A Conversation On LSD

A rare home movie of a conversation between early LSD pioneers Timothy Leary, Oscar Jangier, Al Hubbard, Sidney Cohen, Myron Stolaroff and Humphry Osmond & others. A must see for psychedelic historians. I believe this was filmed at Tim’s home circa 1972.Thank you Timothy Leary Archive!



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Timothy Leary Interviews

Timothy Leary on the Psychedelic Salon Podcast
Episode 284 Timothy Leary The Revolution Continues #1 Download
Episode 285 Timothy Leary The Revolution Continues #2 Download
 Episode 286 Timothy Leary The Revolution Continues #3 Download 
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On November 13, 1976 Howard Pearlstein & Henry Marshall interviewed Dr. Timothy Leary just a few months after his release from prison in 1976. It took place in Houston, Texas for the local Pacifica Station, KPFT. Unlike most radio interviews, instead of just one person asking the questions this one consisted of a panel of men who at times seemed more like a board of inquiry of some kind. However, it doesn't take long for Dr. Leary to be in full command of the situation. And for historians who are interested in whether or not Leary gave evidence against one of his attorneys, you'll be quite pleased when the questions trend in this direction. Tim defends his own sanity but quickly moves on to a preliminary discussion of Leary's 8-Circuit theories, evolution, the future, space migration, life extension & more.

Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison Experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment. Both studies produced useful data, but Leary and his associate Richard Alpert were dismissed from the university.

Leary believed LSD showed therapeutic potential for use in psychiatry. He popularized catchphrases that promoted his philosophy, such as "turn on, tune in, drop out ", "set and setting", and "think for yourself and question authority". He also wrote and spoke frequently about transhumanist concepts involving space migration, intelligence increase and life extension (SMI²LE), and he developed the eight-circuit model of consciousness in his book Exo-Psychology (1977).

During the 1960s and 1970s, Leary was arrested regularly and was held captive in 29 different prisons throughout the world. President Richard Nixon once described Leary as "the most dangerous man in America". Leary was released from prison on April 21, 1976 by Governor Jerry Brown.

[NOTE: All quotations are by Dr. Timothy Leary]

“From my earliest years I wanted to figure out what life was about. I wanted to find out why I was here so that my actions and my desires would have some meaning. I don’t understand why everyone isn’t mainly and centrally a philosopher, because if you aren’t trying to figure that out for yourself you’re borrowing, or begging, or passively taking on someone else’s philosophy, and this may lead to situations that are unsatisfactory.”

“A philosopher never gets in trouble if his ideas are not new.”

"I spent four years in 29 jails and prisons on four continents."

“Looked at it pragmatically, the trick of taking intelligence tests is to get the highest score possible in terms of intelligence as defined by middle class intellectuals who designed the test.”

“It’s the nature of the game that a philosopher who’s proposing radical new ideas will be opposed by 80% of society.”

“My responsibility is to the genetic process and evolutionary process as I see it.”

“We have to be gentle with each other because we are going through a period of mutations.”

“I think, though, that there has never been a cultural change in history that was as profound, as pervasive, and as bloodless as the cultural revolution of the Sixties. By and large it was a smiling revolution.”

“By and large I’m very proud of what happened in the Sixties, every aspect of our culture was reformed and revised and reviewed and improved.”

“Now, LSD is a dangerous drug because it’s basically a post-terrestrial experience. And for caterpillars to start taking a butterfly drug, it gives you perspectives, and forecasts what’s to come.”

“There’s perhaps less than ten percent of the population who should even consider, under the best circumstances of disciplined control, to take this drug, because LSD is not a hedonistic, laid-back, multi-orgasm drug. It really isn’t. It’s a neurological experience. It’s a sixth circuit neuroelectric experience, and it’s basically preparation for post-terrestrial life.”

“To summarize, I’m an evolutionary agent using electromagnetic energies to broadcast evolutionary signals. The signals are ‘leave the planet’, ‘get smarter’, and ‘learn how to live as long as you want’.”

Leary makes a point about President Kennedy attempting to turn the solution to a bad economy away from war and into space.

Further information may be found at:
FREE Mp3 recordings are featured on the Psychedelic Salon Podcast
Dr. Timothy Leary on Wikipedia
The Timothy Leary Movie Archive
www.EROCx1.com

Timothy Leary archive sold to NY Library

On June 16, 2011 the New York Public Library announced that it has acquired the Timothy Leary archive for $900,000. The well organized, invaluable collection contains >335 well organized boxes equivalent to 412 linear feet of letters, manuscripts, research documents, notes, legal and financial records, printed materials, photographs, video and audio tapes, CDs and DVDs, posters and flyers, and artifacts, dating from Leary’s youth in the 1920s until his death in 1996.

