Product Description
This book tells the inside story of Leary's early LSD research at Harvard. Known throughout the world as the guru who encouraged an entire generation to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," he draws on wit, humor, and skepticism to debunk the power of psychotherapy and to advocate reprogramming the brain with psychedelics. Discussing how various drugs affect the brain, how to change behavior, and how to develop creativity, he also delves into psychopharmacological catalyzing, fear of potential, symbol and language imprinting, and brain reimprinting with Hinduism, Buddhism, and LSD. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Quantum Psychology Before Quantum Psychology
Though Quantum Psychology was created/trademarked by Eddie Oshins in the mid-1970's, you can bet that Timothy Leary was an influence on him.

Quantum Psychology is a means to enable you to stay in your adult experience of what is in your present moment, and maintain rather than lose access to inner resources which your automatic responses cut you off from. It enables you to notice the mechanism of your automatic response "trance" and exercise control over it and respond more effectively, free of the emotional charge of past experiences.
Sound familiar? That is basically what Timothy Leary wrote about in this book. The only difference is that Timothy Leary tinkered with drugs to get there.
In all seriousness, Timothy Leary did make a huge contribution to the field of psychology and others revised his findings later and took credit.

Thank You Mr. Leary

Totam tibi subdo me
It is not there simply for appearing part here, but rather to appear part there. They do not jump the categories and they get where we go. The dislocated paradigm appeared as if nobody had not taken a reading. Thus it is difficult to get our rolamentos. So who thinks about the foundation of parents, unless it is not excellent to its situation? Illumination beckons, but it is not definitive...and the infinitive certainly is not duplicated. They try to adapt pieces in new matrices, the not old ones. To the arrest of the woman demonstrates they had had matrices at least once in their lives. My matrices are grumosos. Grumoso was the friend of Wally. Wally was an astronaut. It's so easy to rhyme the name of extremity with hourra. Hourra for Captain Spaulding. Elephant, pyjamas, etc. The "I" is moved away. "Correcto," she said as she put old pieces in new matrices. "Don't mention the arrest of the woman or her sibling," she cried. (She sees them in the spaces for new features.) But that is old wisdom. They do not put the new wine in old, old wine peels, nor do they put the new wine in "ivrognes," whatever those are. "They" get it perhaps. Do you?

Do you think that the last lives are less complex, or just that the matrix has more dimensions and the known pieces are identical? Hmmm. Do not imply more complexity in the experience until you have learned not to remember new pieces. He is like a devil's food cake without the devil. But pull rank in a Fundente tunnel and you quickly see the defect of sonorous reproductions!

If you can read this, you are too close to godhead.

Good Leary; Verrrry gooooooddddddd
Hi; welcome to all Wilson; Icke; Mckenna and Leary fans.

This book has been the first book that i have read of Tiothy Leary. I am impressed by his humor; wit and most of all the way he can see past the system that has been given to us.

I will have to look further into the phenonemon of timothy leary; like wilson and look at some more of his books.

Consciousness Beyond The Mind - The Esoteric Secret
This is valuable information, not from a guru or merely eccentric mind, no, but from a former Harvard University psychologist who subjectively and objectively and systematically tested, experimented and clinically proved that LSD and other psychedelics and their subsequent human reactions, mind interpretations and experiential conscious observations were both beneficial and related to outside the limited human mind or chessboards of values and ideas. Of course the government's are threatened by any and all such ideas that venture outside their limited schematical ideas and systems used for social structure, control and submissive subjection and therefore administer intensely unjust persecution.

But to write this information off as arbitrary and valueless is the common human response to change and growth as a human evolutionary species, a rejection that has been practiced since the beginning of time. Therefore those enlightened by such spiritual, rational/non-rational perceptive illuminations have remained relatively unspoken for many thousands of years and have paradoxically been the progenitors of all religious teachings and many political ideologies.

From chapter 8: "To use our heads, to push out beyond words, space-time categories, social identifications, models and concepts, it becomes necessary to go out of our generally rational minds. . .

Our present mental machinery cannot possibly handle the whirling, speed-of-light, trackless processes of our brain, our organ of consciousness itself. . .

