As described in my video, "Upgrading Your Mental Operating System" and the blogpost "we need a new mental operating system...now", we need to develop a purely secular, empi rical, scientific approach to nondual awakening that will permit us to operate in a completely different manner, and soon.
Sam Harris' new book "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion" describes the approach he used. Sam is an insightful, intelligent, and skillful writer with a philosophy degree from Stanford and a neuroscience Ph. D. from UCLA, so he can bring a useful perspective to many issues.
Sam manifested in blogposts "The impossibility of 'free will'...scientifically and logically'", "Lying - Are 'white lies' OK...helpful? necessary? harmful?" and "Who's responsible if there's no free will? How did guilt and shame develop?".
Sam, and the late Christopher Hitchens, defined the intellectual and scientific discourse on contemporary atheism.
Sam focused his awakening process on secular aspects of religious traditions: "Only Buddhists and students of advaita Vedanta have been absolutely clear in asserting that spiritual life consists in overcoming the illusion of the self by paying close attention to our experience in the present moment."
"Waking Up" details Sam's personal journey towards awakening, through
1) Burmese Theravada Buddhism under Sayadaw U Pandita, to
2) advaita Vedanta with Ramana Maharshi's follower H. W. L. Poonja(ji), to
3) Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen under Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Douglas Harding's work.
Sam left Theravada, after a great effort of several years, because it was "explicitly goal oriented" and "...enlightenment, whatever it is, cannot be a matter of having fleeting experiences". Mindfulness was "a means of attaining an experience...'cessation'...a direct insight into an unconditioned reality." He felt that there must be some mode of ordinary consciousness in which selfless awakening can be expressed. "Why not realize this frame of mind directly?" Cessation never arrived, his practice became a "vigil", waiting for a reward, so he moved on...
Poonjaji's advaita teaching worked, as his "influence on me was profound". However, because of Poonjaji's "all-or-nothing" approach which "obliged him to acknowledge the full enlightenment of any person", many of his students deluded themselves about their spiritual attainments. (A common criticism; Ramana never declared anyone "enlightened".) Sam watched the dissembling of one of Poonjaji's "enlightened" folk by a Dzogchen master, so on to Dzogchen...
Sam found in Dzogchen a focus on being able to "experience the intrinsic selflessness of awareness in every moment". Taking the "goal as the path" and realizing that "the freedom from self that one might otherwise seek is the very thing that one practices", worked for him. He found the "goal of Dzogchen...is to grow increasingly familiar with this way of being in the world".
On enlightenment, Sam pointed out that "Many of these (esoteric) claims are preposterous". A example was the impossibility of "omniscience" by the Buddha, who could not be "a better mathematician, physicist, biologist and Jeopardy contestant than any person who has ever lived" or "capable of painting the Sistene Chapel".
Discussing the "mystery of consciousness", Sam drew upon the Nobel Prize - winning work of Roger W. Sperry, et al. on corpus callosotomy, the surgical severing of the fibers which pass information between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. This procedure successfully prevents local storms of activity from developing into seizures.
Callosotomy does not produce any apparent changes in behavior, even in neurological exams. However, Sperry found both functional specialization as well as functional independence between the two halves, i.e. separate memories, learning processes, behavioral intentions, and apparently centers of conscious experience as shown at right.
How this manifests is shown below. The right hemisphere is shown the word "key" in the left field of view (they cross over). However the subject, speaking from his left hemisphere, will say he has seen "ring". However if the subject is asked to select w/his left hand (right hemisphere) what he saw, he will pick out the key.
If asked to speak/name what is in his left hand, w/o showing it to the left hemisphere, he will be unable to reply. If shown the key and being asked why he picked it from among the other choices, he will confabulate some answer.
The two hemispheres can perform separate manual tasks like drawing different figures with each hand simultaneously and even sabotage each other's work. Years after surgery, the left hemispheres will express surprise and irritation when the right hemispheres respond to instructions. Each hemisphere even has its own beliefs, and addresses each other directly.
The hemispheres are now separate but conscious. Harris notes that it is easier to establish consciousness in the right, inarticulate, hemisphere than it is to establish consciousness for most toddlers. Consciousness is more fundamental than any apparent self.
Well, where did the "I" go when the brain divided, to the left or to the right? Harris says that the question makes no sense as it assumes that there is a "self bobbing on the stream of consciousness like a boat on the water".
