Program Notes
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Guest speaker: Timothy Leary
Dates when these interviews were recorded: 1973 and 1992.
[NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.]
“The best philosophers often end up in prison. … Most of the men that I model myself after have been lucky if they just got away with being in prison for their ideas.”
“I have no more to do with drugs that Einstein has to do with the atomic bomb.”
“I based my entire life on Socrates. He’s the guy that caused all the troubles in history. His motto was, ‘The aim of human life is to know thyself.’ And this is very subversive.”
“As soon as I studied books about Socrates, I realized that [philosophy] is a dangerous profession because you’re teaching people to question authority. I realized that this job which I was going to undertake, the corrupting of the minds of youth, pays poorly, it gets you in serious difficulty with authorities.”
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:20 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:23 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:30 ►
And I’m going to begin today by passing along a little bad news and then some really good news.
00:00:36 ►
The bad news is that my dear friend, Jacques Oliver, had a serious heart attack last Friday night.
00:00:42 ►
The good news is that he survived, and although he’s in the hospital, he is recuperating and in good spirits. While you may not recognize Jacques’ name, you should recognize his voice because, well, besides me, Jacques is the only other person whose voice has been included in every podcast from here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:57 ►
You see, Jacques is the musician who has provided the theme song for the salon, and if you listen closely, you can sometimes hear his voice ghosting
00:01:05 ►
over mine. Now, some of Jacques’ friends may be hearing this here for the first time, and so I
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want to let you know that his heart attack also became a performance. It happened at the Imagine
00:01:17 ►
Festival on Orcas Island during the Friday night set, being performed by Jacques and his band,
00:01:23 ►
Nature Loves Courage. I’ll now pick up the rest of this
00:01:27 ►
story in Jacques’ own words, which I received yesterday in an email that he sent out from his
00:01:32 ►
hospital bed, and I quote, the final song of the set was Lazy by David Byrne. Final verse goes like
00:01:40 ►
this, hard man, hard times, hard keeping this all inside, good times, good God, so lazy I almost
00:01:48 ►
stopped, at which point my heart stopped, causing me to collapse on the ground, end quote. In his
00:01:58 ►
email, Jacques describes what happened afterwards, but the headlines are that a trauma nurse came out
00:02:03 ►
of the audience and began giving
00:02:05 ►
him CPR, and within minutes, the Orcas Fire Rescue Team were there with a defibrillator, and
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after six jolts, our dear friend Jacques came back to life. Within minutes, he was in a helicopter and
00:02:18 ►
on his way to a hospital in the mainland. So, my hat goes off to everyone involved in this excitement,
00:02:24 ►
so my hat goes off to everyone involved in this excitement including Darren and the entire team of staff and volunteers
00:02:29 ►
who produced the festival and were prepared for emergencies like this.
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Well done, all of you.
00:02:35 ►
So, now that I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that Jacques is on the mend
00:02:40 ►
let’s get on with today’s program which I think you’re going to find to be a lot of
00:02:45 ►
fun. If you’ve been with me here in the salon for a while, you probably remember that a few years
00:02:51 ►
back I podcast somewhere around 50 or so recordings that were given to me by Timothy Leary’s Foundation,
00:02:58 ►
and this was before his archive was placed in the New York City Public Library.
00:03:02 ►
Well, the other day I was poking around in some of those
00:03:05 ►
old recordings, the ones that I haven’t played yet, and I found two that I think you’re going
00:03:10 ►
to enjoy. And I’m going to play them back to back because, well, in a strange way they’re connected.
00:03:16 ►
The first recording was made in Folsom Prison back in 1973, and that was after Leary’s previous
00:03:23 ►
escape from prison and his adventures on the run.
00:03:26 ►
A few months after this interview, he was put in solitary confinement and even housed next to
00:03:31 ►
Charles Manson for a while. He was serving a 90-year sentence, but fortunately for him,
00:03:37 ►
Leary was released from prison in 1976 by Governor Jerry Brown. Of course, at the time of the
00:03:44 ►
interview that we’re about to listen to,
00:03:46 ►
he’d assumed that he would be in prison for the rest of his life.
00:03:50 ►
And yet, as you’ll hear, he remained remarkably upbeat about life.
00:03:58 ►
Since we’re going to be sitting here and chatting for a little while,
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first I think what I’d like to know is,
00:04:02 ►
who is this man who has the name
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Timothy Leary? Who is Timothy Leary? Who is he as a person? I’m a philosopher. I’m a psychologist who
00:04:15 ►
has been studying the nervous system for the last 30 years. I’ve written 10 books and hundreds of articles.
00:04:25 ►
I probably know as much or more about how the nervous system works, the far galactic
00:04:31 ►
outposts of awareness and the range of human experiences any scientist around.
00:04:37 ►
You also happen to be a person in prison.
00:04:40 ►
Well, yes, I’m in prison, and that may seem odd, a philosopher in prison, but I have to say this about my profession.
00:04:50 ►
The best philosophers often end up in prison.
00:04:52 ►
If you’re a good baseball player, you end up in the major leagues.
00:04:55 ►
If you’re a really successful politician, you end up in Washington, I’m sorry to say.
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If you’re really a good philosopher, you’re coming out with new ideas about the seven great destiny questions that are going to rattle the walls of social institutions.
00:05:09 ►
Most of the men that I model myself after have been lucky if they got away with just being in prison for their ideas.
00:05:18 ►
As far as the general public’s concerned, you’re probably best known for your views on drugs.
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When did you really get started working with drugs?
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Starting in 1960 at Harvard University.
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What role? How?
00:05:34 ►
Well, for many years before that, as a psychologist
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and once studying the nervous system,
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knowing that the nervous system is the key to all human knowledge,
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I had been looking for instruments, just like microscopes, to
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see how the mind and the nervous system works.
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And in the 1960s, as we all know very well, drugs came along as modes, expanding cultures,
00:05:57 ►
just like telescopes and microscopes.
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The nervous system is a biochemical structure. Drugs are the fuels of the instruments, just like tractors and jet engines expand our muscles
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and our legs and that sort of thing.
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If you’re going to study a nervous system, drugs are one of the major tools.
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You were looking at it from a research view.
00:06:20 ►
Did you ever go away from that view?
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Every time that you worked with drugs, were you looking at it from research well uh the philosopher is looking not just at the narrow research aspects
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but for the implications the great questions are where did we come from where are we going
00:06:34 ►
we’re on this planet uh this spaceship earth how we’re going to go along with each other how can
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we use our heads so that i’ve always been interested in finding ways of using our nervous system as an instrument to answer the basic questions of life.
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I think any scientist who really gets to the frontier of his science gets these basic questions, gets kind of mystical, gets philosophic, it’s inevitable,
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and I’ve accepted that responsibility.
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and I’ve accepted that responsibility. I think we need at this time a new philosophy. We’ve run out of the great navigational ideas of how we’re going to get the great ship moving in the right
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direction. Ten years ago you did have a philosophy in a hallucinogenic revolution. What were you
00:07:21 ►
really advocating then? Well, my main message is use your head, specifically. Learn how to use your nervous system.
00:07:28 ►
For the last 15 years, I’ve been studying my own nervous system.
00:07:34 ►
I’ve gotten to use my own nervous system the way Llewyn Hoek and the first men that got the microscope,
00:07:40 ►
or Galileo, the first guy that got the telescope.
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It takes years to learn how to focus it and dial it and tune it.
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I know that the nervous system is a computer.
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We can program it in many different directions.
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It’s like a series of motion picture or television cameras.
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We can focus it and turn it around on different objects.
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It’s electronic. It’s electric.
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We can dial it and tune it. It’s there to be used.
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And the challenge of the human race right now,
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I call it the neurological age we’re going into,
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we’ve got to learn how to ease our head.
00:08:11 ►
Are you ahead of your time?
00:08:13 ►
Is that why you haven’t been accepted totally yet?
00:08:15 ►
Are you too far ahead of your time?
00:08:16 ►
Yes, I’m in a kind of a time warp.
00:08:20 ►
I definitely am ahead of it.
00:08:21 ►
It’s a question whether I may be off in the right direction,
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and perhaps the great center movement of society and science won’t follow me.
00:08:29 ►
These are the risks that the power of scientists takes.
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But I have a certain empirical experimental proof that I’m not entirely wrong,
00:08:36 ►
because most everything that I said in 1962, 1963,
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my testimony before Senate committees about how we could avoid a drug in this country.
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In those days, I was almost alone as a voice saying, this is going to happen, and beware,
00:08:51 ►
don’t let it happen.
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And I was considered pretty radical, for example, saying that marijuana should not be criminalized,
00:08:56 ►
that LSD should be turned over to the government to be treated like fissionable material, like
00:09:00 ►
atomic.