We cannot study the brain, the instrument for fabricating the realities we inhabit, using the mental constructs of the past. . . "

And from Chapter 9:
"From the standpoint of established values, the psychedelic process is dangerous and insane - a deliberate pscyhotization, a suicidal undoing of the equilibrium man should be striving for. With its internal, invisible, indescribable phenomena, the psychedelic experience is incomprehensible to a rational, achievement-oriented, conformist philosophy. but to one ready to experience the exponential view of the universe, psychedelic experience is exquisitely effective preparation for the inundation of data and problems to come."

What impressed me about Leary's information is that of mental imprinting - which only occurs during infancy and/or early childhood, the period of stasis -which is basically our entire lives, and the idea of reimprinting, or breaking on through the imprinted frozen or previously impressed mind - which can occur through psychedelics.

Apparently, there is a short time period as an infant only for many species, or both infant and early childhood for humans, which then ends shortly, permanently imprinting the humans social and cultural frame of mind through linguistics for the remainder of their lives. Experiments with birds and the immediate introduction towards a human, or even a ping pong ball, causes the bird to search for this parental ideal the remainder of their lives. As humans we are subject to the attempt to the ideals that were first exposed to us in early childhood, attempting to get as close to that model for the remainder of our lives, anotherwards we all take a still snapshot on reality, forever freezing our interpretation on what otherwise is a moving transient reality.

With psychedelics, there is an opening again as in infancy and early childhood where a person can perceive the moving essence of reality outside our snapshot of imprinted mindset, our still schematic, and see the moving, multifacted reality in its many different levels, through more than one of the chakras, where one then reimprints their minds with new perceptions of reality and refocuses on previous chessboard structures, thus re-entry into society with much broader and wider perceptive capabilities with significant healing properties that are extremely beneficial.

This book is truly ahead of it's time, and of course, rejected as non-conforming to traditional paradigms and therefore considered a major threat to the comfort zones of our societal and cultural games that we take too seriously as a one and only level of reality.

Numbingly Stupid
I have a moderate amount of experience with psychedelics in authentic native religious ceremonies.I thought perhaps reading Leary would give me the white man's perspective on these experiences.

Having read this one book of Leary's, I'm not sure if the title of this review refers to the book or the reader :)Some of the history of the 1960s drug culture contained in this book was interesting.However, the interesting historical tidbits occur randomly with little clear context or relationship to the rest of the book.In fact, this volume reads not like a book but rather like so many unrelated paragraphs.Most paragraphs make some degree of sense by themselves but there is little if any connection from one paragraph to another.The book is a context-free mish-mash of history, scientific classifications of experience and art, rants against modern society, scholarly analysis of the history of science and philosophy, and personal resentments.

Perhaps I haven't re-imprinted my brain sufficiently, or perhaps I've not re-imprinted it closely enough to Leary's own re-imprinting, or perhaps I'm just dumb.Either way, I didn't get much out of this book. ... Read more

Product Description
From planning the psychedelic revolution with Allen Ginsberg, Peggy Hitchcock, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti to discussing Dr. Albert Hoffman's legendary bicycle ride home after the world's first deliberate ingestion of LSD, Timothy Leary's passion affected an entire culture and influenced modern world history. Leary's original, animated, and psychedelic autobiography is now repackaged in an all new edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Timothy Leary s dead? No (no, no, no, no!) he is outside - looking in!
Who is Timothy Leary, really?? The opinion may and will vary. To me. a man who saw a better world, and was potentially very close to see its global birth. Unfortunately, his vision was to remain only for a "chosen few", although we can never know the true scope of his influence. In this book, which summarizes his life, T. Leary gives a truthful account of his vision, his idealogy and what has come out of it on the social and universal scale...In a true psychedelic guru fasion, he very gently but firmly goes through the whole time blocks, and space cuts, moving on and on through the everlasting now, emerging in different psycho-perceptual sensory fields...always with a perpetual smile.
As a human's his life wasn't the easiest one - just read the book. Nevertheless, the man was truly happy, and an awesome teacher to thousands, if not millions. A fun read for us, his accidental (or may be not so accidental) offspring.

