Timothy Leary

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Dr. Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Born	October 22, 1920  Springfield, Massachusetts, USA
Died	May 31, 1996 (age 75)  Los Angeles, California, USA

For the American baseball player use Tim Leary (baseball player)

Timothy Francis Leary, Ph.D. (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American writer, psychologist, advocate of psychedelic drug research and use, and one of the first people to be buried in space. As a 1960s counterculture icon, he is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD. He coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Psychedelic experiments and experiences 1.3 Trouble with the law 2 Hollywood 2.1 Death 2.2 Influence on others 2.3 Trivia 3 Creative works 3.1 Writings 4 Partial Discography 4.1 Multimedia performances 4.2 Games 4.3 TV appearances 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Leary was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, as an only child^[1] and the son of an Irish American dentist who abandoned the family when Timothy was 13. He graduated from Springfield's Classical High School. Leary attended three different colleges and was disciplined in each.^[1] He studied for two years at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and was known for cutting classes, drinking and chasing girls. He transferred to West Point to please his mother but was forced to resign after an incident where he lied about smuggling liquor during a school field exercise. An extended period of a schoolwide "silent treatment" followed.

He received a bachelor's degree in psychology at the University of Alabama in 1943. An obituary of Leary in the New York Times said he was a "discipline problem" there as well and "finally earned his bachelor's degree in the Army during World War II."^[1]

His education also included a master's degree at Washington State University in 1946, and a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1950. During World War II, Leary served in the U.S. Army, as a sergeant in the Medical Corps. He went on to become an assistant professor at Berkeley (1950-1955), director of psychiatric research at the Kaiser Family Foundation (1955-1958) and a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University (1959-1963).

Leary's early work in psychology continued the exploration by pioneers such as Dr. Harry Stack Sullivan, Dr. Karen Horney, and others, of how important interpersonal forces are on mental health. Dr. Leary specifically focused on how interpersonal process might be used to diagnose personality patterns or disorders. He developed a complex and respected interpersonal circumplex model, published in The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, that offered a means by which psychologists could use MMPI scores to quickly determine a respondent's characteristic interpersonal modes of reacting. It is a credit to the robustness of his ideas that circumplex models continue to figure prominently in interpersonal research. [4]

In 1955 his first wife, Marianne, committed suicide, leaving him a single father with a son and daughter.^[1] 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.

”

[edit] Psychedelic experiments and experiences

On May 13, 1957, Life Magazine published an article by R. Gordon Wasson that documented (and popularized) the use of psilocybin mushrooms in the religious ceremony of the indigenous Mazatec people of Mexico.^[2] Anthony Russo, a colleague of Leary's, had recently taken the psychedelic (entheogen) Psilocybe mexicana during a trip to Mexico and shared the experience with Leary. In the summer of 1960, Leary traveled to Cuernavaca, Mexico with Russo and after drinking several shots of Tequila tried psilocybin mushrooms for the first time, an experience that drastically altered the course of his life. (Ram Dass Fierce Grace, 2001, Zeitgeist Video). In 1965 Leary commented that he "learned more about. . . (his) brain and its possibilities. . . (and) more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than. . . (he) had in the preceding fifteen years of studying doing (sic) research in psychology" (Ram Dass Fierce Grace, 2001, Zeitgeist Video). Upon his return to Harvard that fall, Leary and his associates, notably Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass), began a research program known as the Harvard Psilocybin Project. The goal was to analyze the effects of psilocybin on human subjects using a synthesized version of the drug--one of two active compounds in the so-called Mexican mushroom--that was produced according to a recipe concocted by Albert Hofmann, a research chemist at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. The experiment later involved giving LSD to 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 or "bad trips".^{[citation needed]} 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.

According to Leary's autobiography Flashbacks they administered LSD to 300 professors, graduate students, writers and philosophers and 75% of them reported it as being like a revelation to them and one of the most educational experiences of their lives. They also gave LSD to 200 professional religious people and 75% reported that they had the most religious experience of their lives. They administered the drug to prisoners, and after being guided through the trips by Leary and his associates, 36 prisoners allegedly turned their backs on crime. The normal recidivism rate of prisoners is about 80%, where as of the subjects involved in the project about 80% did not return to prison.

