Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

Written by Sam Harris

Narrated by Sam Harris

For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris’s latest New York Times bestseller 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 Harris—a scientist, philosopher, and famous skeptic—could write it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Sep 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781442359949

Sam Harris

Sam Harris is the author of the bestselling books The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, and Lying. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing has been published in over fifteen languages. Dr. Harris is cofounder and CEO of Project Reason, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. Please visit his website at SamHarris.org.

Reviews for Waking Up

[Maria Grzywacz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book!
Admittedly, some of the passages on the structures of/in the human brain were difficult to get through, but they do support Harris' case. The book includes personal anecdotes, which brings the author on eye-level with the reader. Also, I really appreciated his elaboration on different means of accessing different states of consciousness. Surely, the book is highly subjective, but Harris is an intelligent, well-read and confident narrator, and even people who disagree with him will surely benefit from hearing his perspective!

[bibleblaster · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some may find this a surprising work from famed atheist writer, Sam Harris. Spirituality? I found it insightful and clear (and a wonderful invitation into meditation practice). Harris points to some of the places where he and his "horsemen" companions (e.g. Dennett, Hitchens) disagree, and this helps to illuminate his own take on spirituality. "Spirituality begins with a reverence for the ordinary that can lead us to insights and experiences that are anything but ordinary. And the conventional opposition between humility and hubris has no place here. Yes, the cosmos is vast and appears indifferent to our mortal schemes, but every present moment of consciousness is profound." Amen.

[Miranda Hoover · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm surprised at such harsh reviews. This book is a fleshed out and refined look at Sam's own extensive examination of consciousness throughout his life. Through experimentation and scientific rigor, his conclusion that one may(and even *should*, or at the very least, consider to) have spirituality without religion. He clarifies what he means by each term. He lays out the very best arguments to abandon dogma in religion and spiritual communities. He lays out the evidence for mindfulness practices as a way of altering and improving one's experience of life. I believe he did a very good job of untangling spirituality from the bullsh*t it is often tied to. Perhaps those who picked up the book with biases against spirituality or around atheism just couldn't follow the case he makes. Anyway, 5 stars from me and I subscribed to his Waking Up app after reading, which I highly recommend as well.

[terry tibbs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I learnt so much about waking up, and have now implemented some of Sam's ideas, such as stretching, yawning, rubbing eyes, scratching balls, and have started varying my breakfast cereal. Coffee is such an integral part of waking up, that Sam dedicated a whole chapter.

[steve02476 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Liked this book a lot. Harris wasn't as overbearing as usual, and the subject matter (consciousness) is something I'm really interested in.

[anace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great insightful book. Everyone should read it since it shows why meditation is good

[Kirtland Benson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The book is rather wordy and philosophical to the point of being nonsensical at some places. The low rating is mostly because there’s multiple gaps in some chapters where the audio cut out for a half a minute or so.

[Otilia Rehnstrom · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The most important book you’ll ever read. Change your perception, changes your life.

[Allison Sylviadotter · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I find Sam Harris to be thoughtful, but covertly pretentious. I liked the book and a lot of what he says is spot on, but he has such obvious male biases and leans far too much on his personal opinions as "truth." A lot of "This worked for me, therefore it is correct." rhetoric. That's a rather myopic way to look at things. But overall an interesting book with a few good insights at least.

[LeoGura · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great book read with a calm and soothing voice by Sam Harris. Interesting and educative

[Brett Olsen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Narrated by the author (Sam Harris) and very engaging subject matter. I’m a big fan. Well worth it for anyone interested in a no BS discussion on meditation and spirituality.

[Benjamin Vyverberg · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the best books I have ever read! I have been very frustrated with both sides of the spectrum when it pertains to religion and non-religion. Sam Harris is carving a path for people who don't fit in with either camp.

It's also amazing that Harris has shown yet again that science can give us a deeper understanding to the things that religion has claimed. He did this very well with ethics in the moral landscape and just as well with mindfulness in this book.

If there is one book I would recommend someone read it is this book. If a person can truly understand the concepts in this book and apply them to their life it will not only give a person more time to respond to their emotions but get rid of a lot of angst and negative feelings in general.