Harris adds, "...the only thing that actually exists is consciousness and its contents...There is no stable self that is carried along from one moment to the next". Even though you feel like an internal self in most waking moments, there is no self to be found anywhere.
As far as "thought", Harris says that "We spend our lives lost in thought." In Eastern contemplative traditions, being distracted by thought is understood to be "the very wellspring of human suffering."
"Being lost in thoughts of any kind, pleasant or unpleasant, is analogous to being asleep or dreaming. It is essentially a form of psychosis."
On "gurus", Sam is adversarial. "If your golf instructor were to insist that you shave your head, sleep no more than four hours a night, renounce sex, and subsist on a diet of raw vegetables, you would find a new golf instructor."
He continues "...a person's desire to win the teacher's approval can often be exploited - emotionally, financially and sexually...moral intuitions and instincts for self-preservation can always be recast as symptoms of fear and attachment. Consequently, even the most extraordinarily cruel or degrading treatment at the hand of a guru can be interpreted as being for one's own good."
He singles out some well-known "gurus" for criticism, particularly Gurdjieff, Osho, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (graphic), Osel Tendzin, Pam Reynolds (NDE), and Eben Alexander ("Proof of Heaven") (at great length).
Harris found psychedelics useful:
"The positive experiences were more sublime than I could ever have imagined...My 'bad trips' were...the most harrowing hours I have ever endured, and make the notion of hell...perfectly apt."
"I believe that psychedelics may be indispensable for some people - especially those who, like me, need convincing that profound changes in consciousness are possible. After that, it seems wise to find ways of practicing that do not present the same risks. Happily, such methods are widely available."
Concluding, "In fact, we can directly experience that consciousness is never improved or harmed by what it knows. Making this discovery, again and again, is the basis of spiritual life."
"Everything we take ourselves to be...depends upon distinct processes that are spread all over the surface of the brain...The sense that we are unified subjects - the unchanging thinkers of thoughts and experiencers of experience - is an illusion.
Sam admits that his awakening is only sporadic, but increasing.
BTW, this post has been selected by the Science and NonDuality folk for posting on their website for the upcoming SAND meeting in San Jose, CA @ which i'll be speaking on Oct 25. They will also be interviewing me.
Sam Harris' new book "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion" describes the approach he used. Sam is an insightful, intelligent, and skillful writer with a philosophy degree from Stanford and a neuroscience Ph. D. from UCLA, so he can bring a useful perspective to many issues.
 |
| Sam Harris |
Sam manifested in blogposts "The impossibility of 'free will'...scientifically and logically'", "Lying - Are 'white lies' OK...helpful? necessary? harmful?" and "Who's responsible if there's no free will? How did guilt and shame develop?".
Sam, and the late Christopher Hitchens, defined the intellectual and scientific discourse on contemporary atheism.
Sam focused his awakening process on secular aspects of religious traditions: "Only Buddhists and students of advaita Vedanta have been absolutely clear in asserting that spiritual life consists in overcoming the illusion of the self by paying close attention to our experience in the present moment."
"Waking Up" details Sam's personal journey towards awakening, through
1) Burmese Theravada Buddhism under Sayadaw U Pandita, to
2) advaita Vedanta with Ramana Maharshi's follower H. W. L. Poonja(ji), to
3) Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen under Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Douglas Harding's work.
 |
| Sayadaw U Pandita |
Sam left Theravada, after a great effort of several years, because it was "explicitly goal oriented" and "...enlightenment, whatever it is, cannot be a matter of having fleeting experiences". Mindfulness was "a means of attaining an experience...'cessation'...a direct insight into an unconditioned reality." He felt that there must be some mode of ordinary consciousness in which selfless awakening can be expressed. "Why not realize this frame of mind directly?" Cessation never arrived, his practice became a "vigil", waiting for a reward, so he moved on...
 |
| Poonjaji |
Sam found in Dzogchen a focus on being able to "experience the intrinsic selflessness of awareness in every moment". Taking the "goal as the path" and realizing that "the freedom from self that one might otherwise seek is the very thing that one practices", worked for him. He found the "goal of Dzogchen...is to grow increasingly familiar with this way of being in the world".
On enlightenment, Sam pointed out that "Many of these (esoteric) claims are preposterous". A example was the impossibility of "omniscience" by the Buddha, who could not be "a better mathematician, physicist, biologist and Jeopardy contestant than any person who has ever lived" or "capable of painting the Sistene Chapel".
