This book focuses on the relation between science and religion. Alan Wallace argues that for its adherents scientific naturalism has taken on the role of an ersatz religion, with scientism functioning as the fundamentalist branch of that creed. A former Buddhist monk, Wallace brings to bear the ideas of Buddhism about the ultimate non-duality of subject and object. He argues that the inquiry into the nature of consciousness can greatly profit by incorporating some of the methods of the great contemplative traditions of the world, including that of the Christian West.