Timothy Leary

Transpersonal Psychology: Integral · Esoteric · Meditation

Timothy Francis Leary, Ph.D. (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American writer, psychologist, campaigner for psychedelic drug research and use, 1960s counterculture icon and computer software designer. He is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD. During the 1960s, he coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

Biography

Early life

Leary was born in Springfield, Massachusetts the son of an Irish American dentist, who abandoned the family when Timothy was a teenager. Leary studied briefly at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, but reacted badly to the strict training at the Jesuit institution. He also attended West Point but was forced to resign after an incident involving smuggling liquor during a school field exercise and an extended period of a schoolwide "silent treatment." There is evidence that as one of the few Irish Catholics then attending West Point, he was made a scapegoat as his Protestant co-conspirators were allowed to continue their studies.^{[How to reference and link to summary or text]}

He earned a bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of Alabama in 1943, a master's degree at Washington State University in 1946, and a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1950. He went on to become an assistant professor at Berkeley (1950-1955), a director of research at the Kaiser Foundation (1955-1958), and a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University (1959-1963). Leary later described these years disparagingly, writing that he had been

an anonymous institutional employee who drove to work each morning in a long line of commuter cars and drove home each night and drank martinis ... like several million middle-class, liberal, intellectual robots.

Exploration of psychedelics

On May 13, 1957, Life Magazine published an article by R. Gordon Wasson that documented (and popularized) the use of entheogens in the religious ceremony of the indigenous Mazatec people of Mexico.[1] Influenced by Wasson's article, Leary traveled to Mexico, where he tried psilocybin mushrooms, an experience that drastically altered the course of his life. Upon his return to Harvard in 1960, Leary and his associates, notably Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass), began the Harvard Psilocybin Project conducting research into the effects of psilocybin and later LSD with graduate students.

Leary argued that LSD, used with the right dosage, set and setting, and with the guidance of professionals, could alter behavior in unprecedented and beneficial ways. His experiments produced no murders, suicides, psychoses, and no bad trips. The goals of Leary's research included finding better ways to treat alcoholism and to reform convicted criminals. Many of Leary's research participants reported profound mystical and spiritual experiences, which they claim permanently altered their lives in a very positive manner.

Leary and Alpert were dismissed from Harvard in 1963. Their colleagues were uneasy about the nature of their research, and some parents complained to the university administration about the distribution of hallucinogens to their students. Leary and Alpert then founded the International Foundation for Internal Freedom in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1963 they relocated to a large mansion near Poughkeepsie, New York in a town called Millbrook and continued their experiments. Leary later wrote,

We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the twenty-first century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art.

Repeated FBI raids ended the Millbrook era. G. Gordon Liddy, in his autobiography "Will" tells of raiding the Leary mansion and finding the inhabitants so stoned that they rolled around in their own feces and openly defecated on the floor in full view of others.

In 1964, Leary co-authored a book with Ralph Metzner called The Psychedelic Experience, ostensibly based upon the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In it he writes:

A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of space-time dimensions, and of the Penis ego or identity. Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key - it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures.

In 1966 he formed the League of Spiritual Discovery, a religion with LSD as their sacrament. This later became The Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

Leary later went on to propose his eight circuit model of consciousness, in which he claimed that the human mind consisted of eight circuits of consciousness. He believed that most people only access four of these circuits in their lifetimes. The other four, Leary claimed, were evolutionary off-shoots of the first four and were equipped to encompass life in space, as well as expansion of consciousness that would be necessary to make further scientific and social progress. Leary suggested that some people may shift to the latter four gears by delving into meditation and other spiritual endeavors. An example of the information Leary cited as evidence for the purpose of the "higher" four circuits was the feeling of floating and uninhibited motion experienced by users of marijuana. In the eight-circuit model of consciousness, a primary theoretical function of the fifth circuit (the first of the four developed for life in outer space) is to allow humans to become accustomed to life in a zero or low gravity environment.

Trouble with the law

Leary-DEA — DEA agents Don Strange (r.) and Howard Safir (l.) arrest Leary in 1972

Leary's first run in with the law came in 1965. During a border crossing from Mexico into the United States, his daughter was caught with marijuana. After taking responsibility for the controlled substance, Leary was convicted of possession under the Marijuana Tax Act and sentenced to 30 years in jail. Soon after, however, he appealed the case, claiming the Marijuana Tax Act was in fact unconstitutional, as it required a degree of self-incrimination. Leary claimed this was in stark violation of the Fifth Amendment. The Supreme Court concurred. In 1969, the Marijuana Tax Act was declared unconstitutional, and Timothy Leary's conviction was quashed.