00:09:01 ►
In the subsequent years, most of my prophecies have come true,
00:09:09 ►
and many very conservative organs like the American Medical Association,
00:09:12 ►
the American Psychiatric Association, the American Bar Association, even William Buckley, the conservative writer and television star,
00:09:20 ►
they’re all coming around to positions that I was considered radical in espousing in the 1960s.
00:09:27 ►
I believe you said 10 years ago that you wanted to change the spiritual level of the United States.
00:09:33 ►
Did you think of yourself as a drug messiah back in those days, that started your own church?
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Well, if you hadn’t asked me about drugs today, I wouldn’t have brought it up. I talk about the
00:09:44 ►
nervous system. I talk about how we can use our knowledge to make this country a better place.
00:09:47 ►
I talk about how to reduce crime, that sort of thing.
00:09:49 ►
I want to point out that you’re the one that’s asking questions about drugs.
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Now, I know I have to answer questions about drugs because I’ve been labeled, as they say,
00:09:57 ►
in prison.
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That’s under my jacket.
00:09:59 ►
But I have no more to do with drugs than Einstein has to do with the atomic bomb.
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Now, now.
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All the way through.
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You never did 10 years ago.
00:10:08 ►
When I was lecturing, if you read my books, less than 10% of any book I’ve ever written,
00:10:13 ►
or 10 or 15% of any lecture I’ve ever given, is on drugs.
00:10:17 ►
And usually, the drug question came up and the question and answer carries afterwards.
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Now when Albert Einstein got to the particular heaven or a fulsome prison hell, wherever his destiny led him,
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and he began talking about the equations of space-time
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and the relativity theory,
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I know that there’s a reporter or a television man saying,
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yeah, Albert, but what about the atomic bomb?
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And he’d say, yeah, it’s true that there were those crazy mixed-up kids
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who got a hold of that atomic bomb on the basis based my theories and blew up Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
00:10:47 ►
So I have to take the responsibility for drugs as being one part of the philosophy that I’ve been teaching and studying and working on.
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Are you saying 10 years ago that the news media just totally blew out of proportion what you were actually trying to achieve?
00:11:03 ►
Did you not advocate LSD?
00:11:05 ►
No, I never advocated drugs.
00:11:08 ►
I defended drugs, different drugs, against unscientific charges.
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As soon as you start saying marijuana is not a killer drug, you become an advocate.
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In the people’s mind.
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Yeah.
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As I look in this camera and realize that people are going to be watching this program,
00:11:27 ►
I think it’s safe to say that maybe a third of the audience generally likes me.
00:11:32 ►
They think I’m a philosopher in prison for my ideas, and they don’t want me in prison.
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But I think there’s another third that really dislikes me intensely,
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thinks that I’ve led the young people astray.
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There’s another third probably that couldn’t care less,
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that you’re busy enough with your own lives
00:11:47 ►
that my debate with the United States government is no concern of yours.
00:11:51 ►
The one thing that’s true of almost everyone involved in these debates,
00:11:55 ►
they don’t really know what I’ve been saying.
00:11:57 ►
I think that very few people who are watching this program have read my books.
00:12:02 ►
And we know how the media labels people.
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How they label Eagleton, how they label Muskie? It’s the great sensation game. And it’s very
00:12:08 ►
hard once they lay a label on you to fight back.
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When was it that various local and government officials started putting pressure on you
00:12:15 ►
because of the views that were made known by the news media on drugs and so on?
00:12:20 ►
Well, I don’t know how many Americans know this, but I had the honor of being the person that started G. Gordon Liddy on his meteoric career.
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As much as anyone in this country, I put Gordon Liddy in the White House.
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He was out after you, wasn’t he?
00:12:33 ►
Yeah, he was an assistant D.A. near Millbrook, New York, where I had a scientific center where we were studying consciousness.
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And Gordon was very ambitious.
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Now, of course, there are millions of people going along on this trip,
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but in those days, the first time that I was harassed by the law
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was on a Saturday night at midnight.
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I was in my bedroom with my wife, and I was talking to my son,
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and the door banged open, and in came G. Gordon Liddy
00:13:01 ►
with 24 armed and booted sheriffs.
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Warren?
00:13:06 ►
Do you have a warrant on him?
00:13:09 ►
Yeah, but the warrant was, they found no marijuana.
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The warrant was thrown out.
00:13:14 ►
They did confiscate a little plant we had on Piedmont, which was a geranium.
00:13:20 ►
But Gordon Liddy then ran for Congress on the basis that he had driven me out of the county.
00:13:24 ►
And from there, he went to White House as a drug expert.
00:13:29 ►
And how did Gordon Liddy get to be a drug expert because he had fought Timothy Larry. This has been well known, it’s been testified to recently. That was 1966 and
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since then I’ve been in continual… I know exactly how that system works.
00:13:40 ►
Phones being bugged, being harassed and so forth. They tried it out on me before
00:13:44 ►
they tried it out on Senator Muskie, who’s now in the government. If I recall, you
00:13:49 ►
recently filed a suit to close Folsom. Yes, with the help of some prisoners. There’s a small group
00:13:56 ►
of prisoners here who are attempting to set up an educational program. It’s called PROBE. They’re
00:14:02 ►
trying to get it authorized, and they helped me. This is a brief
00:14:06 ►
filed and written by
00:14:09 ►
jailhouse lawyers. We want to close the prisons
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because they set up condition of
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slavery, involuntary servitude, and the brief spells out how we can deal with the prisoner problem without
00:14:22 ►
caging men in a way that’s very unconstitutional.
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And we hope to do it, of course, very legally and with the cooperation of the prison guards
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and administration.
00:14:32 ►
There’s something in this for everybody.
00:14:34 ►
One thing, I see the United States and the human situation like a nervous system.
00:14:38 ►
We’re all in touch.
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I think the problem has been that we’ve gotten out of touch with each other.
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We’ve got to use technology to get into close communication
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so that everything we’re doing here now is legal.
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It’s with the knowledge of the prison authorities.
00:14:53 ►
We want to bring them in.
00:14:54 ►
We want to raise their salaries.
00:14:55 ►
We want to give them compensation adequate to their problem
00:14:59 ►
because they’re facing the crucial problem of how to change men’s minds and solve crimes.
00:15:05 ►
And we’re not against anyone.
00:15:09 ►
Certainly ten years ago you were giving advice to people.
00:15:11 ►
What advice would you give young people today?
00:15:15 ►
Well, you know, I’ve been off the air for three and a half years
00:15:18 ►
and haven’t been getting any advice.
00:15:21 ►
I’m letting other people take over to see how good the advice is that they could pass on.
00:15:30 ►
My main advice to everyone is we’ve got to learn how to use our heads.
00:15:35 ►
We’ve got to realize that the nervous system can be used as an instrument
00:15:38 ►
to help us understand why we’re here and where we’re going.
00:15:42 ►
I think we’ve got to change.
00:15:44 ►
We’d like
00:15:45 ►
to see the United States move into its third century with the same spirit we had 200 years
00:15:51 ►
ago, a spirit of novelty, of something great and imaginative and freeing, so that we could
00:15:56 ►
have the pride that Americans used to feel. Now, as I look around as I’ve been back, I
00:16:02 ►
don’t see that Mr. Nixon or the Democrats have a program that’s going to lead us into the third century with this vigor that we need.
00:16:09 ►
We’ll limp or crawl or kind of stagger into the third century, which I think is a tragedy.
00:16:17 ►
So I don’t have any advice for anyone.
00:16:20 ►
I’m just simply saying that we’re going to be broadcasting our ideas of hope and confidence and courage and we don’t say we’re right, but God knows we’re about ready for
00:16:32 ►
for a new philosophy. It’s going to come. You say you aren’t giving advice. Would you give advice
00:16:38 ►
on the use of drugs nowadays? Yeah, I should do that and I’ll look right into the eyes of everyone that’s watching this program and say that I don’t urge you to take LSD in particular.
00:16:52 ►
LSD is the most powerful substance that the human being has ever developed for influencing the mind.
00:16:58 ►
I’ve used the comparison of nuclear energy or fission material. I think that in the right hands and scientific and disciplined
00:17:06 ►
and hopeful people,
00:17:08 ►
it will bring about changes.
00:17:10 ►
But for anyone to listen to this broadcast,
00:17:14 ►
to get any other message,
00:17:15 ►
that I’m telling you,
00:17:16 ►
stay away from LSD.
00:17:17 ►
In the first place,
00:17:18 ►
99% of what’s called LSD is LSD.
00:17:22 ►
And 99% of the things that are said about LSD
00:17:24 ►
are totally lies or fabrications.
00:17:28 ►
The whole thing is so confused now that I’ll flatly make that statement.
00:17:31 ►
You also said in the past that you were afraid of heroin.
00:17:36 ►
You don’t like heroin.
00:17:38 ►
Personally, I don’t like heroin at all.
00:17:40 ►
It’s a down trip. It’s an escape trip.
