Experiencing Nonduality on the Scientific Path: A Review of Sam Harris’s Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion

Abstract

Regarding one’s felt sense of agency or “self” in the control of one’s actions, Alan Watts once said, “There is a colossal disparity between the way in which most individuals experience their own existence, and the way in which the individual is described in [the] sciences....” Neuroscientist and philosopher, Sam Harris, in Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion tackles the disparity problem between scientific understanding and subjective experience by recognizing that operationalizing terms such as spirituality, meditation, and enlightenment within a secular framework may lead us to mechanisms for relieving suffering. To accomplish this, Harris invites each of his readers to conduct “an experiment within the laboratory of [one’s] own mind.” Incorporating established principles of behavior into an exploration of core themes within Waking Up, this review proposes to promote radical behaviorism as an ally to Sam Harris’s scientific conceptualization of spiritual practice.

As a student of radical behaviorism, I hold a strong conviction to a nondualistic (i.e., monistic) worldview, supported by the experimental analysis of behavior, that all behavior is fully determined by genetic, physiological, and environmental variables, and nothing else. However, even as I write these opening sentences, there does seem to be something more at play. Throughout my daily experiences, I tend to behave, and occasionally feel, as though a separate entity enclosed within my skin somehow maneuvers freely around the deterministic world making decisions, solving problems, and referring to itself as “I.” And I suspect the same is true for your own experience. How are we to reconcile this contradiction between what we objectively know about the world and how we subjectively experience that world?

As a student of Buddhist ideas and practices, I face a similar contradiction. Although the Buddhist tradition did not emerge from a scientific foundation, its claims have arisen from an empirical practice of objective self-observation, otherwise known as meditation. Over 2,000 years ago, the Buddha landed on a discovery that has since been supported in the West by the experimental methods of biology, neuroscience, and behavior analysis: our actions in the world are not the result of a separate initiating self but rather the product of our personal and ancestral histories as manifested within each moment of our present experience. In addition to this objective discovery, the Buddha proclaimed an ethical maxim: our ignorance to the truth of “no-self” may be the fundamental cause of human suffering. And herein lies the contradiction. Despite my personal efforts and a verbal commitment to the Buddha’s proclamation, I continue to find myself swept away by interpersonal circumstances that generate self-focused states of pride, shame, blame, annoyance, and anxiety; and the list goes on.

The empirical practices of Western science and Eastern meditation have much to offer one another. Neuroscientist and philosopher, Sam Harris (2014/2015), in his book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion embraces both traditions and tackles the disparity problem between scientific understanding and subjective experience by recognizing that operationalizing terms such as “spirituality,” “meditation,” and “enlightenment” within a secular framework may lead us to the basic mechanisms for relieving human suffering. To accomplish this, Harris invites each of his readers to conduct “an experiment within the laboratory of [one’s] own mind” (p. 82). Waking Up stands alone as an invaluable contribution to both scientific and spiritual fields. Thus, I encourage anyone with an interest in such issues to embark upon Harris’s guided experiment for themselves. Incorporating established principles of behavior into an exploration of core themes within his book, this review proposes to promote radical behaviorism as a unique ally to Sam Harris’s scientific conceptualization of spiritual practice.

Witnessing Nonduality through the Experimental Analysis of Behavior

According to Harris (2014/2015), seeing through the illusion of an initiating self may be regarded as the fundamental goal of spiritual practice (p. 9). Given its demonstrations of extraordinary orderliness between environment and behavior, the experimental analysis of behavior may provide unique insight into this spiritual principle of no-self. Take for instance a study on "anxiety" conducted by Estes and Skinner (1941). With rats as subjects, the experimenters demonstrated that initial brief presentations of an unconditioned aversive stimulus preceded by a 5-min tone had no disruptive effect on a steady rate of positively reinforced lever-pressing. However, after several days of running the experiment, the rats’ productive activity was almost completely suppressed during the presentation of the tone, only to resume at nearly full strength in the absence of the tone. One need only to examine the cumulative records within the published study to find the results illuminating, but for the researcher who witnesses these behavioral outcomes in real time, the observations are a uniquely important experience.

