“I’m spiritual, but not religious.” The sentiment seems all too common, as though the traits are worlds apart. Much cultural adversity afflicts conventional religion, such as wealth, control, dependency, and various abuses often associated with fundamentalism and evangelicalism. But religion is, at its roots, very much concerned with spirituality. Perhaps the main difference between spirituality and religion is that the former gives complete freedom to choose an individual path towards wholeness, recovery and enlightenment. The latter is the institutionalised, organised formal practise of a particular spiritual tradition’s beliefs, ethics, and rituals. In contrast, spirituality doesn’t necessarily entail any adherence to religious tradition.

But what exactly does this pesky word “spirituality” mean? Well, the English word “spirit” comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath, breathing, air, inspiration, character, spirit, life, vigour, and courage. Spirituality does not require or depend upon any notions of supernaturalism. It refers to non-physical and non-transient qualities, states of time and space or human consciousness that go beyond words and are only partially defined through human concepts. Love is one such quality; it cannot be seen but can be felt, though perhaps never fully understood. The Quaker writer and activist, Parker J. Palmer, described spirituality as a “longing to be connected with the largeness of life¹,” that is, a desire to be part of something larger than one’s ego and connect with a power-not-oneself. Lest readers jump to the conclusion that this largeness refers to a supernatural higher power on some higher order of reality (whatever those words may mean), let it be clarified that a power-not-oneself can take various forms and need not represent a supernatural person, being, thing, or principle. The only important thing is that it be something other than self. Why? Because self is illusion.

By traditional definitions of God, atheism rejects traditional theism, supernaturalism, and notions of higher and lower realities. Despite the negative weight atheism carries with much of society, positive atheism can be a wonderful, life-affirming philosophy and way of life. The problem is that all too often the vocally anti-religious New Atheists are quite irrational in their attacks upon religion and religious people. They overstate their cases and totally misunderstand the nature of religious faith. They are ignorant of religion and theology and can be quite fanatical. These otherwise brilliant thinkers often stray from the path of reason; yes, reason – a value they otherwise rightly espouse as being of paramount importance.

Recently, neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris (The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape) published a rare and unexpected book called Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion². Here the learned and ever-skeptical neuroscientist draws on, among other things, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, empirical and realist philosophy, and Buddhism. With a high degree of openness and introspection, he shares his own very personal experiences with spiritual practises and pursuits (as well as mind-altering chemicals). Acknowledging that there are “genuine spiritual experiences” that are not rationally accessible, he states that the significance of these occurrences cannot be rationally assessed. That great humanist of yesteryear, Julian Huxley, acknowledged the existence of the “transrational” and “transnatural.” In an essay entitled “The New Divinity”³ Huxley made the important point that “the term ‘divine’ did not originally imply the existence of gods: on the contrary, gods were constructed to interpret [our] experiences of this quality.” He then went on to say, “[f]or want of a better, I use the term divine, though this quality of divinity is not truly supernatural but transnatural – it grows out of ordinary nature, but transcends it. The divine is what man finds worthy of adoration, that which compels his awe⁴.”

After reading Harris’ book, one could assume that Harris would agree with Huxley’s description of the divine, although perhaps still balk at the use of the word “divine.” Perhaps “numinous” is preferable. Regardless, the transnatural or transrational “grows out of ordinary nature, but transcends it” (Huxley’s words). Harris’s albeit infrequent use of the phrase “self-transcendence” along with more robust references to “genuine spiritual insights” make it unambiguously clear that he recognizes the existence and importance of a spiritual path. Harris rightly acknowledges that spirituality “remains the great hole in secularism, humanism, rationalism and atheism.” Indeed, many Humanist organizations host countless arguments concerning the proper use of “spiritual” and “spirituality.” Harris makes the point that there is a great deal of emptiness in our everyday lives, an emptiness that can be filled by the practise of some sort of naturalistic spirituality (for example, mindfulness). “There is something degraded and degrading about many of our habits of attention as we shop, gossip, argue, and ruminate our way to the grave,” says Harris. It would be hard to disagree with that observation. Shopping, in particular, seems to have taken the place of organized, conventional religion. It is perhaps the de facto religion of millions in the so-called advanced Western nations.

