Waking Up - Book Summary & Review

Waking Up

Searching for Spirituality Without Religion

Sam Harris

For the people who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris presents us with a guide to meditation backed by neuroscience and psychology. This book merges contemplative wisdom with modern science.

Discover a non religious path to mindfulness and spirituality.

In order to be spiritual, we need to find god and open ourselves up to a higher plane. But that’s not quite it, discovering spirituality – doesn’t require religion. All we need to find spirituality is to transform the way we think. We have to stop thinking in terms of pleasure and pain. Instead we have to concentrate on becoming more mindful of our thoughts and ourselves.

Seeking pleasures and avoiding pain will not result in happiness.

Our pleasures are fleeting. Even if we find that perfect moment of pleasure, soon we’ll start chasing a new moment. This plays out constantly in our daily lives too.

Not only are the moments of pleasure and pain fleeting; they also depend more on our perceptions than reality. There is clearly more to finding happiness than just seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.

Although we see ourselves as a single unified “self” this is not the case. Most of us assume that “I,” is the sense of self, is a single entity that exists in the brain. However, this is simply not true.

Firstly, we aren’t the thinkers of our thoughts, and our sense of control over them is illusory. Do an experiment.
Make yourself comfortable and try not to think any thoughts for an entire minute. Of course, you couldn’t do it. Indeed, we have little control over our thoughts. They simply appear in our minds uninvited.

Even the idea of the self as a single entity is an illusion. The creator of our “selves,” the brain, has two different sides, the right and the left, each with its own personality.

Doctors perform a medical procedure known as callosotomy, which splits the two hemispheres in our brain. Interestingly, people who have undergone this surgery display variety traits depending on which side of the brain is stimulated.

We overestimate our control over our thoughts, and as a result we give them more power than they deserve.

Becoming “mindful” of our thoughts can help overpower them. We have to simply observe our thoughts for a while. Where do they wander?

We aren’t able to live a satisfactory life because we spend our time worrying about what has happened or what might happen instead of living in the moment.

The problem isn’t the worries themselves. Rather, because we let them overshadow us. But there is a solution: by using the meditative technique of mindfulness, we can separate our thoughts and worries from ourselves.

When we meditate, we become aware of what’s going on in our mind. We also begin to recognize that they’re not the reality. They are merely the constructs of your mind.

Meditation allows us to see that our thoughts are just passing impressions and not reality.

By using these meditation techniques, we can start making mindfulness a practical part of our life:

We have to close our eyes and focus on our breathing. When we focus on your breathing, thoughts and feelings pop into your head from time to time. We have to simply acknowledge them and return our focus back to our breathing.

By being mindful of our thoughts without letting them control us, we’ll start recognizing that they are separate from our consciousness.

Numerous studies have shown that our mind wanders for about 50 percent of our waking life. During the periods of wistfulness, a region of the brain called default-mode network (DMN) becomes more active. This region is mostly responsible for our tendency to judge ourselves. It is the root of the concept of “I,” the single, thinking entity. However, when we’re focused on something, like meditation, we weaken the DMN.

Generally, meditation has two types of approach.

The first is the gradual approach, which traces its roots back to the Theravada Buddhism which conceptualized selflessness, that is, the rejection of the single, thinking self. As we travel along the road toward our goal, we still think in terms of the self. The idea is to simply come to the realization that the self does not exist.

Then there is the sudden realization technique, put forward by the Dzogchen school of Buddhism. Here, you assume from the very beginning that the self is an illusion. The idea is to then use that awareness in ways that help you to lead a better life.

Of those two broad approaches, sudden realization is better suited for dismissing the concept of “self.”

Spirituality is an empirical matter, and not a religious one.

Many people believe that the concept of spirituality is closely tied to religion. However, spirituality and religion have little to do with one another. Spirituality is a little more than an attempt to bring non-ordinary states of consciousness. There are a multitude of spiritual experiences, like self-transcending love, bliss, ecstasy or “inner light,” which are common among all types of believers, as well as non-believers. Religious organizations cannot hold a monopoly on spirituality. All claim to do so, but they all are not right.

Many people in the West can’t disconnect spirituality from religion, because their spirituality is entirely faith-based. The act of prayer itself is beneficial; however these benefits are attributed to the religious practices that inspire prayer, rather than the act itself.

Eastern religions, on the other hand, are empirical at their core. They’re concerned with experiences and observations of reality.

Choose your Gurus carefully

Starting on the path to mindfulness isn’t easy. It is very likely that, in order to succeed, you’ll need the guidance of an experienced teacher.

However, finding the right teacher is not easy. For starters, it’s quite difficult to discern whether a spiritual teacher has the necessary expertise or not, demonstrating mastery is simply impossible.

Also, the nature of spirituality makes it easy for ‘charlatans’ and ‘megalomaniacs’ to exploit the student-teacher relationship. Demands like shaving your head and renouncing sex are not uncommon for spiritual communities. The goal of deserting the illusion of self can be used as permission for practices that can make you feel uncomfortable or are downright exploitive.

While finding a good teacher is important for your journey to selflessness, it is also important to be careful in choosing the right path. If you decide to use drugs on your path to spirituality, be careful. Consuming alcohol can temporarily change your perception of reality and yourself. This modification is even more extreme with other drugs. Drugs like MDMA and LSD offer the benefit of altered consciousness, but they also come with risks.

Drugs are also fickle things. They don’t always deliver what they promise, and some experiences can also lead to unparallel horror. While drugs might be a tool in the path to selflessness, they are to be abstained or handled with utmost care.

To summarize our concept of self is illusory and keeps us caught in a dream of malcontent and discursive thought. However, by practicing meditation we can awaken from that dream, and in doing so live life at full attention.

Ruchika Verma

You can purchase this book from Amazon