In 1970, Leary was again convicted of possession of marijuana and was sentenced to jail. When Leary arrived in prison, he was given psychological tests that were used to assign inmates to appropriate work details. Having designed many of the tests himself, Leary answered them in such a way that he seemed to be a very conforming, conventional person with a great interest in forestry and gardening.

As a result, Leary was assigned to work as a gardener in a lower security prison, which made escape possible. Leary considered his non-violent escape to be a humorous prank and left a challenging note for the authorities to find after he was gone. For a fee paid by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Weathermen smuggled Leary and his wife Rosemary Woodruff Leary out of the United States and into Algeria. The couple's plan to take refuge with the Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver failed after Cleaver attempted to hold Leary hostage. Leary described his expectation of reasonableness from a black militant as "naive." The couple fled to Switzerland.

In 1974, having separated from Rosemary, Timothy Leary was "unlawfully captured" by U. S. government agents (some would say "kidnapped" as the United States had no extradition treaty with Afghanistan at the time and U. S. agents had no legal authority on Afghani soil) at an airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, and then flown to the United States. At a layover in the United Kingdom he requested political asylum from Her Majesty's Government, to no avail. He was then held on five million dollars bail ($21 mil. in 2006), the highest in U. S. history to that point; President Richard Nixon had earlier labeled him "the most dangerous man in America." He was incarcerated in Folsom Prison, in California, where at one point he was in a cell immediately adjacent to Charles Manson. He cooperated with the FBI's investigation of the Weathermen, and soon rumours began to spread around the underground that he had become an informant, implicating friends and helpers in exchange for a reduced sentence. However, no one was ever prosecuted based on any information Leary gave to the FBI, as noted in an Open Letter from the Friends of Timothy Leary:

The Weather Underground, the radical left organization responsible for his escape, was not impacted by his testimony. Histories written about the Weather Underground usually mention the Leary chapter in terms of the escape for which they proudly took credit. Leary sent information to the Weather Underground through a sympathetic prisoner that he was considering making a deal with the FBI and waited for their approval. The return message was "we understand."

Leary appears to have been smart and audacious enough to have played along without compromising those who had helped him. This sort of escapade is in line with others throughout his life, such as his manipulation of psychological test responses that enabled him to get into a prison from which he could engineer his escape, and his confrontation of FBI agents who were terrifying an innocent young Hispanic woman during the Millbrook bust (led by G. Gordon Liddy), which was described in an eye-witness interview in the "Timothy Leary's Dead" (TLD) movie DVD (see below). Leary was released on April 21, 1976, by Governor Jerry Brown. At that time, Leary had spent more time for Cannabis possession than anyone else in USA history.

Further evidence of Leary's savvy was his cultivation of a friendship with former foe G. Gordon Liddy (whose former boss, Richard Nixon, had ordered him to destroy Leary), after his release from prison. At the time, both men were near financial insolvency, and Leary correctly guessed that they could earn money touring the country as ex-cons debating the soul of America.

Death

In the months before his death from inoperable prostate cancer, Leary authored a book called Design for Dying, which attempted to show people a new perspective of death and dying. "The most important thing you do in your life is to die" he claimed happily, welcoming death with the same energetic excitement he had welcomed most other challenges in his life. In his final months thousands of visitors, well wishers and old friends visited him in his California home.

For a number of years, Leary was excited by the possibility of freezing his body in cryonic suspension. As a scientist himself, he didn't believe that he would be resurrected in the future, but he recognized the importance of cryonic possibilities and was generally an advocate of future sciences. He called it his "duty as a futurist," and helped publicize the process. Leary had relationships with two cryonic organizations, the original ALCOR and then the offshoot CRYOCARE. When these relationships soured due to a great lack of trust, Leary requested that his body be cremated, which it was, and distributed among his friends and family.

Leary's death was videotaped for posterity, capturing his final words forever. This video has never been publicly seen but will be included in a documentary currently in production. At one point in his final delirium, he said, "Why not?" to his son Zachary. He uttered the phrase repeatedly, in different intonations and died soon after. His last word, according to Zach Leary, was "beautiful." With the movie Timothy Leary's Dead, filmmakers capitalised on his initial desire for cryogenic preservation by secretly creating a fake decapitation sequence without permission from Leary or his family, or so some claim. After the movie's release, the filmmakers declined to admit the scene's falsehood, possibly as a method to generate hype and sell tickets.

