[RC] Atheist Sam Harris -closet Buddhist

[BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community]

Religion News Service
 
   
Sam Harris wants atheists – and everyone  else – to get spirituality
_Kimberly  Winston_ (http://www.religionnews.com/author/kimberlywinston/)  
| September 10, 2014 
 
 
(RNS) Uber-atheist Sam Harris is getting all spiritual. 
In his new book, “_Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion_ 
(http://www.samharris.org/waking-up) ,” the  usually outspoken critic of 
religion describes how spirituality can and must be  divorced from religion if 
the 
human mind is to reach its full potential. 
“Our world is dangerously riven by religious doctrines that all educated  
people should condemn,” he writes in the book, but adds: “There is more to  
understanding the human condition than science and secular culture generally 
 admit.” 
The prescription, Harris holds, is Buddhist-based mindfulness meditation. A 
 Stanford-trained neuroscientist, Harris is a long-time practitioner of 
Buddhist  meditation. He said everyone can, through meditation, achieve a “
shift in  perspective” by moving beyond a sense of self to reach an 
enlightening 
sense of  connectedness — a spirituality. 
Spirituality “is a name for all of the deliberate efforts people can make 
to  cut through the illusion of the self, the illusion that there is a 
thinker in  addition to the thoughts, or an ego as it is often called,” Harris, 
47, said in  a telephone interview. “Self-transcendence is the foundation of 
what I am  calling spirituality.” 
But, he warns, conflating mindfulness meditation or spirituality with  
anything supernatural — from the forgiving love of a Christian God to the  
cosmology of Buddhism — is a path to nowhere. 
“My goal,” he writes in the book, “is to pluck the diamond from the 
esoteric  dunghill of religion.”
 
 
“Waking Up” has been well-received by the general press. _Writing in The 
New York Times,_ 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-between-godliness-and-godlessness.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias:r,{";
1":"RI:9"}&_r=0)  columnist Frank Bruni described  it as, “so entirely of 
this moment, so keenly in touch with the growing number  of Americans who are 
willing to say that they do not find the succor they crave,  or a truth 
that makes sense to them, in organized religion.” 
But the book’s real success rests with Harris’ core audience:  atheists.  
Many of his erstwhile followers credit Harris with launching New Atheism –  
an aggressive form of non-belief that calls for the eradication of religion –
  with his 2004 book “_The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of 
Reason_ (http://www.samharris.org/the-end-of-faith) ,”  and have little 
patience for the trappings of faith. 
“I know for a fact that many atheists are put off by Sam Harris’ word  
choices,” like “spirituality” and “transcendence,”  said Dave Muscato,  
director of communications for _American Atheists_ (http://www.atheists.org/) . 
He said some atheists will find “a  connection to Sam Harris’ spirituality 
while others (will) see no need for  it.” 
Harris is aware of the problem of reaching atheists with spiritual language 
—  he addresses it in the book — but he is adamant that a failure to 
understand  spiritual experiences outside the framework of faith forms “the 
hole”
 in  secularism. 
“There is no modern, scientific, skeptical context in which to unpack  
spiritual experiences,” Harris said. “People know they have had these  
experiences and then they hear atheists or skeptics discount them. There is no  
shelf in the atheist library for these deeply transformative experiences and  
they are left with absurd religious stories and doctrines by which to 
understand  them.” 
But there is plenty in “Waking Up” that will delight Harris’ most militant 
 atheist readers. The world’s religions, he writes, are “mere intellectual 
ruins”  and its objects of devotion are “epileptics, schizophrenics, or 
frauds.” 
“But I now understood,” he writes, “that important psychological truths 
can  be found in the rubble.” 
Harris is not the first atheist to suggest nonbelievers should mine the  
world’s religious traditions for wisdom or beneficial practices. Philosopher 
_Alain de Botton_ (http://alaindebotton.com/)  and humanist  _Chris Stedman_ 
(http://faitheistbook.com/)  have written  books that explore the 
possibilities, and nonbelievers have been flocking to  so-called “atheist 
churches” 
such as the _Sunday Assembly_ 
(http://www.religionnews.com/2013/11/25/atheists-need-church-sunday-assembly-prompts-controversy/)
 . 
Harris’ description of his own spiritual experiences achieved through  
meditation shares common ground with those of religious people. In the most  
eyebrow-raising scene in the book, he describes standing on the edge of the Sea 
 of Galilee — Jesus’ old stomping grounds — losing his sense of self and 
finding  “a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts.” 
“If I were a Christian, I would undoubtedly have  interpreted this  
experience in Christian terms,” he writes — perhaps evidence of the Holy 
Spirit.  “
But I am simply someone who is making his best effort to be a rational 
human  being.” 
And that is the key difference Harris is after in the book — spiritual  
experiences are not proof of God, but are proof of the power and complexity of  
the human mind. 
Will that distinction be enough to keep his atheist followers? Peter  
Boghossian, author of “_A  Manual for Creating Atheists_ 
(http://peterboghossian.com/) ,” another book that calls for the abandonment  
of religion, thinks 
so. 
“What Harris is trying to do is say, you can experience these states 
without  making supernatural claims,” he said. “People do have these 
experiences 
and you  don’t need to believe in angels or reincarnation or to explain 
them, you don’t  need to rely on old ancient books to explain states of 
consciousness.” 
Harris is creating his own opportunities to explain his version of  
spirituality. He has shunned the usual book tour to stage, at his own expense, 
a  
string of fall appearances from Los Angeles to  Boston.

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