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Later, undergraduates became involved, leading to conflict with the university.^[3] In May of 1963, Leary and Alpert were dismissed from Harvard after college authorities confirmed that undergraduates had shared in the researchers' drugs.^[1] According to another account, Leary was fired for not showing up to his classes while Alpert was fired for giving psilocybin to an undergraduate in an off campus apartment.(Weil, 1963). Regarding Leary's termination Harvard President Nathan M. Pusey released the following statement on May 27, 1963: "On May 6, 1963, the Harvard Corporation voted, because Timothy F. Leary, lecturer on clinical psychology, has failed to keep his classroom appointments and has absented himself from Cambridge without permission, to relieve him from further teaching duty and to terminate his salary as of April 30, 1963" (New York Times, 03/12/1966, p. 25). 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.^{[citation needed]} To further complicate matters their research attracted a great deal of public attention. As a result, many people wanted to participate in the experiments but were unable to do so because of the high demand. In order to satisfy the curiosity of those who were turned away, a black market for psychedelics formed near the Harvard University Campus (Weil, 1963). Sensing the growing opposition to their research Leary and Alpert founded the International Foundation for Internal Freedom in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Leary's activities attracted siblings Peggy, Billy and Tommy Hitchcock, heirs to the Mellon fortune, who in 1963 helped Leary and his associates acquire the use of a rambling mansion on an estate near Poughkeepsie, New York in a town called Millbrook and continued their experiments.^[3] 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.

”

Later the Millbrook estate was described as "the headquarters of Leary and gang for the better part of five years, a period filled with endless parties, epiphanies and breakdowns, emotional dramas of all sizes, and numerous raids and arrests, many of them led by the local assistant district attorney, G. Gordon Liddy.^[3]

In 1964, Leary co-authored a book with Ralph Metzner called The Psychedelic Experience 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 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.

”

Repeated FBI raids ended the Millbrook era. Regarding a 1966 raid by G. Gordon Liddy, Leary told Paul Krassner, "He was a government agent entering our bedroom at midnight. We had every right to shoot him. But I've never owned a weapon in my life. I have never had and never will have a gun around."

On September 19, 1966, Leary founded the League for Spiritual Discovery, a religion with LSD as its holy sacrament (by doing this, he hoped to maintain legal status for the use of LSD and other psychedelics for the religion's adherents, based on a "freedom of religion" argument). Although The Brotherhood of Eternal Love would subsequently consider Leary their spiritual leader, The Brotherhood did not evolve out of IFIF.

On October 6, 1966, LSD was made illegal and all legal scientific research programs on the drug in the U.S.A. were shut down.

During late 1966 and early 1967, Leary toured college campuses to spread the psychedelic gospel by presenting a multi-media performance called "The Death of the Mind", which attempted to artistically replicate the LSD experience. Leary said the League for Spiritual Discovery was limited to 360 members and was already at its membership limit, but he encouraged others to form their own psychedelic religions. He published a pamphlet in 1967 called Start Your Own Religion to encourage people to do so (see below under "writings").

On January 14, 1967, Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and uttered his famous phrase, "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

The phrase came to him in the shower one day after Marshall McLuhan suggested to Leary that he come up with "something snappy" to promote the benefits of LSD.^[1]

At some point in the late Sixties, Leary moved to California. He made a number of friends in Hollywood. "When he married his third wife, Rosemary Woodruff, in 1967, the event was directed by Ted Markland of 'Bonanza.' All the guests were on acid."^[1]

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Leary (in collaboration with the writer Brian Barritt) formulated his circuit model of consciousness, in which he claimed that the human mind/nervous system consisted of seven circuits which, when activated, produce seven levels of consciousness (this model was first published as the short essay, 'The Seven Tongues of God'). The system soon expanded to include an eighth circuit; this version was first unveiled to the world in the rare 1973 pamphlet Neurologic (written with Joanna Leary while he was in prison), but was not exhaustively formulated until the publication of Exo-Psychology (by Leary) and in Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger in 1977. Wilson contributed significantly to the model after befriending Leary in the early 70s, and has used it as a framework for further exposition in his book Prometheus Rising, among other works.

Leary believed that the first four of these circuits ("the Larval Circuits") are naturally accessed by most people in their lifetimes, triggered at natural transition points in life such as puberty. The second four circuits ("the Stellar Circuits"), Leary claimed, were evolutionary off-shoots of the first four which would be triggered at transition points we will have when we evolve further, and would equip us to encompass life in space, as well as the 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" (i.e. trigger these circuits artificially) by utilizing consciousness-altering techniques such as meditation and spiritual endeavors such as yoga, or by taking psychedelic drugs specific to each circuit. 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.