Flashbacks
One of the best autobiographies I've ever read. The story reads like a novel because his life was so interesting and action-packed. He has so much to say. More people should listen.

icon of free speech and thought
i enjoyed this book. a really good read that blends bohemia with academia. he blasts the fear the government tried to instill in all of us for pursuing independent thought. he distinguishes between the illicit drug use that destroys neighborhoods with the controlled settings where everyone has a safe, postive experience. an excellent overview of intelligent psychedelia. he's an icon of free speech and thought, not rampant drug use. the fear-mongers distorted his message, he sets it straight here.

This book is a must have for any student of the 60's...
... or anyone who wants to revisit the good ole daze...

I met Tim quite a bit later in life, when he was in his 60's, and man was he a bright, charismatic guy! You could just tell from watching him and listening to him that he was on a whole other level.

He was a veritable smorgasbord of wisdom, experience, humanity, love, insight, wonder, beauty, light, fun, excitement, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum...

He was very sharp into his transitional years (transitioning from old age to what we call death, what Tim would call a new beginning), way sharper than most younger people ever will be... The guy was a genius, highly intelligent, brilliant, an Einstein of consciousness.

He'd seen things; no, not hallucinations, but deep reality, deep consciousness, high consciousness, the way things work on an atomic level, the way things work on a macrocosmic level...

And he could tell you things... As he said one time "I'm a cheerleader for consciousness!" And he was. He taught a lot of people about freedom, about questioning reality, questioning authority, questioning your illusions, questioning everything.

Meanwhile, he lived quite a life. And this book is about that life, in his own words.

I found the book to be an absolute page-turner, fun, funny, interesting, amazing...

If you are looking for a really well-written and interesting autobiography, about one of the sixties' greatest men, I highly recommend you read this book. If you do, you'll see that Tim was about a lot more than just "turn on, tune in, drop out".

Marilyn Monroe(Garry Hixon) rates Flashbacks
A reallygood book, lot's of funny stories about Leary and Liddy squaring off, a very intelligent man, comparable to John C. Lilly's Center of the Cyclone. Many Beatles references and 60's chantra's-Turn on tune in, drop out! The one where he escapes fromCMC is funny, what an acrobat. The book is better than the audio cassettes. Book has his baby-boomer/whiz kids chart. Supposedly, any kid born after 1965, is a computer nut in the future, could be, but more like internet kids. Tells about his experiences at Harvard, and how stuffy they were in the early 60's. Tells about his [drug] experience with Marilyn Monroe, and he says"If I knew how sick she was then, my God I would of never given her the [stuff]." She in turn gave him some Randy/Mandy's, some Barb that gives feeling of Euphoria when mixed with booze. She was more wacked out than him. He talks about how happy he is, and how happy the world was in the 60's. Good book and I'm going to read it again, when I can afford it!-A good buy, for a book!-Love Marilyn(Garry) ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (45)

Monumental biography with an all star cast
This is indeed a monumental, if somewhat problematic, biography. The problematic part should not deter anyone from reading this extraordinary book, especially people interested in cultural history, the Sixties, the counterculture and the War on Drugs. On the positive side, the book presents a detailed account of the life of Dr. Timothy Leary, the Harvard proffssor who made cool and acceptable the use of drugs for millions of people during the Sixties; the book is kaleidoscopic and includes a fascinating cast that includes but is not limited to Aldous Huxley, Ted Kennedy, G. Gordon Liddy, Uma Thurman's mother, Art Linkletter, Ken Kesey, the Black Panthers, the Grateful Dead, and Charles Manson in an extremely creepy and bizarre scene. In a way, in chronicling Leary's life, Greenfield charts the losing battle against drugs, as we see generations succumb to LSD and more and more potent drugs. It is important to point out that, despite the accusations on other reviews, the author is not a moralist, but it is definitely difficult to sympahtize with a man (Leary) who: introduced both his son and daughter to drugs when they were kids, escaped from jail with the help of a terrorist organization, then betrayed the people who helped him escape, and all in all was a huckster who didn't do a piece of intelligent or responsible research after becoming the Ënlightenment Drug Guru during the Sixties. The one flaw of the book is probably that it doesn't present a sympathetic counterview of Leary's life, and that it does not attempt to explain Leary. What was he thinking? Did he believe in what he was saying? Did he know that he had become a fraud? This lack of insight somewhat weakens the impact of the book overall. Nonetheless, this is a fascinating, if inevitably repelling, account of a possibly monstrous man, all the more monstrous for the seeming casualness and obliviousneess he assumed towards the devastating consequences of his actions.

