Program Notes
Guest speaker: Timothy Leary
[NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.]
“I don’t even use the word ‘United States’. If there is such a thing I’m not a part of it. I’m not an American, I’m a Californian, and maybe I’m a Southern Californian.”
“I think any sensible person would do this, but since my 70s I have been planning, thinking about, my dying, because that’s going to be the climax, the final going away party. And you can’t believe the taboo when you start talking about how you’re going to die and the ways of dying. You’ll easily clear the cocktail party. No one wants to talk to you.”
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:21 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:25 ►
And since I’ve got kind of a busy schedule for the next 10 days or so,
00:00:30 ►
I thought that I would get another podcast out today rather than wait for a full week to pass since my last one.
00:00:36 ►
And since my previous podcast was largely about Dr. Timothy Leary,
00:00:41 ►
I thought that it might be interesting to hear directly from the good doctor himself today.
00:00:46 ►
And so I’ve selected another recording from the Leary Archive that one day will be available,
00:00:52 ►
at least for researchers, in its new home at the New York City Library.
00:00:56 ►
But as you most likely know from previous podcasts, a few years ago,
00:01:01 ►
through the efforts of Bruce Dahmer and then the then-keeper of the archive, Dennis Berry,
00:01:07 ►
I received copies of the audio material from the archive that they’d managed to digitize before the collection was sold to the library.
00:01:15 ►
And gradually I’ve been playing some of this material here in the salon.
00:01:19 ►
Of course, if you don’t want to wait for me to get around to all of it, you can also find all of this material in the Internet Archive.
00:01:26 ►
It’s in the Psychedelia Collection, along with a wealth of other historical recordings that probably will be of interest to you.
00:01:33 ►
So, if you get a chance, you may want to surf over to archive.org and poke around a bit.
00:01:40 ►
Now, today I’ve picked out two recordings to play for you. The second one is an 11-minute piece that was done by NPR Radio, or National Propaganda Radio as I like to call it.
00:01:52 ►
And that little piece is an audio collage of people commenting about the life of Dr. Leary,
00:01:58 ►
which were recorded just a few weeks before he died in May of 1996.
00:02:06 ►
a few weeks before he died in May of 1996. And I’ve added that mainly to give you a little better idea of the grand manner in which Timothy Leary departed this world. But the first recording
00:02:13 ►
that I’m going to play today is from a 1995 interview that was conducted by none other
00:02:18 ►
than Jerry Brown, who is right now, once again, the governor of the state of California.
00:02:34 ►
And just to be clear on something here, I know that people like to think of Brown as some kind of a liberal governor moonbeam or something like that,
00:02:39 ►
but in my opinion, he is no friend of the psychedelic and cannabis community.
00:02:48 ►
A couple of years ago, I was talking with Ethan Nadelman, who is the founder and the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
00:02:59 ►
And Ethan told me of an interaction he once had with Jerry Brown that left me with the opinion that the governor is being manipulated by his political donors more than his conscience. particular, one of his biggest sources of campaign cash is from the prison industry,
00:03:11 ►
which, as I mentioned in my previous podcast, receives five times as much tax money from the state than do the schools in California. So you can form your own opinions about Jerry Brown,
00:03:17 ►
but I think you can figure out how I feel about him. Anyway, back in 1995, Jerry Brown was out of public office for a spell, and so among other things, he hosted a radio program on which one of his guests was Dr. Timothy Leary.
00:03:33 ►
And here’s that interview, which was conducted sometime in October of 1995, I believe, which was about, I guess, maybe six months before Dr. Leary passed on to his next great adventure.
00:03:47 ►
Welcome to another edition of We the People.
00:03:49 ►
This is Jerry Brown, and this is the show that attempts, works to, and hopefully gets behind the media,
00:03:56 ►
behind the cultural veils that obscure our clarity and understanding for ourselves
00:04:02 ►
and for the people around us, for our culture.
00:04:04 ►
This is a show not of the left or of the right,
00:04:06 ►
but hopefully of an expanded awareness of what we can do and what we are.
00:04:12 ►
Today is not Columbus Day, even though you’d think that,
00:04:15 ►
hearing on the radio and other media outlets.
00:04:17 ►
That’s tomorrow.
00:04:18 ►
But in this age where everything is celebrated or not celebrated out of sorts and out of phase,
00:04:24 ►
that’s the way they do it.
00:04:26 ►
It reminds me, when I was governor, I was asked to make Admission Day, September 9th,
00:04:32 ►
a movable feast so people could have a three-day weekend driving away somewhere,
00:04:38 ►
and I vetoed it on the ground that we have so little memory already
00:04:42 ►
that if we don’t keep our holidays on the correct days,
00:04:46 ►
we won’t even know what we’re holidaying about.
00:04:49 ►
And secondly, why do we have to get away for three days?
00:04:52 ►
Why can’t we be right where we are?
00:04:54 ►
And being right where we are reminds me of the famous saying of our guest this hour,
00:05:00 ►
that of Timothy Leary when he said,
00:05:02 ►
Tune in, turn on, and drop out?
00:05:06 ►
A man who excelled in the academic world at Harvard, was one of the first pioneers of LSD and other psychedelics,
00:05:16 ►
known very much and identified with the 60s, but continuing to write, to explore, to pioneer,
00:05:22 ►
and even as we speak, he is the author of a recent book called Chaos and Cyberspace.
00:05:29 ►
Another book which I’m looking at here is a reissue from the late 60s called Timothy Leary High Priest.
00:05:35 ►
All of these books are going to be available for those that wish to call in and support the membership drive here at KPFA. We’re also simulcasting in New York City at WBAI and also in Fresno.
00:05:51 ►
So right off, Tim, are you there?
00:05:55 ►
I’m here, Governor Brown.
00:05:56 ►
Happy to be with you and happy to be on this station.
00:05:58 ►
Well, thank you.
00:05:59 ►
I’m happy for WBAI, my favorite East Coast station.
00:06:04 ►
Well, thank you.
00:06:04 ►
So we’ve got a lot of people out there that are listening.
00:06:07 ►
We’re going to give them a chance to call as soon as we have a chance to just kind of establish the groundwork here,
00:06:13 ►
the whole frame of reference.
00:06:15 ►
Now, I want to just start right off here.
00:06:20 ►
I’d like to get a sense of how your sense of things has changed from just that time before you left Harvard
00:06:27 ►
and you had a certain perspective on the world,
00:06:29 ►
probably very much influenced by the academic scientific paradigm time of the time,
00:06:36 ►
and the way you see things after all your explorations and celebrations and heartaches that have come over the last 30 years.
00:06:44 ►
and celebrations and heartaches that have come over the last 30 years.
00:06:50 ►
Can you give us kind of a little brief evolutionary history of your own consciousness?
00:06:51 ►
Oh, boy.
00:06:55 ►
I’m not asking you for the whole bottle of wax here,
00:06:59 ►
but I know that if you had a snapshot of the way the world looked to you,
00:07:02 ►
say like 1960 and the way the world looks to you today,
00:07:05 ►
I have a hunch that it must be pretty different.
00:07:07 ►
We should lay the ground framework here.
00:07:09 ►
Number one, that like most people
00:07:11 ►
my age, I’m having thrilling discoveries
00:07:13 ►
in amnesia that sometimes I
00:07:15 ►
forget what I’m talking about.
00:07:17 ►
This kind of adds a
00:07:18 ►
thrill, but it certainly is going to
00:07:21 ►
I’m not going to be able to remember all
00:07:23 ►
the things that you want to remember, but I’ll just
00:07:24 ►
fabricate and make up answers, okay?
00:07:26 ►
So at least keep in the spirit.
00:07:28 ►
I’ll try to.
00:07:29 ►
So, I mean, you must have had a kind of a more linear, rigid view of the world, a la 1958, than you do 1995.
00:07:40 ►
Jerry, I’ve been thrown out of, like, four of the top schools by the time I was 20.
00:07:45 ►
I was thrown out of a Jesuit school, Holy Cross in Worcester.
00:07:49 ►
I was silenced at West Point and made a deal with it.
00:07:53 ►
Oh, you went to West Point?
00:07:55 ►
Yeah.
00:07:55 ►
I didn’t know that.
00:07:56 ►
I was born at West Point as a baby, and then I went back there.
