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Product Details
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (September 9, 2014)
This is an important book in many ways. Perhaps most important because Sam Harris has, for the past several years, been a strong and outspoken critic of organized religion of all stripes. And one thing Harris can do better than almost anyone else, is make his case both clearly and powerfully without any added garbage.
If you've watched his many videos on YouTube, you know the man can make an argument and stand his ground without wavering one iota. And the depth of his research is impressive. If Harris kept his message in this same vein, he would stay safe and continue to be accepted as a credible spokesman for the atheist perspective for a long time to come.
But did he do that with this book? Not on your life. Harris, makes a whole different argument here, one that many may not be familiar with (but that is on display on his blog posts). Religion may be bunkum, he asserts, but spirituality (which may be the foundation of many religions), is a truly worthy pursuit.
No doubt that a great many atheists are not going to like this one little bit. After all, atheists can sometimes be as narrow-minded as believers. For many, spirituality is seen as practically equivalent to religion. But in this book he makes a strong case that nothing could be further from the truth. And he doesn't make his arguments in a detached, completely intellectual way. Some might say that Harris has bought the spiritual kool-aid hook, link and sinker.
Harris is a long-time (25+ years) meditator, seeker after wisdom, student of a variety of spiritual practices and disciple of various teachers and gurus in several Eastern traditions. He most closely aligns himself with the school of non-duality or the direct path to awakening.Read more ›
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This is certainly one of the best books I've read on the subject of the self, and I've read quite a lot of books on it in the hopes of finding a book which I can recommend to others (my other favorite book is "Stepping Out of Self Deception" by Rodney Smith). The main contribution that Harris has made is to use his knowledge of neuroscience (which he has a PhD in) to explain in great detail the illusion of the self as personal essence (for example, your left brain is conscious and so is your right brain, according to split-brain patient studies--which one of them would contain *your* personal essence?).
He also details his own path in experiencing more and more moments of no-self day-to-day, which is quite a good read with many useful tips and delightfully edifying tales. But I do have some criticism to share.
Harris distinguishes between two meanings of self. He says that a scientific meaning of self is the whole person, including the memories, the body, the occupation, the relationship roles, etc. But the problem, he says, is that most people identify as a soul/homunculus inside the brain, behind the eyes, controlling the brain and body according to its free will. Because such a view violates the laws of causality (determinism), it cannot hold up to scrutiny. The problem here is that Harris has failed to deconstruct the notion of the "scientific" meaning of self. He does not see that there is nothing separating one individual person from the entire universe except for concepts. Or if he does see that, he fails to make his understanding of this clear. If we are to imagine that each person is separate from the universe, then why not also imagine that each cell in the body is separate from the body?Read more ›
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The phrase “spiritual but not religious” irks believers and atheists alike. Sam Harris’s latest book is subtitled A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. He gained fame with books bashing faith and says he won’t do that here (but he’s unable to refrain).
Harris says most of us see life in terms of pleasure versus pain – but there can be more – a deeper contentment grounded not in transitory well-being but rising above that. The key is that the self is an illusion, and only by getting out of it can one access that more fundamental nirvana. We must break from “being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves” and wake up from the dream of being a separate self.
How? By mindfulness meditation. Harris says that “how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes.” Author Paul Dolan recently authored a book about how happiness is shaped by how you choose to allocate your attention and contextualize experiences. Harris goes further and prescribes “overcoming the illusion of the self by paying close attention to our experience in the present moment.” In other words: not just choosing which aspects of experience to focus upon, but stepping out of the whole web of experience as mediated by a seeming self.
Despite calling the self an illusion, Harris is emphatic that consciousness is not illusory; even thinking about the question proves the reality of the conscious experience. (Cogito ergo sum!) But I frankly fail to see how the one can be deemed illusory and the other not. Our (present) inability to understand how consciousness arises, Harris insists, does not gainsay the phenomenon’s reality.Read more ›
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This item: Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