Envy 2.0 !!
You have to feel sorry for Robert Greenfield. He seems to be sickened by Timothy Leary. As sickened as a bulimic in a cake shop. I really mean it. Talk about kicking a man whist dead, and making yourself all obsessive and almost pathological in writing about your favourite devil. Who hired Robert Greenfield to do all this intellectual flagellation anyway? It's like the publishers put a gun to poor Greenfield's head and made him write Timothy Leary's life story. Well that's my conspiracy story anyway. Why else write an exceptionally lucid commentary on the 60's if you can't stand your subject?Robert Greenfield has penned a roller coaster of a ride through the pharmacological labyrinth of the 1960's, and Timothy Leary is the bad guy of the piece. (Now there must be other talented writers out there who can who can string together a less chilling portrayal of Timothy Leary) This book is exceptionally well written you see, and the pages are glossy and it sure is an impressively bounded hardback; but these good points just enhanced my confusion, because, to my mind anyway, most of Greenfield's hostility seems made up! According to Greenfield, Leary was a highly a pathologically selfish, narcissistic complex A- hole, who lacked sympathy for his victims and compassion for those closest to him. Worse, Leary, the piper of the psychedelic movement, who preached the power of LSD, failed to exhibit the capacity for inner growth. Indeed, but I wonder how Greenfield would have handled juggling a newly discovered psychedelic potion with the turmoil of dirty politics and career envy? But these are not the only gripes Greenfield has for Tim. Greenfield's hostility is so subjective that he should be ashamed of himself for kicking a man whilst dead and gloating over his subsequent cancer in old age.And the horrid little people who paid Greenfield to write this moral execution should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves too. Leary may well have tipped into narcissism in the end but I'm not fooled. By all accounts Leary had uber-charisma, and even though this book is hostile, Leary's charisma managed to shine through.

According to the people Greenfield interviewed, Leary cheated his way to a PhD, he was a terrible parent, Irish and an eternal womanizer. Greenfield is especially judgmental about Dr Tim's love life. What is it with us guys anyway? They say that resentment is unconscious, but still, we should at least try to be mindful of our inner libidinal turmoil.Come on, why all the resentment anyway? I mean, Leary gets off with a gorgeous year old Uma Thurman's mum (by all accounts, she was better looking than her daughter) and all we can do is rationalise (including Tim's friends) that Uma's mum wanted a father figure!So Uma Thurman's mum saw Timothy Leary as a father figure and so slept with him. Now what idiot believes that girls want to sleep with their fathers? (Sorry all you Jung fans out there) I'm afraid that Leary was a master at getting the girls. Sorry but that's the way the cookie crumbles. What other academic psychologists are even capable of getting a super model to look at them? Anyway, I'm aware that I'm adopting an aloof sneer of objectivity (like I'm so innocent!) but If I were in 1960's Millbrook, I'll probably be as jealous of the other (I was about to type better) man.It's human nature after all and Greenfield is in Leary's generation so this is my conspiracy theory. And it's not just in the bed department that Greenfield objects to, Tim cheated his way to a PhD, he was a bad parent and he stole the Tune in Drop Out quote.

The Man Who Drugged America
A fascinating, even-handed look at the life of a man who may have done more to bring psychedelic drugs to the United States than any other single person. Greenfield, a former editor of Rolling Stone, traces Leary's life through his beginnings as a creative academic psychologist, through the craziness of the 'magic mushroom' research at Harvard, to Leary's days as the major voice of the optimistic counter-cultural Left. ("turn on, tune in, drop out," remember?) Greenfield also follows the less talked-about aspects of Leary's life - his escape from prison, his clash in Algeria with Eldridge Cleaver's violent revolutionism, his total about-face to become a DEA informer, and his later interest in space travel and the Internet as tools to inform consciousness. Greenfield pulls no punches - he is sympathetic to Leary's idealism but appropriately critical of his narcissism and emotional immaturity, particularly in regard to his children. Amazing to notice documented evidence of how much Tim Leary influenced the life of America.

