Word: weil
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This capacity for wondering self-searching. Weil believes, has been neglected and underestimated. We have been taught to attend primarily, if not solely, to the input and output of the intellectual computer, and to deny or mistrust the experiences associated with alternate states of consciousness. We are not at ease with our own unconscious minds; we look for reassurance and self-esteem in the external world. "Internal reality, in all its varied forms," he writes, "is a different order of reality that is self-validating. And the most elementary requirement for getting in touch with it is simple withdrawal...
Drugs provide one of the quickest, easiest ways to withdraw from the ordinary waking state of consciousness. Weil rejects the notion that drug use in our society indicates internal unrest or social canker; he believes instead that "the desire to alter consciousness periodically is an innate, normal drive analogous to hunger or the sexual drive...
...REMARKABLE aspect of Weil's discussion of drugs in this context is his refusal to attribute value judgements to the varied expressions of this need to experience a high. He carefully discusses the disadvantages and properties of drug-induced highs, and differentiates between the abuse of chemical agents and their proper use to attain a certain psychic state. The Amazon Indians' use of natural drugs as community events moves Weil to suggest four ways to encourage their proper use; use drugs in natural ways, avoiding synthetic chemicals and the isolated, more potent forms of natural drugs (marijuana rather than...
...recent interview Weil spoke about his research and observation among Indians in Ecuador, Columbia, and Mexico. He went to learn more about their healing techniques and use of drugs as medicine, but the results, he said, were disappointing. Synthetic drugs from European and American pharmaceutical companies have already made their way into most Indian cultures. Weil reported that drug injections have become a very popular remedy for illness, for the Indians ascribe the same magic to the needle that they once attributed to mushroom and herb...
...rather than within the consciousness of the user, is the cause of most drug abuse, and, more generally, harmful conceptions about the consciousness itself. Anxious Americans try to escape with drink or dope for the same reason that Indians prefer an injection to the medicine man's traditional methods. Weil's most important and far-reaching point in The Natural Mind is simply this: that the power to heal and to perceive the self fully lies within the mind, not outside...