Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

4.4 | 8,771 ratings

Price: 12.46

Last update: 01-09-2025

About this item

For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris’ new book is a guide to meditation as a rational spiritual practice informed by neuroscience and psychology.

From multiple New York Times best-selling author, neuroscientist, and "new atheist" Sam Harris, Waking Up is for the 30 percent of Americans who follow no religion, but who suspect that Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history could not have all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds. Throughout the book, Harris argues that there are important truths to be found in the experiences of such contemplatives - and, therefore, that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow.

Waking Up is part seeker’s memoir and part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way, and no author other than Sam Harris - a scientist, philosopher, and famous skeptic - could write it.

Tim Q.

You can be rational, yet not unhappy

Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2014

Sam's blog post---a precursor of this book---had a life-changing effect for me. Before, I actually envied the religious people in a way, as they had solace in life---and the life is hard, no matter what you do. But, as a rational and scientifically-minded person, I could not possibly buy into all this Iron (or New) Age cult BS, and so oscillated between common unhappiness and mild depression for the most of my life. Not anymore. I heard about meditation, of course, but always dismissed as something that belongs with the said BS. Only Sam's authority as a truly rational thinker finally broke the ice and I gave it a try.

Well, folks---after a year of meditating several times a week and a 10-day retreat, I can say: IT DOES WORK. Life is still hard, but that fact doesn't bother me as much; I feel more connected to the people around me, and way more even-minded. In fact, I can't recall when it was last time me and my wife had an argument (we used to bicker all the time). Besides this anecdotical evidence, there are now thousands of scientific papers on the benefits of meditation, some of which are discussed in the book.

However, this is not just yet another book on meditation---it's not only on meditation, and it's not a self-help book---at least in any traditional sense. Unlike most of the former, it's strictly rational and does not give any concessions to any sort of religious accommodation, and unlike the latter it does not give a "30-Day Program to Become Happy" or anything of this sort---although it does discuss practical points. You can look at it as an invitation to look inside our minds, and to use this rational introspection cut through the illusions which are, at the end of the day, the source of our unhappiness.

Importantly, "Waking Up" presents a different take on the introspection/meditation techniques than the mainstream meditation literature. Besides introducing the bread-n'-butter mindfulness/vipassana techniques that every novice should start with (there is an extensive literature on that out there), Sam talks about the ways to directly cut through the illusion of the Self, instead of gradually getting to this insight through thousands of hours of vipassana meditation. That part is very interesting, and---depending on the person---it may work right away. However, if you find these instructions totally confusing, I'd suggest to stick to the traditional mindfulness practice, which seems to be a prerequisite for most of the people (for me, at least).

The first four chapters is the core of the book, that discusses the problem of consciousness, the Self--and the illusion of thereof, and meditation. The last chapter is somewhat of an appendix that covers various aspects related, one way or the other, to spiritually: the teachers/gurus, near-death experiences, and psychedelic drugs. However, the way it's written, this chapter comes out as an integral part of the book.

The prose is superb: elegant, lucid, and to the point. I can't recommend enough the audio version---Sam did an excellent job narrating it. If you are new to the whole meditation thing, I can recommend to first read "10% Happier" by Dan Harris (no relation to Sam). It's a very different, lighter/entertaining book (the audio version is fantastic), but it should serve as an excellent introduction to "Waking Up".

Finally, a piece of criticism: I was surprised that Sam didn't discuss the loving kindness (metta) meditation technique in sufficient detail (he does mention it, though). I expected it to be covered: in the very beginning, he talks about his early experience taking MDMA and the effect it had---and you can actually get the same effect through metta. In fact, that's one of the easier experiments to run in the "laboratory of your mind" (it's better to do it after a concentration/mindfulness session, so your mind is sufficiently concentrated). Moreover, this sounds exactly like the kind of experiences many Christians are talking about, but in an absolutely secular, rational context.

Carlos R. Tirado Negron

Good and entertaining, but with some dissapointing parts at the end.