Loved it...and got bored
Timothy Leary turns out to be a very complex, very messed up character, and there's enough solid data in this book to leave one wondering what the world would look like if Leary had never come along. He seemed to have the power to pull the world along with him, but he wasn't always too clear on where he was going. This book tells his life in funny, sad, confusing detail; at times, the book becomes plodding, which is hard to believe given the drama in Leary's life. But somewhere in the middle, it's as if the author is lost in one of Leary's endless trips-and-flashbacks periods. I decided that if I heard one more description of the details of an LSD trip, I'd skip ahead a bit. Did that a few too many times and started to get bored. So... I encourage reading this book, but it's not worth a careful read of every page. Editor, check please!

Okay....Yeeeaaaahhh
This book has only served to more humanized the memory of Timothy Leary, for me, anyway. He was made aware of his divinity through the use of psychedelics, but was not able to fully integrate and become it in the flesh... and there's nothing at all wrong with that! It takes many lifetimes to acheive and embody God consciousness while in the physical construct. So he was still involved with his ego, and he had his shortcomings... so did nearly ever other sixties figure you can shake a stick at. This book, and all who bash Leary, can never take away the clarion call to raise your consciousness beyond ordinary states of reality, that Leary preached.

The bad never negates the good. It just reveals to us the areas of our personalities that we need to work on. I'm sure the good doctor has already reincarnated and is working on those aspects of himself that he needs to polish as we speak. That being said, it was a great read and despite all the negative swipes at Leary, it doesn't take away from the good things he did. So he wasn't perfect? Neither is anyone else I know. ... Read more

Product Description
Touching on topics ranging from religion, education, and politics to Aldous Huxley, neurology, and psychedelic drugs, the poem and ten vintage essays collected here articulate Timothy Leary's freewheeling, freedom-loving philosophy of life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Leary is a buffoon.
You could say Leary was nothing but a clown, but that would be inaccurate. He was a government operative working with the CIA. Don't take my word for it you can find plenty of info yourselves. There is a reason the personality test for new CIA hires is called the Leary test. Hopefully this rat swine is rotting in hell somewhere.

Turn on, tune in, drop out
Very shallow, superficial, immature.I totally understand why he was fired from Harvard

Millbrooks Psychedelic Prankster
Timothy Leary was a unique American to say the least.As a longtime fan of Sixties psychedelic rock and Beat literature, It stood to reason that Iwould find my way to Timothy Leary.This book is an amusing collection oflectures and tales from the High Priest of LSD.I found Leary to be a veryhumorous writer but he does take liberties with the facts.He misquotesthe the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha, for example.This book has to beread with a grain of salt.I think Leary intended it this way.It wouldbe terribly insulting to ones intelligence if he didnt.His intelligenceand humor do shine through however.I would state that this book shouldprobably be only read for entertainment by those of us who have a biastowards certain experiences that Leary espouses in his book.A real goodread but definitely not for everyone. ... Read more

Product Description
Back in print after 20 years, this text from the earliest days of psychedelia chronicles the experiences on 16 acid trips taken before LSD was illegal. The trip guides or "high priests" included Aldous Huxley, Ram Dass, Ralph Meltzner, Huston Smith and a junkie from New York City named Willy. It tells of the goings-on and freaking out at the Millbrook mansion in New York State that became the Mecca of psychedelia during the 1960s, and of the many luminaries who made their pilgrimage there to trip with Leary and his group. Chapters include an I Ching reading and a chronicle of what happened during those "spacewalks" of the mind. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

fanstasmical
the book is easy to relate to cuz i love drugs!
and it came within the allotted time range

a trip inside the head of one of the greatest heads
Let's imagine that you know nothing about Timothy Leary and LSD.

You don't "know" that he got in trouble at Harvard for giving LSD to students, or that he ever said "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

You don't "know" that Art Linkletter's 20 year-old daughter walked out of a 6tth floor window on LSD, or trippers sometimes claim they've seen God.

You don't "know" that LSD leads directly to long hair, random sex and brown rice.

You don't "know" that an LSD trip gives you pulsing hallucinations.

Okay. You've emptied your mind of preconceptions and prejudices. You are now ready to read "High Priest," Timothy Leary's 1968 account of the first trips he took, who he took them with, what he experienced and what he learned.