Although we have no data reflecting the rats’ behavior during the sound of the tone, I invite you to conduct the following thought experiment. Imagine yourself as the researcher observing a rat’s activity throughout each of the controlled conditions. In the initial phases we see the rat unhesitatingly press a lever for food pellets at a rate which generates visible signs of activity we may describe as “well-being.” The rat is undisturbed by the initial presentation of the neutral tone, and despite any momentary annoyance of the unconditioned stimulus, the rat perseveres with lever pressing without interruption. However, after several days of running the experiment, we begin to see some surprising changes to the rat’s behavior. In the presence of the tone, the rat appears to lose all interest in the available positive reinforcement for lever-pressing. It cowers in a manner we may describe as “anxious.” It repetitively licks its paws in a self-soothing manner. If we introduce a new rat into the same environment at this time, our experimental subject viciously aggresses toward it. Any prior signs of well-being seem to have altogether disappeared from this individual’s life.

Between two different contexts, we notice two strikingly different “rats” within a single organism. And, most important, we directly witness these distinct repertoires as products of environmental contingencies (i.e., respondent and operant conditioning). We recognize the interdependent and nondualistic relationship between behavior and environment; in a contingency-unit analysis, behavior and environment are two sides of the same coin. While observing the experimental control over our rat’s behavior, we become enlightened to the fact that no inner agent is personally responsible. However, despite directly witnessing our subject’s repertoires as nondualistic phenomena controlled by environmental variables, we may not yet be prepared to see and describe this same truth about our own complex responding to the countless aversive or positively reinforcing contingencies in daily life.

Dualistic versus Nondualistic Verbal and Perceptual Behavior

An important theme within Waking Up is the distinction between “dualistic” and “nondualistic” meditation practices. To illustrate these distinctions, let’s draw an analogy to the practices of the verbal community. In the field of behavior, an individual’s actions may be described in one of at least two general ways depending on the speaker’s audience. Take, for example, a description of the rat’s productive behavior in our earlier experiment. While speaking with a casual acquaintance, one may say, “The rat is pressing the lever.” Because it describes the rat as an agent of its own activity, we will call this dualistic verbal behavior. Given its convenience in common discourse, dualistic verbal behavior tends to be the grammatical form most differentially reinforced by verbal communities of daily life. Thus, we tend to both see and describe actions in this dualistic manner as our default forms of perceptual and verbal behavior. On the other hand, when describing the rat’s actions to a fellow behavior analyst, one’s descriptions may take on an analyzed nondualistic form, such as, “Lever-pressing is evoked by context in which it has previously been reinforced.” Each form of description, and perception, has a distinct advantage over the other depending on the circumstance. As noted, the first type of description is a product of the contingencies of daily life, whereas the second belongs to the scientific community. In addition to the scientific, nondualistic grammatical form, we can also introduce an alternative nondualistic form of description that may be uniquely suited to contingencies of spiritual practice: “Lever-pressing is happening.”

When analyzing the behavior of the researcher in the above experiment there are two stimulus control contingencies relevant to the present discussion. The observed environmental control over the rat’s behavior is part of a contingency that controls the experimenter’s behavior of seeing and describing the nondualistic nature of the rat’s behavior. But another more subtle contingency affects the way the researcher sees and describes his own behavior. As a product of the competitive contingencies in the scientific and academic community, the researcher’s perceptions and descriptions of his scientific achievement are likely to be dualistic in form. The researcher remains inescapably ignorant of the entire history that led to the shaping of his scientific repertoire, and may therefore behave and feel as the prime mover of the experiment and its outcomes. Furthermore, the verbal communities throughout the researcher’s daily life have likely shaped repertoires of seeing and describing his successes or mistakes through a dualistic lens of self-esteem or self-responsibility (Skinner, 1989) rather than through a nondualistic lens of genetic, physiological, and environmental control. To perceive one’s own repertoire as a product of natural selection and environmental contingencies, a different set of experimental procedures may be needed.

Dualistic and Nondualistic Practices as Experimental Variables

If all our thoughts, words, actions, and perceptions are solely the products of genetic, physiological, and reflex or operant contingencies, what is there for an “I” to do to recognize its own nondualistic nature? Let’s return to Sam Harris’s invitation to conduct an experiment into our own minds (i.e., our own repertoires). Because the complex behavior involved in self-observation is inaccessible to outside observers, the critical variables are not controllable to the degree demonstrated in an experimental analysis. But that should not deter us from taking an experimental attitude toward the project.