00:07:59 ►
And I was there almost two years.
00:08:01 ►
And I was never linear.
00:08:03 ►
I was always looking at it like an alien. What do
00:08:06 ►
these guys do in dressing up like that and pretending to… Yeah, so I’ve been almost
00:08:11 ►
like an alien presence. Harvard, I got my doctorate in California.
00:08:15 ►
I’ve got to stop you right there, though, because I did study to be a Jesuit priest
00:08:20 ►
for almost four years.
00:08:21 ►
I know.
00:08:22 ►
Did you derive anything from your time at Holy Cross?
00:08:21 ►
for almost four years.
00:08:21 ►
I know.
00:08:24 ►
Did you derive anything from your time at Holy Cross?
00:08:25 ►
Sure.
00:08:27 ►
I learned a lot about how the mentality works.
00:08:30 ►
And, yes, I have a great deal of affection.
00:08:34 ►
And I must tell you, of all the orders in the Catholic Church, the Jesuits are certainly the elegant and the most intellectual
00:08:38 ►
and most futuristic.
00:08:40 ►
So you belong in the Jesuits if you’re going to be in the Catholic thing.
00:08:43 ►
And I congratulate you.
00:08:45 ►
Well, I’m not in the Jesuits, and you can’t really say I’m in the Catholic thing,
00:08:48 ►
but I always feel that those realities stay with us in some form.
00:08:53 ►
Okay, so you went on to Harvard.
00:08:56 ►
I went to World War II for four years.
00:09:01 ►
I had over five years of military service there.
00:09:04 ►
I went after Holy Cross,
00:09:06 ►
and I got into a very interesting thing where I was court-martialed
00:09:10 ►
with the officers and their sabers, you know,
00:09:12 ►
and they acquitted me of the charge that I got into a power struggle.
00:09:16 ►
So I was out there, you know, in the major games going,
00:09:20 ►
you know, the Jesuit schools and West Point,
00:09:22 ►
and then I went to UC Berkeley, and then later Harvard.
00:09:25 ►
Yeah, I like to be where the action is and where I can learn most.
00:09:28 ►
And the smartest people are hanging out at those places.
00:09:31 ►
At some point, though, you must have, you left, you started experimenting with LSD,
00:09:36 ►
and then not too long after that, you dropped out of Harvard, or they kicked you out, or
00:09:39 ►
you, or what?
00:09:42 ►
One of the choices, yeah.
00:09:44 ►
All of the above. All of the above.
00:09:45 ►
All of the above.
00:09:46 ►
I had no intention of being at Harvard for more than two years.
00:09:48 ►
The last thing I ever wanted was tenure, life, get out of here.
00:09:53 ►
But the stuff was so interesting, I did stay on a couple years later.
00:09:56 ►
I had left by the time they fired me.
00:10:00 ►
There was quite a bit of mutual respect with many of the professors at Harvard.
00:10:04 ►
There was quite a bit of mutual respect with many of the professors at Harvard.
00:10:12 ►
Oh, yeah, that was because we were experimenting with psychedelic drugs.
00:10:15 ►
Now, I’d always been kind of down on drugs because the tranquilizers used by doctors in the 60s,
00:10:21 ►
the drug and hospitalizers, didn’t like that at all
00:10:23 ►
because it took away from their own individual
00:10:25 ►
choice. But I did
00:10:27 ►
become a very
00:10:29 ►
enthusiastic
00:10:30 ►
user of psychedelic drugs
00:10:33 ►
in my own research,
00:10:35 ►
my own brain, and telling people
00:10:37 ►
about it.
00:10:39 ►
Okay, so here we are, you know, many, many years
00:10:41 ►
later.
00:10:43 ►
Does the world… I’m trying to get you to contrast.
00:10:47 ►
Maybe that’s a dumb question, but just the idea of what you see now out there in the world.
00:10:52 ►
Is it something that, I don’t know, did you miss it before?
00:10:57 ►
Is there something new, or not new, but you must have something you’re focusing on that you didn’t see before. It’s politically correct to say this, but I think things are improving at a dizzying speed.
00:11:09 ►
We’re aware of stuff now about fathers molesting their wives and kids.
00:11:15 ►
It’s been going on more and more in the past, but now we’re aware of it.
00:11:19 ►
All these issues of inequality and of power.
00:11:27 ►
We’re very aware of it, so there’s a tremendous…
00:11:30 ►
The kids today, 10, 15 years old,
00:11:32 ►
spending their time with these new language computers,
00:11:36 ►
they’re just not going to be the docile followers
00:11:39 ►
that their parents and grandparents were.
00:11:41 ►
So this is pretty interesting.
00:11:43 ►
We’re improving at a dizzying speed.
00:11:46 ►
Now, that certainly is not politically correct.
00:11:49 ►
It’s an interesting point of view.
00:11:53 ►
So in that sense, you’re pretty optimistic, or very optimistic.
00:11:54 ►
It’s the use of the pronouns.
00:11:57 ►
If I say we, we are evolving.
00:12:01 ►
If you say no, we’re not, well, then you’re not one of my we, you’re your we, so it’s great.
00:12:03 ►
I love that pronoun, we.
00:12:06 ►
Well, yeah, we is a real weasel word.
00:12:10 ►
I’m trying to, yeah, as long as you’re small groups, yeah, anyway.
00:12:12 ►
Yeah, we is, I mean, I agree.
00:12:16 ►
Politicians always talk we, we are going to make America better.
00:12:17 ►
Who do they mean?
00:12:22 ►
They mean General Motors, they mean them and their wife, 10 people, all 265 million.
00:12:23 ►
You know, so you’re right. It’s not a very clear way, and in fact, it’s a form of obfuscation that is used.
00:12:28 ►
You’re right, too.
00:12:29 ►
We both agree on that.
00:12:31 ►
That’s good.
00:12:31 ►
Okay.
00:12:32 ►
Well, all right.
00:12:33 ►
So when you say we’re improving, are you not, I mean, we can speed up the way we can impact the world,
00:12:39 ►
say, with genetic engineering and nuclear weaponry, but does that mean, okay,
00:12:46 ►
so doesn’t that mean we can destroy things just that much more easily?
00:12:50 ►
You can.
00:12:51 ►
I can’t because I don’t have it.
00:12:53 ►
I don’t even know how to do that stuff.
00:12:54 ►
But the human race in some of its, you know, at Los Alamos Laboratory or somewhere,
00:13:00 ►
you have these toys, they’re not toys, they’re awful weapons,
00:13:04 ►
and they keep refining them
00:13:06 ►
and they keep in in getting more of them they they exist and are in the hands of somebody
00:13:13 ►
well and therefore american government
00:13:15 ►
working briefly to find out uh… you know
00:13:18 ►
where where the uh… nuclear weapons are and uh…
00:13:21 ►
i think there’s a very very very
00:13:24 ►
strong anti-nuke feeling which
00:13:26 ►
didn’t even exist yeah and actually the generals don’t like that but they are
00:13:30 ►
aware of the of the problem first time I’ve ever been praising generals but
00:13:37 ►
I’ll never do it again Jerry well no I understand that that’s probably but but
00:13:44 ►
here’s what’s…
00:13:45 ►
So you’re really making the point that at least now the United States is trying to get rid of some nuclear weapons,
00:13:52 ►
which wasn’t even the case 20 years ago.
00:13:55 ►
I don’t even use the word United States.
00:13:56 ►
Okay.
00:13:57 ►
If there is such a thing, I’m not part of it.
00:13:59 ►
All right.
00:14:00 ►
I’m not an American.
00:14:02 ►
You’re an alien.
00:14:02 ►
I’m a Californian, and maybe I’m a Southern Californian.
00:14:06 ►
The real battle between the elegance of San Francisco and the vulgarness of L.A.,
00:14:11 ►
I’m caught in that.
00:14:13 ►
It’s great.
00:14:15 ►
But you don’t have that national identity.
00:14:17 ►
That’s just a little too broad.
00:14:18 ►
No, boy, that’s a…
00:14:22 ►
And by the way, my disillusion with politicians is we get it from the young kids.
00:14:28 ►
I was so thrilled in the last elections and all the polls show that most kids today do not believe that politics is the answer or certainly partisan politics.