00:17:42 ►
And although I’m an escape artist, I like to escape to life, not escape from life. I think that heroin addiction is like diabetes
00:17:53 ►
or it’s like epilepsy. There are certain people that just physiologically and psychologically
00:18:00 ►
are so wired up that they’re going to be attracted to this mode of escape and heroin addicts
00:18:06 ►
They’re probably would be
00:18:09 ►
60 or a hundred thousand if we kept the money thing out of it could be handled by physical
00:18:17 ►
Prescriptions by doctors just the way
00:18:20 ►
Diabetes diabetics now use insulin
00:18:22 ►
Well, if you pass the law against, immediately the price of insulin would go up, like the price of heroin,
00:18:27 ►
and you’d have diabetics going around robbing and stealing to get their fix.
00:18:32 ►
But for me, heroin is no trick.
00:18:34 ►
You’re sitting here in prison. What are you doing productively? What are you doing to keep yourself alert?
00:18:41 ►
Well, I have no trouble keeping myself alert. There’s plenty to do here. The main thing
00:18:47 ►
I’m doing is taking advantage of this opportunity to study society from this very interesting
00:18:53 ►
vantage point. I’m talking to prisoners, I’m listening to them, I’m doing some writing.
00:18:59 ►
I do about two hours of physical yoga every day. There’s no problem. This is where it’s happening.
00:19:05 ►
As I said before, it’s a microcosm.
00:19:07 ►
You’ve got all the raw essence of human society here.
00:19:11 ►
This is where you can really see it coming down.
00:19:14 ►
It’s a rare experience.
00:19:15 ►
It’s nothing that I want to make a career of.
00:19:18 ►
But it’s my ambition to really liberate the world.
00:19:22 ►
Why not?
00:19:22 ►
I mean, why settle for anything less?
00:19:24 ►
I have a sense of humor about it. I know the odds are against me, but we only have a few years here. Let’s try to leave this spaceship a better place. And all the models and all the philosophers and all the men that I think have really liberated humanity have all done their time on the outside.
00:19:46 ►
their time on the outside. I want to get back in. I think I belong in American society. I think that a society that imprisons its philosophers is playing with very bad magic. You just can’t
00:19:52 ►
imprison ideas. You’ve been arrested a number of times for possession of marijuana. Were any of
00:19:57 ►
those legitimate? No, as a matter of fact, I’ve never been legitimately arrested. I’m in prison
00:20:03 ►
now because one evening I was in a parked car,
00:20:06 ►
and a policeman came up to the car and opened the door against my wishes,
00:20:10 ►
made a pass at the ashtray, and said,
00:20:13 ►
You’re under arrest for some flood.
00:20:15 ►
He said, For marijuana.
00:20:16 ►
I said, What marijuana?
00:20:17 ►
He reached in his pocket.
00:20:19 ►
He pulled out two joints that I’d never seen before, half joints,
00:20:24 ►
and said, You’re under arrest. A year later, an Orange County, you know Orange County, jury believed the policeman’s story and found me guilty of possession of marijuana.
00:20:43 ►
instead of giving me bail, as I was entitled to for appeal,
00:20:45 ►
I held up a book that I had been writing and said, your ideas are dangerous,
00:20:48 ►
and we’re not going to give you bail,
00:20:49 ►
and we’ll put you in prison to keep you quiet.
00:20:52 ►
Now, I’m not complaining,
00:20:54 ►
because I think I should have been shut up then.
00:20:56 ►
I’ve been around the United States for 10 years,
00:20:58 ►
talking and spreading my message,
00:21:00 ►
and I think it’s good in a public life
00:21:03 ►
to have a chance to lay back and see what the opposition is going to do. As a matter of fact, and I think it’s good in a public life to have a chance to lay back and
00:21:06 ►
see what the opposition is going to do. As a matter of fact, when I was arrested,
00:21:10 ►
I was running for governor in California, and I published position papers on how to gradually
00:21:15 ►
eliminate taxes, how to eliminate crime, how to eliminate the drug abuse problem, and so forth.
00:21:21 ►
I thought I’d lay back for a couple of years and see how well the other side was going to do. But last January in Afghanistan, the American government agents, they’re part of that
00:21:32 ►
same LIDI narcotics bureau group, stole my passport illegally, kidnapped me. It was a valid passport
00:21:40 ►
on the sovereign territory of Afghanistan, kidnapped me, put me in a plane, brought me back.
00:21:44 ►
for on the sovereign territory of Afghanistan kidnapped me, put me in a plane, brought me back, and now I’m in Folsom Prison and I’m broadcasting again. Now, I didn’t want to
00:21:50 ►
come back. I was happy over there. I was consulting with other governments on how they could avoid
00:21:55 ►
the crime and the drug problem we have here. But now that I’m back, I am going to be broadcasting.
00:22:01 ►
You say that that arrest was not only given at once.
00:22:06 ►
Let me rephrase that.
00:22:08 ►
Do you think the sentence was put on you extra tough because you are a similarity?
00:22:12 ►
First of all, I don’t think that anyone should go to prison
00:22:15 ►
for the possession of marijuana.
00:22:16 ►
So it’s unfair for everybody.
00:22:18 ►
I don’t think there’s any question, though,
00:22:20 ►
that if another middle-aged, middle-class person
00:22:23 ►
was found with two of these in their pocket pocket they wouldn’t be doing prison time I am Timothy Larry I
00:22:32 ►
don’t think it’s so much my ideas because there are a lot of people
00:22:36 ►
running around preaching new ideas the reason I’m in prison is because my ideas
00:22:41 ►
were listened to by millions of people. They got a little too popular.
00:22:46 ►
That’s my version of it.
00:22:48 ►
Briefly, I know you took a number of pages in your newest book to explain how you broke out of prison,
00:22:53 ►
but briefly tell us how you did it.
00:22:58 ►
You had help?
00:22:58 ►
I’d like to say telepathy, teleportation, magic.
00:23:02 ►
I was part of it.
00:23:04 ►
I went over a fence.
00:23:05 ►
You got outside help?
00:23:06 ►
I was helped after I got outside.
00:23:08 ►
Well, in your book you also have help. It was a long-range setup that helped you get out and so on.
00:23:15 ►
You were helped by the Weathermen?
00:23:16 ►
Yeah.
00:23:17 ►
One person who helped you break out was a young girl codename of Kelly, and you say that she’s the senator’s daughter.
00:23:23 ►
Yeah.
00:23:24 ►
You were Senator Blank in the the book is it to remain that way
00:23:28 ►
well-known senator very well does the senator know oh sure
00:23:34 ►
then you went on to uh algiers you lived over there with eldridge cleaver and his wife kathleen
00:23:40 ►
what do you think of eldridge cleaver as a man? His beliefs, his feelings. There was a big rift there after he had lived there for a while.
00:23:47 ►
Yes, Eldridge Cleaver and I disagreed strongly on philosophy and on how to change the world.
00:23:54 ►
I believe that the revolution is a neurological revolution.
00:23:57 ►
It’s a revolution of consciousness.
00:23:58 ►
I saw it more as a spiritual revolution.
00:24:02 ►
Eldridge, as you probably know, believed in a violent military revolution,
00:24:07 ►
and I felt that this was old-fashioned and would get easily wiped out and create bad
00:24:13 ►
vibrations where we wanted good vibrations.
00:24:17 ►
Some people say that perhaps your use of LSD and other drugs, you might have destroyed
00:24:21 ►
some of your brain. Do you think that you’ve suffered any brain damage whatsoever?
00:24:28 ►
Well, am I insane?
00:24:31 ►
Of course, that’s a very tricky question for anyone to answer.
00:24:34 ►
I’ve lived through the 30s and the 40s and the 50s and the 60s. I don’t think anyone who’s still erect after those years has had insanity tested.
00:24:42 ►
I’m 52 years old, facing the problems of maturity and getting old.
00:24:47 ►
I’ve been through a lot of rough time the last few years. My career has been ruined and they took my
00:24:53 ►
credit card away at Harvard and I’ve been harassed by the United States government pretty heavily.
00:25:00 ►
I’ve been in four prisons all without committing any crime. I know I’ve been in solitary confinement for four months.
00:25:08 ►
In addition to all of these pressures,
00:25:11 ►
I probably push my nervous system as much as any human being living.
00:25:17 ►
I think I’m the strongest, saddest person around.
00:25:20 ►
Now, I’m not making any guarantees for the future,
00:25:24 ►
but, you know, there’s something very
00:25:26 ►
ominous about this tendency to call anybody that you don’t agree with insane.
00:25:30 ►
A hundred years ago, they’d say you were possessed by the devil or you’re a heretic.
00:25:36 ►
Twenty years ago, they’d say you were communists.
00:25:37 ►
Now, the really sophisticated totalitarian method now is to say that someone that is
00:25:43 ►
a dissenter, that is against the
00:25:45 ►
society is insane in Russia now very smooth they take their philosophers and
00:25:50 ►
their dissenting poets and they don’t put them in Siberia anymore they put
00:25:54 ►
them and the same as on now maybe it is insane to be against what’s happening in
00:26:00 ►
this United States today maybe it’s insane to try to have hope that something can be done about it.
