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 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.