Timothy Leary

A cheerleader for evolution

‘Your role is quite simple. Become a cheerleader for evolution. That’s what I did and my grandfather before me. These brain-drugs, mass-produced in the laboratories, will bring about vast changes in society. This will happen with or without you or me. All we can do is spread the word. The obstacle to this evolution, Timothy, is the Bible.’

-- Aldous Huxley to Timothy Leary according to latter one's autobiographical account[1][2][3]

The raise of the Anti-Christian sentiment

‘[W]e had run up against the Judeo-Christian commitment to one God, one religion, one reality, that has cursed Europe for centuries and America since our founding days. Drugs that open the mind to multiple realities inevitably lead to a polytheistic view of the universe. We sensed that the time for a new humanist religion based on intelligence, good-natured pluralism and scientific paganism has arrived.’

-- Timothy Leary[3]

Think for yourself

‘The message is simple: think for yourself, and 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 are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who 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.'’[4]

Timothy Leary (1920 – 1996) was a psychologist who researched psychedelic drugs which change the activities of the brain—especially LSD—and promoted their use. He became the roving Hippie, the sage of Aquarius, the 1960s icon who promoted peace and love through psychedelic drugs to a nation divided over the rise of the hippie counterculture, as Leary tried to avoid arrest and prison. Leary coined the slogan, "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

Professors at Harvard led the attack on the wayward lecturer, warning that experimental drugs like LSD should be administered by physicians in controlled medical settings, not by psychologists at late-night parties. Leary responded that "control of the mind through drugs, which we call internal politics, will be the leading civil rights issue in the coming decades." He claimed, "LSD use is a sacramental ritual." In 1963, he was fired from Harvard on a technicality- he was assigned zero courses to teach for a semester, then fired for having an inadequate number of students.

Harvard's action made him immensely popular in the dropout world, despite repeated reports of "bad trips" and psychological damage to drug users. Despite repeated arrests he avoided prison until 1970. The terrorist group the Weather Underground helped him escape, but in 1973 he was apprehended trying to enter Afghanistan. Leary returned to prison until paroled in 1976. Leary continued his advocacy lectures across the country from his base in Hollywood. He married five times, twice to one woman. The first of his spouses committed suicide, as did his only daughter.

He died of cancer, but remains an iconic hero to the surviving addicts he introduced to dangerous drugs.

## Contents

* 1 Bibliography
* 2 Further reading
* 3 See also
* 4 References

## Bibliography[edit]

* Evolutionary Agents — Leary delves deeper into his vision of "human future history." He likens human society to that of insect hives and claims humans will eventually become the aliens.[5]

## Further reading[edit]

* Fourth Communication from the Weatherman Underground, September 15, 1970.
* Timothy Leary Archive Online video exhibit from the Internet Archive

## See also[edit]

* Frankfurt School
* Hippie
* Bernardine Dohrn
* Weather Underground

## References[edit]

1. ↑ Ado Krige (29 Aug 2014). Timothy Leary 1920-1996. WordPress. Retrieved on 13 Sep 2018. “Here is an extract of a conversation between Huxley and Leary: After he heavily induced himself with psilocybin, Huxley told Leary in a chilling conversation: ... The late British psychiatrist William Sargant wrote, “Aldous Huxley, in his writings and in talking to me personally, insisted that mescaline had taken him into the presence of God.” Leary declared, “I am a revolutionary, and the faster this system [the culture and the Christian ideals upon which it was built] goes down the happier I’ll be.”
2. ↑ Timothy Matthews (11 Nov 2008 (originally)). FRANKFURTSKÁ ŠKOLA A JEJÍ IDEOVÍ SOUDRUZI (Frankfurt school and its ideological comrades) (Czech). Te Deum (originally: The Wanderer). Retrieved on 13 Sep 2018. “Také dr. Timothy Leary, který bádal a popularizoval halucinogenní drogy, nám dává nahlédnout do myšlení frankfurtské školy. Ve své knize Záblesky paměti uvádí svůj rozhovor s Aldousem Huxleyem, který řekl: „Až budou tyto drogy působící na mozek vyráběny ve velkém v laboratořích, přivodí hluboké změny ve společnosti. K tomu dojde v každém případě, ať s naší účastí, nebo bez nás. Všechno, co můžeme dělat, je šířit slovo. Hlavní překážkou v tomto vývoji, Timothy, je bible.“ Leary pak pokračuje: „Střetli jsme se zde s onou židovsko-křesťanskou oddaností jedinému Bohu, jednomu pravému náboženství a pouze jedné realitě, která je prokletím Evropy po celá staletí a Ameriky pak ode dne jejího vzniku. Drogy otevírající mysl mnohočetným realitám nevyhnutelně vedou k polyteistickému náhledu na universum. Cítili jsme, že nadešel čas pro nové humanistické náboženství založené na rozumném a tolerantním pluralismu a na vědou podloženém pohanství.“”
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Timothy Leary (1990). Flashbacks: A Personal and Cultural History of an Era : an Autobiography. Putnam, 44, 109. ISBN 978-08747-78700. “we had run up against the Judeo-Christian commitment to one God, one religion, one reality, that has cursed Europe for centuries and America since our founding days. Drugs that open the mind to multiple realities inevitably lead to a polytheistic view of the universe. We sensed that the time for a new humanist religion based on intelligence, good-natured pluralism and scientific paganism has arrived.”
4. ↑ http://toolshed.down.net/lyrics/salivallyrics.php#01
5. ↑ Evolutionary Agents. Retrieved on 13 Sep 2018.