Seven grams of Leary's ashes were arranged by his friend at Celestis to be buried in space aboard a rocket carrying the remains of 24 other people including Gene Roddenberry (creator of Star Trek), Gerard O'Neill (space physicist), Krafft Ehricke (rocket scientist), and others. A Pegasus rocket containing their remains was launched on February 9 1997.

Miscellaneous pursuits

Other interests

Leary has on several occasions flirted with the occult and was a member of the magical order of the Illuminates of Thanateros.

Leary also believed that advances in technology could provide insights similar to those of psychedelic drugs, and lectured in the early 1990's on virtual reality.

Leary's final forecast for the future was encompassed in the acronym "SMI²LE" standing for "space migration", "intelligence increase" and "life extension."

Influence on others

Leary's book "The Psychedelic Experience" was the influence for John Lennon's song "Tomorrow Never Knows" on The Beatles' album Revolver. Leary once recruited John Lennon to write a theme song for his California gubernatorial campaign (which was interrupted by his prison sentence), inspiring Lennon to come up with the hit "Come Together," which Lennon later reclaimed for himself. Leary was also present when Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono recorded Give Peace A Chance during one of their bed-ins in Montreal, and is mentioned in the lyrics of the song. Leary was the explicit subject of the Moody Blues song "Legend of a Mind", which memorialized him with the words, "Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, no, no he's outside looking in." At first, Leary detested the line, but later found the sense of humor to adopt "Legend of a Mind" as his theme song when he hit the university lecture circuit, promoting NASA scientist Gerard O'Neill's innovative plans to build giant Eden-like orbiting mini-Earths using existing technology and raw materials from the moon.

Jlbedin3 — Tim Leary and Friends Recording Give Peace A Chance Photo By Roy Kerwood

A number of other musical groups have admired and been influenced by Leary, including the progressive metal band Tool, the metal band Nevermore, Marcy Playground, and Dog Fashion Disco. Nevermore mentions Leary in their lyrics, and titled one of their albums "The Politics of Ecstasy" (after Leary's book by the same name). The Psychadelic Trance band Infected Mushroom uses a soundclip of Leary saying "Tune in, turn on, and drop out" in a song. Leary made a cameo appearance in "STUFF," a short film directed by Johnny Depp and Gibson Haynes about the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitar player John Frusciante. He also appears on 'Gila Copter' off the 'Linger Fickin Good' album by the Revolting Cocks and also appears in the video for 'Cracking Up'. Leary also appears as the father in the Suicidal Tendencies video "Possessed to Skate". He is also mentioned in the song "The Seeker" by The Who: "I asked Timothy Leary/ But he couldn't help me either".

In the movie, The Ruling Class, the character, Jack Gurney (played by Peter O'Toole), who thinks he is Jesus, claims that the voice of "Timothy O'Leary" told him he was God (see film clip here).

Timothy Leary's ideas also heavily influenced the work of Robert Anton Wilson. This influence went both ways and Leary took just as much from Wilson. Wilson's book 'Prometheus Rising' was an in depth, highly detailed and inclusive work documenting Leary’s eight circuit model of consciousness. Wilson and Leary conversed a great deal on philosophical, political and futurist matters and became close friends who remained in contact through Leary's time in prison and up until his death. Wilson regarded Leary as a brilliant man and often is quoted as saying (paraphrase) "Leary had a great deal of 'hilaritose', the type of cheer and good humour by which it was said you could recognise a deity". Timothy Leary and his endorsement of LSD usage is also reflected upon in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

World religion scholar Huston Smith was turned-on by Leary after the two were introduced to one another by Aldous Huxley in the early 1960s. The experience was interpreted as deeply religious by Smith, and is captured in detailed religious terms in Smith's later work Cleansing of the Doors of Perception. This was Smith's one and only entheogenic experience, at the end of which he asked Leary, to paraphase, if Leary knew the power and danger of that with which he was conducting research. In Mother Jones Magazine, 1997, Smith commented:

"First, I have to say that during the three years I was involved with that Harvard study,
LSD was not only legal but respectable. Before Tim went on his unfortunate careening course, it was a legitimate research project. Though I did find evidence that, when recounted, the experiences of the Harvard group and those of mystics were impossible to tell apart -- descriptively indistinguishable -- that's not the last word. There is still a
question about the truth of the disclosure." ^[2]

Trivia

The term Timothy Leary tickets is an affectionate nickname given to the small squares of blotter paper to which liquid LSD has been applied. Presumably, this is because such tabs offer a "ticket" to a whole new show: a "trip" to lands hitherto unexplored.

