Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

Sam Harris

Sep 2014 · Simon and Schuster · Narrated by Sam Harris

About this audiobook

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.

Ratings and reviews

I felt it meandered. I was hoping for a more striking insight into "Waking Up". I am better for having listened to it, but his podcasts are much more thought provoking.

I dry adull dissertation on consciousness. Seams to negate any sense of spirituality. Borderlines on boring.

I won't pretend that this app has suddenly turned me into a self-reflective saint, but out of all the meditation apps I've tried it has had the most noticable effect on me in smaller day to day sort of ways and i think its been valuable both to me and to those around me.

About the author

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.