Callosotomy does not produce any apparent changes in behavior, even in neurological exams. However, Sperry found both functional specialization as well as functional independence between the two halves, i.e. separate memories, learning processes, behavioral intentions, and apparently centers of conscious experience as shown at right. How this manifests is shown below. The right hemisphere is shown the word "key" in the left field of view (they cross over). However the subject, speaking from his left hemisphere, will say he has seen "ring". However if the subject is asked to select w/his left hand (right hemisphere) what he saw, he will pick out the key.
If asked to speak/name what is in his left hand, w/o showing it to the left hemisphere, he will be unable to reply. If shown the key and being asked why he picked it from among the other choices, he will confabulate some answer. The two hemispheres can perform separate manual tasks like drawing different figures with each hand simultaneously and even sabotage each other's work. Years after surgery, the left hemispheres will express surprise and irritation when the right hemispheres respond to instructions. Each hemisphere even has its own beliefs, and addresses each other directly.
The hemispheres are now separate but conscious. Harris notes that it is easier to establish consciousness in the right, inarticulate, hemisphere than it is to establish consciousness for most toddlers. Consciousness is more fundamental than any apparent self.
 |
| Roger W. Sperry Nobel Laureate |
Harris adds, "...the only thing that actually exists is consciousness and its contents...There is no stable self that is carried along from one moment to the next". Even though you feel like an internal self in most waking moments, there is no self to be found anywhere.
As far as "thought", Harris says that "We spend our lives lost in thought." In Eastern contemplative traditions, being distracted by thought is understood to be "the very wellspring of human suffering."
"Being lost in thoughts of any kind, pleasant or unpleasant, is analogous to being asleep or dreaming. It is essentially a form of psychosis."
On "gurus", Sam is adversarial. "If your golf instructor were to insist that you shave your head, sleep no more than four hours a night, renounce sex, and subsist on a diet of raw vegetables, you would find a new golf instructor."
 |
| Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche |
He continues "...a person's desire to win the teacher's approval can often be exploited - emotionally, financially and sexually...moral intuitions and instincts for self-preservation can always be recast as symptoms of fear and attachment. Consequently, even the most extraordinarily cruel or degrading treatment at the hand of a guru can be interpreted as being for one's own good."
He singles out some well-known "gurus" for criticism, particularly Gurdjieff, Osho, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (graphic), Osel Tendzin, Pam Reynolds (NDE), and Eben Alexander ("Proof of Heaven") (at great length).
Harris found psychedelics useful:
"The positive experiences were more sublime than I could ever have imagined...My 'bad trips' were...the most harrowing hours I have ever endured, and make the notion of hell...perfectly apt."
"I believe that psychedelics may be indispensable for some people - especially those who, like me, need convincing that profound changes in consciousness are possible. After that, it seems wise to find ways of practicing that do not present the same risks. Happily, such methods are widely available."
Concluding, "In fact, we can directly experience that consciousness is never improved or harmed by what it knows. Making this discovery, again and again, is the basis of spiritual life."
"Everything we take ourselves to be...depends upon distinct processes that are spread all over the surface of the brain...The sense that we are unified subjects - the unchanging thinkers of thoughts and experiencers of experience - is an illusion.
Sam admits that his awakening is only sporadic, but increasing.
BTW, this post has been selected by the Science and NonDuality folk for posting on their website for the upcoming SAND meeting in San Jose, CA @ which i'll be speaking on Oct 25. They will also be interviewing me.
Sam Harris is referring to the Buddhist belief in skandhas, the five aggregates of all human beings: bodily matter; sensations; perceptions; mental formations; consciousness. “They are constantly in the process of change and do not constitute a self.”
ReplyDeleteIn “Waking up” Sam Harris uses the terms ‘spiritual’ and ‘mystical’ interchangeably. Just as he says that you do not have to be religious to be spiritual, so too you do not have to believe in God or be religious to be a mystic.
In my free ebook on comparative mysticism, “The Greatest Achievement in Life,” I summarized many similarities, and some differences, among the mystics of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.
Ironically, the man who personally introduced me to mysticism was an atheist who once wrote “God is man’s greatest invention.” Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was also a Nobel astrophysicist at the University of Chicago.
Hi Ron,
ReplyDeletei rarely post comments that reference someone's own books, as that is not what this blog is about, and it can easily get far out of hand, but i read through your comparative mysticism book and found it useful. It is also recommended as you are not charging for it, and important demonstration of your intent.
your diligent efforts to present a balanced viewpoint from many traditions, historical periods, teachers and both genders on the history and sayings of mysticism makes it a good resource for folk. Several of the bibliographies will be very useful.