[edit] Trouble with the law

Leary's first run in with the law came on December 20, 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, given a $30,000 fine and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment. 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.

On December 26, 1968 Leary was arrested again, this time for the possession of two roaches of marijuana, which Leary claimed were planted by the arresting officer.

On 19 May 1969 The Supreme Court concurred with Leary. The Marijuana Tax Act was declared unconstitutional, and his 1965 conviction was quashed. The case was known as Leary v. United States.

On the day his conviction was overturned Leary announced his candidacy for Governor of California, running against Ronald Reagan. His campaign slogan was 'Come together, join the party'. On 1 June 1969 Leary joined John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their Montreal Bed-In and Lennon subsequently wrote Leary a campaign song called Come Together.

On 21 January 1970, Leary received a ten-year sentence for his 1968 conviction. 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 (including the "Leary Interpersonal Behavior Test"), 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.[5]

As a result, Leary was assigned to work as a gardener in a lower security prison, and in September 1970 he escaped. Leary claimed his non-violent escape was 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 when, after staying with them for a short time, Cleaver attempted to hold Leary hostage.

In 1971 the couple fled to Switzerland, "where they were sheltered and effectively imprisoned by a large-living arms dealer, Michel Hauchard, who claimed he had an 'obligation as a gentleman to protect philosophers,' but mostly had a film deal in mind."(Luc Sante, New York Times Book Review, June 24, 2006)

In 1972, Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, convinced the Swiss government to imprison Leary, which they did for a month, but the Swiss refused to extradite him back to the US.

In that same year, Leary and Rosemary separated. After a brief spell with heroin addiction^{[citation needed]}, Leary became involved with French-born socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith. Leary "married" Harcourt-Smith in a pseudo-occult ceremony^{[citation needed]} at a hotel two weeks after they were first introduced; she would use his surname until their breakup in early 1977. They traveled to Vienna, then Beirut and finally went to Kabul, Afghanistan in 1973. "Afghanistan had no extradition treaty with the United States, but this stricture did not apply to American airliners," Luc Sante wrote in a review of a biography of Leary. That interpretation of the law was used by U.S. authorities to capture the fugitive. "Before Leary could deplane, he was arrested by an agent of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs."^[3]

At a layover in the United Kingdom, as Leary was being flown back to the United States, 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^{[citation needed]}; President Richard Nixon had earlier labeled him "the most dangerous man in America."^[1]

The judge remarked, "If he is allowed to travel freely, he will speak publicly and spread his ideas."^{[citation needed]} Facing a total of 95 years in prison, Leary was put into solitary confinement in Folsom Prison, California, where at one point he was in a cell immediately adjacent to Charles Manson. Manson had difficulty understanding why Leary didn't try to control people when he gave them LSD (like MK-ULTRA attempted to do). "They took you off the streets," Manson allegedly said, "so that I could continue with your work."^{[citation needed]}

Leary cooperated with the FBI's investigation of the Weathermen and radical attorneys, and soon the underground became aware that he had become an informant, implicating friends and helpers in exchange for a reduced sentence^{[citation needed]}. Leary would later claim no one was ever prosecuted based on any information he 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."

”

Many of his oldest friends, including Ken Kesey, Paul Krassner, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, and Ram Dass, were openly contemptuous of Harcourt-Smith and felt that she had "led him by his dick" (in the words of Krassner)^{[citation needed]}. These sentiments were echoed at a rally against the "new" Leary organized by Kesey at Stanford University.^{[citation needed]}

While imprisoned Leary remained a productive writer, sowing the seeds for his incarnation as a futurist lecturer with the StarSeed Series. In Starseed (1973), neurologic (1973), & Terra II: A Way Out (1974), Leary transitioned from Eastern philosophy and Aleister Crowley to outer space being a medium for spiritual transcendence as his principal frame of reference. Neurologic also added the idea of "time dilation/contraction" available to the activated brain through the cellular, DNA, or atomic level of reality. Terra II is his first detailed proposal for space colonization.

[edit] Hollywood

Leary was released from prison on April 21, 1976 by Governor Jerry Brown. After briefly relocating to San Diego, Leary established residence in Laurel Canyon and continued to write books and appear as a lecturer and (by his own terminology) "stand up philosopher". In 1978, he married filmmaker Barbara Blum and raised her young son as his own (they would divorce in 1993).