00:14:37 ►
That lesson has sunk in, and that’s, I think, a payoff 21st century model. Okay, so that’s an improvement
00:14:46 ►
because the partisan politics really creates a diversion
00:14:49 ►
from looking at the truth,
00:14:51 ►
looking at what’s really happening
00:14:52 ►
and therefore being in a position
00:14:54 ►
to do something constructive or creative.
00:14:58 ►
Politicians are not going to do it,
00:14:59 ►
so just try to keep them responsible away,
00:15:03 ►
but your friends and the local community.
00:15:06 ►
Okay, so that’s where you see
00:15:08 ►
the only, the place, the
00:15:10 ►
locus of human
00:15:12 ►
activity of some kind of change
00:15:14 ►
has to be in the neighborhood among people
00:15:16 ►
at a more human,
00:15:18 ►
smaller scale. Is that…
00:15:19 ►
Half of the time, Jerry, but see, the glorious thing there is
00:15:22 ►
that everyone in the 21st century
00:15:24 ►
is going to have this screen, but see, the glorious thing there is that everyone in the 21st century
00:15:25 ►
is going to have this screen, and there, they’re no longer, it’s the global village, as McLuhan said,
00:15:32 ►
so that you have your own small, real, material, you know, palm tree or fir tree, local community,
00:15:39 ►
that, bang, open up that window, and you’re involved in the most thrilling international interaction.
00:15:48 ►
Okay, so you’ve got your local where you kind of identify L.A. or neighborhood,
00:15:53 ►
wherever, Benedict Canyon, where you are.
00:15:55 ►
But you’re saying with the screen now, you’re out there in some kind of global cyberspace
00:16:00 ►
where you’re now part of this larger community, this larger conversation.
00:16:05 ►
They’re not out there, Jerry.
00:16:07 ►
They’re in me, too.
00:16:09 ►
Okay, they’re out there, and out there is in there with you.
00:16:12 ►
I had a great experience.
00:16:13 ►
I’ve just been hooked up with this new ISDN Pac Bell equipment.
00:16:19 ►
Yes.
00:16:20 ►
Basically, I got a lot of high-powered video.
00:16:24 ►
Anyone can have this now.
00:16:26 ►
Right.
00:16:26 ►
We have it here.
00:16:27 ►
So what do you use it, though?
00:16:29 ►
So you have it, but for what?
00:16:31 ►
Well, calm down.
00:16:32 ►
I’ll tell you.
00:16:33 ►
The first thing they did when they hooked it up,
00:16:35 ►
they had set up some sort of a raid in London with about 3,000 kids.
00:16:40 ►
And boom.
00:16:41 ►
I can see the kids.
00:16:43 ►
And I say, are you there?
00:16:45 ►
Take a second, they shout, yes.
00:16:48 ►
And they could see me in my study, and I could see them in real time.
00:16:52 ►
That was a life-changing experience for me.
00:16:55 ►
That one thing has happened to me,
00:16:57 ►
and it will be happening to everyone within two or three years
00:17:00 ►
when they get these Pac Bell wires in there.
00:17:03 ►
That’s hopeful.
00:17:04 ►
Okay, so now you’re breaking down some boundaries here
00:17:07 ►
and you’re able to at least visually participate with stuff thousands of miles away.
00:17:13 ►
At the speed of light.
00:17:15 ►
Using the non-polluting language of the universe, really, light.
00:17:21 ►
Electromagnetic, we’ve got a telephone problem here.
00:17:24 ►
No, it’s okay. Okay. Look, we’ve got a telephone problem here. No, it’s okay.
00:17:25 ►
Okay.
00:17:27 ►
Look, we’re going to take a break.
00:17:29 ►
You’re back with We the People.
00:17:31 ►
I’m Jerry Brown, and I’m talking to Timothy Leary.
00:17:33 ►
You just mentioned Marshall McLuhan and the speed of light.
00:17:37 ►
I remember Marshall McLuhan telling me several years ago that,
00:17:42 ►
and I remember the phrase because it really got my attention.
00:17:44 ►
He says, there is no morality at the speed of light. several years ago that, and I remember the phrase because it really got my attention.
00:17:45 ►
He says,
00:17:48 ►
there is no morality at the speed of light.
00:17:50 ►
Would you have any comment on that?
00:17:56 ►
Well, I know what he means.
00:17:58 ►
It’s one of those things that’s kind of hard to put into
00:17:59 ►
low-down words.
00:18:02 ►
Say it one more time, Jerry.
00:18:04 ►
Well, there’s no,
00:18:04 ►
what I think it means…
00:18:06 ►
He said, Marshall McLuhan said,
00:18:09 ►
there’s no morality at the speed of light.
00:18:11 ►
And what I take that to mean,
00:18:14 ►
the morality is built up in villages,
00:18:18 ►
out of custom,
00:18:20 ►
through settled relationships,
00:18:22 ►
through patterns of behavior,
00:18:24 ►
people doing things to each other.
00:18:26 ►
Over time, over generations, you get kind of, you know, you get a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong.
00:18:33 ►
But if you’re moving at the speed of light, you’re never in one place long enough to have any bond or connection
00:18:41 ►
requiring the kind of responsibility or the link
00:18:45 ►
or the bond that morality
00:18:48 ►
implies. So that’s
00:18:49 ►
the way I interpret it. I’m not sure
00:18:51 ►
what he meant. You don’t have to say
00:18:53 ►
morality. It’s just social structure.
00:18:56 ►
Rules. They build up
00:18:57 ►
like three strikes you’re out. Nine
00:18:59 ►
men or women on a team.
00:19:01 ►
And the faster you go, the less
00:19:03 ►
you keep moving. The faster you go, the less you keep moving,
00:19:05 ►
the faster you move.
00:19:07 ►
Now, when you describe this beam,
00:19:09 ►
it kept moving, moving, moving,
00:19:11 ►
and never made a lot of attachments.
00:19:13 ►
You know, that’s the story of my life.
00:19:15 ►
I have moved,
00:19:16 ►
I have a list of the places
00:19:17 ►
where I’ve actually had post office boxes,
00:19:20 ►
and there’s close to a hundred movements
00:19:23 ►
in four continents.
00:19:26 ►
Also, my interest has moved, too.
00:19:29 ►
That’s simply the Einsteinian motto.
00:19:33 ►
Keep moving.
00:19:35 ►
You just keep on moving.
00:19:36 ►
Well, certainly you don’t step into the same river twice.
00:19:39 ►
That’s what Harik Kleine said.
00:19:40 ►
I like that one, too.
00:19:41 ►
You don’t step into the same river twice.
00:19:43 ►
Let’s go to Peekskill.
00:19:44 ►
That implies, though, that if’s the river that’s moving, not you.
00:19:47 ►
You can jump into the river and just zoom down.
00:19:51 ►
I’ll drop it now, Greg.
00:19:52 ►
Yeah, well, that’s more of a metaphor.
00:19:55 ►
I might argue with a wise Greek.
00:19:57 ►
A wise Greek.
00:19:58 ►
No, I only took a year of Greek, and I didn’t really understand it that well.
00:20:01 ►
Let’s go to Peekskill, New York, where Rob is on the line.
00:20:04 ►
He’s calling us long distance from New York. Rob,
00:20:06 ►
you got a question or comment for Tim Leary?
00:20:08 ►
Yes, I do. Thank you very much.
00:20:11 ►
You’re sounding very
00:20:12 ►
optimistic, and it
00:20:13 ►
sounds encouraging to hear somebody talk so optimistic
00:20:16 ►
about all the technology that I’ve
00:20:18 ►
been hearing most people worry about.
00:20:20 ►
But I just wanted to hear you
00:20:22 ►
address how, with the
00:20:23 ►
dizzying speed you talk about things advancing at,
00:20:27 ►
how do we feel certain that those who want to stay in power, who are in power now,
00:20:32 ►
are going to have a little more dizzying speed on their side
00:20:35 ►
and be able to stay just one step ahead of the people who would otherwise be able to use that technology
00:20:41 ►
to bring ourselves together and get everyone on the same page?
00:20:45 ►
Okay, Rob, thank you.
00:20:46 ►
You said that beautifully.
00:20:47 ►
That’s the basic dance of human evolution or human politics,
00:20:51 ►
and you stated it so clearly.
00:20:54 ►
What do you think the solution is?
