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The Natural Mind: An Investigation of Drugs and the Higher Consciousness

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It is one of life's unexpected pleasures to discover Doctor Weil's original trail-blazing book on consciousness now revised and re-released. This book is a genuine countercultural classic. Along with millions of others, I have watched with interest as Doctor Weil's writing career has progressed from his concern with drug use and consciousness into his current writings educating the American public as to the values of wholistic alternative medical practices. Yet, most of his new fans are unfamiliar with this earlier work. Remedy that one fast, friend! With the publication of this book in the 1970s Weil established himself as a singular and original thinker not bound by the traditional and nearly exclusively rational allopathic medical viewpoints promulgated in western medical education. In spite of his eminent credentials as a Harvard-educated physician, Weil debunks conventional wisdom as to drug use and the so-called drug problem. As Weil states in the book, contemporary society doesn't have a drug problem so much as it has a consciousness problem, one exacerbated by the increasing use of rational thought as the exclusively legitimate path to knowing and understanding ourselves as well as the world around us. Instead, Weil counsels the reader as to how the act of recognizing the role of one's attitude and personal intellectual/ mental approach to experience can positively or negatively affect the nature of one's perceptions, experiences, and consciousness. His viewpoints and insights regarding the relative properties and values of inductive versus deductive reasoning is worth the price of the book alone. Wow! I haven't had this much fun anticipating anything since my lady friend came back from her sabbatical in London. Now we won't have to haunt the old used books stores in search of old copies of Doctor Weil's work. Enjoy!

An excellent book about the inner workings of the mind.This book is a must read for those who have read Dr. Weil'srecent books about health and self care.The natural mind lays the ground work for these latter books, and is as relevant now as when it was first written in the early seventies.

'There is none who is worthy of my love or hatred'. - Krishna, Bhagavad Gita.

The Natural Mind by Andrew Weil is not so much concerned with drugs per se as it is with the nature of consciousness. Having obviously experienced profound mystical states of being, Weil outlines his 'conceptual model' of a world in which the 'limitless' powers of the mind have been freed from the restraints of non-intuitive, 'straight' thinking reponsible for virtually all our social problems and allowed, via 'non-ordinary', or 'stoned' thinking, to restore sanity, balance and health to our Western world.

It is vital to stress the overwhelming nature of attaining the highest levels of consciousness, through such methods as meditation. It is difficult to understand where the more visionary aspects of Weil's beliefs come from if we are unable to accept the self-authenticating validity of these experiences. They leave us - at least initially - with virtually no doubts as to the perfect rightness of the spiritual and psychological insights gained.

To my mind, the most valuable of these insights is emotional detachment from personal prejudices and biased thinking. The experience of highest consciousness permits us to look at social, personal and medical problems with a fresh perspective and find effective solutions, rather than continue using methods that have patently failed and too often only exacerbated them.

Weil shows how the problem of drugs has been so mismanaged that instead of facts (alcohol and tobacco, our two most damaging and addictive drugs, are considered safer than relatively harmless ones such as cocaine, and especially marijuana), we prefer to hear only the 'evidence' of 'experts' who pander to our fears and prejudices.

People are using substances, Weil asserts, because of an innate need to achieve an 'altered state of consciousness', in other words, to get 'high'. By linking this need to the ultimate high of meditation, he suggests drug users have been misled into thinking highs can only be found in things external to themselves (he calls this a 'materialistic' view) instead of experiences they can find within themselves that are infinitely more satisfying.

Many of Weil's beliefs are eminently sensible and useful, but a large number are problematic. He discounts the pharmacological properties of drugs and denies they are directly responsible for the highs of the user. Drugs are merely 'active placebos', he claims, that in the right 'setting' trigger the mind's natural tendency to enter into altered states. When he tells us psychotics are 'the evolutionary vanguard of our species' who 'possess the secret of changing reality by changing the mind', and that physical manifestations of disease are caused by 'non-material factors', we know the line between science and faith has been well and truly crossed.

As a 'spiritual' way of thinking, a lot of the views expressed by Weil are very attractive. All things within and without oneself - however 'bad' - must be loved whole-heartedly, thus encouraging them to respond positively in return. Wasps, and bees, can 'appear to behave differently' towards someone who sees them as similar to himself, who sees their 'extraordinary beauty'. Diseases are to be embraced rather than fought against, causing them to minimize the suffering they cause. We are assured 'all things tend to go in one direction only - always toward equilibrium, balance and harmony'.