[Colton Harding · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is Sam’s best book. While he’s still anti religion (which isn’t necessarily bad) he’s not on a tirade against it. This is a more open minded approach. His attempts at describing mediation and spirituality are refreshing. I also appreciate his perspective on psychedelics and using drugs to further examine the mind.

[andreas6wpv · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

After having seen interviews with Harris, had to read this:Convoluted, confusing, incoherent. Using false dilemmas to make points. Using outliers as examples why non-outliers need to be seen different. Wordy and unconvincing. All in all, very disappointing, discouraging.

[briandarvell_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I typically do not read books like this but I thought I would give it a shot after enjoying listening to Sam Harris' podcast. There was a lot of interesting thoughts in the book about how to think, act and set spiritual goals without the need to be tagged to any religion. I enjoyed some so Sam's anecdotes about his spiritual travels and the book showed me new ways of thinking about meditation and spirituality. Would likely want to read another of The author's books at some point.

[arewenotben · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Seems a bit muddled and unfocused, with several shots at organised religion which don't really advance his argument. Enjoyed the chapter on Neuroscience and the criticism of the idea of a 'soul' from that perspective though.

[erwinkennythomas · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sam Harris’s Waking Up is a thoughtful account about how to tap into one’s consciousness. The author who is a neuroscientist discussed the right and left brain dichotomy. Our right brain functions quite differently from the left, but still they are complimentary.Harris discussed many topics that have to do with the brain, thinking, and feeling. Some of these are reflections of the mind, hallucinations, near death experiences, and the role of drugs. And the author made trips to the Far East to have experiences from gurus. But he ended up not being impressed with some of their meditational practices. As a scientist the author evaluated a variety of practices while attempting to explore consciousness. For him people didn’t have to be religious to reap these benefits. But Harris’s own approach to meditation had to be subjected to scientific scrutiny. That is why as an atheist he didn’t think much about the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that based many of their beliefs on faith.Harris’s book will shake up what believers think about their religion. And although the writer found benefits in meditation, still he exposes some of the Far Eastern gurus that were nothing more than charlatans. So Waking Up isn’t a book that is promoting any religious belief, but its contents are geared to those who wish to reap the benefits of meditation without a religion. So this guide to spirituality without religion should be read by believers and non-believers alike, who wish to tap into consciousness by submerging “I” in their thinking, and showing compassion towards others.

[anandrajan_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Hmm. Something's off. It took me a while to figure it out but this reminds me of when I was into Ayn Rand and then transitioned to existentialism, humanistic psychology and Nietzsche (many eons ago). So, if you're into "Waking Up," head on over and read Jay Garfield's "The Fundamental Wisdom of The Middle Way" - an immortal translation of Nagarjuna's classic text. Your mind will first thank you and then deconstruct you AND your entire world. Sam Harris seems to be caught in an incurable view of anatta (no self). This is extraordinarily dangerous (especially to scientific types) since emptiness of self SHOULD always be accompanied by emptiness of phenomena as Nagarjuna makes clear (via Garfield and others). If you practice emptiness of self and think this means that the brain and its processes are "all that's really going on," that's an incurable view (with Dennett and company waiting to drag you down even further).

[tgraettinger_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very intriguing reading - found myself wanting to underling many passages in the book. Harris' main thesis is that self-transcendence what spirituality is all about, and that it can be achieved through meditation and/or through pharmacology. Not sure that I follow his arguments well or at all sometimes, but I do think he's worth keeping an eye on and re-reading over time. I'm probably not ready for this book yet.

[benkline · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This took me a while to get through, considerably so with that it's not the biggest tome or that its super laden with jargon as some philosophical or scientific books can be. And you definitely get out of this exactly what you expect from the cover "Spirituality without Religion".

I have a hard time placing my thoughts on where this should fall (2 stars, 3 stars, 4 stars, somewhere in between, a mixture of all three?). Because there is some good in here, and there is some real bad in here. Firstly, it's by Sam Harris, one of the upmost atheist commentators alive today (like Hitchens, Dennit, Maher, etc.), and he definitely spends a fair bit of time taking more or less pot-shots at religions (all of them, even gurus like Ginsberg's, etc.). While these are unnecessary, its not out of the realm of expectations going in considering its Harris and the format of the book, but its still pretty needless. Now, while this is needless, I don't find it too problematic (given my bent and given my knowledge of Harris going in), but I can see how this would be a turnoff for some people reading it.