Leary cultivated a friendship with former foe G. Gordon Liddy. At the time, both men were near financial insolvency^{[citation needed]}, and in 1982 they toured the lecture circuit as ex-cons debating the soul of America. The tour generated massive publicity and considerable funds for both figures. Along with the personal appearances, a successful documentary that chronicled the tour and the concurrent release of the^{[citation needed]} autobiography, Flashbacks helped to return Leary to the spotlight.

While his stated ambition was to eventually cross over as a mainstream Hollywood personality, reticent studios and sponsors ensured that this never occurred. Nonetheless, constant touring ensured that he was able to maintain a very comfortable lifestyle by the mid-1980s, while his colorful past made him a desirable guest at A-list parties throughout the decade. He also attracted a more intellectual crowd which counted John Frusciante (Leary appeared in Johnny Depp's and Gibby Haynes' 1994 film 'stuff' which showed the squalid conditions that Frusciante was living in at the time) Robert Anton Wilson, David Byrne, science fiction wunderkind William Gibson, and Norman Spinrad amongst its ranks.

While he continued to frequently use drugs on a private basis, rather than evangelizing and proselytizing the use of psychedelics as he had in the 1960s, the latter day Leary emphasized the importance of space colonization and an ensuing extension of the human lifespan while also providing a detailed explanation of the eight-circuit model of consciousness in complex, interesting books such as "Info-Psychology", among several others. He adopted the acronym "SMI²LE" as a succinct summary of his pre-transhumanist agenda: SM (Space Migration) + I² (intelligence increase) + LE (Life extension).

Leary's colonization plan varied greatly throughout the years. According to his initial plan, 5,000 of Earth's most virile and intelligent individuals would be launched on a vessel (Starseed 1) equipped with luxurious amenities. This idea was entirely plagiarized from the plotline of Paul Kantner's concept album Blows Against The Empire, which in turn was derived from Robert A. Heinlein's Lazarus Long series. In the 1980s, he came to embrace NASA scientist Gerard O'Neill's more realistic and egalitarian plans to construct giant Eden-like orbiting mini-Earths using existing technology and raw materials from the Moon.

By the early 1990s, Leary had begun to incorporate computers, the Internet, and virtual reality into his aegis of thought. In spite of establishing one of the earliest sites on the World Wide Web and his oft-quoted insight that the Internet was "the LSD of the 1990s", Leary essentially remained computer illiterate^{[citation needed]} and required assistance in checking his email.^{[citation needed]}

In 1989 Leary's eldest daughter, Susan, committed suicide after years of mental instability. Relations between the two had been tenuous for years, with the younger woman often casting her father as a negligent alcoholic and drug fiend responsible for her mother's death.^{[citation needed]} Leary had not spoken to son Jack on a regular basis since the early 1970s.^{[citation needed]}

After splitting from Barbara Leary in 1992, Leary began to ensconce himself with a much younger, artistic and tech-savy crowd that included his granddaughters, Dieadra Martino and Sara Brown; grandson, Ashley Martino; stepson, Zach Chase; author Douglas Rushkoff, publisher Bob Guccione, Jr., and actress Winona Ryder. He was frequently spotted at raves and alternative rock concerts, including a memorable mosh pit experience at an early Smashing Pumpkins concert. Attempting to maintain the pace of the average twentysomething in his early seventies, Leary began to develop poor eating habits and steadily abused alcohol and prescription medication^{[citation needed]}. This culminated in a likely overdose in late 1993 that was misdiagnosed at the time as bilateral pneumonia^{[citation needed]}.

Aging perceptibly after his hospitalization, he nonetheless managed to fulfill his unceasing schedule of public appearances in 1994 while continuing to frequent the LA club scene at a slightly decelerated pace. He drank heavily and seemed prone to bouts of senility for the first time in his life^{[citation needed]}, but as one friend pointed out in Robert Greenfield's biography of Leary, "there were always three to four hours per day of the lucid Tim". Later that year, Leary was arrested for the final time with girlfriend Aileen Getty, charged with illegally smoking in the baggage claim area of an Austin airport. Leary hoped that this would result in endorsement deals from the tobacco industry, but nothing materialized^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Death

In early 1995, Leary discovered that he was terminally ill with inoperable prostate cancer. He did not reveal the condition to the press upon diagnosis, but did so after the death of Jerry Garcia in August.

