The guru-disciple relationship is uniquely powerful and fraught with potential for both rapid transformation and terrible abuse. On one hand, the guru is in a position to cut through the disciple's illusions in a way that may be impossible on one's own.
The guru represents a living example that the goal is possible. On the other hand, a person's longing for liberation makes them vulnerable to exploitation. Unscrupulous gurus can become tyrants or sexual predators, using spiritual ideas to rationalize their behavior while disciples are unable to think critically under their spell. So while the guru-disciple relationship can work, it contains serious potential pitfalls.
Section: 1, Chapter: 5
The great insight of the Eastern contemplative traditions is that while the conventional self is an illusion, it is possible to realize our identity with a deeper level of consciousness. This realization is available in the present moment but is usually obscured by identification with thought. Eastern spirituality focuses on the primacy of mind and changing one's perception as the key to lasting well-being, whereas the West focuses more on changing external circumstances.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
Psychedelic drugs like LSD, psilocybin, and DMT can produce extraordinary states of consciousness that feel personally meaningful and spiritually significant. Users often report the following:
- Profound feelings of awe, sacredness, and gratitude
- Ego-dissolution and a sense of merging with the universe
- Vivid hallucinations of otherworldly landscapes and beings
- Deep psychological insights and a new perspective on life
- Experiences of seeming to transcend space and time
While they can occasion powerful mystical experiences, these experiences alone do not necessarily translate into long-term psychological benefits or spiritual maturity. Psychedelics can also be dangerous if used recklessly.
Section: 1, Chapter: 5
The Buddha didn't teach Buddhism as a faith-based religion, but rather as empirical instructions: If you do X, you will experience Y. Buddhism contains practices anyone can do, without accepting any unjustified beliefs, to experience insights into the nature of one's own mind. The purpose is to cut through the illusion of the self.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
Although spiritual experiences can feel profoundly meaningful, it's a mistake to assume they prove the metaphysical worldviews of the traditions in which they occur. Whether it's the Christian having a born-again experience, the Hindu yogi feeling one with Brahman, or the psychonaut blasting off on DMT, these altered states reveal something about the nature of the human mind - not necessarily ultimate reality.
Each tradition interprets such experiences through the lens of its own beliefs and doctrines, leading to irreconcilable claims. The only thing mystical experiences prove is that consciousness is far more flexible than we typically realize in ordinary states. Spirituality must be based on reason and empiricism, not faith.
Section: 1, Chapter: 5
One can shift between two modes of viewing consciousness, just as one can shift perspectives on a window:
- The window can be looked through to view the world outside, in which case one doesn't notice the window itself.
- Or the window can reflect back one's own image, like a mirror, in which case one notices the window instead of the world.
Likewise, consciousness can either be filled with the outward-facing contents of experience, or attention can turn inward to recognize the mirror of awareness in which the contents appear. Glimpsing the inward-facing nature of mind is difficult because we are usually absorbed in the outward-facing flow of thought and perception.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
"Despite the obvious importance of the unconscious mind, consciousness is what matters to us—not just for the purpose of spiritual practice but in every aspect of our lives. Consciousness is the substance of any experience we can have or hope for, now or in the future...It is easy to see that any further developments in physics, chemistry, or biology will do nothing to close the explanatory gap. Consciousness is just a matter of what things seem like to a subject - and where there is no subject, there is no seeming."
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
One of the most well-known Buddhist meditation practices is vipassana or "insight" meditation. It can be taught in an entirely secular way. The purpose is to cultivate a quality of mind called mindfulness, which is a state of clear, non-judgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant.
Vipassana is the practice of noticing the components of one's experience with equanimity, without grasping at the pleasant or pushing away the unpleasant. This eventually leads to the insight that there is no self that is the enduring experiencer of one's experience.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
At the heart of the mind-body problem lies the mystery of consciousness itself. Philosopher Thomas Nagel defined consciousness as essentially subjective experience - there is "something that it is like" to be a conscious creature.
Consciousness cannot be an illusion, because the very fact that things seem a certain way is what consciousness is in the first place. Even a brain in a vat having delusions is conscious simply by virtue of having experience at all. Consciousness, in this sense, is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
"We are always and everywhere in the presence of reality. Indeed, the human mind is the most complex and subtle expression of reality we have thus far encountered. This should grant profundity to the humble project of noticing what it is like to be you in the present. However numerous your faults, something in you at this moment is pristine—and only you can recognize it.
Open your eyes and see."
Section: 1, Chapter: 6
"We have seen that the sense of self is logically and empirically distinct from many other features of the mind with which it is often conflated. In order to understand it at the level of the brain, therefore, we would need to study people who no longer experienced it."
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
The Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Dzogchen aims to point out the nature of mind to the student directly, without any complicated philosophy or practice.
Instead of striving towards awakening through meditation, the student is invited to recognize the innate wakefulness that is already present - an open, contentless awareness that is naturally free from grasping and the illusion of self. This is done through an introduction called "pointing out instructions" given by the teacher. With this glimpse of the mind's nature, one then practices "taking the goal as the path," resting in pure awareness.