Thanks for sharing.
stillness
Thanks Gary. I am glad that you found my ebook useful.
ReplyDeleteI respect Sam Harris, but wish he had not included psychedelics. They can lead to altered states of consciousness, both wonderful and terrible, but I do not believe that those are genuine mystical insights.
Hi Ron,
Deletei didn't mention it in this post, but i remain a psychedelic virgin. However, i work w/many folk who have used psychedelics to advantage to get their spiritual work started, as Sam indicated in his paragraph ending w/"Happily such methods are widely available." Seeing what the brain is capable of producing beyond what we believe is "ordinary life" can be very important for some folk.
As i have said in many formats, i have not met anyone who has reached persistent nonduality through psychedelics alone. One case is of someone who took over 2000 high dose LSD trips and was still stuck in his story, only now it was about his xTreme acid taking, purportedly to get rid of his ego.
It is interesting that "top tier" research @ big name research institutions published in "important" journals have demonstrated that magic mushrooms/psilocybin and long term meditation produce virtually identically subjective reports of the mystical states attained, and by the same neural route.
The video "Meditation Works like Magic Mushrooms?" @ http://happinessbeyondthought.blogspot.com/2012/09/is-nondual-awakening-mental-disorder-is.html reviews this research, as does the blogpost "magic mushrooms work like meditation? the latest science".
stillness
Sacred mushrooms are used by Aztec, Mayan and Inca shamans in Latin America. A professor friend from San Francisco was taught their use in Peru and an author friend in New Zealand did so with shamans in Guatemala.
DeleteThey may produce states of consciousness similar to mystics emotionally, mentally and physically, yet not be transformative spiritually. 'Spiritual,' of course, is a slippery word.
Perhaps some day you might find time to do a review of my ebook. I would appreciate that.
Hi Gary,
ReplyDeleteI have found both Harris's and your book useful. I practice a mixture of Vipassana meditation and self inquiry, with a particular interest in getting insight into the selflessness of phenomenon. One question that I have that Harris didn't address (I know you have talked about it some) is: why did the sense of self evolve in the first place? In order for it to have come from natural selection, it must have been a beneficial mutation at some point. I have heard you mention that in today's world, any value it served before is no longer relevant. Could you elaborate on that some. What changed in human history to render a beneficial adaptation moot and even harmful?
Thanks, I appreciate your insight.
Hi Unknown,
DeleteSymbolic consciousness, or our ability to recognize that symbols on a stone, stick, or wall, could represent other things, evolved about 75,000 years ago. Along w/that came the ego/I, and the sense of free will. This happened as our numbers began to grow and we were in larger groups and finally organizations, w/different tasks assigned to different folk and w/leaders and followers.
As you point out, the sense of "free will", complete w/the feelings associated w/it, must have a beneficial adaptation at some point or it wouldn't have manifested. It appears that with the evolution of a "doer", the belief that we were in "charge/control" and were "free" to decide what to do, created a focus on tasks, ownership, attachments, winning/losing, hierarchy, etc. that made that part of the population w/this algorithm more successful. They had a higher success rate at passing their genes and behaviors and learning (memes) on to their children and group.
This worked well until we developed complex social support organizations and w/agriculture had enough food, so that the fear of imminent starvation and attack from other folk or beasts in our immediate environment diminished significantly. Once the lions and tigers and bears were gone, the "free will" and "doer" that had served us so well had to "do" something, so it focused on our social hierarchical positioning and we developed a large area of brain real estate dedicated to this.
Since those fears were largely imagined, as the society got massively complex, it was apparent that the "doer" w/his processor capable of only 7 +/- data points working on one problem were hopefully inadequate. They just couldn't deal w/these complex problems which required huge amounts of data and run the calculations on such a massively complex "entangled" world and all of its interactions . Consequently it became apparent that we were continually failing to be successful, or to control anything, which created anxiety, depression, stress, fear, insecurity, etc.
That's where we are now. It is time to recognize the new reality, as our neuroscience demonstrates, that "free will" is an illusion, that the "I" that is supposed to exercise control is an illusion, and develop a modified operating system that deals w/the reality rather that exists now.
Trust this is useful.
stillness
Yes, beautifully put. Thank you.
DeleteGary, What is your opinion on the fourth way by Ouspensky and Gurdjieff?
ReplyDeleteHi Talat khan,
DeleteDon't know their work well enough to have an opinion.
stillness
gary