Film rights for a biography of Leary were bought by Miramax in April 2006. A feature film is now in development.

Leary was the godfather of Winona Ryder, Uma Thurman (daughter of his ex-wife Nena), Joi Ito, and Caresse and Genesse P-Orridge, daughters of Genesis P-Orridge.

Leary claimed to have discovered an extra primary color he referred to as "gendale." [3]

Creative works

Writings

Intelligence Agents. Leary, Timothy. 1996. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1561840386)
Game of Life. Leary, Timothy. 1989. New Falcon Publications. (ISBN 0941404641).
Change Your Brain. Leary, Timothy. 1988. (ISBN 1579510175)
Info-Psychology: A Revision of Exo-Psychology. Leary, Timothy. 1988. Falcon Pr. (ISBN 0941404609)
Your Brain is God. Leary, Timothy. 1988. (ISBN 1579510523)
Info-Psychology. Leary, Timothy. 1987. (ISBN 1-56184-105-6)
What Does Woman Want. Leary, Timothy. 1987. New Falcon Publications. (ISBN 0941404625)
Flashbacks. Leary, Timothy. 1983. (ISBN 0874774977)
Flashbacks. Leary, Timothy. 1983. Tarcher. (ISBN 0874771773)
Changing My Mind Among Others. Leary, Timothy. 1982. Prentice Hall Trade. (ISBN 0131278290)
Confessions of a Hope Fiend. Leary, Timothy. 1973.
High Priest. Leary, Timothy. 1968. (ISBN 0914171801)
Start Your Own Religion. Leary, Timothy. 1967. (ISBN 1579510736)
Psychedelic Prayers & Other Meditations. Leary, Timothy. 1966. (ISBN 0914171844)
The Politics of Ecstasy. Leary, Timothy. 1965. (ISBN 091417133x)
The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality. Leary, Timothy. 1957.
Design for Dying. Leary, Timothy, with Sirius, R. U. 1997. HarperCollins Publishers Inc. ISBN 0-06-018700-X (cloth); ISBN 0-06-092866-2 (pbk.); ISBN 0-06-018250-4 (intl).
Concrete & Buckshot: William S. Burroughs Paintings. Leary, Timothy and Benjamin Weissman. 1996. Smart Art Press. (ISBN 1889195014)
Surfing the Conscious Nets: A Graphic Novel. Leary, Timothy and Robert Williams. 1995. Last Gap. (ISBN 0867194103)
Chaos and Cyber Culture. Leary, Timothy and Michael Horowitz, Vicki Marshall. 1994. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 0914171771)
Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati Wilson, Robert Anton and Timothy Leary. 1978. Pocket. (ISBN 0671816691)
Mystery, magic & miracle;: Religion in a post-Aquarian age, (A Spectrum book). Heenan, Edward F. and Jack Fritscher, Timothy Leary. 1973. Prentice-Hall. (ISBN 013609032X)
The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Leary, Timothy and Metzner, Ralph, Alpert, Richard, Karma-Glin-Pa Bar Do Thos Grol. 1964. (ISBN 0806516526)
Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality: A Functional Theory and Methodology for Personality Evaluation. Leary, Timothy. 2004. Resource Publications. (ISBN 1592447767)
Evolutionary Agents. Leary, Timothy and Beverly A. Potter. 2004. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1579510647)
Musings on Human Metamorphoses. Leary, Timothy. 2002. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1579510582)
The Politics of Psychopharmacology. Leary, Timothy. 2001. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1579510566)
Politics of Self-Determination (Self-Mastery Series). Leary, Timothy. 2001. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1579510159)
Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out. Leary, Timothy. 1999. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1579510094)
The Delicious Grace of Moving One's Hand: The Collected Sex Writings Leary, Timothy. 1999. Thunder's Mouth Press. (ISBN 1560251816)
El Trip de La Muerte. Leary, Timothy. 1998. Editorial Kairos. SPANISH. (ISBN 8472454088)
The Lost Beatles Interviews Leary, Timothy (Afterword) and Geoffrey Giuliano, Brenda Giuliano. 1996. Plume. (ISBN 0452270251)
HR GIGER ARh+. Giger, H. R., with Leary, Timothy. 1994. Benedikt Taschen Verlag. (ISBN 382289642X)
Uncommon Quotes: Timothy Leary. Leary, Timothy. Audio tape. 1990. Pub Group West. (ISBN 0929856015)

Multimedia performances

The progressive rock band Tool used a sample of Leary's speech for the intro to their song Third Eye as heard live on the Salival CD. The short excerpt started with the repeating phrase "Think for yourself; question authority."

