Timothy Francis Leary, Ph.D. (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American writer, psychologist, computer software designer, and advocate of psychedelic drug research and use. As a 1960s counterculture icon, 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."
He earned 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."* "Timothy Leary, Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75," obituary, New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1996
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 Foundation (1955-1958), and a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University (1959-1963).
In 1955, his first wife, Marianne, committed suicide, leaving him a single father with a son and daughter.* "Timothy Leary, Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75," obituary, New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1996
Leary later described these years disparagingly, writing that he had been:
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.* 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 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 Hoffman, 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, 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.
In 1963, Leary and Alpert were dismissed from Harvard after college authorities confirmed that undergraduates had shared in the researchers' stash.* "Timothy Leary, Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75," obituary, New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1996 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. 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. 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. 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.* "The Nutty Professor," by Luc Sante, New York Times Book Review, June 24, 2006, review of "Timothy Leary: A Biography," by Robert Greenfield Leary later wrote:
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 on flimsy charges concocted by the local assistant district attorney, G. Gordon Liddy."* "The Nutty Professor," by Luc Sante, New York Times Book Review, June 24, 2006, review of "Timothy Leary: A Biography," by Robert Greenfield
It was in Millbrook, that Leary's son and daughter, "Susan and Jack, who had been dragged through so much, beginning with their mother's death, and had been neglected and passively abused for many years, began to fall apart. (In 1988 Susan shot her boyfriend, and eventually killed herself in jail; Jack managed to repair himself, but has avoided publicity ever since.)"* "The Nutty Professor," by Luc Sante, New York Times Book Review, June 24, 2006, review of "Timothy Leary: A Biography," by Robert Greenfield
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:
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 19th 1966, Leary founded the League for Spiritual Discovery, a religion with LSD as its holy sacrament (by doing this, he hoped to legalize LSD 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.
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.* "Timothy Leary, Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75," obituary, New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1996
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."* "Timothy Leary, Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75," obituary, New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1996
Leary in the late 1960s and early 1970s formulated his eight circuit model of consciousness (based on his psychedelic experiences at the Millbrook estate) in which he claimed that the human mind/nervous system consisted of eight circuits which, when activated, produce eight levels of consciousness. He 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. The eight circuit model of consciousness was exhaustively formulated for the first time in Leary's 1977 book, Exo-Psychology.
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 received a ten-year sentence for possessing two roaches of marijuana, which he claimed were planted by the arresting officer. 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 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, and Leary became involved with a groupie by the name of Joanna Harcourt-Smith. They travelled 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."* "The Nutty Professor," by Luc Sante, New York Times Book Review, June 24, 2006, review of "Timothy Leary: A Biography," by Robert Greenfield
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 ; President Richard Nixon had earlier labeled him "the most dangerous man in America."* "Timothy Leary, Pied Piper Of Psychedelic 60's, Dies at 75," obituary, New York Times Book Review, June 1, 1996
The judge remarked, "If he is allowed to travel freely, he will speak publicly and spread his ideas." 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."
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:
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.
An eye-witness interview in the "Timothy Leary's Dead" DVD (see below) describes his confrontation of FBI agents who were terrifying an innocent young Hispanic woman during the Millbrook bust (led by G. Gordon Liddy).
The most important activity during this time was the writing & publishing out of prison the StarSeed Series. This was (1973), [http://www.noveltynet.org/content/books/neurologic/39.html neurologic (1973), & Terra II: A Way Out(1974). Tim transitioned here to the idea of using outer Space to expand the 7 Circuit Model of consciousness. 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 a proposal for space colonization.
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.
After his release from prison, Leary cultivated a friendship with former foe G. Gordon Liddy (whose former boss, Richard Nixon, had ordered him to destroy Leary). At the time, both men were near financial insolvency, and in 1982, they earned money touring the lecture circuit as ex-cons debating the soul of America.
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.
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.
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."
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." *
-- "Timothy Leary" a biography by Robert Greenfield, Chapter 1."Greenfield, Robert, "Timothy Leary" a biography, as excerpted on the web site for The New York Times
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.
1920 births | 1996 deaths | Chaos magicians | Deaths by prostate cancer | Irish-Americans | Non-graduate alumni of West Point | Occultists | People buried in space | People from Springfield, Massachusetts | Psychedelic advocates and proponents | Psychedelic researchers | University of California, Berkeley alumni
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