I think his views on ego, and the self, and consciousness is.... a bit .... un-erudite but trying to be erudite? (See what I did there?) He overly poses things scholarly at times with some things that don't have a scholarly background, which I can get his attempts at doing -- trying to make scientific that which never was before. Thats fine and noble... but you need to do a lot more than anecdotal (ie. [not verbatim] this one time I had a bad LSD trip on a boat off shore in Kathmandu, but all of my prior times were perfectly great on it). He does have a very lengthy list of sources and many of them look interesting to look up, but a fair bit of what he speaks of is about his times with this guru or that meditation center, or this learning, or that learning. And while that's all interesting, and fascinating, it doesn't provide the depth to what he's trying to pass off as it should - or maybe as he thinks it should. And I think thats a bit of where Harris's ego comes into play with this, because he's definitely one of the many notable writers with an ego that works into his writings, (see his friend Hitchens), so because of his ego he assumes we should take his views as scientific fact immediately, and due to that ego we (as readers) almost view it in the opposite light (insofar at least I do).

I definitely think I was expecting a little bit (maybe a lot?) more out of this than there was, and it wraps up and ends rather quickly without a huge concrete conclusion. The overall thesis of it is a bit muddled and his thoughts are good... but it does go downhill as the work progresses.

I'm still not sure how to fully think about this or to summarize it even, I am definitely planning on checking out some of his sources, and I really do think there is a lot more to go (scientifically as a community) on our research into the 'ego' and conscious [brain] and consciousness, especially in the mind/self departments.

[razinha-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Don't be deceived by the title as I was. This is meditation mumbo jumbo cast in the claimed trappings of secularism. I didn't think I ever thought something I'd read from Sam Harris would be a waste of time. Engaging? Usually. Annoying? Occasionally. But this claptrap? Seems a lot of people read this expecting something enlightening about meditation and were disappointed. I read it NOT expecting anything about meditation (silly me) and was disappointed. I'm not sure if I'll be able to read else anything by him in the same way as I did before reading this. I'm having a hard time not docking him credibility points after this ... interesting ... subject.

Now, I should allow that I started reading this in a "mood", and the mood was exacerbated by just finishing Buddhist Boot Camp. I was hoping that Harris could banish that silliness with some intellectual discourse worth considering. Maybe lead me in a good direction on a troubling question of mine: what is the secular equivalence of "spirituality"? Had I not known his particular position with respect to religion, his protestations and assurances that he was not speaking in such terms throughout this book would have appeared to be lip service. This is fuzzy stuff unbecoming a critical thinker. And this is a meandering essay on the "illusion of self" and alleged benefits of mediation and...

Well, let's just say I am annoyed that I read it through, hoping for something redeeming only to have my initial anticipation dashed and my disdain build through the reading.

Apart from my issues with the premise and text, I found some of the writing disturbing...example:“Arranging atoms in certain ways appears to bring about an experience of being that very collection of atoms. This is undoubtedly one of the deepest mysteries given to us to contemplate”.
(Emphasis mine.) "given to us"??? By whom? Typical piss-poor choices of words like that from amateurs open the door for nutcases to distort and undermine intellectual discourse. It's worse when they come from one of Harris's particular pedigree. "Given" implies an outside agency. Maybe that's nitpicking, but even a favorable confirmation bias couldn't get past it.

So it turns out this is a mix of meditation nonsense and things I already knew about the brain. I'm (I assume obviously) not a neuroscientist, but I've read a bit on some of the research refuting Sperry with respect to his so-called "split brain" conclusions. Harris perpetuates them.

And meditation? What the hell is this supposed to mean? We wouldn’t attempt to meditate, or engage in any other contemplative practice, if we didn’t feel that something about our experience needed to be improved.

Really? I can't "contemplate" because I want to think about something? Almost set it aside again after that. But I persisted.

Harris also seems to have some strange love affair with philosophers. This jars my sensibilities, as my confirmation bias on that front is in complete opposition. I consider the career choice of thinking about thinking or some "meaning of life" an abrogation of intellect.

Now, his notes were good. I like well sourced writings with actual, direct references. Too many lazy authors don't source, or don't footnote, preferring instead to provide none or only as detached endnotes. So...one good point to recommend. And it keeps this from getting just one star.