00:26:05 ►
So if that’s insane, count me in.
00:26:08 ►
But otherwise, make up your own mind.
00:26:12 ►
You’re an optimist.
00:26:13 ►
A hope fiend.
00:26:14 ►
Yeah, I’ve been called an irrepressible optimist.
00:26:18 ►
Now, the opposite of an irrepressible optimist
00:26:21 ►
is a repressive pessimist.
00:26:22 ►
And I think that’s what’s running the country today.
00:26:28 ►
What do you think of your future? Do you think you’re going to walk out of wholesome prison a free man one day? I think my future is very interconnected with the future
00:26:32 ►
of this country. You just can’t keep your philosophers in prison. If I am kept in prison,
00:26:38 ►
it’s going to be a very bad symptom for freedom and for hope and for union. Sitting here during the interview, I’ve noticed the symbol on your shirt. What is that for?
00:26:48 ►
This is a very interesting symbol for some of us. This is a replica of the remnants of a living
00:26:57 ►
organism that was found on a meteorite that came from interstellar or extraplanetary space. This is proof that life exists somewhere off our planet.
00:27:08 ►
Now, we feel that this is the first contact with higher intelligence
00:27:13 ►
or somewhere out there there’s another point of view.
00:27:16 ►
And we’ve taken this as a symbol of the new hope philosophy that we’re talking about.
00:27:23 ►
Sometime in the fall,
00:27:25 ►
we’re going to see in the sky
00:27:26 ►
a meteorite.
00:27:27 ►
Have you heard about it?
00:27:28 ►
It was discovered by a German astronomer.
00:27:31 ►
We call this light
00:27:34 ►
that’s going to come into our solar system,
00:27:36 ►
we see it in the daytime as well as at night,
00:27:37 ►
we call it starseed.
00:27:39 ►
And it kind of ties in with the symbol
00:27:40 ►
that we’re visitors on this planet Earth.
00:27:43 ►
We’re not going to be here very
00:27:45 ►
long. We’ve got to get back in touch with the greater picture. And it’s a symbol of
00:27:49 ►
unity and hope.
00:27:51 ►
I would like to ask you briefly if you have a final comment.
00:27:56 ►
I think I’ve said pretty much what I have to say. We’re going to keep broadcasting.
00:28:02 ►
There’ll be more messages. I’d be very glad to hear from anyone in the audience who’d like to keep this dialogue
00:28:08 ►
going.
00:28:09 ►
My partner, my mate, Joanna Larry, is going to be going to college campuses and radio
00:28:14 ►
programs and television programs.
00:28:16 ►
I’ve had two books that have published since I’ve been back.
00:28:21 ►
I’ve heard it was wanted back here. I think there aren’t very many philosophies of hope,
00:28:26 ►
freedom being broadcast.
00:28:30 ►
And let me try to shut me up.
00:28:33 ►
The people who have broadcast hope in this country
00:28:36 ►
in the last few years, many of them have been killed.
00:28:38 ►
I know it’s a risky job, but I’m here,
00:28:40 ►
and I’m going to keep broadcasting.
00:28:45 ►
How was that for standing up to the man?
00:28:48 ►
Facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison,
00:28:52 ►
Leary still puts his finger in the establishment’s eye and says,
00:28:56 ►
I’m here and I’m broadcasting.
00:28:58 ►
Well, this brings me to the next interview with Tim Leary that I want to play for you.
00:29:03 ►
And this one took place 19 years later,
00:29:05 ►
sometime late in 1992,
00:29:08 ►
and, well, it’s my all-time favorite interview
00:29:10 ►
with Dr. Leary.
00:29:12 ►
I thought that playing it right after the one
00:29:14 ►
that we just heard would be interesting
00:29:15 ►
because it begins with the same question.
00:29:18 ►
Who is Timothy Leary?
00:29:21 ►
But there’s an added benefit with this interview.
00:29:24 ►
Over and above being able to see what changes may have taken place in Leary’s thinking over the intervening years.
00:29:31 ►
And that benefit is that the person conducting the interview is the one and only Skip E. Lowe.
00:29:37 ►
He was a really well-known television personality in the L area, and between 1978 and 2014, Skip conducted somewhere around 6,000
00:29:48 ►
interviews on his show, Skip E. Lowe Looks at Hollywood. Now, as soon as you hear Skip’s first
00:29:54 ►
question, you’re going to think that you recognize his voice, and there’s a good reason for that,
00:29:59 ►
and it’s because Martin Short essentially copied both the voice and mannerisms from Skip Lowe
00:30:05 ►
for the comedy character that Short named Jiminy Glick.
00:30:09 ►
And I’m sure that many of our fellow salonners have fond memories of watching Jiminy Glick
00:30:15 ►
while passing a joint around.
00:30:17 ►
I know that I do.
00:30:19 ►
And so, when Skip asks his questions,
00:30:22 ►
there’s really no way I can see anybody but Jiminy Glick asking them.
00:30:27 ►
For example, after first stating that it was his understanding that Timothy Leary had actually created LSD,
00:30:35 ►
and then being corrected by Leary, Lowe just goes on to say,
00:30:39 ►
and what I can only hear now is coming from the voice of Jiminy Glick,
00:30:43 ►
So, tell me more about the LSD. What
00:30:46 ►
happened there? As you’ll hear, Skip knew next to nothing about what Leary had done before this
00:30:53 ►
interview, and that makes it even more fun to listen to. So now, here is another interview
00:30:59 ►
with Dr. Timothy Leary, 19 years after the interview that we just listened to.
00:31:05 ►
Larry, 19 years after the interview that we just listened to.
00:31:12 ►
Timothy Larry grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. Is that where you grew up? I spent my first 18 years in a very small town in western Massachusetts.
00:31:17 ►
College? Where?
00:31:19 ►
I went to about seven colleges. Actually, I was expelled from several of them.
00:31:23 ►
I went to West Point for two years. I went to a seven colleges. Actually, I was expelled from several of them. I went to West Point for two years.
00:31:25 ►
I went to a Jesuit school.
00:31:27 ►
I got my master’s degree from Washington State University in Pullman.
00:31:31 ►
Right.
00:31:32 ►
And then my doctorate in psychology at UC Berkeley.
00:31:36 ►
Berkeley.
00:31:37 ►
Expelled from where?
00:31:38 ►
You say several.
00:31:40 ►
Expelled for what reason?
00:31:41 ►
May I ask?
00:31:42 ►
Well, I was expelled from the University of Alabama for spending the night in the girls’ dormitory.
00:31:46 ►
Now, you’re going to ruin my reputation.
00:31:48 ►
Go ahead, Timothy.
00:31:49 ►
I want to know.
00:31:51 ►
You’re going to go for the real inside story.
00:31:53 ►
No, you say expelled.
00:31:54 ►
Go ahead, like you several.
00:31:55 ►
But what else?
00:31:57 ►
For what other reasons?
00:31:59 ►
You said one for girls?
00:32:00 ►
I was expelled from a Jesuit school called Holy Cross College
00:32:03 ►
for gambling, playing poker, blackjack late at night during a religious retreat with a son of an Italian mafia guy from New York.
00:32:15 ►
They graduated me right there.
00:32:17 ►
You’ve been outspoken ever since you were a kid then, really.
00:32:20 ►
Timothy Leary has always been his own person, own mind, unspoken person.
00:32:24 ►
Yes, I lived a very, well, I would say a lonely childhood. Timothy Leary has always been his own person, own mind, unspoken person.
00:32:28 ►
Yes, I lived a very, well, I would say a lonely childhood.
00:32:34 ►
It was a very isolated little town, and I didn’t see much of the sophisticated world.
00:32:37 ►
So I lived as a child an extraordinary life.
00:32:44 ►
I read books all the time, and I dreamed dreams of doing heroic things to help the human race.
00:32:47 ►
And my model, my idol, was a philosopher
00:32:51 ►
named Socrates. And I based my entire life on Socrates. So that’s where Timothy Leary…
00:32:53 ►
He’s the guy that caused all the trouble for me. His motto was, he said that the aim of
00:32:59 ►
human life, Kippy, was to know thyself. Now this was very subversive, because the very idea
00:33:05 ►
of someone saying, you don’t have a self, you’re a serf, you’re a slave, he was inventing
00:33:12 ►
the idea of individuality, and that you could do something about your life. Now as soon
00:33:17 ►
as I studied the books about sovereignty, I realized that this is a dangerous profession, because you’re teaching people to question authority.
00:33:27 ►
I realized that this job, which I was going to undertake, the corrupting of the minds of youth, it paid poorly.
00:33:36 ►
It could get you in serious difficulty with authorities, and in the case of Socrates, it got him hemlocked.