00:20:57 ►
I think the solution has to be to get the media through the,
00:21:02 ►
with the cyberspace media that’s coming out to be a worldwide data source,
00:21:06 ►
get that into the hands of the people immediately.
00:21:09 ►
Well, I’m convinced that a small group of people who are free of the dogma
00:21:16 ►
can think faster and smarter and more successfully than massive bureaucracies.
00:21:23 ►
We can think better than they can because they have these enormous, swollen bureaucracies,
00:21:27 ►
and they’re all just looking up to please the guy above them.
00:21:30 ►
And we’re free as long as we do it in groups, keep moving.
00:21:34 ►
That’s the lesson of human evolution, is actually it.
00:21:37 ►
Okay, so Tim, you’re saying in small groups, people are able, through their own minds,
00:21:46 ►
Small groups, people are able, through their own minds but with the tools of new technology,
00:21:53 ►
able to really outthink and outwit these swollen bureaucracies of government and possibly even of the corporate world as well.
00:21:56 ►
And the nice thing about it, Jerry, is that the team, you don’t stick with them all your life.
00:22:01 ►
I’m not going to be an alpha 1C all my life.
00:22:03 ►
You play the game just like it’s a metaphor from sports. You play on the team for a while. You don’t spend all
00:22:10 ►
of your life doing it. You move on to other teams. But the principles are the same. Fair
00:22:15 ►
play, honesty. We’re in it together. But he’s changing teams. In the past, it was loyalty, loyalty, loyalty to the dead politicians, the priests before you.
00:22:29 ►
But now it’s encouraging.
00:22:31 ►
Okay, so this speed-up, this breakdown of loyalty, I see what you’re saying.
00:22:35 ►
You’re seeing that as a positive in that those bonds were taught to see them as something really great.
00:22:43 ►
And you’re saying, quite to the contrary,
00:22:45 ►
they’re the things that are holding us back.
00:22:47 ►
But the nice thing about it, you can move.
00:22:49 ►
I started out in Massachusetts, and that was San Francisco,
00:22:53 ►
greatest city in the world for a long time.
00:22:55 ►
Now I’m here, I keep moving.
00:22:57 ►
Americans, by the way,
00:22:59 ►
we’re the most mobile people that ever lived, as far as I can see.
00:23:02 ►
Okay, but wait a minute.
00:23:03 ►
If you don’t have any real link or any grounding in the soil where you are,
00:23:08 ►
then you get to be kind of a disposable personality.
00:23:12 ►
What if you have a wife and you get tired of her, she breaks her back and you say,
00:23:16 ►
sorry, honey, I’m going to get one that’s more serviceable.
00:23:19 ►
Oh, my God, now.
00:23:20 ►
And we move it on.
00:23:21 ►
The wife of the broken back?
00:23:23 ►
Okay.
00:23:23 ►
Well, I mean, we’re just talking about if we’re moving fast,
00:23:26 ►
where does kind of childish irresponsibility begin in that kind of a process?
00:23:33 ►
I’ve had this conversation a hundred times, dear Jerry,
00:23:36 ►
so that none of this implies that you’re not going to see teens.
00:23:42 ►
I could say teens.
00:23:43 ►
Don’t think for yourself, period.
00:23:45 ►
Think for those close to you.
00:23:46 ►
Your family is your team.
00:23:48 ►
And as I get older, I might not tell you, family and friends.
00:23:52 ►
But you belong to many teams, and that doesn’t mean you’re disloyal.
00:23:56 ►
You can bring back your other team, which you learned in the third team.
00:24:00 ►
We’re going to belong to a lot of teams without fear or prejudice
00:24:03 ►
and make them all better and learning more from each other.
00:24:07 ►
Okay.
00:24:08 ►
Rob, thank you very much.
00:24:09 ►
We’re going to go to Larry in Fremont.
00:24:11 ►
Hey, Larry.
00:24:12 ►
Hi.
00:24:13 ►
Well, I thought since Tim Larry is on,
00:24:16 ►
this would be a good time to offer an apology for psychedelics
00:24:20 ►
because I don’t know if you’ve talked about this yet on the show,
00:24:24 ►
but I heard
00:24:26 ►
Jerry on the subject the other day, and he sounded very down on psychedelics, and I thought
00:24:32 ►
he didn’t really understand the issues involved.
00:24:38 ►
First of all, you said something the other day, Jerry, that you said, well, if psychedelics were so great,
00:24:45 ►
how come everyone’s not enlightened because people used to do them all kinds in the 60s?
00:24:52 ►
Well, actually, Jerry, you admit that’s a very dumb thing you said.
00:24:57 ►
No, what I’m just saying is, look, if we figure there’s…
00:25:00 ►
Wait a minute.
00:25:01 ►
If in the 60s there was, let’s suppose there was 10 million, 20 million,
00:25:05 ►
let’s say there’s 100 million doses of LSD,
00:25:08 ►
are we that much more enlightened in 1995 than we were in 1960?
00:25:13 ►
Yes, actually, it did have a change in society.
00:25:17 ►
Wait a minute.
00:25:18 ►
Let’s hear from Tim here, Larry.
00:25:20 ►
What Jerry’s doing, he’s using those same old metaphors, right?
00:25:28 ►
Number.
00:25:28 ►
Well, I’m using numbers, which are always dubious.
00:25:31 ►
A hundred thousand, a hundred million, and all this and that.
00:25:33 ►
Listen to…
00:25:35 ►
That’s a weird way to think in mass, mass, mass movements like that.
00:25:39 ►
No, here’s what I’ll tell you, Tim.
00:25:40 ►
What I said was I think if, you know, there are ways of expanding your awareness.
00:25:44 ►
Tim, what I said was I think there are ways of expanding your awareness.
00:25:52 ►
There’s lots of different practices, shamanistic, Zen meditation, Tibetan, fasting, who knows what.
00:25:53 ►
But those… Monks, monks, monks.
00:25:54 ►
Monks, there’s more.
00:25:55 ►
Okay, there’s natural methods, as I understand it.
00:25:58 ►
There’s a more integrated experience.
00:26:02 ►
Your whole being is bringing this awareness about,
00:26:06 ►
whereas if you just drop a couple of pills,
00:26:09 ►
you have something foreign ingested into your system,
00:26:13 ►
and then it burns out, and then where is it?
00:26:15 ►
Whereas if you had to work for it through fasting,
00:26:18 ►
through flagellation, or whatever the hell you do.
00:26:21 ►
That’s the Catholic way to do things.
00:26:27 ►
You can’t get your bliss if you don’t suffer first.
00:26:30 ►
I know, I know.
00:26:32 ►
Well, you suffer first or you suffer later.
00:26:34 ►
When do you want it?
00:26:37 ►
Psychedelics are not unnatural.
00:26:39 ►
First of all, you have, you have.
00:26:41 ►
Well, that’s true.
00:26:41 ►
You can have a naturally grown psyche.
00:26:43 ►
You can suck those frogs that give you the good high.
00:26:46 ►
Do you read about them?
00:26:47 ►
Yeah, sure.
00:26:48 ►
But even now in your brain there’s DMT.
00:26:52 ►
Right.
00:26:53 ►
So the question is how do I access that aspect of my brain?
00:26:56 ►
I think that’s a great idea.
00:26:57 ►
Right.
00:26:58 ►
Right.
00:26:59 ►
But, you know, there’s no brownie points for doing it on the natch.
00:27:06 ►
It’s not any more unnatural.
00:27:10 ►
Psychedelics are just as natural as all the other things that you said,
00:27:13 ►
and they’re much safer than these very extreme, dangerous things you find,
00:27:22 ►
for instance, like fasting and fl then flatulation and so on they have uh…
00:27:28 ►
in the in in the organized religion
00:27:30 ►
would be
00:27:31 ►
you got on the it
00:27:32 ►
not infinite like that you don’t drop a hit and i think i’ve i’m pride
00:27:37 ►
faking i think that was your mistaken sixties
00:27:40 ►
it’s very good effort right they can i i think that the word that they could
00:27:44 ►
everybody that the community there It never says Africa, for Christ’s sake. Everybody gets what Timothy Lear deserves.
00:27:47 ►
Were you seeing it?
00:27:48 ►
Well, you’re stuck with it.
00:27:49 ►
Yeah, but what I’m saying is these things are like books,
00:27:55 ►
and they’re sources of information.
