No one knew about endorphins, the morphine-like molecules made in every human brain that serve as our own internal narcotics. At the time of its first publication The Natural Mind drew much praise for its original and radical insights. It also drew harsh condemnation from a few prominent critics within the medical establishment who saw it as an apology for drug use. They misread my arguments and attacked me for saying that human beings are born with a need to use drugs. What I wrote was that human beings are born with a drive to experiment with ways of changing consciousness.
Drugs are but one of many possible techniques, having their own risks and limitations.
The idea that it is normal to seek changes in consciousness has never been discredited. The Natural Mind argues that high states originate within the human nervous system rather than in any external substances. Research on endorphins and other neurochemicals strongly supports this theory. The book also insists that such states have great positive potential, a suggestion confirmed by demonstrations of the power of the mind, when not in its ordinary mode, to modify functions of the body and counteract disease. I have developed and explored that theme through the intervening years in my own investigations and writing.