00:33:41 ►
But I’ve enjoyed this profession, and in the last 70 years in America,
00:33:47 ►
it’s been a wonderful time.
00:33:48 ►
It has?
00:33:49 ►
For a dissident philosopher,
00:33:50 ►
because so much change has happened that…
00:33:52 ►
Do you think the kids today know thyself?
00:33:56 ►
Because a lot of them don’t.
00:33:57 ►
They don’t have identifications of their own self.
00:34:00 ►
They don’t know who they are.
00:34:01 ►
They just follow the leaders.
00:34:03 ►
Ain’t it the truth?
00:34:04 ►
It’s been that way for… Am I right? It’s been that way for most human beings throughout most human history.
00:34:09 ►
Right.
00:34:10 ►
At certain times in human history, culture, when everything’s favorable, you know, it’s
00:34:15 ►
called a renaissance. Now, they had one in Athens because Athens was protected by geography
00:34:20 ►
from the big empires.
00:34:21 ►
Right.
00:34:22 ►
There was another great renaissance around Venice and northern
00:34:27 ►
Italy. And a renaissance preaches the basic religion of humanism. A renaissance period,
00:34:35 ►
we had one in the 60s here, and the key to it was humanism. He said, the aim of individual
00:34:39 ►
life is to know yourself and to treat each other as human beings. And this flies in direct
00:34:45 ►
opposition to every fundamentalist religion, to every political party who is supposed to
00:34:50 ►
work for God or for the state. So what happens in a renaissance? We rediscover the wonderful
00:35:01 ►
potential of the inner human being. The clothes tend to come off because there’s more human contact and beauty and erotic activity tends to be more active at this period.
00:35:15 ►
So in the 60s we had a classic renaissance which ended in 1980 when the repression of Reagan and Bush came up. We all know that’s my history.
00:35:24 ►
Right, right. Berkeley. I went to Berkeley.
00:35:28 ►
I went there for four years and I taught. And you taught. For about four years at Berkeley, yeah.
00:35:31 ►
Philosophy. Psychology. Psychology. But that’s really philosophy, too, isn’t it?
00:35:36 ►
Really? Yes. Psychology, philosophy. Yeah, of course.
00:35:39 ►
To be a good psychiatrist. You know, go ahead. I agree with you.
00:35:43 ►
I agree with you, Skippy. So you think you were there in the 60s or was it the 60s you were there
00:35:50 ►
when were you there in no I was a graduate student at Berkeley from 1940s
00:35:56 ►
40s really 50 okay and I taught around Berkeley and did research there as a
00:36:02 ►
faculty member and researcher for about nine years. I left Berkeley basically to go to Harvard in 1959.
00:36:09 ►
You went to Harvard for how long?
00:36:10 ►
As a teacher.
00:36:11 ►
As a faculty member.
00:36:12 ►
Faculty member. When did this all begin for Timothy Leary, this creating of LSD? When
00:36:20 ►
did all of that start?
00:36:21 ►
Well, I didn’t create LSD.
00:36:22 ►
Well, you did something about it. They all think you are the creator, but you’re not.
00:36:26 ►
I know you’re not. Experimental.
00:36:28 ►
I don’t know anything about chemistry at all.
00:36:30 ►
I’m not involved in computers, and I can hardly turn my own computer on.
00:36:34 ►
I try to use these tools as ways of increasing intelligence
00:36:39 ►
and getting to operate your mind and your brain,
00:36:41 ►
to be intelligent, to know thyself.
00:36:43 ►
You have to learn how to operate your mind and your brain. To be intelligent, to know thyself, you have to learn how to operate your mind
00:36:45 ►
and your brain.
00:36:46 ►
We don’t use it enough.
00:36:48 ►
People use it just this much.
00:36:49 ►
Yeah.
00:36:50 ►
And there should be,
00:36:51 ►
there’s a lot there.
00:36:52 ►
Tell me more about that.
00:36:53 ►
Well, of course,
00:36:55 ►
most schools do not teach
00:36:57 ►
young people
00:36:58 ►
to think for themselves.
00:36:59 ►
The idea is to,
00:37:00 ►
most schools indoctrinate
00:37:02 ►
to train you
00:37:02 ►
to play your part
00:37:04 ►
in a factory society,
00:37:05 ►
or you’re going to be a lawyer and you’ll be a doctor,
00:37:07 ►
and you’ve got to be a crook because of the cops.
00:37:09 ►
We have to have cops and crooks.
00:37:11 ►
There are all these roles that are being taught in schools.
00:37:14 ►
But rarely, there are a lot of good teachers out there, and I’m sure…
00:37:18 ►
Are there really, Timothy?
00:37:19 ►
There are many teachers out there, particularly now,
00:37:22 ►
people that went through the 60s,
00:37:24 ►
when thinking for yourself was popular and almost authorized yes there are a lot of
00:37:29 ►
good teachers out there that are doing their best to encourage and stimulate
00:37:32 ►
their students to think for themselves themselves but there’s 60s kids that are
00:37:36 ►
now so what I thought I have always thought for myself ever since I was a
00:37:40 ►
client again that’s why I like the vigil on me I’m me I’m me yeah there ain’t
00:37:44 ►
nobody likes get the no but I’m just saying Tim I’ve always kid. That’s why I always liked you. I’m an individual. I’m me. I’m me. There ain’t nobody like Skippy.
00:37:45 ►
No, but I’m just saying,
00:37:46 ►
Timothy, I’ve always been me.
00:37:48 ►
That’s why I’ve always liked you, Skippy.
00:37:49 ►
Is that right?
00:37:51 ►
So tell me more about the LSD.
00:37:54 ►
What happened there?
00:37:56 ►
You started something there
00:37:58 ►
with that creation.
00:37:59 ►
A lot of pot and everything else.
00:38:01 ►
I didn’t start anything.
00:38:02 ►
The use of certain botanical,
00:38:04 ►
vegetable substances
00:38:05 ►
was psychotropic to activate the brain.
00:38:08 ►
That’s been going on for thousands of years.
00:38:10 ►
It has been.
00:38:11 ►
Socrates and that whole group of Plato
00:38:13 ►
and the Lucidian mysteries,
00:38:15 ►
they were using marijuana, hashish, and opium.
00:38:17 ►
The use of drugs or vegetables to activate your brain,
00:38:22 ►
to open up new circuits of your brain.
00:38:25 ►
That’s called shamanism.
00:38:28 ►
And many say that most of the religions and much of the philosophy has come from groups,
00:38:33 ►
like the group around Socrates.
00:38:37 ►
Socrates, yes.
00:38:39 ►
At Harvard University, for example, there’s been a long tradition,
00:38:42 ►
an honorable tradition of the use of psychedelic drugs.
00:38:45 ►
At Harvard?
00:38:46 ►
Ralph Waldo Emerson started what was called
00:38:48 ►
American Transcendentalism, flying in the face
00:38:52 ►
of the Puritan ethic in Boston.
00:38:54 ►
Emerson was banned from Harvard and Boston
00:38:57 ►
for about 30 years, longer than I was.
00:38:59 ►
Really?
00:39:00 ►
Yeah, and then at the same time there was an active use
00:39:03 ►
of psychoactive drugs by British poets.
00:39:09 ►
Then William James, who founded the psychology department at Harvard,
00:39:12 ►
wrote a book called The Varieties of Religious Experience,
00:39:16 ►
in which he talked about his experiences with hashish and nitrous oxide.
00:39:20 ►
So when I went there, I was joining a long club of honorable and very distinguished philosophers
00:39:28 ►
who believed in transcendence, or basically they were humanists, as opposed to the engineer
00:39:33 ►
tradition of MIT or the puritanical fundamentalist tradition of Christianity.
00:39:40 ►
Right, right, right.
00:39:41 ►
But in 1970, five years. They gave you five years prison for a little
00:39:49 ►
abuse of marijuana. Is it just for a little marijuana? Five years. Well, they said you
00:39:54 ►
fought more than that.
00:39:55 ►
It was more than five.
00:39:56 ►
It was?
00:39:56 ►
I was sentenced to both federal and state prison for, could have totaled 30 years.
00:40:01 ►
Thirty, but you didn’t spend 30 years.
00:40:03 ►
Well, I escaped after nine months.
00:40:06 ►
You did? You didn’t know that? No, I didn’t know what do you mean you escaped?
00:40:08 ►
I trained trained trained very carefully and I climbed a wire and climbed a wall and I was met by a
00:40:13 ►
guerrilla outlaw group and I got political asylum in Algeria and
00:40:18 ►
How long were you in Algeria? About nine months. I was there with the Black Panthers and then I went to
00:40:23 ►
With the Black Panthers? You haven’t read my book, have you?
00:40:26 ►
Not really, no, I haven’t.
00:40:27 ►
I’ve written several unauthorized autobiographies.
00:40:32 ►
Right, right.