Leary authored an outline for 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. Unwilling to flesh out his outline, the book was delegated to another author^{[citation needed]}. Leary's de facto "family"--his staff of technophilic Gen Xers--updated his website on a daily basis as a sort of proto-blog, noting his daily intake of various illicit and legal chemical substances, with a predilection for nitrous oxide, cigarettes, his trademark "Leary biscuits" (see below), and eventually heroin and morphine. His sterile house was completely redecorated by the staff, who had more or less moved in, with an array of surreal ornamentation.

In his final months thousands of visitors, well wishers and old friends visited him in his California home. An attempt at reconciliation with Jack proved to be a failure when Leary spent their allotted time conferring with Ram Dass and two of the ex-convicts from the Harvard psilocybin experiment. Until the final weeks of his illness, Leary gave many interviews discussing his new philosophy of embracing death.

For a number of years, Leary was reported to have been excited by the possibility of freezing his body in cryonic suspension. He didn't believe that he would be resurrected in the future, but he recognized the importance of cryonic possibilities. He called it his "duty as a futurist," and helped publicize the process. Privately he dismissed cryonics as "a joke" and did not seem to regard the process with much seriousness. Leary had relationships with two cryonic organizations, the original ALCOR and then the offshoot CRYOCARE. A cryonic tank was delivered to Leary's house in the months before his death, but 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. He briefly considered suicide, ultimately relenting at his granddaughter's request and also contemplated ingesting LSD in his final hours (á la Aldous Huxley).

Leary's death was videotaped for posterity at his request, capturing his final words. This video has never been publicly seen but will be included in a documentary currently in production^{[citation needed]}. 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 capitalized on his initial desire for cryogenic preservation by secretly creating a fake decapitation sequence.

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, and remained in orbit for six years until it burnt up in the atmosphere.

[edit] Influence on others

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 "Come Together", based on Leary's theme and catchphrase for the campaign. 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. (Lennon later denounced Leary^{[citation needed]}, calling The Psychedelic Experience "that stupid book,"^{[citation needed]} but credited Leary's role in his life.)

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" (a lyric later incorporated into the Bongwater's cover version of the Moody Blues song "Ride My Seesaw"). 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 lecture circuit.

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 new wave band Devo (Leary even appearing in one of their films). Nevermore mentions Leary in their lyrics, and titled one of their albums "The Politics of Ecstasy" (after Leary's book by the same name). Also, on Nevermore's self entitled album there is a song named "Timothy Leary". The Psychedelic 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" from the Linger Ficken' 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". He appears in Blind Melon's video "Galaxie" as a magician.

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 admittedly 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. Although the theory originated in discussions between Leary and a Hindu holy man at Millbrook, Wilson was one of the most ardent proponents of it and introduced the theory to a mainstream audience in 1977's bestselling Cosmic Trigger. In 1989, they appeared together on stage in a dialog entitled The Inner Frontier in Cleveland, Ohio hosted by the Association for Consciousness Exploration^[4], (the same group that had hosted Leary's first Cleveland appearance in 1979^[5][6]). 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".

Leary's endorsement of carefree LSD usage is also reflected upon in a more negative light in the concluding chapter of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In addition, Owsley Stanley, one of the pioneers of the era, would later write of him,

"Leary was a fool. Drunk with 'celebrity-hood' and his own ego, he became a media clown- and was arguably the single most damaging actor involved in the destruction of the evanescent social movement of the '60's. Tim, with his very public exhortations to the kids to 'tune in, turn on and drop out', is the inspiration for all the current draconian US drug laws against psychedelics. He would not listen to any of us when we asked him to please cool it, he loved the lime-light and relished his notoriety... I was not a fan of his." ^[6]

Author and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey remained a supporter and admirer of Leary throughout his career,

"Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking."

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." ^[7]

[edit] 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.

• Leary on several occasions flirted with the occult and was a member of the magical order of the Illuminates of Thanateros.^{[citation needed]}

• Leary was at one time a member of the Advisory Board to the Libertarian International Organization (LIO).

• Leary appeared at the Starwood Festival in 1991 and 1992[8]. In front of hundreds of Neo-Pagans in 1991, he declared, "I have always considered myself, when I learned what the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan." (Quote from CD: Timothy Leary Live at Starwood)

• Leary biscuits are crackers topped by a piece of cheese, butter, or other fatty topping, covered in turn with a bud of marijuana and microwaved briefly.^[7]

• 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, Genesis P-Orridge's daughters Caresse and Genesse P-Orridge, and Miranda July.