Start in 1959. Leary is, he says, "an anonymous institutional employee who drove to work each morning in a long line of commuter cars, and drove home each night and drank martinis and looked like and thought like several million liberal middle-class robots."

Could be anyone you know. Except that the institution is Harvard. And that Leary was on the fast track.

But on a research trip to Spain with his two young children, he gets so violently ill that he surrenders to his illness and has his first death/rebirth trip. "I slowly let every tie to my old life slip away. My career, my ambitions, my home....I was a 38 year-old male animal with two cubs. High, completely free."

A year later, he takes mushrooms in Mexico. And here, for the first time, he writes what he sees: "Summer days...swimming trunks before breakfast...cold grapefruit eaten by the hot poolside....touch football on the lawn...the imposition of psychological categories on the flow of life...clear hot sun burning tanned skin...the need to collaborate with subjects....the startle value of iced drinks."

Leary also tracks what's going on with others who have chewed the bitter mushrooms. It's tame stuff: the giggles, revelations of oneness with everything in the universe, "Buddha unity."

Back at Harvard, what he's learned starts to undermine the academic/success game. Research, he writes, "is a phony ritual to counteract fear of the mystery." The key to the mystery of life? "Chemistry." The nervous system? "Equal amounts of God and Devil."

In his new reality, Harvard presents him with fresh problems. Control of the drug as an issue of power. Playing the game even as you're dealing yourself out of the game. Keeping mind-altering drugs as a sacrament for those in the know or giving them to just anybody.

What's most compelling in "High Priest" is how acutely Leary the psilocybin trips that he and his friends take. Allen Ginsberg, in a darkened room, listening to Beethoven and Wagner, as Leary enters and announces, "You are a great man." Arthur Koestler taking hallucinogens and feeling no different. Leary's interim conclusion about life: "God and sex are the two central beats of the dance." A behavioral observation: "The people you turn on fell in love with you or never wanted to see you again."

In l961, Leary starts tripping with his colleague Richard Alpert (later to become Ram Dass). The language changes: sacrament, holy man, ritual. They're learning about ideal settings, the need for a guide, LSD as prayer. For two years, Leary works in a prison, taking LSD with convicts to see if they can stop playing "the bad boy" game --- like the experience of other researchers who gave LSD to alcoholics, he gets astonishing results.

Also in 1961, his first LSD trip. For those who have taken it, this is the big league of psychedelics."Like all sacraments that work, they demand your all. They demand that you live up to the revelation." Reluctantly he concludes:" Cambridge, Massachusetts was not a place to start a new religion." Really? Bet you'd have twigged that Harvard couldn't handle "rocks are aware" and "all is consciousness."

What Leary, in his enthusiasm and innocence, misses: At the height of a visionary experience, you can become a completely different person. But visionary experiences have a half-life. Prophets have even shorter lives --- over and over we kill them.

After the experiences he describes in these pages, Tim Leary detonated his old life, decided to save the planet, and became for his troubles, a spokesman and a showman. "High Priest" shows you how a charismatic professor came to take this route --- it hints at the one-note message that's to come.

But that's not our concern. Here we're watching a man wake up from a Kafkaesque nightmare, and learn how to look inside without judgment, and learn how to be with other people when they've swallowed a sacrament. I

This is an old story --- really, the oldest. And one of the most exciting: "I once was lost but now am found/ Was blind, but now I see." Just reading it will get you high --- legally.

for ace backwards the self proclaimed "48 year old homeless bum"
I wrote this first paragraph to another of Ace's negative reviews for Alan Watts but I feel my response can be applied with validity to his review here as well. I haven't read this Alan Watts book but how can you criticize Alan Watts for possibly, (I'm not going to take your word for it and I have little interest in whether this great man may have been an alcoholic at one point), having been a drunk in his youth when in another review you call Charles Bukowski, one of the world's most renown drunks, the greatest writer ever. Bukowski is known for having written great poems and being a complete alcoholic, I like his poetry it's good, but Alan Watts almost single handedly BROUGHT EASTEN RELIGIONS TO THE WEST! Watts was a Zen Buddhist and Taoist master. Alan Watts in one of the great heroes of humanity for opening up the close minded consciousness in America during a time when it was readily accepted by the masses to the loving heart of the Buddha's teachings and The Way of Kindness. Stop blaming others for your failings Ace and start being accountable for your own life choices. I don't care if being homeless was a purposeful decision or an accidental one but it's not Alan Watts, Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, or Terence Mckenna's fault. You are trying to help people with your how to be homeless book just as those men tried to help the world to be a better place during very troubling times. I feel your negativity is misguided, if you really want to blame somebody for the world being so difficult and unfair I suggest you aim your resentment at corrupt power hungry close minded money grubbing greedy politicians, dictators, fascists, and CEOs of corporations and others among us in this global community that would take more then their share without ever any concern for if or how others survive if they can and not harbor anger at those who tried to create and/or maintain freedom in this country while increasing awareness and intelligence.