I couldn't help wondering if maybe I had the wrong Sam Harris, but he references the writings of the Sam Harris I thought I was reading. Advocating not thinking? Jeez. I've read enough Buddhist BS on that nonsense to drive anyone with a brain nuts. Thinking is a moral imperative. Not thinking is an affront to the intellect. Reading Harris push it? Yeah...no.

I'm glad this is not the first Harris book I've read. Were it so, there would be no more. As it is, I have to keep looking for someone smarter on the subject of spiritual equivalency with religion. And I have docked him credibility points. A lot.

Don't mistake my generous two stars. This is not a book anyone should read.

[mirrani_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found this book interesting and, in some cases, enlightening. I certainly did not expect to take in as much information or find it as readable as I did. Reading this book as someone who was curious about the subject matter, but did not feel a belief or pull in one direction or the other, I am surprised how much I got out of reading it.

[daniel5estes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you're already a fan of Sam Harris, then you'll certainly want to check out Waking Up. It's as close to a defense of spirituality by a sincere atheist as you will likely ever encounter. It's also a veiled peek into the life of Harris himself, providing a little background info on why the man ticks the way he does.If you've never heard of Sam Harris, but are curious about the confluence of two seemingly opposite realms, spirituality and atheism, then expect Waking Up to be a mixed bag. The discussion will range from technical descriptions of neurology to philosophical/metaphysical pondering of the self. Some chapters will yield much more appeal than others. Just not all of it, I'm guessing.

[clifforddham · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Referred to by Pico Iyer and Michael Krasney, July 30, 2015, on Forum, KQED.

[tobias.bruell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The text is the result of the authors lifelong quest to understand the human mind. The core assertion is that the "self-feeling" (i.e., the feeling of being an individual that is the author of ones actions) is an illusion. Convincing reasons are given to substantiate this claim and at that it is helpful that the author has a PhD in neuroscience. Spirituality is defined as the quest to overcome this illusion of "self-feeling", but detailed descriptions of exercises to do so are sparse. However, meditation is considered a relevant exercise and a general discussion of meditation is provided.The book is mostly written in a calm and serious style. There were only a few paragraphs that remained unintelligible gibberish to me; a problem that seems unavoidable when discussing meditation/spirituality. Sometimes the author has strong opinions but not so strong that I would have considered it awkward; others surely will.I believe that I really learned something from the book. I know of no other text that identifies a unique purpose of meditation/spirituality so clearly.

[cdogzilla · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

With Harris there's always a bit of an edge any time 9/11 and fundamentalism are mentioned, even this book might have lines that could be seized upon by those who see Harris as an Islamaphobe. But, that's not what this is about, and he's really very good at summarizing the position of consciousness in our incomplete understanding of the mind-brain relationship. This would be an intriguing read if only descriptive; it's also prescriptive though, and makes strong arguments for why spirituality is not only for new age incense sniffers but belongs in the realm of science and philosophy.

[spbooks_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed reading this book despite its obvious flaws. The chapters seem disconnected from each other as if the connecting thread has broken. About half way through I started wondering whether I was reading a different book. And, near the end, it seemed that Harris had moved a long way from his emphasis on scientific evidence to support claims that are made about spirituality. But there's lots of ideas to think about. Harris communicates clearly (mostly) with wit and incisive critique of that with which he disagrees. I particularly appreciated his debunking of so-called near death experiences (NDEs) and charlatan gurus. Definitely worth a read.

[jmulick_2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

As a behavioral scientist myself, I don't disagree with anything factual he says in this book, neither with his assertions about consciousness. I listened to an audiobook of this title, and the author was the reader. His interpretation, as well as his words, came off decidedly preachy and superior-sounding. I had similar self-investigations of consciousness alteration when young, as well as subsequent years of disciplined research with scientific methods on topics of psychopharmacology, behavior, and learning. He discloses that he seems to have spent much of his slightly more than four decades with eastern GURUS LOOKING FOR ENLIGHTENMENT! I spent a bit more time actually studying other people who were a either more normal than his gurus or people with developmental differences and arrived at much the same place with respect to his main subjects. Of course, everybody takes a unique journey. Fortunately, the book was short.