In 1966 he recorded an album "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" (Original release: Mercury 21131 (mono) /61131 (stereo), US 1967) which was ostensibly a "user manual" for a self-guided LSD "trip". While the album did poorly in general release, it has become one of the rarest "memorabilia" and prized of possessions of many Leary collections. One track, "All The Girls Are Yours" has been performed repeatedly by others, and was even re-recorded in 2004.

In 1973 he recorded the album "Seven Up" with the German band Ash Ra Tempel.

He was also mentioned in the musical Hair in the two songs Manchester, England and The Flesh Failures.

In 1981, he had a cameo in Cheech and Chong's film Nice Dreams, wherein he played a doctor who had "the key" to Cheech's escape from a mental hospital. Rather than giving him the key to his straightjacket, however, he gives him a dose of LSD.

In 1993 he was credited with the opening track "The Incredible Lightness Of Being Molecular" on the "Fifty Years of Sunshine," a CD that celebrated the invention of LSD. Recorded in Los Angeles by Genesis P-Orridge and Doug Rushkoff on March 14, 1993. Written by Dr. Timothy Leary for the special publication Lysergic Times, edited by Michael Horowitz to commemorate 50 years of LSD, and launched on April 16th 1993 in San Francisco, USA.

He appeared as guest vocalist on the opening track Gila Copter of the Revolting Cocks 1993 album Linger Ficken' Good... and Other Barnyard Oddities.

He is also mentioned in The Magnetic Fields song "Technical (You're So)" ; "You dance like a Hindu deity/Best friends with Timothy Leary"

He sings in the chorus of the John Lennon song Give Peace a Chance.

He is also mentioned in The Who song "The Seeker" ; "I asked Bobby Dylan, I asked The Beatles/I asked Timothy Leary, but he couldn't help me either."

He is the subject of [4]"Legend of a Mind" by the Moody Blues

His speech appears on a song called "Left Handshake" By Skinny Puppy. cEvin Key tried to obtain the permission to put his speech on that track, but he didn't because of copyright terms. Also, the same speech was used for a Nine Inch Nails track called "Fixed".

The phrase "turn on, tune in, drop out" appears on the Gill Scott Heron song "The Revolution will not be televised".

A song called "Timothy Leary" appears on the 1995 album "Nevermore" by the band Nevermore, lamenting his persecution by authorities.

Games

Equal parts party game, roleplaying game and social simulation, Timothy Leary's Mind Mirror was released for Commodore 64, Apple II, and MS-DOS computers by Electronic Arts in 1985.

He later stated that he had plans to release an updated version of the program with advanced graphics (including Apple Macintosh and Amiga versions), but that never occurred.

TV appearances

He appeared in the episode Stagecoach of the TV show The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. with Bruce Campbell as a Harvard professor.
He appeared in "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" first chapter.

Cyberculture in the years 2000

T.Leary-Netherlands tour 1987 (video)

External links

TimothyLeary.us - biography, archives, links and more
I Have America Surrounded - the Life of Timothy Leary - website for a Timothy Leary biography.
Timothy Leary - Rotten Library article.
Timothy Leary Video and Audio
"How to Operate Your Brain" Leary's guided meditation with video and music
IncreasingIntelligence.com - Timothy Leary resources
TFYQA.com - Think For Yourself; Question Authority: Timothy Leary ideals
DMOZ.org - Open Directory links
Biography and Pictures
8-Circuit Model of Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson
Template:Moby game
My Best Birthday Present - Timothy Leary by Michael Dare
Dr. Timothy Leary, PhD at Deoxy.org
Dr. Timothy Leary's IMDB resume
NeuroLogic by Joanna and Timothy Leary (EBOOK)
[http://www.bruceeisner.com/writings/2004/09/timothy_learys_.html Timothy Leary's Ultimate Trip -- Leary Interviewed by Bruce Eisner

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