Section: 1, Chapter: 4
Douglas Harding's "Headless Way" uses a simple technique to glimpse the "headless" nature of consciousness:
- Notice that when you look out at the world, you can't see your own head. It's an absence, a "glorious gaping hole" where you expected your head to be.
- Instead of a head, there is just awareness and the world that appears in it. You are not limited to the confines of a head.
- Now notice what happens when you turn your attention 180 degrees and try to look back at the source of awareness, the "looker." You will find there is nothing there - no head, no face, no self.,
- This "headless" view can be directly glimpsed in any moment, as a matter of immediate experience rather than belief or philosophy. With practice, the illusion of being a self "in here" looking out at a world "out there" begins to dissolve.
Section: 1, Chapter: 4
There is a deep paradox in spiritual practice - although we have to make an effort to meditate, taking up the practice reinforces the sense of self that is trying to improve itself through meditation.
Meditation only works to the degree that we can let go of the meditator and simply accept what is appearing in consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. This doesn't mean resignation or passivity - we should absolutely work to change things for the better. But on a moment-to-moment basis, the deepest form of well-being comes from complete acceptance of our experience as it is, without grasping or resistance.
Section: 1, Chapter: 5
Meditation is the practice of paying close attention to the contents of consciousness in a way that goes beyond our habitual ways of thinking. It reveals the following:
- The mind has a strong tendency to wander and get caught up in thought.
- Thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are constantly appearing and vanishing on their own - consciousness is like a flowing stream.
- There is no stable self to be found behind the flux of experience - just the flow of experience itself.
- It is possible to observe the contents of consciousness in a clear, non-reactive way, without identifying with them. This is the essence of mindfulness.
With practice, one can learn to disentangle from thoughts and simply be aware of them arising and passing away, leading to insights into the nature of the mind.
Section: 1, Chapter: 4
"The form of transcendence that appears to link directly to ethical behavior and human well-being is that which occurs in the midst of ordinary waking life. It is by ceasing to cling to the contents of consciousness—to our thoughts, moods, and desires—that we make progress. This project does not in principle require that we experience more content. The freedom from self that is both the goal and foundation of spiritual life is coincident with normal perception and cognition—though, as I have already said, this can be difficult to realize."
Section: 1, Chapter: 5
It is possible to realize directly, through a simple shift of perspective, that consciousness does not feel like a self. If you turn attention inward and look for the "I" that seems to be the subject of experience, you won't find one. There will just be consciousness - a field of seeing, hearing, thinking, and feeling without any fixed point in the middle.
This "headless" state, as author Douglas Harding termed it, can be glimpsed immediately but is usually overlooked because attention is absorbed in the outward-facing contents of consciousness rather than the inward-facing context in which they appear.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
There are two main approaches to spiritual insight:
- Gradual practice - Meditative techniques and conceptual frameworks are used to cultivate certain qualities of mind (concentration, equanimity, compassion, etc.) with enlightenment as a distant goal to methodically work towards. This is the most common approach.
- Sudden realization - The inherently awake, non-dual nature of consciousness is pointed out directly by the teacher, with no need for gradual cultivation. One practices by simply resting in this "natural state." Traditions like Zen and Dzogchen take this approach.
The gradual approach gives one a progressive path to follow but can get overly fixated on future attainment. The sudden approach points to ultimate truth immediately but can lead to a lack of integration, as ego-clinging tends to re-arise.
Section: 1, Chapter: 4
Upon close inspection, the conventional sense of self begins to dissolve. We normally feel like we are a subject riding around inside our heads, behind our eyes, having an experience. But where is this inner subject to be found? If you look for it - behind your eyes, in your head, in your body - you won't find any center to consciousness or seat of the self. In fact, in direct experience, it's not clear what "I" even refers to - there is just consciousness and its contents.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
"We spend our lives lost in thought. The question is, what should we make of this fact? In the West, the answer has been "Not much." In the East, especially in contemplative traditions like those of Buddhism, being distracted by thought is understood to be the very wellspring of human suffering."
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
"One cannot travel far in spiritual circles without meeting people who are fascinated by the 'near-death experience' (NDE). The phenomenon has been described as follows: 'Frequently recurring features include feelings of peace and joy; a sense of being out of one's body and watching events going on around one's body and, occasionally, at some distant physical location; a cessation of pain; seeing a dark tunnel or void; seeing an unusually bright light, sometimes experienced as a 'Being of Light' that radiates love and may speak or otherwise communicate with the person; encountering other beings, often deceased persons whom the experiencer recognizes; experiencing a revival of memories or even a full life review, sometimes accompanied by feelings of judgment; seeing some 'other realm,' often of great beauty; sensing a barrier or border beyond which the person cannot go; and returning to the body, often reluctantly.'"
Section: 1, Chapter: 5
True spirituality is not about having mystical experiences or holding certain beliefs - it's about recognizing what consciousness is like prior to the arising of concepts, beliefs, and personal identity. This recognition is available in any moment, not in some distant future after years of striving.
Simply look closely at what you are calling "I" and the background of pure awareness will become obvious. Enlightenment is a direct insight into the real nature of the mind, not an altered state to be attained through effort. With practice, one can learn to drop into this way of seeing more and more readily, leading to a decisive liberation from suffering.
Section: 1, Chapter: 6