But what, exactly, is the basis of Harris’ “rational approach to spirituality,” and what are the salient and recognizable features of a spiritual path? Well, it goes, at least in substantial part, like this. Humans suffer because they are in bondage or prison – yes, even humanists, rationalists, atheists, and other freethinkers. Many such people will be delighted to learn they are in bondage or prison, spiritually speaking, but that is to say that “we are all prisoners of our thoughts,” writes Harris. Now, this is a very Buddhist concept, although not exclusively so. Buddhism is not a religion or at least theist in all of its forms and manifestations, and even in those forms and manifestations that can be seen to be religious, the teachings are not faith-based. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to believe in Buddhism. Indeed, not believing at all is best. This is especially true of Theravada (literally, “the Way [or Teaching or Tradition] of the Elders” or “the Ancient Teaching”), which is the oldest surviving Buddhist school, and which is something more nearly resembling psychotherapy as opposed to a religion or philosophy as those terms are ordinarily understood in the West. Harris shows he is quite familiar with a number of spiritual traditions including Theravada Buddhism, Dzogchen Buddhism (being the most ancient and direct stream of wisdom within Tibetan Buddhism, which is generally esoteric in nature), and Advaita Vedanta. Harris makes the point that the central teachings of Buddhism are “entirely empirical,” even though there are a number of “superstitions that many Buddhists cherish.” True, Buddhism’s “three basic facts [marks] of existence” (dukkha [unsatisfactoriness or suffering is part of our lives], anattii [“not-self”/there is no self], and anicca [everything is impermanent]) are entirely empirical, but that is arguably not the case when it comes to Buddhist ideas of rebirth. As respects the latter, one can find in Buddhism both naturalistic and supernaturalistic ideas of rebirth. In any event, Harris wouldn’t regard rebirth as being a central teaching of Buddhism. While his points are reasonable, many wouldn’t agree.

Moving forward with Harris’ position, the Buddhist teaching of dukkha affirms that discontentment or unsatisfactoriness is inescapable and ever-present in life, in varying degrees from one moment to the next. Harris is right to affirm that humans are prisoners of thoughts, and not just thoughts but also beliefs, prejudices, biases, opinions, views, ideas, memories, and all other attachments and aversions. People have a “habit of being distracted by thoughts,” says Harris, conveying that people fail to see things-as-they-really-are. For most, both internal and external experiences are filtered through and distorted by thoughts as well as the other things mentioned above. The root cause of dukkha, according to Buddhism, is upiidiina. That Sanskrit and Pali word literally means “fuel.” Much like the expression “to add fuel to the fire” in the sense of making a bad situation worse, the word upiidiina in Buddhist teachings means clinging, grasping, attachment, and all of the things that will simply add fuel to the fire of life. In short, clinging, grasping, and attachment cause suffering, unsatisfactoriness, and bondage of various kinds. They cause a type of imprisonment, metaphorically speaking.

But there’s much more. Harris affirms the truth of what in Buddhism is known as anatta. The concept of anatta is bedrock to Buddhism. Anatta means no-self or, more correctly, not-self. The Buddhist teaching of anatta affirms that there is no actual self (in Harris’ words, “the feeling of ‘I’“) at the centre of one’s conscious, or even unconscious, awareness. Note that the word “self” can also refer, quite legitimately, to the person each person is as a mind-body complex. This self is not in question. The so-called consciousness – Harris has much to say on that subject – goes through continuous fluctuations from moment to moment. As such, there is nothing to constitute, let alone sustain, a separate, transcendent “1” structure or entity. People die and are born (or reborn) from one moment to the next. They do have a sense of continuity of self – in Harris’ words, “the feeling of self we call, ‘1’” – but it is really an illusion. This self has no substance in either physical or psychological reality. One’s sense of self and continuity of self are nothing but mental constructs composed of a continuous stream of transient and ever-changing “I-moments,” brought about and put together by nothing other than thought, including memory. These Imoments are synthesized by the brain/mind (Harris denies a difference between the two) in a way which appears to give them a singular, separate, and independent existence, a life of their own. Without thoughts and feelings (the latter being felt thoughts), there is simply no “I” or ego as a separate, independent, permanent entity. Harris, as a neuroscientist, knows that all too well. He makes it unambiguously clear that the “conventional sense of self is an illusion.” He writes, “The feeling we call ‘I’ is an illusion. There is no discrete self or ego living like a minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain.”