Weil has been swept up in the euphoria of experiencing 'oneness', and come to believe - as many have before him - all of creation is working together for the common 'good', that all life - despite appearances - is inseparably united and harmonious. Accepting life in all its manifestations means, if this is true, the only options are co-operation and love.

The highest state of consciousness, however, when one takes a closer look, teaches a much tougher lesson. Attaining the perfect freedom of mystical experience takes us infinitely above our human need to love or to hate anything or anyone. From this level of complete detachment we see truly accepting living beings means wanting in no way to discourage their natural impulses to fight for survival and advantage for themselves and their own kind. We are as unaccepting of others if we expect them to suppress the anti-social, recalcitrant and deadly aspects of their nature because we are loving them as we would be if we were hating them.

I agree entirely that acceptance is essential to maximizing the degree to which co-operation is possible. But, where Weil believes transcendence will all but eliminate difference, conflict and suffering, I think irreconcilable differences, unending conflicts and the most terrible suffering can become, via highest consciousness, things we are able to endure with no damage done to our joy.

This work explores the nature of consciousness. It isn't a book about "the drug problem" but a book about how to understand our minds and the innate drive to alter consciousness that motivates many to use psychoactive substances.

The most impressive quality about Dr. Weil's writing is his objectivity--he takes apart the notion of bias and shows the reader how to look at the world with new eyes. One of best books I have ever read.

I first was introduced to this book when a medical student in l976 in Arizona. Presented is a very expansive look at all mind-altering substances used in all cultures, with new definitions of those socially acceptable and not in our own culture. This belongs on every library shelf. I very quickly learned to see the many new insights into behavior vis-a-vis effects of all substances on the mind. I happen to be a fan or Dr. Weil's contraversial health information, but for those who have no interest, this material is fairly unrelated and more of a contribution to our understanding of culturally prescibed and proscribed mind altering substances. As an abstainer from cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, chocolate and recreational drugs, I was better able to understand the behavior of the majority who do use the above. This is also an excellent book for parents of teenagers, to further understanding on this vital topic. We need, as a nation to rethink our policies on a lucrative industry which is not taxed due to not being legal and also to look at the consequences of youthful consequences.

This book was shared with me by a college girlfriend who was taking a graduate Biology of the Brain course at the University of Iowa. I confess that I only read it out of love and admiration for her, as I expected only a dry, clinical text. But this book grabbed me with its honesty, its openness, and its accessibility. I found it impossible to put down as I explored a range of substances that I had only heard of, but often wondered what they were and how they worked. The book is written with soul, conscience, great depth of understanding, and honesty. I am grateful to her even today for sharing it with me. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking to understand these substances which are all around us in our communities, like it or not.

I wouldn't say that I'm an avid reader; I only read books that REALLY catch my attention. Well, this book did it, and I must say that Andrew Weil changed the way that I live life. As a medical student, I was able to understand the concept of drug abuse from a different perspective that could save many lives. As far as I'm concerned, it should be stocked in every college bookstore of this country.

This book is not really about drugs at all, but about ways of thinking. Andrew Weil gives an important and an alternative insight into a new way of being conscious through the drug problem.

Andrew Weil argues for the positive benefits of highs and altered states of consciousness because it clears the channels between our unconscious and conscious awareness, our intuitions and intellect and our inner experiences and external senses.

The Natural Mind is a book about why we should achieve such altered states of consciousness and the importance of being able to achieve them through natural means. It is a book that provides powerful germs of alternative mental models that has the potential to change our perception of physical illness, psychological disorders, drugs and our approach to obtain knowledge in helpful ways.

This important book should not be missed by medical students, psychologists, psychiatrists, philosophers of consciousness and anyone involved in or interested in drugs.

The ideas presented in the book themselves make it worthwhile.

I read this book years ago and I continue to get much out of his ideas. Discussions based on the ideas in his book are almost always guaranteed to spiral into engaging and revealing exchanges. For me, more useful than "Eight Weeks...".

Excellent information from a learned man who has personally experienced what he is writing about.