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2015

The book is well written and in a simple style, which always helps in such endeavors. (for a better experience buy the audio with whispersync narrated by Sam Harris himself) I also liked the way in which the author portrays the notion of spirituality. Although I would not have used the term "spiritual" to describe this phenomenon, I do understand his reasons for doing that, and for lack of a better name, he uses it with the necessary caveats (it does not imply, for example, a believe in the afterlife or the supernatural). He always make clear that spirituality is practice completely separable from the religious domain. He also points to the fact that it has always existed in many forms and shapes, and that it is a very distinct phenomenon from superstitious beliefs. He disentangles it from any mythological obscurantism. Not only in New Era religiosity, but especially within the many Indian traditions that came to symbolize it in the West. He is also honest enough to recognize the ample variety of scams and barefaced gurus that swirl around many “spiritually minded people” and warns readers against it.

Lastly, he takes great pains in distinguishing meditative or mystical states from neurological diseases and conditions. Experiences of spirituality, understood as a practice of concentration and awareness, are backed by neuroscientific studies of neuroimaging and fMri that show a very distinct pattern from Schizophrenia, Temporal Lobe paralysis and other brain diseases. It is also distinct from self delusion. Here the evidence comes not from neuro imaging, but from the clinical picture that emanates from their own descriptions of their symptoms. These clearly differentiate “out-of-body experiences” and other clinical hallucinations from meditation practices and their first-person reports of it. (Although he doesn’t mention it, there is also fMRI evidence backing this assertion)

There are various chapters dedicated exclusively to understand consciousness according to the most recent studies of the brain’s inner workings, the neurons and known cases of people with exotic conditions. Those are probably the most interesting chapters for anyone not regularly accustomed to neuroscience. For example: How many selfs are there? or is there even something real in the belief of a self? This is, actually, a “delusion” that he devotes a great deal of the book to unravel. It is the so called “illusion of the self”. Buddhist teachings explain that the best way to attain the “Nirvana” or supreme state of well-being is to understand the illusion of the self. Although Harris explains in detail his own understanding of this concept and its consequences (all of them backed or reasonably informed by neuro-scientific studies), he considers that even more important than understanding or attaining this realization is to reap its benefits. In order to do that, he offers some basic exercises sprinkled with stories and anecdotes of his own experiences while learning and practicing them. All of it makes the book, not just an interesting reading, but also a learning experience, and a very entertaining one.

There are, however, some parts towards the end of the book, that I found rather disappointing. Specifically his relatively benign treatment of the topic of psychedelic drugs and “enlightenment”. He warns that he does not recommend their use to everyone, but considers that they may “open the doors” to it, as they did for him. Although he doesn’t use them anymore, he still considers them a “uniquely potent means of altering consciousness”. He is talking specifically of his experiences with Hallucinogens such as psilocybin and LSD. I find it disappointing for many reasons. Not the least, that one of those “experiences” could well have taken his life or deeply affected his mental health, as he himself recognizes, or that some of the worst uses of the term “spiritual” have been precisely related to nothing more than poor excuses to the use and abuse of controlled substances. The main reason why I find this disappointing is because his discussion on this topic demonstrates a very poor understanding of the nature of meditation and its relationship with the other so called altered mental states. It is as if Harris was saying that both, deep meditation practices and the use of hallucinogenic or psychedelic drugs, were simply two different, but equally valid and effective paths to self-transcendence. This is not just misleading, but quite untrue, as it contradicts well established scientific results on the topic as well as the intuitions of many dedicated practitioners of passive and active meditation.

For a better discussion of this topic I refer the reader to the book Why God Won’t Go Away. It presents an outstanding conceptual and scientific discussion offered by Andrew Newberg and other researchers where they discuss the first fMRIs study of meditative Buddhist monks and contemplative nuns. I recommend specifically the discussion about “mystical” and “cuasi-mystical” experiences and their corresponding differences in the search of what they called the Absolute Unitary State. It is a much richer and profound discussion both in neurological and philosophical terms.

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