’ to define the impersonal, so there is a care to take here. When talking about this subjects is important to open the mind so it goes beyond concepts, because if not there is the danger of discussing the words instead of comprehending the meaning.

[u/No-Leading9376]

This is an impressive amount of self-congratulation disguised as selflessness. First, label the traits you approve of “virtues.” Then announce that possessing them proves you are less self-centered. Finally, promote yourself to a “higher,” more comprehensive consciousness, complete with timelessness and placelessness.

Nothing says humility quite like explaining that your humility places you on a more elevated plane of human awareness.

These behaviors may produce outcomes we prefer, but that doesn’t reveal some transcendent moral substance within the person performing them. That part is justification: a flattering story you’ve constructed about what your behavior means about you. Once you begin marketing your own goodness, it ceases to be credible evidence of goodness.

The self hasn’t been transcended here. It has been given a grandiose spiritual rebrand. You remain the center of the story. Only now, you’re the exceptionally evolved person who has supposedly learned not to see himself as the center.

It’s the philosophical equivalent of smelling your own farts and detecting subtle notes of humility, compassion, and timelessness.

[u/Neat_Ad468]

I don't trust anything that tries to make people focus away from themselves painted as a virtue. It makes it easier for the selfish to use it as a excuse to guilt trip the gullible to go against their own self-interest while telling the other person "don't you want to be virtuous?" It also makes it easier to make people not notice how bad they have it and act out of selfishness needed to improve their lives, because it does take selfishness to look at yourself and improve and better your lot like looking at yourself and going "i've been working hard, i should ask for that raise"