The idea that there is no actual self at the centre of one’s conscious (or even unconscious) awareness seems almost obvious and self-evident, and like-minded individuals will be pleased and reassured to read what Harris has to say about the matter. However, the idea of self as illusion is not self-evident to many. Indeed, Harris’ thesis will come as a shock to many, including both religious and non-religious people. Christians have a great problem with the idea of no-self/not-self because, to their way of thinking, to deny the reality of the self is to deny the existence of the human soul. Buddhists, many if not most scientists, and a great number of philosophers and psychologists will have no trouble with Harris’ self as illusion thesis.

Lest the reader think that the idea of no-self is Buddhist alone, the Scottish philosopher, David Hume, wrote that people tend to believe that the self is real because of what we perceive to be the “felt smoothness of the transition which imagination effects between point and point⁵.” But all that these individuals are dealing with, he said (as have many others over the years, such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell), is a bundle of mental experiences that have the illusion of continuity about them. So what gives this sense, this illusion of mental continuity? Russell and others have written that sense of mental continuity is simply the result of habit and memory. In other words, thought, which is Harris’ point entirely.

The good news from Harris is that the sense of self can be altered and even extinguished. But how can the self change, let alone extinguish, itself if there is no separate, independent, permanent self? On that question, the words of William Temple, a former Archbishop of Canterbury come into play: “For the trouble is that we are self-centered, and no effort of the self can remove the self from the centre of its own endeavour; the very effort will plant it there the more fixedly than ever⁶.”

If the self can’t extinguish itself, what can extinguish the feeling of a separate, independent, permanent self? And where does spirituality come into all of this? According to Harris – and again this is all so very Buddhist, but again not exclusively so, “spirituality largely consists in realizing [that self is an illusion], moment to moment.” People need to recognize “thoughts as thoughts.” However, people are not their thoughts. They think them, or rather generate them in their brains. Such is the nature of consciousness. But do brains actually generate consciousness, or transduce it? Harris appears to be open and undogmatic on that issue. He writes that “consciousness is simply the light by which the contours of our mind and body are known.” At any rate, the important thing is to recognize, and also viscerally feel, that self is illusion. The sense of self or “I” simply disappears when, through the transformative power-not-oneself of consciousness, the barriers to seeing things-as-they-really-are are removed once and for all by the person each individual is. An individual who achieves that will find that the vicious cycle of thoughts creating more thoughts, and selves creating more and more other selves, is broken as well.

Harris rightly affirms that so many personal problems – particularly those of a psychological and emotional kind – arise from self-identification, self-absorption, and self-obsession. People cling to the “self” as self. They even manage to convince themselves that they belong to that self, indeed that they are that self. But, as Harris points out, those myriads of I’s and me’s that make up the waxing and waning, fading-in and fading-out stream of consciousness are nothing but thoughts. Yet people think – there’s that word again – those thoughts are the real people inside them. To borrow a couple of phrases from the “Big Book”⁷ of Alcoholics Anonymous, the result of this misbelief in a separate self is “self-will run riot.” The regular practise of mindfulness, or choiceless but purposeful moment-to-moment awareness and bare attention is able to relieve people of the bondage of self. In Harris’ words, it is “simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant.”

When Buddha Shakyamuni (a.k.a., “the Buddha”) was asked whether he was God, he replied, “no.” He replied the same way when asked whether he was the son of God, a prophet, and so forth. What was he then? “I am awake,” said the Buddha. The essence of Buddhism, in two words, is “Wake up!” That is also the message of Sam Harris’ new book Waking Up. But what does it mean to wake up? Well, it means to begin to see things-as- they-really-are. It means to start living not just in and for the moment, but from one moment to the next. For if truth be life, that is, reality, things-as-they-really are, which must be taken to be axiomatic, it can only be experienced from one moment to the next. In that regard, mindfulness in Buddhism is generally known as vipassanii (insight meditation), which is a form of meditation altogether different from all other forms of meditation. Only mindfulness affords insight. How important that is! Without insight, without understanding of oneself and reality, there can be no possibility of growth or change of any positive kind. Now, the Pali word vipassanii is composed of two parts: vi, meaning “in various ways”, and passanii, meaning seeing. So, vipassanii means “seeing in various ways” as well as seeing things-as-they-really-are. People wake up, and perhaps for the very first time in life see things as they really are. Enlightenment. Insight. Light. Truth. Wisdom. Waking up. They are all different words referring to the same grasp of reality – and it is a spiritual reality.

