The Natural Mind : A New Way of Looking at Drugs and the Higher Consciousness

Rating:
Summary: Mind expanding
Review: 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.

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Summary: On furthering the truth about mind-altering "drugs"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: On furthering the truth about mind-altering "drugs"
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful--lucidly analyzes reason and consciousness
Review: In The Natural Mind, Weil presents his research and opinion in a clear and effective manner. Regardless of your opinion on drugs, this book will give you insite into the world of drugs (both accepted drugs such as tobacco and alcohol and "illicit" drugs). It is an absolute mind-opener!

Rating:
Summary: The Natural Mind is a must read!
Review: In The Natural Mind, Weil presents his research and opinion in a clear and effective manner. Regardless of your opinion on drugs, this book will give you insite into the world of drugs (both accepted drugs such as tobacco and alcohol and "illicit" drugs). It is an absolute mind-opener!

Rating:
Summary: The Revised "The Natural Mind" Is An Unexpected Pleasure
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking, interesting, but wrong.
Review: This is an interesting book that advances the argument that the reason people use drugs is to achieve altered states of consciousness but that meditation is a better way to do it. Furthermore, the author argues that drugs do not cause the user to become high, but instead are simply the "trigger" that induces the mind to enter an altered state. These are thought provoking ideas and worth reading, but they are totally wrong. People use drugs to change their mood, not their consciousness. Drugs make people happy or excited or are just fun, and that's why people use them. Moreover, drugs have real effects on the mind due to their pharmacological properties; they aren't simply "active placebos". For the most part, the author's arguments are based on unsupported premises and as a whole the book is unsatisfying. As the author would no doubt point out, I have some biases. I am a materialistic neuroscientist (in the sense that I believe that the thoughts occur when neurons fire or that the mind and the brain are the same thing) who has personal experience with nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, LSD, mescaline, and meditation. Most agitating to me is the author's (weak) arguments against materialism. He suggests that there is some non-material property of the mind responsible for the effects of drugs, and that to think that drugs are the actual cause of the highs one can experience is to fall into a "materialistic trap". Later he contradicts himself by stating that the material and non-material are the same thing. So which is it? Are you a monist who thinks that the mind and the brain are just different sides of the same coin, or are you a dualist who thinks that they are two wholy different things that magically interact? As I said, this was a thought provoking book and probably worth reading, but was it a "good" book? Not really.

Rating:
Summary: it isn't a occident
Review: well as though very few people open to the american bibles and find certain melelzadekguys had paved the way for peoples to know that joint conciousness is normal as vines and fig trees have considerations internationals knowing will as well have enjoyed dr. weils candor in his fantastic death valley experience and all of those trippynesses availing the truths that a natural mind does not mean you must have an alternative lifestyle. this book is a liberating experience. i mean that.