Despite the lack of tight control over our own experimental conditions, we still benefit from manipulating and operationalizing the independent and dependent variables that are within reach. The first such independent variable is a set of guided practices referred to by Harris as dualistic meditation. As its name suggests, these practices make no explicit effort to, as Harris describes it, “cut through the illusion of self.” They consist of stimulus control procedures that shift one’s perceptual and verbal behavior from the continuous and often unhelpful stream of dualistic self-talk to the observations of specific stimuli from one’s immediate experience. For instance, in the guided breathing meditation provided by Harris (2014/2015, pp. 39–40), the practitioner is coached to discriminatively respond to the felt stimulus properties of one’s own breathing, to notice any distracted behavior, and to respond to distraction by returning to the breath.

The second independent variable is a set of guided practices that Harris calls nondualistic meditation. These are procedures designed to shift behavior from our default repertoires to an alternative perspective that objectively observes the subtle traces of the repertoire, felt as a “self,” momentarily at strength for the meditator. Last, the variables that are “measured” (i.e., our dependent variables) include any noticeable short- or long-term changes to one’s own verbal, perceptual, and ethical repertoires resulting from practicing each of the strategies. Readers can find examples of nondualistic guided practices in Waking Up, titled “Beyond Duality” (Harris, 2014/215, pp. 138–140) and “Look for Your Head” (pp. 145–146). In addition, a vast collection of both dualistic and nondualistic guided practices from numerous meditation teachers can be found in Sam Harris’s online Waking Up app.

Among my favorite resources within the Waking Up app include the conceptual dialogues between Harris and other experts on topics such as the advantages and disadvantages of dualistic versus nondualistic practices, the nature of enlightenment, the possibility of stability in one’s enlightened experience, and ethical issues related to the interpersonal relationships between historical and contemporary “gurus” and their students within spiritual traditions. For instance, Harris engages in multiple recorded conversations with his friend and fellow meditation expert, Joseph Goldstein, on many nuanced issues related to the two styles of practice. In a conversation segment titled “Selflessness vs. Mental Illness,” Goldstein says that the nondualistic and dualistic traditions “can serve one another rather than be in opposition.” He stresses that “each one has its danger and the other is the corrective for the danger of the other.” There are countless benefits to practicing meditation, the details of which are beyond the scope of this book review. But readers can find a brief overview of some of the measured outcomes of meditation practices within the psychological literature provided by Harris (2014/2015, pp. 122–123). By confining this current discussion to the dualistic and nondualistic outcomes of each practice, I offer a brief behavioral interpretation of some of the benefits and potential hindrances that may result from practicing each of the two traditional forms.

Potential Outcomes of Dualistic and Nondualistic Practices

When practicing dualistic meditation, such as observing momentary properties of one’s own breath, the meditator can enter the practice from virtually any behavioral state or disposition. For instance, one can sit down and observe the breath as a person behaving with a dualistic sense of self-esteem, self-confidence, self-responsibility, self-loathing, etc. Regardless of “who” is meditating on the breath, the person tends to behave in a perceptual sense that “I am feeling my breath.” This is especially true when explicit operant strategies (e.g., covertly labeling each breath) are implemented to sustain one’s attention. With continued practice, the forms of the explicit strategies tend to grow increasingly subtle, the breath itself may become noticeably calmer and reduced in magnitude, and a shift in stimulus control unfolds from dualistically perceiving the self-control of breathing to a nondualistic recognition that breathing is happening independently of an inner agent. However, just as our behavioral researcher who notices the nonduality of lever-pressing may not recognize the nondualistic nature of his observational repertoire, the dualistic meditator who notices the nonduality of breathing may not yet notice the nonduality of noticing.

As mentioned, the full range of variables responsible for meditative experience are too vast, complex, and inaccessible to fully control for and directly witness by outside observers. This limitation also holds true for the meditator’s own observations. Regardless of the precision of one’s own observational repertoire, no one can witness the full range of genetic, neurobiological, or environmental variables responsible for one’s own experience. This unavoidable ignorance results in a tendency for dualistic meditators to misperceive their meditative outcomes as the successes or failures of the felt repertoires, or “selves” (Skinner, 1989), seemingly in control of their meditation. Such false perceptions of self-control are the pitfalls of dualistic practice for which nondualistic practice is said to function as a corrective.