But there’s more. Breaking the illusion of self not only enables vision and enjoyment of things-as-they-really-are, it also, according to Harris, enables appreciation for the reality and nature of consciousness. The latter is real, whereas self is illusion. Writes Harris, “Consciousness is also what gives our lives a moral dimension. Without consciousness, we would have no cause to wonder how we should behave toward other human beings, nor could we care how we were treated in return.”

The thesis that consciousness gives our lives a moral dimension is an interesting and somewhat curious view that may well upset a number of people including, most especially, humanists, rationalists, atheists, and other freethinkers. Surely, reason has an important role to play here. Harris is perhaps at his most mysterious on this subject. Harris likely sees an important, if not central, place for the application of reason to the task referred to above, for how else can one truly assess whether his or her actions are reasonably likely to affect the “conscious experience for better or worse” of others? Obviously, one cannot rely upon either revelation in any religious sense, or some authoritarian directive on the matter. Undoubtedly, human powers of reasoning owe their existence, directly or indirectly, to consciousness itself, or at least rely upon and otherwise operate through the medium of consciousness.

The trouble is – and Harris readily acknowledges this to be the case – whilst consciousness is susceptible to a certain, and ever-increasing, amount of scientific investigation, it neither is, at least at present, the subject of any definite, inerrant, all-encompassing scientific explanation, nor appears to be even amenable to any such explanation. Strangely, Harris is at his most ambiguous not when it comes to talking about matters such as his experiences with mind-altering chemicals, but when he is writing about the nature of consciousness, which, of course, is his real field of expertise. Even when he writes of his experiences during meditation he authors lines such as these: “pure consciousness … where all thought subsided, and any sense of having a body disappeared … ” leaving only “a blissful expanse of conscious peace that had no reference point in any of the usual sensory channels.” A colloquialism derived from a quote by Cardinal John Henry Newman⁸ says, “Mysticism: it begins in ‘mist,’ centres in ‘I,’ and ends in schism.” Funny, and to some extent true. However, real mysticism helps to eliminate that sense of “I” about which Harris writes very clearly.

While some may be thinking that Harris has morphed into a Deepak Chopra or Eckhart Tolle, the reader can rest assured that Harris’ “bullshit detector remains well calibrated” and that he “make]s] no claims in support of magic or miracles in this book.” That’s right. There’s no magical thinking in Waking Up and, to borrow a famous phrase (and book title) from the late Paul Kurtz, Harris successfully manages to resist “the transcendental temptation.” Well, almost, for he does use the phrase “self-transcendence,” but anyone who understands the sense in which Harris uses those words should have no problem with them either.

While this may be an unrealistic ideal, perhaps the new book of Sam Harris’ will help to insert the words “spiritual” and “spirituality” into the ordinary, everyday language of humanists, rationalists, atheists, and other freethinkers. Despite one or two setbacks, Waking Up provides an interesting and thorough exploration of spirituality, also including helpful exercises and instructions in sidebars throughout the book. Humanists looking to explore spirituality will love it.

Palmer, Parker J. ‘The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching,.’ Online at http://www.couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/ heart-of-a-teacher/ ↩︎
Harris, Sam. Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014) ↩︎
Huxley, Julian. Essays of a Humanist (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964). ↩︎
Ibidem, p. 223. ↩︎
Book 2, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40). ↩︎
Temple, William. Nature, Man, and God (London: Macmillan & Co., 1934), p. 243. ↩︎
Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered From Alcoholism (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 2001). ↩︎
Connor, Peter Tracey. 2000. Georges Bataille and the Mysticism of Sin (London: John Hopkins University Press): 31 (“Mysticism begins in mist and ends in schism”). ↩︎