00:27:59 ►
Wait a minute.
00:27:59 ►
I don’t agree with that, but go on.
00:28:01 ►
And you access the information as a point of reference.
00:28:05 ►
As a good literary scholar, you… Okay, Larry,
00:28:08 ►
Larry, I’m going to… Well, I’m not going to…
00:28:09 ►
Wait a minute, I’m going to let you go there, because
00:28:12 ►
there’s a lot of people lined up, and we
00:28:14 ►
want to just digest that point.
00:28:16 ►
Not to mix metaphors here,
00:28:18 ►
you said that the ingestion
00:28:19 ►
of one of these psychedelics is like getting
00:28:22 ►
a book inside your brain. I want Tim
00:28:24 ►
to respond to that.
00:28:26 ►
Right, that’s nonsense.
00:28:27 ►
We’re talking about the brain. We’re talking about natural, natural chemicals designed by DNA
00:28:32 ►
or whatever goddess you worship over the years
00:28:34 ►
in synchronicity with the human brain.
00:28:37 ►
So there are certain vegetable products
00:28:39 ►
that can activate different circuits in your brain.
00:28:43 ►
And we’re just now at the species learning about Candice Perk,
00:28:49 ►
that wonderful psychiatrist in Pennsylvania.
00:28:53 ►
What was his name?
00:28:54 ►
Perk.
00:28:55 ►
K-E-R-R?
00:28:56 ►
Candice, P-E-R-K, yeah.
00:28:59 ►
Recepticides, she demonstrated.
00:29:00 ►
Now it’s taken for granted in neurology that the brain has these recepticides,
00:29:08 ►
the locks that are opened by the keys of various digital products okay they’re called brain activating or neuro activating drugs and
00:29:12 ►
they’re naturally natural with anything in fact the basic thing the rain you
00:29:18 ►
know the bodies come and go but the brain is going to keep going and using
00:29:21 ►
different bodies and the brain lives on. And the brain lives on light, and the brain lives on exchange of light.
00:29:27 ►
You don’t have to worry about books.
00:29:31 ►
Who has books?
00:29:32 ►
You talk about the brain.
00:29:33 ►
You think the era of the book has pretty well had it?
00:29:37 ►
Well, you’re always going for the juggernaut.
00:29:39 ►
We’ll always be using books.
00:29:41 ►
We’ll always be painting pictures.
00:29:42 ►
Nothing’s had it.
00:29:43 ►
It’s going to add.
00:29:44 ►
See, Huxley told us that.
00:29:46 ►
He said, it’s not either or.
00:29:48 ►
And the priests and the politicians are always going to say,
00:29:51 ►
it’s either this or it’s that.
00:29:53 ►
It’s both and.
00:29:54 ►
It ain’t that way.
00:29:55 ►
It’s both and and more ands and more your ands and my ands.
00:30:00 ►
And it’s never either or because that’s the good evil.
00:30:04 ►
I mean, it isn’t either. So, in other words,, evil, either, not good, or good, or good, or good.
00:30:06 ►
So in other words, it isn’t either Clinton or Gingrich.
00:30:10 ►
Thank you, Jack.
00:30:11 ►
I think beautifully you said that.
00:30:13 ►
Yeah, that’s what a lot of people think, though.
00:30:15 ►
That’s why Clinton is doing so well.
00:30:17 ►
They say, wait a minute, what do you want, Gingrich?
00:30:20 ►
And they say, okay, under those circumstances, Clinton looks real good.
00:30:23 ►
The Democrats have been much more interested in freeing individuals.
00:30:29 ►
They fought the big guys, but that’s changing, too.
00:30:33 ►
Unions used to be very, very much for people.
00:30:35 ►
Now they’ve become bureaucracies, too.
00:30:37 ►
So you have to keep changing.
00:30:38 ►
Keep changing.
00:30:39 ►
Keep changing teams.
00:30:42 ►
You’re listening to We the People.
00:30:43 ►
This is Jerry Brown.
00:30:44 ►
I’m talking to Tim Leary.
00:30:46 ►
On the line now from, let’s see, there’s Theo.
00:30:49 ►
How long is this going to go on?
00:30:51 ►
Another 15 minutes.
00:30:52 ►
Oh, maybe.
00:30:54 ►
Another couple of minutes.
00:30:55 ►
Two or three more questions.
00:30:56 ►
Okay, okay.
00:30:57 ►
Let us do that.
00:30:58 ►
Theo.
00:30:58 ►
Yes, I’m right here.
00:30:59 ►
Yeah.
00:31:00 ►
Hi, Timothy.
00:31:01 ►
My name is Theo Cedar.
00:31:02 ►
Hi.
00:31:03 ►
Hi, it’s good to hear you.
00:31:04 ►
You haven’t met me, but I’ve been a student of your books and of your legacy since I was 18 years old.
00:31:11 ►
I’m now 32.
00:31:12 ►
I’ve been taking psychedelics for 14 years.
00:31:14 ►
And I just wanted to ask you if you had any particular message for the next new generation of leadership in this area of psychedelics and consciousness.
00:31:29 ►
Wow.
00:31:30 ►
That’s a big one.
00:31:31 ►
Yeah.
00:31:35 ►
There are many, many ways to grow and study them carefully, but whatever you do, do it in a routine.
00:31:41 ►
Don’t do it by yourself.
00:31:44 ►
Okay, Tim, I want you to stay around just a couple more minutes.
00:31:46 ►
I want to take a 30-second break,
00:31:48 ►
and then I want to talk just about your own personal state of mind right now,
00:31:52 ►
and then we’ll let you go.
00:31:54 ►
You’re listening to We the People.
00:31:56 ►
This is Jerry Brown.
00:31:56 ►
We’ll be right back.
00:31:58 ►
You’re back with We the People.
00:32:00 ►
This is Jerry Brown.
00:32:01 ►
I’m talking to Tim Leary.
00:32:02 ►
Tim, I want to ask you, before earlier in the day when we were speaking,
00:32:07 ►
you were talking about your own personal well-being
00:32:11 ►
and that you’ve been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer.
00:32:15 ►
And maybe I think our listeners would really like, would appreciate having,
00:32:21 ►
just getting your sense of how you react to that and what you’re doing now.
00:32:27 ►
What does a human being do at this point in their life?
00:32:30 ►
I can’t speak for human beings.
00:32:32 ►
I can only speak for myself.
00:32:33 ►
Okay.
00:32:34 ►
That’s a good place.
00:32:35 ►
It’s an ultimate taboo here.
00:32:37 ►
Well, we politicians always think in these big, bloated categories.
00:32:41 ►
Thank God someone’s doing it.
00:32:43 ►
So you were telling me, though, about how you think about your own death
00:32:48 ►
and what you’re doing about it.
00:32:49 ►
Yes.
00:32:50 ►
I think any sensible person would do this.
00:32:53 ►
When I got to be 50, I was in prison then,
00:32:56 ►
but since the 70s I have been planning, thinking about my dying,
00:33:01 ►
because after all that’s going to be the climax, the final going-away party,
00:33:05 ►
and you can’t believe the taboo that if you start talking about how you’re going to die
00:33:10 ►
or the ways of dying, you will usually clear the cocktail party.
00:33:14 ►
No one wants to talk to you.
00:33:15 ►
It’s surprising to me that I’ve now announced that I’m already planning my deanimation,
00:33:23 ►
and my house is being fixed up so that there’s a room,
00:33:27 ►
a comfortable, pleasant room where I plan to have the plug pulled or I’ll pull the plug myself.
00:33:35 ►
That’s been prepared, by the way, and guided by lots of friends that hopefully help in this situation.
00:33:46 ►
When that happens, then next door, next room,
00:33:49 ►
there’s a reanimation room,
00:33:50 ►
and the Alcor Chronics group are going to be there.
00:33:54 ►
And as soon as I’ve put out seed,
00:33:57 ►
first your heart goes in a thrilling time,
00:34:00 ►
about two or three or four minutes,
00:34:02 ►
when your brain is alive, but the body, that’s a thrilling exploration I’m looking forward to.
00:34:10 ►
Well, you don’t know it’s thrilling, though, do you?
00:34:12 ►
I mean, that’s your anticipation.
00:34:14 ►
Well, yeah, I don’t know, but I’m going to try to send messages back.