When behaving as a person with self-esteem, self-responsibility, or any other dualistic viewpoint, there remains a possibility for us to objectively glimpse, from a different perspective, the nondualistic nature of the repertoire itself. This stimulus control shift may occur as a result of practicing formal nondualistic meditation, or it may occur incidentally as a result of an unusual life experience, such as watching a live performance from your favorite musical artist, witnessing the Grand Canyon, listening to a nondualistic lecture by Alan Watts or Joan Tollifson on the Waking Up app, or even while reading Darwinian or Skinnerian interpretations on the nature of life, such as the contemporary writings of Richard Dawkins or David Palmer, respectively. When such glimpses (Kelly, 2019) occur, conventional forms of self-talk seem to drop away, there may be a feeling of pure unconditioned perception, and the noticed properties of the objective nondualistic repertoire may, in turn, evoke feelings of spaciousness, boundlessness, formlessness, oneness with the environment, and perhaps even a feeling of complete freedom from any source of control altogether.

Such glimpses have an almost indescribable impact on one’s well-being and may strengthen feelings of unconditional “love” toward others, which may in turn increase one’s tendency to behave generously toward others with noncontingent positive reinforcement (Skinner, 1980, p. 132). But as the term “glimpse” suggests, the experiences are fleeting, and we are inevitably thrown back into dualistic contingencies of problem-solving, competition, comparison, planning for our futures, and remembering past events. When recalling our glimpsed experiences to others, and to ourselves, we may run into problems that, similar to those observed in dualistic practice, result from an ignorance of controlling variables.

It is worth noting that a feeling of formlessness, boundlessness, or freedom from control is not evidence of formlessness, boundlessness, or freedom any more than a feeling of agency is evidence of an initiating self. Nonetheless, it is not uncommon to find teachers, gurus, or self-proclaimed buddhas (i.e., “awakened ones”) within spiritual fields assert claims about their supposed “enlightenment” as having mystical properties that not only transcend notions of a “self” but also appear to transcend the realm of conditioning altogether. To illustrate the potential dangers related to one’s ignorance of controlling variables during nondualistic experiences, consider the following quote from a self-proclaimed enlightened buddha and nondualistic teacher called Osho, some of whose ethical missteps as a leader of a commune are discussed by Harris in chapter 5, titled “Gurus, Death, Drugs, and Other Puzzles.” The following quote was spoken by Osho to his followers and transcribed within the opening paragraphs of his book Freedom:

The Russian physiologist Pavlov, and the American psychologist Skinner, are 99.9 percent right about man: they believe that man is a beautiful machine, that’s all. There is no soul in him. I say 99.9 percent they are right; they only miss by a small margin. In that small margin are the buddhas, the awakened ones. But, they can be forgiven because [they] never came across a buddha, [they] came across millions of people like you. (Osho, 2000, p. 2)

Osho appears to understand just enough about behavioral science to be reckless with his assertions. Considering his status as a world-famous teacher on nonduality, Osho’s claim that he belongs to 0.1% of the human population who have somehow transcended the bounds of behavioral principles is ironically dualistic and dangerously narcissistic.

A Scientific Strategy toward Solving Problems of Meditation Practice

Throughout Skinner’s writings, an important distinction is made between the experimental analysis of behavior, which demonstrates the lawful environmental control of an organism’s activity, and an interpretative analysis of behavior. A scientific interpretation offers an explanation of a given behavioral phenomenon of unknown origin by considering the limited available facts and filling in the gaps with a plausible account of the event exclusively within the framework of empirically validated behavioral principles. Consider the following passage by Skinner (1969, p. 228):

Science often talks about things it cannot see or measure. When a man tosses a penny into the air, it must be assumed that he tosses the earth beneath him downward. It is quite out of the question to see or measure the effect on the earth, but the effect must be assumed for the sake of a consistent account. An adequate science of behavior must consider events taking place within the skin of the organism, not as physiological mediators of behavior, but as part of behavior itself. It can deal with these events without assuming that they have any special nature or must be known in any special way. The skin is not that important as a boundary. Private and public events have the same kinds of physical dimensions.

