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A review by luminesse
Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris
4.0
The overall rating for the book would probably have been rated 3 stars, but there was a significant amount of richly fascinating information on the biology of the brain (as to how it relates to consciousness, its nature and location) and drug experiences, so I added a star.
The main theme is about promoting the Sam Harris brand of spirituality to atheists who reject the notion of spirituality, perhaps due to its connections to religion and unscience. I wasn't really looking for a book to convince me about spirituality since I'm already onboard with that. Nor was I looking for a book about meditation. Actually I was just curious to see what this guy Sam Harris is like, having been impressed with him a couple of brief occasions on tv.
In my life I've been fascinated by biopsychology and less than enthusiastic about philosophy. Philosophical conversations and arguments annoy me. To be honest, my love for biopsychology kept me interested while he parsed his arguments on the location of consciousness, though ultimately at the end of a bunch of 25-cent phraseology I basically responded, "Well, duh."
A vast number of words and pages were devoted to his pet argument that the self is an illusion, and I must say I was never really convinced but I'm glad to concede that he's a smart man who's spent a lot of time directing his energies at these experiences and I'm sure he's talking about something that's a real experience and this is how he's chosen to define it. (I was able to best understand what he meant about being without a self and just be conscious toward the end of the book when he described communing with a redwood for hours under the influence of psychotics.)
The main theme is about promoting the Sam Harris brand of spirituality to atheists who reject the notion of spirituality, perhaps due to its connections to religion and unscience. I wasn't really looking for a book to convince me about spirituality since I'm already onboard with that. Nor was I looking for a book about meditation. Actually I was just curious to see what this guy Sam Harris is like, having been impressed with him a couple of brief occasions on tv.
In my life I've been fascinated by biopsychology and less than enthusiastic about philosophy. Philosophical conversations and arguments annoy me. To be honest, my love for biopsychology kept me interested while he parsed his arguments on the location of consciousness, though ultimately at the end of a bunch of 25-cent phraseology I basically responded, "Well, duh."
A vast number of words and pages were devoted to his pet argument that the self is an illusion, and I must say I was never really convinced but I'm glad to concede that he's a smart man who's spent a lot of time directing his energies at these experiences and I'm sure he's talking about something that's a real experience and this is how he's chosen to define it. (I was able to best understand what he meant about being without a self and just be conscious toward the end of the book when he described communing with a redwood for hours under the influence of psychotics.)