William Stingone, curator of manuscripts at the library acknowledged Tim as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century and predicts the collection will help researchers get beyond the “myth making” around ’60s figures and “Hopefully we’ll be able to get to some of the truth of it here”. It will no doubt be of great resource for the recent resurgence of psychedelic research by Charlie Grob, Rick Strassman, Roland Griffiths and organizations such as Heffter Research Institute & MAPS.

The complete documentation from Leary’s early psychotropic drug experiments are in tact. Thomas Lannon, the library’s assistant curator for manuscripts and archives explained that much of the archive includes legitimate scientific research performed prior these substances being made illegal. Leary kept meticulous records at many points during his life. There are comprehensive research files, legal briefs, budgets and memos about the many institutes and organizations he founded, but there are also notes and documents from when he was on the run after escaping from a California prison with help from the Weather Underground. A folder labeled as notes from his “C.I.A. kidnapping” in 1973 is full of cryptic jottings recounting the details of his arrest in Afghanistan, at an airport in Kabul, after he fled the United States.

Partial list of items in the archive purchased from the Leary Estate include:

• Thousands of letters to Leary, many from luminaries of the 1960s era, including Aldous and Laura Huxley, Gerald Heard, Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Charles Olson, Arthur Koestler, Huston Smith, Walter Houston Clark, Walter Pahnke, Humphry Osmond, Al Hubbard, Oscar Janiger, Cary Grant, Charles Mingus, Maynard Ferguson, Michael Hollingshead , Robert Anton Wilson, Gordon Wasson, Ken Kesey and Augustus Owsley Stanley. Other correspondence is with his family – including letters to and from his mother, his wives and his children – as well as publishers, attorneys, politicians and his numerous adversaries, including G. Gordon Liddy and law enforcement figures from local sheriffs to Drug Enforcement Agency and Central Intelligence Agency operatives.
• Professional and research papers, which will provide scholars a unique opportunity to study Leary’s clinical work from graduate school through his years at Millbrook, including hundreds of reports documenting the psilocybin-induced experiences Harvard graduate students and faculty, creative artists, prisoners at the Massachusetts State Prison at Concord, and theology students.
• Files and correspondence detailing Leary’s experience at Harvard University, including his initial acceptance, the university’s eventual resistance to his research, his controversial research methods and his eventual dismissal. These files depict the evolution of Leary’s studies from rigorous, empirical research into more free-flowing, scientifically problematic exploration, as well as the promotion of psychedelics.
• The complete records of the organizations Leary formed to continue his research after leaving Harvard, including the International Federation for Internal Freedom, Castalia Foundation and the League For Spiritual Discovery. These files, like those from Leary’s research at Harvard, include session reports, completed questionnaires, and letters describing the mushroom and LSD induced experiences of many notable cultural figures and Leary’s associates, such as Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and Ralph Metzner. Letters among Leary and his research partners also document their turbulent and intense personal and professional relationships.
• Extensive correspondence, legal briefs, prison writings, letters of support and petitions sent to and produced by the four Leary defense funds during his time in prison after his arrest in 1973. There are also materials connected to his exile period in Algeria and Switzerland, including correspondence, notebooks, statements, letters and manuscript material.
• Copies of government documents, released to Leary under the Freedom of Information Act, pertaining to various agencies’ surveillance of Leary, as well as his arrest. Leary’s cooperation with the authorities, still considered by many as a betrayal of the counterculture, is also well documented.
• Computer generated text, correspondence and material relating to the computer revolution, the Biosphere project, space colonies, cryogenics and more from his time in Los Angeles.
• More than 300 videotapes and 300 audiotapes featuring Leary, including about 50 early lectures. A large portion of these tapes are noncommercial and probably represent the only copies in existence.
• Manuscripts of published books and articles, as well as a substantial number of unpublished works, some book length. Scores of unpublished essays on a variety of subjects, unproduced movie scripts, fiction and poetry are also included.

The archive is currently sitting in a storage complex in Long Island, waiting to be sorted and processed over the next 18 - 24. It is my hope that it will soon be digitized for the world to access online similar to Hofmann.org. A portion of the sale is being donated back to finance the processing of the material. When Tim announced his illness, he attempted to comfort us by saying something to the effect of “I will live forever, spreading through the WWW like a virus corrupting the minds of young people.” It has been heart breaking to see his website dead all these years and will be awesome to see Leary’s wish come full circle. I believe letters of support to the New York Public Library are appropriate, they may be contacted HERE. A big thank you to all who helped make this happen!

