Timothy Leary

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Timothy Francis Leary, (born October 22, 1920 in Springfield, Massachusetts – died May 31, 1996 in Beverly Hills, California) was a writer and psychologist and a long-time advocate for research into and use of psychoactive drugs. As a 1960s counterculture icon, he is most famous as a proponent of the supposed therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD. He coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

Biography

Early life

Leary was born an only child in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father, a dentist, left when he was 13. He graduated from Springfield's Classical High School. He studied for two years at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He then transferred to West Point, but was forced to resign after an incident where he got drunk on smuggled liquor after the 1940 Army-Navy game.

Leary resigned the corps and moved to Tuscaloosa, where he attended the University of Alabama in pursuit of a bachelor's degree in psychology. He was expelled for spending the night in a women's dorm, but, after a brief service in the Army Medical Corps in Pennsylvania he was allowed to re-enroll and complete his degree requirements by correspondence. He was awarded his first degree in psychology from Alabama in 1943. He later earned 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), director of psychiatric research at the Kaiser Family Foundation (1955-1958) and a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University at the invitation of David McClelland (1959-1963).

Leary was introduced to psychedelic substances by a colleague, Anthony Russo. 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. He later commented that he "learned more [...] about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than [...] in the preceding fifteen years of studying doing research in psychology." Upon his return to Harvard that fall, Leary and his associates 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 Hoffman, a research chemist at Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland. The experiment later involved giving LSD to graduate students.

Leary argued that LSD, used under professional guidance, could alter behavior in unprecedented and beneficial ways. The goals of Leary's research included finding better ways to treat alcoholism and to reform convicted criminals. The project was controversial from the start, with suspicions about its scientific credibility and a growing number of scandalous rumors about researchers' behavior and the participation of undergraduates without medical supervision. In May of 1963, Leary and Alpert were dismissed from Harvard. They turned to their own International Foundation for Internal Freedom, founded a year earlier. Attention given to their experiments, however, fueled a black market for psychedelic drugs in Cambridge and prompted the FDA to begin regulating psychedelic compounds. With help from Mellon heirs Peggy, Billy and Tommy Hitchcock, who helped to set up the Millbrook Estate where the research could be continued. The activities at the estate garnered the notice of a local assistant district attorney, G. Gordon Liddy and led to frequent police and FBI raids.

In 1966 the unauthorized manufacture of LSD was made a misdemeanor. Leary founded the "League for Spiritual Discovery" that year in hopes of having the drug legalized as a religious sacrament. He toured college campuses with a multi-media performance called "the Death of the Mind" which attempted to artistically replicate the LSD experience. He encouraged listeners to form their own psychedelic sects, publishing a pamphlet in 1967 called Start Your Own Religion.

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

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 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 Prometheus Rising, among other works.

Leary believed that most people only access the first four of these circuits ("the Larval Circuits") in their lifetimes. The second four circuits ("the Stellar Circuits"), 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 such as yoga as well as by taking psychedelic drugs. 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'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.

In 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 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 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'. In May 1969 Leary joined John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their Montreal Bed-In and Lennon wrote Leary a campaign song called Come Together.

In 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, 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.[1]

As a result, Leary was assigned to work as a gardener in a lower security prison, which made escape possible. 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 after 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, Leary became involved with French-born socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith. Leary "married" Harcourt-Smith in a pseudo-occult ceremony 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."<ref name="multiple2"/>

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 Template:Fact; President Richard Nixon had earlier labeled him "the most dangerous man in America."<ref name="multiple1"/>

The judge remarked, "If he is allowed to travel freely, he will speak publicly and spread his ideas."Template:Fact 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."Template:Fact

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. 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:

Template:Cquote

While this claim evidently discounts the documented involvement of Leary in the set-up of Brotherhood of Eternal Love attorney George Chula and ignores his repeated attempts to set-up his fugitive ex-wife Rosemary, it should also be pointed out that Leary's affidavits and archives provided the government with a significant amount of intelligence on the American left and drug scenes and the lack of convictions directly based on Leary's testimony does not mean that his information did not strengthen the government's hand considerably.

The testimony, which had been primarily instigated by Joanna, served as a controversial rallying point for the declining American counterculture. 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) into serving as a traitorous pawn in a vast governmental conspiracy against the left wing. These sentiments were echoed at a rally against the "new" Leary organized by Kesey at Stanford University.

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.

Hollywood

Leary was released from prison on April 21, 1976 by Governor Jerry Brown. The image of his ostensible betrayal still fresh in the eyes of most of his old base, he briefly contemplated a return to mainstream academia, but his applications were ignored, ushering in a period of despondent alcoholism and bitter fighting with Joanna. After briefly relocating to San Diego, he left Joanna after she became pregnant with what may or may not have been his child (she professed to sleeping with another man earlier on the day of conception; Leary refused to take a paternity test).

Loading his few possessions into a Ford Pinto, Leary established residence in Laurel Canyon and commenced the final phase of his career 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, 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 wildly inaccurate Template:Fact 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.

Leary's lecture remained fairly static throughout the era. 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. 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 Template:Fact and required assistance in checking his email. Template:Fact

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. Leary had not spoken to son Jack on a regular basis since the early 1970s.

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 goddaughter 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. This culminated in a likely overdose in late 1993 that was misdiagnosed at the time as bilateral pneumonia.

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, 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.

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. 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. 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.

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 Template:Fact, calling The Psychedelic Experience "that stupid book," Template:Fact 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.

File:Jlbedin3.JPG
John Lennon,Timothy 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 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' 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". 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. 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." [2]

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." [3]

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 appeared at the Starwood Festival in 1991 and 1992[4]. 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.<ref>Recipe from erowid.org</ref>
  • 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.

Template:Cquote

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

-- "Timothy Leary" a biography by Robert Greenfield, Chapter 1."<ref name="multiple3"/>

Creative works

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)

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)
  • 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)

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...)
  • 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 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.
  • 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 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."
  • 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".
  • 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. The band can be found at www.myspace.com/wefuckingrockdotcom
  • He is mentioned in the fact track on the DVD of Blow
  • 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."

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. 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.

References

  • "Timothy Leary." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 18 Feb 2007, 00:37 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 18 Feb 2007 [6].


External links

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