• Timothy Leary is mentioned in the Dog Fashion Disco song "The Acid Memoirs." Leary's phrase "tuning in and dropping out" is also used in the song.

• Timothy Leary is mentioned in The Magnetic Fields song "Technical (You're So)" off the album "The House of Tomorrow."

• Timothy Leary is the subject of the Moody Blues song "Legend of a Mind."

• Timothy Leary is mentioned -- dismissively -- in The Who song "The Seeker" which was released as a single in 1970.

• Timothy Leary is mentioned in the songs "Manchester England" and "The Flesh Failures/Let The Sunshine In" for the musical Hair and subsequent film Hair

• Leary appeared in the music video for the song Galaxie by Blind Melon in 1995.

• The rock band Tiamat named a song "Four Leary Biscuits" on their album "A Deeper Kind of Slumber".

• Heavy Metal band Nevermore released a song about Leary in 1995 that bears his name.

• A quote of Timothy Leary is heard on a live version of Tool's "Third Eye" on the album Salival.

• In World War I Leary's father, "Tote" Leary, was drafted as a dental surgeon into the U.S. Army (commissioned a first lieutenant,^[8] then promoted to captain just before the war ended in 1918) and assigned to West Point, where he

“

consorted with fellow officers and gentlemen such as General Douglas MacArthur, then the superintendent of West Point; Captain Omar Bradley; and Lieutenant George Patton. It was at West Point on January 17, 1920, on the day after Prohibition became the law of the land, that Tim Leary was conceived. Abigail would later recall that during her pregnancy, the smell of distilling moonshine and bathtub gin hung over officers' row like a "rowdy smog." Tote once told his son that while Prohibition itself was bad, it was not nearly as bad as no booze at all. At 10:45 A.M. on October 22, 1920, seven days before his father's thirty-second birthday, Timothy Francis Leary was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Once Abigail gave birth to a son, General MacArthur, who had also been raised on an army post, took a special interest in the family.

”

• He appears as himself in the Cheech and Chong movie Nice Dreams.

• He appears as "Dr. Byrthfood" in the Devo video project We're All Devo.

-- "Timothy Leary" a biography by Robert Greenfield, Chapter 1."^[8]