Further information may be found at:
FREE Mp3 recordings are featured on the Psychedelic Salon Podcast
NYT Article on TimothyLearyArchives.org
The Timothy Leary Movie Archive
www.EROCx1.com

Mp3 Tribute to Hunter Thompson

The Elastic Retreat
with DJ Deadtotheworld
Episode Four: Tribute to Hunter S.Thompson
Download: FREE MP3 [right click, save target as]

Take a journey through incarnations of Thompson's work mixed with psychedelic sound collage. Rare recordings like the original tapes from the famous road trip which became Hunter's most well known work: "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" are featured in this weeks installment. Also featured will be excerpts of H.S.T. lectures, and passages from his books. Even if your only image of Thompson is the one of Johnny Depp, you will be in for a treat in this special two hour episode of The Elastic Retreat. In the words of Thompson himself, in order to truly enjoy this show, "The mind & body must be subjected to extreme stimulus, by means of drugs and music."

Intro -
1. Alias & Tarsier -  Luck and Fear
2. Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit
3. Anoushka Shankar - Naked
4. Neil Young - Western Hero
5. Bob Dylan - Memphis Blues
6. Dredg - Pariah
7. Les Claypool - Booneville Stomp
8. Acoustic Tribute to Tool - Eulogy
9. Boards of Canada - Tears From the Compound Eye
10. Dosh - Keep up Appearance
11. Ween - The Mollusk
12. Jerry Garcia and David Grissman - Panama Red
13. Subtle - Hollow Hollered
14. Why - The Hollows
15. Faith No More - Ashes to Ashes
16. Black Mountain - Wucan
17. Queens of the Stone Age - Song for the Deaf
18. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts IV
19. Bob Dylan - Mr. Tamborine Man

Links:
The Elastic Retreat
EROCx1 Blog

The origin of the 60’s: Alan Watts & friends Houseboat Summit

This fascinating recording is of a meeting held in 1967 between Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder planning & discussing the future of psychedelic culture. Its offers a very unique & insightful perspective on the creation of would later be known as the “60’s”.

From: The Psychedelic Salon
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PROGRAM NOTES:

"The Houseboat Summit" was held in February 1967, and has been documented in several places on the Web. In addition to the quotes below, which are from this podcast, you can read a more complete transcript of this historic meeting here.

"I think that, thus far, the genius of this kind of underground that we’re talking about is that it has no leadership." -Alan Watts

"What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed." -Alan Watts

"My historical reading of the situation is that these great monolithic empires developed, Rome, Turkey, and so forth, and they always break down when enough people, and it’s always the young, the creative, and minority groups drop out and go back to a tribal form." -Timothy Leary

"Our educational system in its entirety does nothing to give us any kind of material competence. In other words, we don’t learn how to cook, how to make clothes, how to build houses, how to make love, or to do any of the absolutely fundamental things of life." -Alan Watts

"That society is strong and viable which recognizes its own provisionality." -Alan Watts

"And so when the essential idea of love is lost there comes talk of fidelity. Actually, the only possible basis for two beings, male and female, to relate to each other is to grant each other total freedom." -Alan Watts

"Increasingly, we’re developing all kinds of systems for verifying reality by echoing it." -Alan Watts.

"Drop out of the public schools. The public schools cannot be compromised with." -Timothy Leary

"What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks." -Alan Watts

"Half the things I’ve done are wrong, mistakes [unintelligible]. The moratorium on pot and LSD a year ago is ridiculous. I shouldn’t have done that. I make a blunder at least one out of two times I come to bat." -Timothy Leary

"In other words, when there is a game going on that’s on a collision course, and that this game obviously is going to lead to total destruction, the only way of getting people out of a bad game is to indicate that the game is no longer interesting. See, we’ve left this game and it bores us." -Alan Watts, February 1967

The Psychedelic Salon

Dr. Timothy Leary on VH1 Aug 13th!

There is a VH1 series called “Lords of the Revolution” with episode #104 featuring Dr. Timothy Leary. Its scheduled to air on Vh1 August 13th @ 8PM.

Below is the summary:
[From the moment Harvard professor Timothy Leary ate magic mushrooms in 1960, his life would never be the same. Advocating the use of LSD and other mind altering drugs to expand consciousness, Leary transformed himself from an eccentric Harvard professor into the leader of the 1960s psychedelic counter-culture movement. Leary's influence helped shape the music, fashion and politics of a new generation. He defied authority and fought the government at every turn, earning the title, in President Nixon's words, as "the most dangerous man in America."]

Link: Lords of the Revolution » Ep. 104

This series also features Cheech & Chong

Aquarius Rising by Pierre Sogol

Project by: Damer.com
Found by way of my friend Lorenzo

Aquarius Rising by Pierre Sogol.
Bringing a rare 1967 film documenting
hippie life in California back to life!