00:34:17 ►
How about that?
00:34:18 ►
Well, do you have any fear of your own dying?
00:34:21 ►
No, I’m looking forward to it with, like… You have no choice of where you’re born or with whom, and society usually determines
00:34:32 ►
who you marry and all that, but planning your own way-away party should be the climax, the
00:34:40 ►
golden celebration of everything that you try to do in your life.
00:34:48 ►
And I’m really thrilled by the… This is the real new terrain here.
00:34:50 ►
And I’m amazed at the response.
00:34:53 ►
Some people, of course, get very upset,
00:34:54 ►
but many, many people are thrilled that finally,
00:34:57 ►
finally someone’s talking about the ultimate two.
00:35:00 ►
Let’s not be afraid of dying or death,
00:35:02 ►
but let’s figure out how to make this into something
00:35:05 ►
that is the glorious last act of your life.
00:35:09 ►
Now, of course, when you’re dying,
00:35:11 ►
that’s something your friends are there,
00:35:13 ►
but it must be, obviously, it’s a very singular experience.
00:35:18 ►
I mean, it’s just you’re dying.
00:35:19 ►
It’s not anybody else’s.
00:35:21 ►
Well, you’re using singular.
00:35:23 ►
I don’t know.
00:35:24 ►
Of course, but if my last years and my last minutes and seconds are
00:35:30 ►
surrounded by a group of people that love me and all that, that’s not shoplifter.
00:35:36 ►
No, it isn’t.
00:35:37 ►
No, it isn’t.
00:35:38 ►
I’m not going to do it alone.
00:35:41 ►
I’ve done enough Sundays sermonizing on that.
00:35:47 ►
I’m preaching to the Father here.
00:35:50 ►
No, I think…
00:35:51 ►
But I want to repeat again.
00:35:53 ►
You’ve always been a hero of mine, and I’m delighted to talk.
00:35:56 ►
Let’s talk again.
00:35:58 ►
Timothy Lurie, thank you very much for sharing this time with us.
00:36:02 ►
Very fascinating, and I really appreciate your being willing to,
00:36:06 ►
you know, to be so open and honest.
00:36:08 ►
I think it was real fascinating
00:36:10 ►
and very human,
00:36:11 ►
and thank you very much.
00:36:12 ►
Thank you, Jerry.
00:36:12 ►
Bye-bye.
00:36:13 ►
Okay.
00:36:15 ►
This is Weekend Edition.
00:36:17 ►
I’m Scott Simon.
00:36:17 ►
By now, it is well known
00:36:19 ►
that Timothy Leary
00:36:21 ►
is dying of inoperable prostate cancer,
00:36:23 ►
that the man once called
00:36:24 ►
the High Priest of LSD
00:36:25 ►
is determined to choreograph his own death,
00:36:28 ►
perhaps a suicide over the Internet,
00:36:30 ►
much as he once advocated choreographing one’s own consciousness
00:36:34 ►
with mind-altering drugs.
00:36:36 ►
Most of the news industry accounts paint a picture
00:36:39 ►
of some kind of failing P.T. Barnum-like character
00:36:41 ►
holding his own wake before he dies,
00:36:43 ►
but many of Mr. Leary’s
00:36:45 ►
friends present a different picture, someone who’s a scholar, an entertainer, folk hero,
00:36:50 ►
and a free thinker. NPR’s Margot Adler reports. There are those who think they know Timothy Leary
00:36:56 ►
as a demon who destroyed people’s lives through psychedelics, or as a saint who brought them
00:37:00 ►
enlightenment, or they think he’s a nut or a clown, an entertainer. Robert Anton
00:37:05 ►
Wilson, philosopher and author of the Illuminatis Trilogy, says he has known Leary since 1970.
00:37:11 ►
He said to me once, there are 24 Timothy Leary’s, and which one you contact depends on your own
00:37:17 ►
state of intelligence at the moment. I think I’ve contacted about 17 of them, and I hope
00:37:23 ►
in my next few visits to him I get to see the other seven.
00:37:27 ►
Most people who love or hate Timothy Leary
00:37:29 ►
talk about his work with psychedelic drugs,
00:37:32 ►
although that is no longer Leary’s primary interest.
00:37:35 ►
Leary’s work has gone from drugs to space colonies to computers.
00:37:38 ►
He’s designed six computer games.
00:37:40 ►
Frank Barron, who along with Leary,
00:37:42 ►
co-directed the Harvard Psilocybin Project in 1960 and 1961,
00:37:47 ►
and like Leary was a psychologist in Berkeley before that,
00:37:50 ►
says much of the impetus behind their original investigations into psychedelics in Berkeley
00:37:55 ►
came out of a reaction to the nuclear bomb.
00:37:57 ►
For one thing, Berkeley in the late 40s was really the bomb the bomb mind capital of the world.
00:38:06 ►
And psychologists like Barron and Leary,
00:38:08 ►
whose own wife had committed suicide while in therapy,
00:38:11 ►
believed events in the world were moving faster than psychology.
00:38:14 ►
They wanted better ways of changing human nature.
00:38:17 ►
There had to be an acceleration on that end of it,
00:38:22 ►
that is, on the psychological understanding end,
00:38:24 ►
more attention to feeling,
00:38:26 ►
more attention to consciousness as a whole human being.
00:38:30 ►
At Harvard, Leary used LSD with prisoners and with divinity students.
00:38:34 ►
He left Harvard in 1963 after criticism by Harvard administrators.
00:38:39 ►
Leary hit the streets with what poet Allen Ginsberg later called
00:38:42 ►
the democratization of LSD,
00:38:45 ►
the use of psychedelics by thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands in the 1960s. Here is Leary speaking
00:38:50 ►
in the mid-60s, answering the question of whether these drugs are dangerous.
00:38:54 ►
They’re dangerous to anyone who has a vested interest in any of our psychological, psychiatric
00:39:00 ►
or educational programs, because there’s no question in our mind that we open up new possibilities
00:39:05 ►
of learning without teachers,
00:39:07 ►
of understanding yourself without doctors,
00:39:10 ►
and of coming to an odd and reverent understanding of life
00:39:14 ►
without a spiritual guide or a minister.
00:39:16 ►
Now, this is going to play havoc
00:39:17 ►
with lots of the games that are being played
00:39:19 ►
and lots of the control
00:39:20 ►
which is being exercised in our society.
00:39:24 ►
David Horowitz is the author of Destructive Generation,
00:39:27 ►
Second Thoughts About the Sixties.
00:39:29 ►
He blames Leary for those followers who went over the edge.
00:39:32 ►
He does not take any responsibility for what he has done,
00:39:36 ►
who he’s influenced, the lives he’s destroyed.
00:39:39 ►
It’s a nihilistic attitude.
00:39:40 ►
It’s like, you know, I’m going to lead people down the primrose path
00:39:44 ►
and, you know, damn the consequences. lead people down the primrose path and, you know,
00:39:45 ►
damn the consequences. On the other side, Nina Grabois. I am 77 now. A Holocaust survivor from
00:39:53 ►
Vienna and at one time Leary’s secretary, Grabois says she experienced a larger transcendent reality.
00:39:59 ►
When we have to leave that endless horizon.
00:40:10 ►
When we’re compressed back into our little bodies and our little personalities, we cry.
00:40:13 ►
Grabois says she is grateful to Leary.
00:40:19 ►
If Timothy had not come out with this immense courage, I would never have known about it.
00:40:25 ►
I’d still probably live in Long Island suburbs and be miserable.
00:40:30 ►
Leary’s own life seemed out of a movie.
00:40:32 ►
He was charged with possessing marijuana in 1966.
00:40:36 ►
He was sent to prison, climbed a telephone pole, escaped,
00:40:39 ►
and was handed over to members of the Black Panther Party in Algiers by members of the Weather Underground.
00:40:42 ►
Later, the Panthers disowned him.
00:40:44 ►
There are those who say when he returned to the United States and prison,
00:40:47 ►
he ratted on his liberators to achieve his freedom.
00:40:50 ►
But Robert Anton Wilson says Leary got out of jail
00:40:53 ►
because he didn’t accept the reality of an isolation cell in Folsom Prison.
00:40:57 ►
He didn’t accept that reality tunnel.
