Weil - The marriage of the sun and moon: a quest for unity in consciousness

Copyright 1980, 1998 by Andrew Weil
Preface copyright 2004 by Andrew Weil
All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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The Library of Congress cataloged the print edition as follows:
Weil, Andrew.
The marriage of the sun and moon.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-395-91154-0 (pbk.)
ISBN 0-618-47905-8 (pbk.)
1. Mind and body. 2. Consciousness. 3. Drugs
Psychological aspects. I. Title.
BF161.W35 154.4 80-16603

e ISBN 978-0-6184-7905-4

v2.1117

The following chapters in this book previously appeared in various publications: Throwing Up in Mexico, in High Times; Coffee Break, in Journal of Psychedelic Drugs; When Its Mango Time Down South, in Journal of Altered Stales of Consciousness and High Times; Eating Chilies, in Journal of Psychedelic Drugs and Harpers Weekly, A Good Fit, in Journal of Psychedelic Drugs; Mushrooms I, in Journal of Altered States of Consciousness; Mushrooms II and Mushrooms III in Journal of Psychedelic Drugs and Journal of Altered States of Consciousness, In the Land of Yag, in Journal of Altered States of Consciousness and High Times; Is Heroin as Dangerous as White Sugar? in Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, High Times, and The Diners Club Way (published in Colombia); The Green and the White, in Journal of Psychedelic Drugs and Journal of Altered States of Consciousness, and in The Coca Leaf and Cocaine Papers, edited by George Andrews and David Solomon (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich); Some Notes on Datura in Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, The Love Drug, in Journal of Psychedelic Drugs; Now You See It, Now You Dont: The Magic of Uri Geller, in Psychology Today, When the Sun Dies, in Harpers; The Marriage of the Sun and Moon, in Alternate States of Consciousness, edited by Norman E. Zinberg, copyright 1977 by the Free Press, a Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.

And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night...

Genesis 1:16

Consider this: By an extraordinary coincidence, the sun and moon appear to us to be the same size in the sky. The suns vast distance from us exactly compensates for its much greater diameter, so that it appears no bigger than the moon. If this relationship did not hold, total eclipses of the sun would not occur. Human consciousness has developed on the one planet where the lights that rule the day and night are equal.

The Institute of Current World Affairs made my travels possible and provided a haven in the middle of New York City. I thank the members and staff of that foundation, especially Dick Nolte, Jane Hartwig, Maria De-Benigno, and Theano Nikitas. For other assistance in getting around, I thank the editors of High Times and Tony Jones of Harpers.

For good company during some of my wanderings, I am grateful to Winnie Rosen, Woody Wickham, Peggy Sankot, and Chris Hall. People who took me in and made me welcome in distant places included Katha Sheehan and Margarita Dalton of El Vergel, Oaxaca, Mexico; Jorge Fuer-bringer of Mocoa, Colombia; Leonard Crow Dog and family at Crow Dogs Paradise, Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota; Dean Ornish, Don Lohr, Dick Felger, Norman and Dorothy Zinberg, Tim and Jane Gold, Jeff Steingarten and Caron Smith, Jonathan Meader, the late Spencer Smith, the late Jack Wintz, David and Alice Smith, and the people of Camut, Vaups Territory, Colombia.

The following persons provided information that went into this book: Dick Schultes and the staff of the Harvard Botanical Museum; R. Gordon Wasson, Jess M. Idrobo, Freda Morris, Eden Lipson, Tim Plowman, Jerry Beaver, Jonathan Ott, Daniel Stuntz, Georgy-M. Olah, Gastn Guzmn, Gary Nabhan, Greg McNamee, Richard Stone, Richard Leavitt, Sally Allen, Bob Harris, Jay Pasachoff, Jeremy Bigwood, Barry Zack, Richard Schweid, Steve Shouse, G. K. Sharma, Thomas E. Mails, James Randi, Diego Len Giraldo, Silvia Patio, Enrique Hernndez; the staff of the Empresa Nacional de la Coca in Lima, Peru; and Msgr. Belarmino Correa Yepes of Mit, Colombia.

I must thank Dan and Jenny for not worrying too much about me. And, finally, I thank Mahina for constant love, support, and help.

In reading over the chapters that make up this book, I thought it might be interesting to provide readers with updates on the subjects I wrote about three decades ago.

Conscious control of involuntary functions of the body (Throwing Up in Mexico) remains mysterious, but there is growing recognition that imbalances of the autonomic nervous system underlie many common disease conditions, especially of the gastrointestinal tract. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) was not a defined clinical entity in the early 1970s; today it is a common diagnosis, as is GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux disorder). Allopathic medicine does not manage these problems well, because it ignores the mind-body interactions that are usually the cause of autonomic nervous system malfunction. Integrative approaches are much more successful. (See www.drweil.com for detailed recommendations.)

When I wrote Coffee Break way back when, espresso was something one tasted in Italy, and Seattle was not the latte capital of North America. If stronger and better forms of coffee are now bestsellers here, the big scientific news about stimulant beverages concerns tea. Tea turns out to have health benefits that coffee does not. It contains powerful antioxidants, notably EGCG (epi-gallo-catechin gallate), that reduce risks of heart disease, cancer, and other chronic illnesses. All teas contain these compounds, but green and white teas, being less processed than black tea, have more of them. Tea consumption is increasing in North America, and much better quality leaves are now availablein Asian grocery stores, teashops, and on the Internet. (Check out www.teahealth.co.uk for more information.)

I am happy to report that supplies of mangoes have improved also. It is now possible to get good, ripe mangoes here, at least some of the time, and decent mango sorbet is sold in most supermarkets. This is nothing compared to the phenomenal increase in chile consumption by Americans. A few years ago, sales of hot sauce surpassed sales of ketchup, something I would never have imagined, and the numbers and variety of chile products available are nothing short of astounding. (See www.mohotta.com, for example.) Spicy ethnic food has also become wildly popular, especially with the inroads made by the cuisines of Thailand, Vietnam, Hunan (China), and Korea. Moreover, medical science has found that capsaicin is a remarkable and long-acting local anesthetic. It is a focus of research in neurophysiology and a new remedy for such painful conditions as post-herpetic neuralgia, a complication of shingles.

I do not have much more to say about laughter than what I originally wrote in A Good Fit, except to mention the appearance in India of a laughter guru, Dr. Medan Kataria, a physician from Mumbai. Dr. Kataria launched his laughter yoga movement in 1995. There are now more than four hundred laughter clubs on the Indian subcontinent, and Dr. Katarias disciples have founded similar clubs throughout the world. (See www.laughteryoga.org.) Participants meet regularly for group laughing sessions in order to promote physical and mental health. I am delighted to see an idea I had back in the 1970s come to such delightful fruition.

Mushroomsmagic and otherwisehave been much in the news. New species of