Nothing in this book needs to be accepted on faith. Although my focus is on human subjectivity – I am, after all, talking about the nature of experience itself – all my assertions can be tested in the laboratory of your own life. In Fact, my goal is to encourage you to do just that.

Readers who are loyal to any one spiritual tradition or who specialize in the academic study of religion may view my approach as the quintessence of arrogance. I consider it, rather, a symptom of impatience.

Seeking, finding, maintaining, and safeguarding out well-being is the great project to which we all are devoted, whether or not we choose to think in these terms. This is not to say that we want mere pleasure or the easiest possibly life. Many things require extraordinary effort to accomplish, and some of us learn to enjoy the struggle. Any athlete knows that certain kinds of pain can be exquisitely pleasurable. The burn of lifting weights, for instance, would be excruciating if it were a symptom of terminal illness. But because it is associated with health and fitness, most people find it enjoyable. Here we see that cognition and emotions are not separate. The way we think about experience can completely determine how we feel about it.

The esoteric doctrines found within every religious tradition are not all derived from the same insight. Nor are they equally empirical, logical, parsimonious, or wise. They don’t always point to the same underlying reality – and when they do, they don’t do it equally well. Nor are all these teaching equality suited for export beyond the cultures that first conceived them.

Making distinctions of this kind, however, is deeply unfashionable in intellectual circles. In my experience, people do not want to hear that Islam supports violence in a way that Jainism doesn’t, or that Buddhism offers a truly sophisticated, empirical approach to understanding the human mind, whereas Christianity presents an almost perfect impediment to such understanding. In many circles, to make invidious comparisons of this kind is to stand convicted of bigotry.

In one sense, all religions and spiritual practices must address the same reality – because people of all faiths have glimpsed many of the same truths. Any view of consciousness and the cosmos that is available to the human mind can, in principle, be appreciated by anyone. It is not surprising, therefore, that individual Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists have given voice to some of the same insights and intuitions. This merely initiates that human cognition and emotion run deeper than religion. It does not suggest that all religions understand our spiritual possibilities equally well.

There is no question that many religious disciplines can produce interesting experiences in suitable minds. It should be clear, however, that engaging a faith-based practice, whatever its effect, is not the same as investigating the nature of one’s mind absent any doctrinal assumptions. Statements of this kind may seem starkly antagonistic towards Abrahamic religions, but they are nonetheless true: One can speak about Buddhism shorn of its miracles and irrational assumptions. The same cannot be said of Christianity or Islam.

Although many Buddhists have a superstitious and cultic attachment to the historical Buddha, the teaching of Buddhism present him as an ordinary human being who succeeded in understanding the nature of his own mind.

Vulnerability comes in pretending to be someone you are not.

I’m quite happy to sever relationships whenever the need arises.

This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless. 

A white lie is simply a denial of these realities. It is a refusal to offer honest guidance in a storm. Even on so touchy a subject, lying seems a clear failure of friendship.

I’m more comfortable relying on the words that actually come out of a person’s mouth, rather than on my powers of telepathy, to know what he is asking.

a person may be impeccably truthful while being mistaken.

To speak truthfully is to accurately represent one’s beliefs. But candor offers no assurance that one’s beliefs about the world are true.

People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs—that is, the more a person’s well-being depends upon a correct understanding of the world—the more consequential the lie.

To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.

I sometimes wonder whether the line between those of us who don’t do such things and the few who do is as impermeable as we like to think.