00:40:33 ►
I’m not too familiar with your book.
00:40:35 ►
Yeah, so I’ve got one called Flashbacks.
00:40:37 ►
You can get it in the bookstores right now.
00:40:39 ►
It’s got the whole sordid story there.
00:40:41 ►
And that’s being made into a movie now
00:40:43 ►
by Interscope.
00:40:49 ►
A brilliant young man named Bima Stagg who’s writing a script about my life. So tell me more about being with the Black Panther in Algeria, and then from there you
00:40:55 ►
went to prison?
00:40:56 ►
Did you go back to prison?
00:40:58 ►
I had to escape from actually Algeria because Algeria was a socialist, fundamentalist Islamic country,
00:41:06 ►
and that’s no barrel of laughs.
00:41:08 ►
No, I know it.
00:41:09 ►
Communism and Islamic fundamentalism.
00:41:11 ►
Right.
00:41:12 ►
I literally had to escape.
00:41:13 ►
I spent some time in Switzerland,
00:41:14 ►
and then I was captured by the DEA.
00:41:18 ►
Where, in Switzerland?
00:41:18 ►
No, in Afghanistan at the airport,
00:41:20 ►
and brought back, and I did about three and a half,
00:41:22 ►
altogether I did four and a half years in prison
00:41:24 ►
for the possession of two roaches of marijuana.
00:41:28 ►
Four and a half years?
00:41:29 ►
Mm-hmm.
00:41:30 ►
So it really turned your life around, didn’t it?
00:41:32 ►
From a professor in Harvard and running, escaping.
00:41:37 ►
What did you do the four and a half years in prison, Timothy Leary?
00:41:42 ►
What did Timothy Leary actually thought about?
00:41:44 ►
What did you do? Well, I tell you, I used that time wisely. I enjoyed it. Now, I’m not advocating. prison Timothy Leary what did Timothy Leary actually thought about what did I
00:41:45 ►
tell you I used that time wise they enjoyed it I know I’m not at you enjoyed
00:41:49 ►
it I’m not advocating prison boys and girls but I found it interesting and an
00:41:54 ►
educational experience for me to be a psychologist at the very bottom of the
00:41:58 ►
prison system because after I escaped they were really angry at me and they
00:42:01 ►
put me at the bottom and I got a view of society.
00:42:06 ►
You know, when you get down to the bottom, you really see how the police state operates.
00:42:10 ►
Also I love being in prison because I didn’t have to pay the rent, I didn’t have to answer
00:42:15 ►
the telephone, I didn’t have to produce erections, you know, on a regular basis. It’s just a
00:42:20 ►
joke. Right, right. I know. And when I was in solitary confinement, I liked that best
00:42:24 ►
because you know why? Why? My roommate was a very funny guy, right. I know. And when I was in solitary confinement, I liked that best because, you know why? Why?
00:42:26 ►
My roommate was a very funny guy.
00:42:27 ►
Kept me entertained all the time. Was he? Yeah.
00:42:30 ►
Is he still there or is he out now? That’s me.
00:42:32 ►
My mirror. Your roommate. Oh, you. I see. Your mirror.
00:42:34 ►
Okay. That’s a joke. I know.
00:42:36 ►
You’re a funny man.
00:42:37 ►
You know that? Thank you.
00:42:39 ►
You’re actually doing a stand-up comedy, too.
00:42:42 ►
No, I don’t do stand-up.
00:42:43 ►
I give my college lecture, but I give it…
00:42:46 ►
In comedy.
00:42:47 ►
In comedy flair.
00:42:48 ►
No.
00:42:49 ►
I make fun of authority.
00:42:51 ►
I make fun of…
00:42:52 ►
Well, that’s comedy.
00:42:53 ►
That’s fun.
00:42:54 ►
Yes, but I’m not a stand-up.
00:42:55 ►
No, I meant, you know…
00:42:56 ►
I don’t tell dick jokes, you know.
00:42:57 ►
No, no, no.
00:42:58 ►
We don’t stand that.
00:42:59 ►
Can I say dick on this program?
00:43:00 ►
Yes, of course you can.
00:43:01 ►
But, Jim, I understand that.
00:43:02 ►
Yeah, I don’t do that kind of stand-up.
00:43:11 ►
I try to mercilessly make fun of Christianity and Islam and politicians.
00:43:15 ►
That’s just part of my job as a dissonant philosopher.
00:43:19 ►
What happened after you got out of prison, the day you arrived out of prison?
00:43:23 ►
First of all, what prison were you in? Which one?
00:43:26 ►
I was in 49 jails and prisons in four continents.
00:43:27 ►
Really?
00:43:28 ►
Yeah.
00:43:30 ►
I came after my release.
00:43:33 ►
I was released from California when Jerry Brown became governor.
00:43:41 ►
And I was released from federal prison after Reagan was thrown out.
00:43:41 ►
Right.
00:43:43 ►
I’m sorry, Nixon, 1976. And when I came to Hollywood,
00:43:46 ►
and I’ve been involved in communication
00:43:48 ►
and computers and electronics and…
00:43:51 ►
Immediately.
00:43:52 ►
Is this what ran through your mind in jail
00:43:54 ►
when you were preparing for this,
00:43:57 ►
when you got out, computers?
00:43:58 ►
Yes, I’m a great follower of a man named Marshall McLuhan
00:44:00 ►
who wrote those wonderful books about communication.
00:44:02 ►
And he said that if you want to change a culture if you want to change yourself if you want to change
00:44:09 ►
religion right change the medium the mode of communication and he said that
00:44:14 ►
Gutenberg created Protestantism when he had the mass assemble book right
00:44:18 ►
everybody could read and now the new form of communication is electronic so
00:44:22 ►
I’m a fanatic about electronics.
00:44:26 ►
My brain… Electronic brain, you’re into.
00:44:28 ►
Aren’t you in electronic brains experiments right now?
00:44:31 ►
Yes, that’s right, yeah.
00:44:32 ►
Tell me about that.
00:44:34 ►
Well, maybe we should…
00:44:35 ►
I don’t give lectures anymore.
00:44:38 ►
Okay, you don’t?
00:44:39 ►
The next two Monday nights at EZTV.
00:44:43 ►
EZTV on Santa Monica Boulevard. Santa Monica Boulevard, right. I know it, yes, off of La Cienega, right. tucson them monday not that easy td easy to use it yet but not on the santa monica bulls and i
00:44:45 ►
don’t know where i know it was not a lot to get right and uh… that’s in santa
00:44:49 ►
monica boulevard between uh… uh… less yet again sentence as in west
00:44:52 ►
hollywood
00:44:54 ►
having a wonderful time because we’re uh… each monday night we invite uh…
00:44:59 ►
geniuses wizards uh…
00:45:01 ►
this new field
00:45:03 ►
of electronic
00:45:04 ►
multimedia geniuses, wizards in this new field of electronic multimedia.
00:45:06 ►
And we’re learning how to produce trance states
00:45:08 ►
by using computer-generated images and electronic patterns.
00:45:13 ►
As a matter of fact, why don’t we put on this little tape now to show you.
00:45:15 ►
You have a tape right now you brought.
00:45:16 ►
This is a commercial, like a commercial you see on TV.
00:45:20 ►
The message from the product, the message from the sponsor is,
00:45:25 ►
learn how to use your eyeballs and operate your brain so let’s run the tape use your
00:45:29 ►
eyeballs and yeah I know I use your eyeballs hmm interesting let’s see it
00:45:34 ►
okay what is that about to the eye that’s a in a dark room this could indeed when we do it in a dark room at
00:45:47 ►
easy TV right the mild half-baked and my voice comes over the eyes are the windows
00:45:55 ►
of the brain who controls your eyes controls and the plugins is right and Program your brain, right? And all eyes love the illuminators. Eyes love dazzle.
00:46:05 ►
Eyes love diamonds.
00:46:07 ►
Glitter.
00:46:09 ►
Eyes today and brains love lexons.
00:46:12 ►
Who controls your screen?
00:46:13 ►
Controls your brain.
00:46:15 ►
We’re developing methods for the individual.
00:46:17 ►
A kid in the third world.
00:46:19 ►
Or a kid in the inner city school.
00:46:21 ►
Learns how to control what’s on her screen.
00:46:26 ►
Operate your brain. program your own brain, use the methods of modern advertising, trailers and commercials to put
00:46:34 ►
your own message on the ground. Otherwise, you’ll be programmed by the wizards to control
00:46:40 ►
commercials on your television set.
00:46:44 ►
Just relaxing, people through this?
00:46:47 ►
Well,
00:46:48 ►
they’ll kind of jumble you
00:46:50 ►
and scramble your brain.
00:46:51 ►
Basically, my brain, most brains love
00:46:54 ►
to jumble with electrons.
00:46:56 ►
Do they really? Oh, sure.
00:46:58 ►
Stimulate them? Is that stimulation?
