A favorite text from undergraduate classes from Dr. Charles Tart; this one was my introduction to beloved Sufi stories such as this one: "There is More Light Here" - A young man saw Nasrudin searching for something on the ground. "What have you lost, Mulla?" he asked. "My key," said the Mulla. So the man went down on his knees too, and they both looked for it. After a time, the other man asked: "Where exactly did you drop it?" "In my house." "Then why are you looking here?" "There is more light here than inside my own house."

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61765 in Books
• Published on: 1996-04-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

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Customer Reviews

Broad perspective on consciousness
Contrary to purely psychology-centered books that miss a lot of the non-behavioral aspects of consciousness and to "spiritual" ones that explain everything based on one point of view, this one discuss both sides of the story. Consciousness is not just about the brain, or thoughts, or some spiritual way of seeing life, but it emcompasses everything, what we are and what we live.

Ornstein shows quite well that the scientific viewpoint is too limited and focused in purpose to broadly explain consciousness. By choosing to deal with the subjective aspects of consciousness, Ornstein provides a full account of the aspects of consciousness that are necessary to improve our understanding of it. To understand consciousness it is necessary to deal with aspects linked to culture, psychology, and education, but also to more experiential (some will say less scientific, more subjective, personal) aspects that cannot be communicated but are equally important to know what consciousness is about.

As pointed out by another reviewer, the second part that deals with non-scientific aspects of consciousness is not well organized. Furthermore, it is largely centered on the Sufi viewpoint. Other eastern philosophies and religions have a lot to say about consciousness and are not treated in this book. But this view of consciousness is mostly subjective and does not fit very well any organization, so i don't think this is a problem. The choice of the Sufi spiritual tradition does seem a good choice to me as Sufism is not really embedded in a particular culture (although some might argue it is grounded on Islam, this point is not relevant as Sufism goes beyond any conception of life or any religious tradition).

I think that this book does a fair job at linking scientific with non-scientific aspects of consciousness. This topic is certainly important for human kind to develop a less dogmatic view of what we are and why. Science is good to answer the "what" question, while religion, philosophy and spitirual practice tackle the "why" answer.

Very thought provoking
Being interested in learning new things, I decided to pick up a book on psychology from library. I am glad that I picked this one as my first book on this subject.

Robert starts the book with a simple question and starts discussion around the question and ends the book with a similar question. His opinions and conclusions are very well convincing and well supported with facts. Most of the stuff mentioned in the book just make SENSE.

The organization of the book and the style in which the book was written may not be the very best but the contents of the book make it worth reading.

An inspiring classic points to an extended concept of Man
This book is a concise and inspiring introduction to what behaviorists left out of psychology, written by a pioneer in the scientific study of consciousness. Ornstein writes with humor and clarity, discussing with equal ease those questions of psychology that science can in principle answer, and also with those which require experiential, rather than experimental, answers. This is a classic, with much of continuing relevance 30 years after first publication.

Reviewers and readers alike should remember the words of Omar Khayyam quoted in this book: "I am a mirror, and who looks at me, whatever good or bad he speaks, he speaks of himself."