[edit] Creative works

[edit] Writings

• The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality. Leary, Timothy. 1957.
• 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 0-8065-1652-6)
• Psychedelic Prayers & Other Meditations. Leary, Timothy. 1966. (ISBN 0-914171-84-4)
• Start Your Own Religion. Leary, Timothy. 1967. (ISBN 1-57951-073-6)
• The Politics of Ecstasy. Leary, Timothy. 1968. (ISBN 0-914171-33-X)
• High Priest. Leary, Timothy. 1968. (ISBN 0-914171-80-1)
• Confessions of a Hope Fiend. Leary, Timothy. 1973.
• Mystery, magic & miracle: Religion in a post-Aquarian age, (A Spectrum book). Heenan, Edward F. and Jack Fritscher, Timothy Leary. 1973. Prentice-Hall. (ISBN 0-13-609032-X)
• What Does WoMan Want?: Adventures Along the Schwartzchild Radius. Leary, Timothy. 1976. Describes techniques of "Hedonic Engineering" (Leary's name for tantric sex).
• The Periodic Table of Evolution. Leary, Timothy. 1977
• Exo-Psychology: A Manual on The Use of the Nervous System According to the Instructions of the Manufacturers. Leary, Timothy. 1977. Starseed/Peace Press.
• Changing My Mind Among Others. Leary, Timothy. 1982. Prentice Hall Trade. (ISBN 0-13-127829-0)
• Flashbacks. Leary, Timothy. 1983. Tarcher. (ISBN 0-87477-177-3)
• Flashbacks. Leary, Timothy. 1983. (ISBN 0-87477-497-7)
• What Does Woman Want. Leary, Timothy. 1987. New Falcon Publications. (ISBN 0-941404-62-5)
• Info-Psychology. Leary, Timothy. 1987. (ISBN 1-56184-105-6)
• Info-Psychology: A Revision of Exo-Psychology. Leary, Timothy. 1988. Falcon Pr. (ISBN 0-941404-60-9)
• Change Your Brain. Leary, Timothy. 1988. (ISBN 1-57951-017-5)
• Your Brain is God. Leary, Timothy. 1988. (ISBN 1-57951-052-3)
• Game of Life. Leary, Timothy. 1989. New Falcon Publications. (ISBN 0-941404-64-1). (Original Edition Published in 1977)
• Uncommon Quotes: Timothy Leary. Leary, Timothy. Audio tape. 1990. Pub Group West. (ISBN 0-929856-01-5)
• Chaos and Cyber Culture. Leary, Timothy and Michael Horowitz, Vicki Marshall. 1994. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 0-914171-77-1)
• HR GIGER ARh+. Giger, H. R. (foreword). 1994. Benedikt Taschen Verlag. (ISBN 3-8228-9642-X)
• Surfing the Conscious Nets: A Graphic Novel. Leary, Timothy and Robert Williams. 1995. Last Gasp. (ISBN 0-86719-410-3)
• The Lost Beatles Interviews Leary, Timothy (Afterword) and Geoffrey Giuliano, Brenda Giuliano. 1996. Plume. (ISBN 0-452-27025-1)
• Intelligence Agents. Leary, Timothy. 1996. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1-56184-038-6)
• Concrete & Buckshot: William S. Burroughs Paintings. Leary, Timothy and Benjamin Weissman. 1996. Smart Art Press. (ISBN 1-889195-01-4)
• 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).
• El Trip de La Muerte. Leary, Timothy. 1998. Editorial Kairos. SPANISH. (ISBN 84-7245-408-8)
• The Delicious Grace of Moving One's Hand: The Collected Sex Writings Leary, Timothy. 1999. Thunder's Mouth Press. (ISBN 1-56025-181-6)
• Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out. Leary, Timothy. 1999. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1-57951-009-4)
• Politics of Self-Determination (Self-Mastery Series). Leary, Timothy. 2001. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1-57951-015-9)
• The Politics of Psychopharmacology. Leary, Timothy. 2001. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1-57951-056-6)
• Musings on Human Metamorphoses. Leary, Timothy. 2002. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1-57951-058-2)
• Evolutionary Agents. Leary, Timothy and Beverly A. Potter. 2004. Ronin Publishing. (ISBN 1-57951-064-7)
• Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality: A Functional Theory and Methodology for Personality Evaluation. Leary, Timothy. 2004. Resource Publications. (ISBN 1-59244-776-7) (Original Edition Published in 1957)

[edit] Partial Discography

• L.S.D. (1966)
• Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out (The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1967)
• You Can Be Anyone This Time Around (1970)
• Flashbacks (1983)
• The Inner Frontier with Robert Anton Wilson (1989)
• From Psychedelics to Cybernetics (1989)
• Origins of Dance (1990)
• How to Operate Your Brain (1992)
• Right to Fly (1996)
• Beyond Life With Timothy Leary (1996)
• Timothy Leary Live at Starwood (2001) recorded in 1991 ISBN 1-59157-002-6
• Timothy Leary: A Cheerleader for Change (2001) ACE/Llewellyn Collection - Recorded in 1985 ISBN 1-59157-004-2
• The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on Tibetan Book of the Dead (with Richard Alpert & Ralph Metzner) (2003)

Also Appears On:

• Seven Up - Ash Ra Tempel (1972)
• Tune In (Turn On The Acid House) - (1988) Psychic TV, 12" EP, Temple Records (UK)- Samples Timothy Leary
• Trance-Techno Express: From Detroit to Berlin & Back - Various (1993)
• Ancient Lights and the Blackcore - with Scorn, Seefeel, Yanomami Shamans from the Amazon, and DJ Cheb I. Sabbah (1995)
• Krautrock - Various [Polygram] (1997)
• Sub Rosa Underwood, Vol. 3: A Sampler - Various (1998)
• Intermenstral - Various (2001)

[edit] Multimedia performances

• 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 1984, The Wooster Group created a controversy when it juxtaposed Leary and his work with excerpts from Arthur Miller's play The Crucible in their ensemble performance piece L.S.D. (... Just the High Points...)

• On three occasions a multi-media maze based on Timothy Leary's eight circuit model of consciousness designed by Association for Consciousness Exploration co-director Joseph Rothenberg was presented at the WinterStar Symposium, and it was presented for 30 days at the Starwood Center in Cleveland, OH. Robert Anton Wilson, Halim El-Dabh, and Muruga Booker have all been participants in presentations of the 8-Circuit Maze. ^[9]

• In 1989 he had a cameo appearance as television evangelist Dr. Timothy Leary in Wes Craven's horror movie Shocker.