Sadly Timothy Leary's first wife Marianne, Susan's Mother suffered from depression and took her own life, something Ace neglected to mention here, and as we know depression can be genetically passed down from a parent to a child. I also think it's important to add Marianne's suicide took place before Timothy Leary had ever taken or was even introduced to LSD and her death was completely unrelated to his experimentation with the substance.

Escaping the Mind's Prison Into Neurological Ecstasy
I'm sad to finish this book, as I have walked with Leary with his first mushroom encounter in Mexico, walked with his colleges and friends, from Dick Albert (Ram Dass), Robert Metzner, Huston Smith, Aldous Huxley, Walter Clark, Walter Puhnke, Michael Hollingshead, Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg - I love Ginsberg - , Gordon Wasson,Frank Barrons and even William Burroughs. From his Millbrook estate to his Harvard studies, prison studies, first LSD trip, to his religious experiential studies and the amazing internal transformations that for myself are greatly superior to static intellectualism. And yet using such intellectual insights coupled with subjective encounters - in allusive non-categorical observance - brings forth the dynamics of Leary's story.

There is far too much information to relate here, the book is enlightening.
All together 16 trips or stories along with various quotes from magazine articles, short thoughts, to excerpts from other books from Ginsberg, Hollingshead, Wasson, Walter Houston Clark, Huxley and others make this book not only informative, but really do capture what is intended to be conveyed - the mystical- religious - subjective - internal - experiential - magical/irrational experience of psychedelics and most importantly, their beneficial use in social, psychological, ontological, neurological, rehabilitative, and spiritual uses. There is no doubt in my mind as to the benefits of psychedelics for the human race.

"Everyone who isn't tripping himself because he's too scared or tired is going to resent our doing it. Sex, drugs, fun, travel, dancing, loafing. You name it. Anything that's pleasurable is going to bring down the wrath of the power-control people. Because the essence of ecstasy and the essence of religion and the essence of orgasm (and they're all pretty much the same) is that you give up power and swing with it. And the cats who can't do that end up with the power and they use it to punish the innocent and thehappy. And they'll try to make us look bad and feel bad." P. 79


This quote (and others) reminds me of Ray Manzarek's story in his book, Light My Fire, of visiting a Las Vegas style rat pack record executive who literally flipped out after hearing a tape of The Doors, hearing that they were psychedelic orientated music. The power people can never accept surrender and vulnerability that comes with the internal search as opposed to the external control.

"The threshold of adult game life is the ancient and natural time for the rebirth experience, the flip-out trip from which you come back as a man. A healthy society provides and protects the sacredness of the teen-age psychedelic voyage. A sick, society fears and forbids the revelation." p. 133


Trip 1 is Leary's non-chemical death and rebirth of a physical sickness.


Trip 2 is the story of Leary's discover of the mushroom in Mexico with some substantial quotes from Gordon Wasson on mushrooms.


Trip 3 has Dick Albert, Jack and Timothy Leary flying in Dick's plane. It also contains Leary's Playboy interview, other magazine quotes and quotes from Albert Cohen and Shiller's LSD.


Trip 6 has Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky walking around naked, Ginsberg telephoning his pal Jack Kerouac and some great Ginsberg quotes! The movement to turn on the world - well intentioned, but naive, the power people would never submit nor allow such conscious expansion beyond the control principal to continue.


Trip 7 talks about the rational thinking of Arthur Koestler's verses the irrationality of a LSD - religious experience and how the two don't see eye to eye.


Trip 9 shows the benefits of incarcerated prisoner rehabilitation and recidivism rate decrease from LSD therapy.