00:47:00 ►
There’s been a rumor for centuries
00:47:01 ►
that some guy,
00:47:03 ►
tough male macho,
00:47:08 ►
dazzled a diamond in some young girl’s eyes.
00:47:11 ►
She’ll watch his socks forever because diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
00:47:16 ►
Wrong. Diamonds give power to those people who know how to use them.
00:47:18 ►
And now electrons.
00:47:24 ►
So we’re teaching people, we’re developing new computer programs, running off CD-ROM, running off Nintendo. Where did you get this idea from?
00:47:26 ►
It’s all out there.
00:47:27 ►
It is out there?
00:47:29 ►
These are not my ideas.
00:47:30 ►
What sort of persons attract to Timothy Leary?
00:47:36 ►
What sort of person attracts to Timothy Leary?
00:47:38 ►
Intelligent people, I know.
00:47:39 ►
People with minds and want to be their own persons.
00:47:42 ►
But what sort of person?
00:47:43 ►
Well, people, I can tell you, people who do not like me
00:47:45 ►
are those people who are deeply committed
00:47:47 ►
to a religious orthodoxy
00:47:49 ►
or to a fundamentalist cause.
00:47:50 ►
Right.
00:47:51 ►
Open-minded people like me.
00:47:53 ►
Open-minded.
00:47:54 ►
Yeah.
00:47:55 ►
Troublemakers, bohemians, artists.
00:47:58 ►
Would you consider yourself a bohemian?
00:47:59 ►
Well, it’s one phrase.
00:48:01 ►
I’m a hippie, I’m a beatnik, I’m a bohemian.
00:48:03 ►
I’m basically an outsider. I’m a dissenting philosopher.
00:48:08 ►
And there’s always a good market for a good audience
00:48:12 ►
because basically a lot of people out there want to be turned on
00:48:17 ►
and want to learn how to operate their brains.
00:48:21 ►
What has been the biggest lesson for Timothy Leary in your
00:48:27 ►
life well it’s kind of foolish to be you know I don’t pretend to be a wise person
00:48:33 ►
I don’t I don’t I have raised questions I don’t give answers that’s what
00:48:37 ►
Socrates told me I will give you an answer here we’re playing the ping-pong
00:48:39 ►
game of an interview right let me see. The best tip I could give anyone, if you want to grow
00:48:46 ►
and learn how to become smarter, enjoy life more and remain young, hang out with people
00:48:52 ►
that are smarter than you are and they can teach you something about your mind and your
00:48:56 ►
brain. And I’m proud to say that I hang out with my friends every week. When I look at
00:49:01 ►
my calendar, my appointment book, and I see the people that I hang out with…
00:49:04 ►
Who sort of some of the people that I hang out with…
00:49:05 ►
Who sort of some of the people? Come on.
00:49:06 ►
Well, Sunday, for example, at my house in Beverly Hills, I had a turkey roast. I didn’t
00:49:11 ►
do anything about the turkey. For 70 members of Alcor, Alcor is an organization who believe
00:49:17 ►
that people are going to have their bodies or their brains frozen. You heard about…
00:49:20 ►
Of course, of course, of course.
00:49:22 ►
I’m a member…
00:49:22 ►
I might be one of them go ahead We had yeah, we had 65 or 70 people in my home
00:49:28 ►
Uh-huh we plan to meet each other maybe in 20 or 30 or 40 years because we were going to be brought back
00:49:34 ►
By the tag. Yes the tag that tells
00:49:38 ►
Doctors do not autops me send me freeze me really this freeze the I
00:49:40 ►
send me, freeze me.
00:49:41 ►
Really?
00:49:42 ►
It says freeze the document.
00:49:45 ►
To give you an example,
00:49:47 ►
now these people, these 60 people,
00:49:51 ►
by definition, they think for themselves, right?
00:49:52 ►
Right.
00:49:53 ►
I like that.
00:49:54 ►
They’re mavericks.
00:49:56 ►
And they’re smart, because you’ve got to be smart.
00:49:59 ►
You have to understand the physics and the biology and the memory, so they’re smart people.
00:50:03 ►
Monday nights I go, every Monday night I go to EZTV,
00:50:07 ►
and we’re assembling at EZTV.
00:50:10 ►
What do you mean by assembling?
00:50:11 ►
You just gather people around?
00:50:13 ►
People come in, they pay, they buy, they take it,
00:50:14 ►
and they come in, but we’re assembling crew.
00:50:18 ►
For example, there’s a play called Timothy and Charlie,
00:50:22 ►
it’s about me and Charlie Manson.
00:50:24 ►
It was written by Tim
00:50:25 ►
Reel and they do incredible audio-visuals. So they perform. What we’re doing, Skippy,
00:50:31 ►
is we’re merging. I use EDV every Monday night. The power of electrons to create an environment
00:50:37 ►
and then out of the environment the lecturer comes or the actors in the play suddenly jump
00:50:42 ►
out of the screen-like environment.
00:50:50 ►
We’re developing experiments in what’s called virtual reality.
00:50:50 ►
Right.
00:50:53 ►
And these young people, I’m the luckiest, really, man in the world.
00:50:59 ►
Every week I meet new people that are on that frontier of electronic communication and consciousness expansion and intelligence increase.
00:51:04 ►
What’s been the hardest for Timothy Leary? and consciousness expansion and intelligence increased.
00:51:07 ►
What’s been the hardest for Timothy Leary?
00:51:10 ►
What’s been the hardest for you?
00:51:13 ►
Well, I suffer, as we all do,
00:51:20 ►
about the incredible poverty and hunger and violence and military power.
00:51:22 ►
I mean, just when you read that the Hindus are fighting the
00:51:25 ►
Muslims and the Catholics are fighting the Protestants in Belfast, the stupidity
00:51:31 ►
and the ignorance and the control of the military and the religious people,
00:51:36 ►
that pains me very much, as I think it does most of us out there.
00:51:41 ►
You’re very concerned, aren’t you, Timothy? You’ve been concerned. I’m looking at you
00:51:45 ►
right now. You’re very concerned what’s out there.
00:51:47 ►
But is it…
00:51:48 ►
Are we doing the right thing
00:51:50 ►
right now
00:51:51 ►
with our military forces? Who’s we?
00:51:52 ►
Well, the military forces. You don’t want to be in that.
00:51:55 ►
Military forces, the Americas. Are we doing the right thing to…
00:52:00 ►
I know we should help them. It’s a terrible thing. See, I’m not an expert on that, but basically
00:52:04 ►
I think…
00:52:05 ►
I don’t like the idea of having military people doing that,
00:52:07 ►
because it’s glorifying the military.
00:52:09 ►
Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:52:09 ►
And anything that glorifies the military, you’re going to pay for that.
00:52:13 ►
Right.
00:52:13 ►
You’re going to pay for that in your budget.
00:52:15 ►
You’re going to pay for that in bloodshed.
00:52:16 ►
So I’m basically… I’ve been to West Point.
00:52:19 ►
Skippy, I was actually born at West Point.
00:52:20 ►
Were you really at West Point?
00:52:21 ►
My father was an army officer.
00:52:23 ►
I was born at West Point.
00:52:25 ►
Is that one of the schools you got kicked out of? And I got kicked out of… No, I actually resigned from West Point. Were you really at West Point? My father was an army officer. I was born at West Point. Is that one of the schools you got kicked out of?
00:52:26 ►
And I got kicked out of.
00:52:27 ►
No, I actually resigned from West Point.
00:52:28 ►
You resigned?
00:52:29 ►
I know the military mind very well.
00:52:31 ►
And the military mind is not to be trusted.
00:52:33 ►
I do, too.
00:52:34 ►
I used to entertain 10, 15 years of my life all over the world.
00:52:38 ►
Vietnam and everything.
00:52:39 ►
And I know the military.
00:52:41 ►
And I don’t agree us military being there.
00:52:44 ►
Hardliners. The hardliners in America and the hardliners in Russia
00:52:47 ►
and the hardliners in Somalia, they all want to take our wealth
00:52:52 ►
and use it on weapons.
00:52:54 ►
Some of your books, tell me some of your books.
00:52:56 ►
I have not read, I’ve got to be honest with you.
00:52:58 ►
How many books have you got out?
00:53:00 ►
Oh, about 30, 35.
00:53:01 ►
35?
00:53:02 ►
Yeah.
00:53:02 ►
Really?
00:53:03 ►
What’s the most popular of the…
00:53:05 ►
Flashbacks.
00:53:06 ►
Flashbacks?
00:53:06 ►
Flashbacks, yeah.
00:53:07 ►
How about The Mirror?
00:53:08 ►
The Mirror…
00:53:08 ►
Mind Mirror was a computer game.
00:53:10 ►
Tell me about The Mind Mirror.
00:53:11 ►
Well, I’ve been working for the last 10 years on programs that allow the person to turn
00:53:17 ►
the computer screen into like a mind phone.
