For years, Americans have been seeking rational, analytical answers to despair and anxiety. But now, this rational Western perception of consciousness has been challenged by an Eastern discipline which brings into sharp focus the travesty and deception underlying many of the contemporary awareness movements. Yet it is also the author's intent to combat the easy criticisms of the super-rationalists who dismiss every new development as the irresponsible invention of the "guru-of-the-month club." He offers not only the findings of extensive scientific research on the brain but the valuable discoveries of personal experience as well. There is no one who is better qualified to assess modern America's approach to matters of the mind than Robert Ornstein, and he does so with clarity, wit, and utter persuasiveness.