Waking Up is an account of spirituality written in the tradition of scientific interpretation. Sam Harris has laid the groundwork for further interpretive work by objectively reviewing the practices and philosophies of contemporary religious traditions, published studies on meditation from the psychological literature, data extracted from neuroscientific research, thought experiments on the nature of “self,” and his personal experiences resulting from decades of practice in dualistic and nondualistic meditation. Radical behaviorism may contribute to the project of scientifically interpreting spiritual phenomena within an empirical framework that assumes that each instance of behavior, including an experience of “enlightenment,” is an instance of stimulus control—analyzed as a reflex, an operant, or a novel response unit under the multiple control of established controlling stimuli. And each stimulus control unit is bound by corresponding physical processes, such as habituation, sensitization, discrimination, generalization, reinforcement, extinction, punishment, and topographically bound stimulus and response classes.

As we have seen, in contrast with the variables witnessed in an experimental analysis of behavior, nondualistic glimpses lack the direct recognition of all of the relevant controlling variables. However, with the practice of scientific interpretation we may safeguard against the dangers that can result from drawing mystical or agency-based conclusions that go beyond the facts. To illustrate this, I would like to share the following verbal “glimpse” experiment extrapolated from the practice of scientific interpretation that can be practiced while observing any ongoing behavior from within one’s immediate environment (e.g., one’s own breath or bodily sensation, a pleasant or aversive emotional experience, watching a fast-food employee cook your order, hearing a child crying in the supermarket, seeing a dog chase its tail, or even one’s own dualistic sense of self or agency). While observing the ongoing activity, covertly label the behavior (X) to yourself by varying the description within the following grammatical frames and notice any corresponding perceptual shifts related to a sense of agency which may occur between the different descriptions:

1. “I see/hear/feel X”

2. “X is happening”

3. “X is happening as a result of genetic, physiological, and environmental variables”

4. “X is happening as a result of genetic, physiological, and environmental variables, and nothing else”

Given the amount of verbal activity with these types of practices, initial attempts may be slow to produce a noticeable perceptual effect. However, in accordance with Skinner’s (1957) interpretation of self-verbal behavior, continued practice can significantly reduce the magnitude of the conventional verbal forms in favor of more “subtle and swift” (p. 445) forms that are unique to the relationship between oneself as a speaker and oneself a listener. In other words, as one’s fluency develops with verbally mediated practices, the salience of the verbal forms reduces to increasingly subtle dimensions, thereby increasing the salience of perceptual shifts.

Closing Remarks

The term “enlightenment” may refer to a perceptual experience in which one sees the absence of an agent or “self” often implied to initiate the actions of an individual. Throughout this review I have outlined three contingencies that may control different aspects of enlightenment: (1) in the experimental analysis of behavior, a researcher is enlightened to the nondualistic nature of an organism’s actions under tightly controlled conditions; (2) the practitioner of dualistic meditation may become gradually enlightened to the nondualistic reality of a particular topography of behavior from one’s own repertoire (e.g., breathing, sitting, walking, etc.); (3) the practitioner of nondualistic meditation may achieve an enlightening nondualistic glimpse of the subtle no-self properties intrinsic to one’s own dualistic and nondualistic repertoires.

Among the conceptual issues discussed within both the Waking Up book and the Waking Up app is whether it is possible for someone to exist in a state of fully stabilized enlightenment. Of course, such claims have been made. The myth of the Buddha depicts him as having achieved this permanent state overnight under the Bodhi tree. But what are the physical dimensions of such a permanent behavioral state? What contingencies of enlightened behavior remain stable across the constantly changing environmental conditions throughout a person’s life? Any assertions made about a spiritual experience that claim to transcend the empirical facts about human behavior should be put to an experimental, or at least interpretive, test before we blindly accept the metaphysical claim. Some practitioners may object to “diminishing,” a mystical experience to an analysis of behavioral contingencies. For instance, what is wrong with appealing to mystical or agency variables so long as they satisfy the practitioners of a given spiritual tradition? In a lecture titled On Having a Poem, Skinner (1972) addressed this very challenge in response to analogous unscientific claims of agency in the origin of creative behavior. In closing, I have provided Skinner’s response below with minor substitutions (in brackets) to fit the current context of meditation and enlightenment:

The answer lies in the future of [meditation]. To accept a wrong explanation because it flatters us is to run the risk of missing a right one—one which in the long run may offer more by way of “satisfaction”. . . . To wait for genius or a genie is to make a virtue of ignorance. If [enlightenment] is a good thing, if we want more of it and better, and if [meditating] is a rewarding experience, then we should look afresh at its sources.

Data Availability

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.