00:53:19 ►
Right.
00:53:20 ►
And to put your thoughts there.
00:53:22 ►
Five or six years ago, you could only do this with words, alphanumerics, but now you can use CD-ROM and graphics.
00:53:30 ►
So these new image processors and computers are tools to learn how to operate your brain and how to communicate more clearly and become smarter.
00:53:43 ►
Timothy Leary, married?
00:53:46 ►
You have children?
00:53:47 ►
At the present time,
00:53:50 ►
I’ve been married seven and a half times.
00:53:51 ►
Seven and a three-quarter times.
00:53:55 ►
I have an addiction problem, Skiffy.
00:53:57 ►
I’m addicted to marriage. You started to…
00:53:58 ►
I’m addicted to marriage.
00:53:59 ►
I just love being married.
00:54:00 ►
Okay.
00:54:01 ►
You and Mickey Rooney.
00:54:02 ►
Mickey Rooney to two.
00:54:02 ►
Yeah, and the first two or three,
00:54:04 ►
four years, it’s wonderful.
00:54:05 ►
But then you realize that you’re dependent on it.
00:54:08 ►
You know, and then so I have…
00:54:11 ►
I’m proud to say that I have been lucky enough to have as my living companion
00:54:19 ►
some of the smartest, most beautiful women in the world.
00:54:21 ►
And every good thing that has come from me I owe to my…
00:54:25 ►
Barbara, her name is Barbara? Barbara. Yeah, I met her in Rome years ago. She used to
00:54:29 ►
live in Rome. She was an actress and a model there, yeah. She was, I didn’t know
00:54:33 ►
that at the time, but beautiful lady, very bright. Very intelligent, yeah, and elegant.
00:54:37 ►
You like to be around intelligent, brilliant people. Do you ever be around dumb
00:54:43 ►
people sometimes, Timothy? Don’t look at me now. Have you will be around dumb people sometimes uh…
00:54:46 ►
don’t look at me now
00:54:48 ►
have you ever been around
00:54:49 ►
people around the world yes
00:54:51 ►
i i i i try to leave a trail of uh… fun
00:54:55 ►
and joy
00:54:56 ►
you know we all as we go through life you meet a lot of people right they’re
00:54:59 ►
not necessarily brain surgeon
00:55:01 ►
but i tried any interaction to leave a little trail of sunshine or you know a little joke or something because I
00:55:07 ►
Basically believe in humanity. Yes, I believe in the human potential and my life is about awakening or encouraging people to develop their potential and
00:55:16 ►
It’s a do you write all night Timothy at night? Yeah, I can’t really write. I’m a late-night person
00:55:22 ►
Yeah, it seems like to me
00:55:21 ►
I tend to be a later. It seems like you’re a writer.
00:55:22 ►
I’m a late-night person.
00:55:23 ►
Yeah, it seems like it to me.
00:55:25 ►
Because I think you read a lot.
00:55:27 ►
You read must-a-lot.
00:55:28 ►
Less and less.
00:55:29 ►
Everything?
00:55:30 ►
I don’t read books as much anymore.
00:55:31 ►
I read magazines and I do a lot of computer stuff.
00:55:33 ►
Is that important for us to know what’s out there in the world today?
00:55:39 ►
Or sometimes it confuses me when I turn the TV on and listen to the news.
00:55:44 ►
It’s upsetting. It’s news. It’s upsetting.
00:55:46 ►
It’s sad.
00:55:46 ►
It’s sad.
00:55:48 ►
I can’t sleep at night sometimes.
00:55:51 ►
That’s why I don’t want to listen to the news late, late night.
00:55:54 ►
How do we handle that?
00:55:55 ►
How do we handle that?
00:56:00 ►
Well, see, when people ask me questions like that, my answer is think for yourself.
00:56:01 ►
Okay.
00:56:02 ►
Figure it out yourself.
00:56:03 ►
Think for yourself.
00:56:04 ►
I don’t want to listen to it. Because each person is different.
00:56:04 ►
Oh, I see.
00:56:05 ►
I see. I see. think for yourself ok figure out yourself think for yourself because each person is different and you have to experiment with yourself and uh…
00:56:08 ►
listen to other people’s ideas but you basically
00:56:11 ►
you have to do it yourself think for yourself
00:56:13 ►
timothy leary what makes timothy leary happy
00:56:17 ►
what does he
00:56:18 ►
are you a happy person
00:56:19 ►
i think i’m one of the happiest people who have ever lived
00:56:21 ►
really yes
00:56:23 ►
even throughout this whole
00:56:24 ►
do you have any regrets in your life right now, Timothy?
00:56:27 ►
Yes, that’s a logical question.
00:56:29 ►
I regret the fact that I moved around so much and being in prison and being so controversial.
00:56:35 ►
It was very hard on my children and it was very hard on a couple of my marriages because
00:56:42 ►
at one point Richard Nixon called me the most dangerous man in America,
00:56:47 ►
and I was being stopped and chased by the police everywhere I went.
00:56:53 ►
My basic crime was I was abusing the First Amendment by talking too much.
00:56:58 ►
I understand.
00:56:59 ►
They don’t like us to think for ourselves.
00:57:02 ►
When they start, we think for ourselves, we’re dangerous.
00:57:09 ►
It was very hard, to answer your question on my children,
00:57:13 ►
to have their father, you know, such a hated person.
00:57:19 ►
My son, when he went to high school, was actually beat up by other kids because he was my son.
00:57:21 ►
And this takes a tremendous…
00:57:23 ►
Of course, still, I’m a middle-class
00:57:26 ►
American, so it’s not as bad as it is for most children in the world, but
00:57:30 ►
still, I regret that my kind of life was hard on the people that were closest to
00:57:37 ►
me. Because family and friendship are basic things. How is he handling it today,
00:57:43 ►
your son? They’re doing fine. They’re doing fine. They’re going to school? I’ve got five grandchildren and I’m in touch with them all the time.
00:57:50 ►
They go up and down. And there’s not as much enmity. As a matter of fact, people are not, the government isn’t going around, you know,
00:57:57 ►
chasing me now, I hope. But things are…
00:58:01 ►
It’s going to be a great 1990s.
00:58:06 ►
I’ll tell you a little story that was told to me.
00:58:09 ►
It’s a time to rejoice because when you think about it,
00:58:13 ►
there are a lot of bad things happening.
00:58:15 ►
We have a president, a vice president,
00:58:18 ►
and two dynamic, you know, strong first ladies,
00:58:23 ►
all of whom are younger than old farts
00:58:25 ►
like Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger.
00:58:28 ►
Isn’t that something?
00:58:28 ►
It’s all new young generation.
00:58:30 ►
Isn’t it great?
00:58:30 ►
Which is post-World War II,
00:58:32 ►
and it’s the 60s kids.
00:58:34 ►
So you like that?
00:58:35 ►
I don’t, yeah, I’m not claiming
00:58:37 ►
that Clinton’s going to be a great politician
00:58:38 ►
because it’s a hopeless job,
00:58:40 ►
but the spirit of hope that Clinton and Bush,
00:58:43 ►
and yeah, there’s a,
00:58:44 ►
all around the world there’s a sense of…
00:58:46 ►
You sense that. I do, too.
00:58:47 ►
Kennedy, when Kennedy was elected in the 60s,
00:58:49 ►
he gave us hope, too.
00:58:50 ►
Actually, Kennedy was not a very good president.
00:58:54 ►
Yes.
00:58:54 ►
But still, the fact he was young and jacky
00:58:56 ►
and gave us a sense of hope and vigor and courage and…
00:59:00 ►
He might bring Dylan to the White House to play for him.
00:59:03 ►
I like Dylan. Don’t you like Dylan?
00:59:05 ►
Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan.
00:59:06 ►
Bob Dylan.
00:59:07 ►
No, Jimmy Carter did that.
00:59:08 ►
I know.
00:59:09 ►
Yeah.
00:59:10 ►
The rumor is that they might bring the Grateful Dead.
00:59:12 ►
No, they’re not going to bring Dylan.
00:59:14 ►
I don’t think so.
00:59:15 ►
No.
00:59:16 ►
Tell me about Timothy Leary’s book and life story and movies.
00:59:20 ►
What’s going to happen?
00:59:21 ►
Are they going to be doing that of Timothy Leary?
00:59:24 ►
I don’t know. Who would you like to see do your life story, Timothy?
00:59:27 ►
That’s almost like him.
00:59:29 ►
I don’t think about that.
00:59:31 ►
I’d like Grace Jones to play me.
00:59:32 ►
How about Grace Jones?
00:59:35 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
00:59:38 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
00:59:42 ►
And so these two interesting people have now faded into our past.
00:59:47 ►
But we were fortunate indeed to have had them with us
00:59:50 ►
and doing their thing during our lifetimes.
00:59:53 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:59:57 ►
Be well, my friends. Thank you.