Waking Up

A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

by Sam Harris

Hardcover, 256 pages

English language

Published April 5, 2014 by Simon & Schuster.

ISBN:: 978-1-4516-3601-7

(32 reviews)

For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Waking Up is a guide to meditation as a rational practice informed by neuroscience and psychology.

From Sam Harris, neuroscientist and author of numerous New York Times bestselling books, Waking Up is for the twenty percent of Americans who follow no religion but who suspect that important truths can be found in the experiences of such figures as Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history. Throughout this book, Harris argues that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow, and that how we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the quality of our lives.

Waking Up is part 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 …

For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Waking Up is a guide to meditation as a rational practice informed by neuroscience and psychology.

[(Source)][1]

[1]: books.simonandschuster.com/Waking-Up/Sam-Harris/9781451636017#

1 edition

Moorlock reviewed Waking Up by Sam Harris

Review of 'Waking Up' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Harris encourages people who are hostile to the claims of religious faith to nonetheless accept that a quest for “spiritual” knowledge, undertaken with a scientific spirit, is important.

By spiritual knowledge, he means knowledge about the nature of the self, and of subjectivity and consciousness. And he has concluded that the Buddhist perspective on these turns out to be the true one (that the “self” is illusory, and that to see through this illusion is a liberating relief).

He’s pretty good at describing just what this self is(n’t) that’s so illusory, and how that contrasts with consciousness which encompasses all that is not illusory. And he gives a very good recital of why the hard problem of consciousness resists the easy outs some authors have proposed.

Harris is so thoroughly invested in being a no-nonsense New Athiest that he stops every couple of paragraphs to reassure us that he isn’t …

Harris encourages people who are hostile to the claims of religious faith to nonetheless accept that a quest for “spiritual” knowledge, undertaken with a scientific spirit, is important.

Harris is so thoroughly invested in being a no-nonsense New Athiest that he stops every couple of paragraphs to reassure us that he isn’t falling for faith-based falderol. This constant embarrassment and defensiveness about discussing “spiritual” topics got on my nerves after a while. I get it. Get over it and move on.

Siddhartha Golu reviewed Waking Up by Sam Harris

Review of 'Waking Up' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Disappointed. I am an atheist interested in the power of mindfulness and the whole world of so-called spirituality, so naturally, I am the ideal audience that Sam Harris is looking for. But it disappointed in almost every domain that I had expectations in. Using deep-sounding difficult words and wrapping them in an almost mythical aura of "Consciousness", this one was a huge letdown. The irony is that I've been following his mindfulness meditation course and it's been the opposite experience there - in fact, his meditation course itself was what motivated me to pick up this book.

Save yourself the trouble of reading on why to meditate and instead dive into doing the practice itself and judge for yourself.

flancian reviewed Waking Up by Sam Harris

Review of 'Waking Up' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

There is significant overlap between Harris's talks and podcasts about meditation and consciousness and this book, so not all content was new to me.

My impression while reading it was of a four star book, but a lot of the impact was lost on me due to my previous exposure to his ideas. I think overall I'd pretty much recommend it to everyone I know (if that weren't very annoying and entitled, that is), so five stars seems justified.