00:40:59 ►
He accepted the reality tunnel that he’d work his way out of there
00:41:01 ►
and get himself a house high up in Beverly Hills,
00:41:04 ►
and that’s what he did, because he doesn’t accept any definition as final, even if it’s backed up by
00:41:10 ►
walls and guards and rifles and guns and watchtowers and the whole machinery of the most
00:41:16 ►
powerful military state in the history of the world. Some, like Wilson, would argue that Leary’s
00:41:21 ►
interests have been on a single theme, whether psychology, drugs, or technology.
00:41:26 ►
The abiding issue has been freedom from society’s control.
00:41:29 ►
Even Leary’s latest interest in choreographing his own death is in character.
00:41:34 ►
How are you doing?
00:41:35 ►
Well, every day is interesting. I’m enjoying life.
00:41:38 ►
Timothy Leary on the phone from his home this past Wednesday.
00:41:41 ►
Death, says Leary, is the most explosive control issue.
00:41:44 ►
Throughout history, religious people wanted to control the dying.
00:41:48 ►
And, of course, the medical profession wants to control us.
00:41:52 ►
Control, control, control of the dying.
00:41:55 ►
It may seem off the wall to control your death, says Leary,
00:41:58 ►
but it’s in keeping with a life committed to thinking for yourself.
00:42:01 ►
Robert Anton Wilson adds this.
00:42:03 ►
Think how often the moment of death is decided by others.
00:42:06 ►
The decision rests either with the attorney general
00:42:09 ►
or the archbishop or the chief rabbi
00:42:11 ►
or the celestial yap
00:42:13 ►
or the grand dragon of the AMA.
00:42:16 ►
Leary’s insisting that every individual
00:42:18 ►
has the right to choose their own time and manner of death
00:42:21 ►
and that these authorities have no real authority at all
00:42:25 ►
except when we neurotically give our power away to them instead of holding on to our
00:42:29 ►
power.
00:42:30 ►
Looking at it from the point of view of freedom and control, there is a certain logic to Leary’s
00:42:34 ►
flirtation with cryonically freezing his brain.
00:42:37 ►
The science of cryonics may still have a few kinks, but it’s a way of multiplying your
00:42:41 ►
options.
00:42:42 ►
But Leary ended his relationship with a cryonics company last week.
00:42:46 ►
The company wanted him to have round-the-clock nursing care
00:42:49 ►
so that the exact moment of his death could be ascertained.
00:42:52 ►
Feeling constrained, Leary said he didn’t want to wake up 50 years in the future
00:42:56 ►
surrounded by men with clipboards.
00:42:58 ►
Robert Anton Wilson, long a proponent of cryonics himself,
00:43:01 ►
says Leary always treated the subject with humor.
00:43:04 ►
Most people in the cryonics himself, says Leary always treated the subject with humor. Most people in the
00:43:05 ►
cryonics movement are very serious about it. Tim has a cartoon in his living room of a bunch of
00:43:10 ►
heads in a cryonic freezer and a janitor walking by accidentally kicking out the plug so they’re
00:43:16 ►
all kind of thawed out. And when Tim saw me looking at that, he says, well, we really can’t be too
00:43:21 ►
serious about all this. In the same way, Leary’s desire to commit suicide on the Internet
00:43:26 ►
is also about control.
00:43:28 ►
No one will cut it, interpret it, or put in a commercial break.
00:43:31 ►
Leary is also taking the gloom out of death.
00:43:34 ►
Michael Horowitz is a bookseller, author,
00:43:36 ►
and the person responsible for Timothy Leary’s archives.
00:43:39 ►
He says Leary’s home is far from somber.
00:43:42 ►
It’s a party atmosphere with intellectual excitement at all times.
00:43:46 ►
And he’s not like hiding.
00:43:48 ►
You know, Timothy doesn’t look good.
00:43:49 ►
He’s lost a lot of weight. He’s very gaunt.
00:43:51 ►
And he’s in a wheelchair now.
00:43:53 ►
He goes out on Sunset Boulevard to clubs
00:43:55 ►
in his wheelchair.
00:43:56 ►
Horowitz is trying to get a university to buy Leary’s archives.
00:44:00 ►
Horowitz notes that Leary
00:44:01 ►
has written more than 25 books.
00:44:03 ►
Most of them have sold about 25,000 copies
00:44:05 ►
but they have been translated worldwide
00:44:07 ►
Harwitz concedes that Leary’s books are not taken seriously
00:44:11 ►
except by a small group of people
00:44:12 ►
and that he is seen more as a clown than a scholar
00:44:15 ►
that he says is also part of Leary’s character
00:44:18 ►
if you met him at a party or you saw him lecture
00:44:20 ►
the focus would not necessarily be on the ideas
00:44:23 ►
when they were they wouldn’t be treated with seriousness.
00:44:27 ►
But I think there’s a method to that style,
00:44:29 ►
which is that people learn better when they’re being entertained.
00:44:33 ►
His challenging of the established order, reckless at times, says Horwitz,
00:44:36 ►
will elevate him into an American folk hero after his death.
00:44:40 ►
Nina Grabois says she finds it amusing that some people are saying
00:44:43 ►
that Timothy Leary will be seen as a saint.
00:44:46 ►
I’m sure eventually he’ll have been born on a lotus blossom or something like that.
00:44:55 ►
The man is very much a man with his feet that are sometimes a little bit of clay.
00:45:02 ►
that are sometimes a little bit of clay,
00:45:08 ►
but it’s the most fascinating mind that I’ve ever come across,
00:45:10 ►
and I’ve come across a few.
00:45:13 ►
But David Horowitz, a critic of the culture of the 60s and no relation to Michael,
00:45:15 ►
says whether you are talking about drugs in the 60s
00:45:18 ►
or Leary’s current obsession with cyberculture,
00:45:21 ►
there’s a lot of pseudo-religion going on here,
00:45:23 ►
not to mention an escape from adulthood. An awful lot of what’s called a counterculture, there’s a lot of pseudo-religion going on here, not to mention an escape from adulthood.
00:45:26 ►
An awful lot of what’s called a counterculture
00:45:28 ►
is kind of an effort to replace a religious belief system that’s been lost.
00:45:35 ►
That’s what puts me off is, you know, cyber chatter.
00:45:40 ►
It’s based on this, you know, always looking for the vision that will allow us to escape,
00:45:46 ►
you know, our lot. But of course, it’s that scream against the human lot in life that has fueled
00:45:52 ►
every visionary. It’s the grist for every utopian novel. Robert Anton Wilson, a writer of speculative
00:45:58 ►
fiction himself, says Leary is an arch heretic who deserves all the malice directed at him.
00:46:03 ►
He really is a menace to our way
00:46:05 ►
of life. He has always been concerned with the extent to which we play robot roles that have
00:46:11 ►
been conditioned or imprinted into us by our families and societies, and Leary does profoundly
00:46:17 ►
threaten to draw people awake into a much, into life more abundant, as another prophet once said.
00:46:23 ►
into life more abundant, as another prophet once said.
00:46:26 ►
Timothy Leary, speaking in 1989.
00:46:29 ►
The Lord is my shepherd.
00:46:31 ►
I shall not want.
00:46:35 ►
Well, if you’re Lord and God is a shepherd,
00:46:37 ►
I ask you, what does that make you? Bah!
00:46:39 ►
Timothy Leary’s dead.
00:46:43 ►
No, no, he’s outside. At 75, the arch heretic only has a little time left.
00:46:55 ►
You can call up Leary’s webpage over the internet,
00:46:58 ►
wander into several of his virtual rooms,
00:47:00 ►
peek at his library and get an update on his daily drug intake,
00:47:04 ►
which includes a daily dozen gulps of nitrous oxide as a painkiller
00:47:07 ►
and a sizable number of cigarettes.
00:47:10 ►
Although David Horowitz says the 60s generation has never wanted to grow up,
00:47:14 ►
Leary’s last act of defiance seems to be full of so much humor and optimism
00:47:19 ►
it seems unfair to dismiss it as a mere tantrum.
00:47:23 ►
I’m Margot Adler reporting.
00:47:41 ►
You’re listening to the Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
00:47:46 ►
I don’t know if you remember those days or not,
00:47:52 ►
but when Timothy Leary began to describe the way he fixed up the room that he intended to die in,
00:47:56 ►
I was mentally brought back to those times once again. And I can recall very clearly what his website was like at the time.
