Body and Mind
November 12
I saw you on the street today, staring at me, smiling in front of the red sky at sunset. I don’t know what you were doing there, what business ghosts might have to attend to, but thanks for showing up. You don’t know how precious a few seconds on the sidewalk can be until they’re gone.
Behind the restless movement of the mind is the stillness of being, the stillness that has no name, no reputation, nothing to protect. It is the natural mind.
The pills are about the size of a bing-cherry pit in diameter and are a faint green color, like the eggs of some songbirds. On one side they have a deeply inscribed SZ, on the other, the number 789. They are Ritalin, the ten-milligram kind. Imogene knows them by sight because occasionally patients admitted to the psychiatric ward where she works as a nurse have containers of assorted pills, and she has learned to spot the ones that will get her high.
You’re not really exhausted until the hallucinations start: Droplets of mercury floated in my peripheral vision. A lemon levitated out of the fruit bowl. A streetlight at the corner of State and Garfield laid its long body down on the sidewalk. The cat looked up at me from the corner of my desk, twitched his muzzle, and said, “Libby, Libby, Libby.”
The Dalai Lama climbed the ladder and entered the dome of this same Great Hum. Already five others had seated themselves. One of these was a highly developed lama who could sing three notes at once, each note carrying a different conversation. Another could carry on two conversations, and the other three could carry on only one. This meant that eight conversations were already taking place. Since the Dalai Lama could carry on two, his arrival completed the number of visitors allowed, and he closed the door after him.
I want to ask Uncle Eddy how it could possibly be that he is sitting in my car as we drive through Katonah, New York, on the way to Danbury, but sometimes in life you just roll with what’s happening and try to make sense of it after it happens.
In your society, and to some extent in others, the natural communication of aggression has broken down. You confuse violence with aggression and do not understand aggression’s creative activity or its purpose as a method of communication to prevent violence.
I am nineteen, standing behind the Coach counter at Macy’s Herald Square. This feels li…
I was nineteen and on LSD the only time God spoke to me. Or, if not God, a voice so clear …
Dr. Andrew Weil Diagnoses Western Medicine
The Western scientific paradigm is materialistic, meaning that scientists do not believe in anything that cannot be perceived or measured. Look how restrictive that belief is. It’s the reason for the limited acceptance of mind-body medicine. The nonphysical causation of physical events is not allowed for in the reigning scientific paradigm. If you talk about nonphysical causes of changes in physical systems, materialists either ignore you or make fun of you or, if you keep at it, get angry with you.