Grateful thanks to Bruce Damer, Rob Menzies, Leon Tabory, Al Lundell and many others, this classic documentary may now be seen online. This material is informing a number of projects including Holly Rae Harman's history of the Ben Lomond Holiday Commune and Ralph Abraham's HIP Santa Cruz History Project.

 
Aquarius Rising Chapter 1: (Above) Begins with flashing facts about the entheogen's impact on religion & civilization. Then documents a Be-In in Orange County, Various festivals in LA, the Sunset Riots and the resulting hearings.

Aquarius Rising Chapter 2: In this chapter they visit the “strawberry fields” LSD commune in the hills near Thousand Oaks, CA. They also stop in at the nearby Renaissance Pleasure Faire.

Aquarius Rising Chapter 3: In this episode, the gang goes to the “New Mecca” (San Francisco). Scenes from the Haight, hippie wedding, Summer of Love, Natasha’s tale, Oregon LSD trip, Nancy (who reappears frequently in other chapters), July 4th in Golden Gate Park.

Aquarius Rising Chapter 4: Here we hear from Nancy, and witness open drug dealing on the streets of Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love.

Aquarius Rising Chapter 5: In this episode we have more scenes from OM Holiday Commune (Ben Lomond). Next we go to Love Street to Betty’s house (Elizabeth Gips) in the Haight for a group discussion. Then jump to a public hearing about hippies, end with Stephen on guitar.

Aquarius Rising Chapter 6: Here we witness Camilla (visiting the famous Betty) and tripping on LSD on the beach at Bodega Bay. Next a trip on OM Holiday Commune’s magic bus down to Ben Lomond Holiday Commune, Nancy the “Florence Nightingale of the Haight” arrives, and some good sitar was played.

Aquarius Rising Chapter 7: This last chapter or “appendix” shows various scenes and rolls credits and opinions.

Dr. Timothy Leary: The League for Spiritual Discovery

From: The Psychedelic Salon

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Jan 1966 Radio interview with Dr. Timothy Leary and Elsa Knight Thompson.

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations below are by Dr. Timothy Leary]

"Psychedelic art is the public face of the communication device of our new religion."

"Man’s attempt to turn on just staggers the imagination. There’s hardly anything that hasn’t been used one time or another, or in one culture or another, to get this [psychedelic] experience."

"We don’t care what method people use [to turn on]. We treasure and glorify any method that can get you high, that can turn you on. But we also insist that no one tell us that we can’t use our sacraments that seem to work for us."

"We’re convinced, and I think it wouldn’t be hard to prove my point, that most Americans are involved in a meaningless, robot, assembly-line series of activities. They don’t really know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, but they’re just pushed off to this assembly-line and off they go."

"[By drop out] we mean drop out of the meaningless and tune in to the productive."

"You have to go out of your mind to come to your senses."

"There’s no more room for mythological, supernatural religious teachers."

"We use this word ‘psychosis’ the way we used the word ‘devil’ or ‘devil-possession’ or ‘witchcraft’ two or three or four or five hundred years ago."

"When the time comes, let your kids turn you on. That’s my message to the middle-age, middle-class, whiskey-drinking American suburban family."

"So jail to us is not a middle class disgrace. Here I am, a former Harvard professor, I’ve been arrested three times in the last year. Isn’t that disgraceful? To me that just means I’m doing my job. And if I don’t get the establishment a little worried, I wonder if my message is not getting through."

www.PsychedelicSalon.org

Dr. Timothy Leary: 1964 lecture on How To Use Your Head

The Psychedelic Salon
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This episode of the Psychedelic Salon features Dr. Timothy Leary. kicking off the 1960's psychedelic revolution in his famous November 29, 1964 Cooper Union address. The first time the American public learns about the mind expanding drug called LSD.

[All quotes below are by Dr. Timothy Leary]

"You have to go out of your mind to use your head."

"Now, in taking this eccentric position, of taking the brain seriously, you run the risk of getting out of touch with your professional colloquies."

"Now from the standpoint of the strategy of the genetic material, every living species is simply a creative solution to a packaging problem."

"This [early imprinting of young ducklings on orange basketballs instead of mother ducks] is both funny and tragic, because it raises the question, in the case of the human being, what accidental orange basketball have you and I been exposed to early in life?"

"At times it seems to us that one of the functions of the mind is to rationalize and protect an accidental early imprint."

"We suggest that psychedelic drugs may be seen as chemical agents which temporarily suspend your old imprints."

"The thing which excites us these days is the corollary concept of psychedelic RE-imprinting."

"I think that anyone who doesn’t experience, at some moment during their psychedelic sessions, and intense awe-full fear has been cheated by their psychiatrist or their bootlegger."

"LSD is the most powerful aphrodisiac ever known to man."

PsychedelicSalon.org