• In 1990 he recorded the album The Origins of Dance with The Grid.

• He is sampled several times on the 1993 Porcupine Tree album Voyage 34, which is an instrumental interpretation of an LSD trip.

• In 1993 he was credited with the opening track "The Incredible Lightness Of Being Molecular" on 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 16, 1993 in San Francisco, USA.

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

• In Joel Hershman's 1993 cult classic Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Leary played white-suited Mr. Jones, who sells fake passports to fugitives out of an office that consists of a big white coupe parked in a deserted drive-in movie lot. He reassures the protagonist that none of his clients have ever been caught, except for the one who disobeyed his orders, got high on LSD, and went to Switzerland.

• 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 John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance".

• He is also mentioned in The Who's 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 [9]"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 "Fist Fuck" on the remix EP Fixed.

• The phrase "turn on, tune in, drop out" appears on the Gil 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. The following album was also entitled The Politics of Ecstasy the title of a book written by Timothy Leary in 1968.

• A South African hardcore/punk band is named "timothylearyisinnocent" after him. However the name is more of a joke than an actual testament to Timothy Leary.^{[citation needed]}

• He is mentioned in the fact track on the DVD release of Blow

• Leary makes a cameo appearance in 1992's "Roadside Prophets", where he educates Adam Horwitz's (Beastie Boys) character on existentialism.

• He is mentioned on a track of Daniel Tosh's CD, True Stories I Made Up, where he states, "I believe the act of non-doing is the most important act of all. Thanks Uma's Dad!" - referring to Leary as Uma Thurman's father

• 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 EP. The short excerpt started and ended with the repeating phrase "Think for yourself; question authority." and follows:

"Think for yourself. Question authority. Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we're going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities: the political, the religious, the educational authorities, who have attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations. Informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness-- chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself. Think for yourself. Question authority."

[edit] Games

• Equal parts party game, roleplaying game and social simulation, Timothy Leary's Mind Mirror was released for Commodore 64, Atari XL, Apple II, and MS-DOS computers by Electronic Arts in 1985. The game was a digital reinterpreting of Leary's doctoral thesis. 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.

[edit] TV appearances

• He appeared as a Harvard professor named Dr. Milo in the episode Stagecoach of the TV show The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. with Bruce Campbell.
• He appeared in "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" first chapter.
• Has a cameo at the end of the 1995 music video "Galaxie" by the rock group Blind Melon.
• He appeared as himself in a 1992 episode of the sitcom "Blossom" entitled The Making of the President.

[edit] References

Weil, Andrew T. "The Strange Case of the Harvard Drug Scandal" Look, 27 November 5, 1963.

[edit] See also

• Freedom of thought
• Cognitive liberty
• Psychedelics
• LSD

[edit] External links

• Exo-Psychology Revisited— Leary’s Eight-Circuit model of developmental psychology assigns extraterrestrial status to the final four (psychedelic) "circuits."
• Timothy Leary's Last Trip
• TimothyLeary.us - biography, archives, links and more
• A page devoted to Timothy Leary & LSD with video of Reverend Lakko recalling Timothy Leary's guidance during the Marsh Chapel Experiment, an interaction with Marshall McLuhan, and other Leary links
• I Have America Surrounded - the Life of Timothy Leary - website for a Timothy Leary biography.
• An interpretation of Timothy Leary -- Reviews Timothy Leary: A Biography, discusses Leary and Aleister Crowley. J. L. Flatley
• 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
• High Blotter Mark - Zero Sum Mind article.
• 8-Circuit Model of Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson
• Timothy Leary's Mind Mirror at MobyGames
• My Best Birthday Present - Timothy Leary by Michael Dare
• Timothy Leary is Among America's Unsung Heroes Luciferian journalist, James Donahue, tells the story of Timothy Leary.
• Dr. Timothy Leary, PhD at Deoxy.org
• Dr. Timothy Leary's IMDB resume
• NeuroLogic by Joanna and Timothy Leary (EBOOK)
• Timothy Leary's Ultimate Trip -- Leary Interviewed by Bruce Eisner
• Listen online: Think For Yourself

Persondata
NAME	Leary, Timothy Francis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Psychologist and advocate
DATE OF BIRTH	October 22, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH	Springfield, Massachusetts, United States
DATE OF DEATH	May 31, 1996
PLACE OF DEATH	Los Angeles, California, United States