00:48:01 ►
As you may remember, there were all kinds of rumors floating around
00:48:05 ►
about him saying that his death would be live over the internet. And to be honest, I found it
00:48:10 ►
kind of ghoulish myself, but then I’d only just barely escaped the clause of death myself about
00:48:16 ►
a year earlier. You see, in April 1995, I underwent surgery for prostate cancer. And now here, not even one year later,
00:48:25 ►
was Timothy Leary very publicly dying from the very same cancer that I had just survived.
00:48:31 ►
It’s really not possible for me to describe the range of emotions
00:48:36 ►
that were raging through me at the time,
00:48:38 ►
but I can assure you that I wasn’t very wild about how publicly Timothy was dying.
00:48:43 ►
Personally, I want to die very quietly and not make a fuss.
00:48:47 ►
But let’s face it, in the case of Timothy Leary,
00:48:52 ►
how else could he die but surrounded by faithful friends
00:48:55 ►
and with a big smile on his face?
00:48:57 ►
At least that’s how I want to picture it.
00:49:00 ►
So just now we heard not only a few thoughts that others had
00:49:04 ►
about Timothy Leary in the weeks just before he died,
00:49:07 ►
but we also heard a few of his own thoughts close to that time, which was in the October 1995 radio interview with Jerry Brown.
00:49:16 ►
Now, as I’ve mentioned here before, during several conversations that I’ve had with two of my close friends,
00:49:23 ►
both of whom are much more familiar with
00:49:25 ►
the life and work of Dr. Leary than I am, we all came to the conclusion that if ever there was a
00:49:30 ►
person in our own lifetimes who led a life that Joseph Campbell would characterize as a hero’s
00:49:36 ►
journey, well, it was Dr. Timothy Leary. Of necessity, a life like that must be full of
00:49:42 ►
contradictions and difficult relationships
00:49:45 ►
and encounters that leave a thousand and one different impressions of the man.
00:49:50 ►
But never having met him in person myself, all of my impressions come from reading his books,
00:49:55 ►
listening to his lectures, reading about him in the popular press,
00:49:58 ►
and most importantly from conversations with people who knew him at various times in his life.
00:50:07 ►
So who was the real Timothy Leary?
00:50:10 ►
Well, obviously he was all of the above.
00:50:11 ►
We all are, aren’t we?
00:50:16 ►
I know in my own life there are quite a few things that I wish I hadn’t done,
00:50:18 ►
people that I wish I hadn’t hurt,
00:50:20 ►
directions that I wish I hadn’t taken,
00:50:22 ►
and directions that I wish I had taken but didn’t.
00:50:25 ►
However, if you ask me how I want to be remembered, I would say that, well, I want to be remembered as I am today, the sum total of all
00:50:31 ►
the characters I’ve played in this life. It’s really interesting to me to have visited at length
00:50:37 ►
with some of the people who, in one way or another, were associated with Dr. Leary in what is generally
00:50:42 ►
called the 60s, and then contrast their opinions of him with those who knew him in the last 15 or so years of his life.
00:50:51 ►
In short, those groups hold vastly different views of him.
00:50:56 ►
But I guess it’s because I’m a grandfather myself that my deepest impression of Timothy Leary as a person
00:51:03 ►
comes from a video I saw that Alan Lundell shot
00:51:06 ►
at a Leary Memorial in San Francisco a few years ago. And it was Tim Leary’s granddaughter who said
00:51:12 ►
some things about her grandfather that literally brought tears to my eyes and caused me to see
00:51:18 ►
through all of the negative stories that I’d heard and read and to see him simply as a caring,
00:51:23 ►
loving human being. someone who, despite his
00:51:26 ►
many faults, was deserving of much love.
00:51:29 ►
At his core, at least to me, he was a truly exceptional being, and I honor him for having
00:51:37 ►
the courage to take that most difficult of all paths, the hero’s journey.
00:51:43 ►
And so I guess that’s enough of my sentimental old man talk for a while.
00:51:49 ►
Now, before I go, I want to mention again something about the Worldwide Occupy Movement.
00:51:55 ►
As you may have noticed, I’m no longer beginning these podcasts by giving the number of days since the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations began.
00:52:03 ►
the number of days since the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations began.
00:52:07 ►
And the reason for that is that the more I read about the movement and the more it becomes apparent to me that the September 17th date
00:52:12 ►
is not actually the beginning of things.
00:52:15 ►
In fact, there are a whole lot of earlier demonstrations
00:52:17 ►
that could be credited with kicking off this resurgence
00:52:20 ►
in activism against the power elite.
00:52:23 ►
And if I were going to point to just one event,
00:52:26 ►
which, as I said, isn’t really fair to all of the activists
00:52:29 ►
who have been on this path for years,
00:52:31 ►
well, then I’d probably point to the Indignados movement in Spain
00:52:36 ►
that began a half a year before the first campers
00:52:38 ►
put up their tents in Zuccotti Park in New York City.
00:52:42 ►
And I mention them today because today, March 29, 2012,
00:52:46 ►
there’s a huge general strike underway in Spain, which is something that still hasn’t happened
00:52:52 ►
here in the U.S., although in my opinion it’s only a matter of time before such large displays
00:52:57 ►
of discontent on the part of the working class takes place here and elsewhere. So I want to be
00:53:03 ►
sure that not only our fellow Saloners in Spain
00:53:06 ►
know that I’m supporting them,
00:53:08 ►
but that I’m also in solidarity with all of the wonderful people of Spain,
00:53:12 ►
including some of my own family members who live there.
00:53:16 ►
Also, I want to mention that I’ve received messages
00:53:19 ►
from some of our fellow Saloners in the UK,
00:53:22 ►
in New Zealand, in Australia, in Canada, and in dozens
00:53:26 ►
of cities around the U.S. who are still out there on the front lines, doing their best
00:53:31 ►
to throw monkey wrenches into the wheels of the global economic and police state machines
00:53:36 ►
that are squeezing the life out of working people, including those working class people
00:53:40 ►
who aren’t working because there are no jobs available.
00:53:44 ►
Now in case you haven’t been keeping up with the news of the movement,
00:53:48 ►
now that most of the big occupations have been mercilessly and brutally squashed by the power elite,
00:53:55 ►
which of course means that the corporate controlled media is able to ignore the huge underground current of changing consciousness that the Occupy movement represents,
00:54:04 ►
underground current of changing consciousness that the Occupy movement represents.
00:54:09 ►
In case you aren’t keeping up with news of the movement, I’d like to suggest that you become involved at the very minimum by seeking out news about the Occupy movement on your
00:54:14 ►
own.
00:54:15 ►
If you’re listening to this podcast, that indicates to me that you also have access
00:54:19 ►
to news sources on the internet, and a simple search on the word Occupy in your local area
00:54:24 ►
will most likely
00:54:25 ►
result in more stories than you have time to read.
00:54:29 ►
And as much as I’d like to continue doing two-part podcasts where the second half is
00:54:34 ►
about the Occupy movement, what I’ve found is that I just don’t have the energy to, well,
00:54:40 ►
essentially to do two podcasts a week, which is what that amounts to.
00:54:44 ►
So I’ll still be covering the movement in these podcasts,
00:54:47 ►
but it’ll have to be more in the form of a complete Occupy podcast every few weeks,
00:54:52 ►
rather than the way I’ve been doing it in the past.
00:54:55 ►
My point, I guess, is that just because you don’t hear me talking about the movement in great detail every week,
00:55:01 ►
it doesn’t mean that I’ve lost my enthusiasm for what is taking place in
00:55:05 ►
almost every corner of the globe. From the foreclosure occupations, to the student loan
00:55:10 ►
occupations, to the unemployment occupations, and to dozens of other forms of this movement,
00:55:16 ►
there is a lot going on. And I hope that you will participate at the very minimum
00:55:21 ►
by keeping yourself informed about it. For I still believe that as long as we can help to Thank you. we eventually get to a tipping point where those who hold the economic strings of our life,
00:55:45 ►
well, they finally get it.
00:55:47 ►
So press on, bold occupiers.
00:55:50 ►
The whole world is depending upon you.
00:55:53 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:55:58 ►
Be well, my friends. Thank you.