Trip 11 touches on William Burroughs and how he thinks on another tribal level, as we all come from different tribal evolutionary thinking. In the end Burroughs drops out of the clan and disapproves of the way Leary, his fellow Harvard and other constituents handle the mushroomtherapy - Leary's got a monopoly on love.
Trip 12 is about Michael Hollingshead's famous mayonnaise jar of LSD and Leary's first experience along with the Jazz musician and his wife, Maynard and Flo Ferguson. And amazing account, really. And Leary, as Huxley has written in 1953, was forever a changed man. He had seen the games, the roles played, the human fallibility of truths, statistics, ideals and so forth from an objective standpoint, from the ultimate subjective standpoint.


Trip 15's Good Friday experiment under the coaxing of the intellectual and scholar Walter Pahnke is also an incredible story and ultimately Leary admits that the mind expansive consciousness is not a rational Descartes mind set, but a religious experience and of course, not under any particular religious structure - in this case Christianity is very constraining, limiting and restraining.


I love the explanation in Trip 16 that Leary related from Pat Bolero to a fellow psychologist who not only became fearful when hearing of "drugs" but could not comprehend her words that attempted to point to the clarity outside of the discursive mindset.


This book has some great Allen Ginsberg quotes and stories, great Burroughs stories, Leary's family, Dick Albert, Michael Hollingshead and many other intellectuals, scholars, divinity school students, the Good Friday experiment, artists, poets, theologians. I love his daughter's, Susan Leary, account of her growing up and observing the LSD sessions, of Alan Watts and others. The trip in Tim's place with Dick Albert, both erroneously thinking the pet dog was dying and other stories make this a very entertaining book to read. But ultimately, its the beneficial attributes from the psychedelic sessions weighted against the opposition that really make this book totally worthwhile.


"Reality and the addiction to any one reality is a tissue-thin neurological fragility. At the height of a visionary experience it is crystal-clear that you can change completely. Be an entirely different person. Be any person you choose. It is a moment of rebirth . . . . It is habit, fear and laziness that keep people from changing after an LSD experience. It's so much easier to doubt your divinity, drift back to speaking English, wearing ties, playing the old game. p. 334


"There comes a point in every lifetime when the blinders are removed and the individual glimpses for a second the nature of the process. This revelation comes through a biochemical change in the body. A Twist of the protein key and you see where you are at in the total process. p. 336


One thing I've learned as a prison psychiatrist is that society doesn't want the prisoner rehabilitated, and as soon as you start changing prisoners so that they discover beauty and wisdom, God, you're going to stir up the biggest mess that Boston has seen since the Boston Tea Party. . . sooner or later, as soon as they see the thing you do is working, they're going to come down on you 0- the newspaper reporters, the bureaucrats, and the officials. Harvard given drugs to prisoners! p. 18

I had seen enough and read enough of the anti-vision crowd, the power-holders with guns, and the bigger and better men we got on your team the stronger our position. p. 128


We even ran sessions for parole officers and correction officials (they tripped). Some of them had unhappy trips. People committed to external power are frightened by the release of ecstasy because the key is surrender of external power. One chief parole officer flipped out paranoid at my house and accused us of a Communist conspiracy and stormed around while Madison Presnell curled up on the couch watching, amused at the white folks frantically learning how to get high. He grinned at me. So you call it the love drug? p. 208

Dr. Tim Leary's Wisdom
The ideal audience for this book really has a large range; it is ideal for anyone wanting to experience a "trip" from a hallucinogenic drug without the actual drug.High Priest is an excellent piece of art, it is an encyclopedia of Leary's 16 most life changing "trips" when under various forms of hallucinogens. It is filled with strong imagery to support Leary's want to tell the world about the wonderful hallucinogenic "trip".His style is very unique in that especially in a series of short stories, he can in essence connect them, just as he does in his life with situations.He uses a very intense tone, and style becomes rapid as he submerges into a hallucinogenic state, almost as if you where there with him.Then as he's coming out of it his style loosens and becomes slower, and drowsy.Its almost as if there were two extremes one is cold and gray, and the other is vibrant and full of life.This book will definitely stir your interest about psychedelic drugs and the life behind it.Leary's intense flavor and swirling style can sometimes almost be frightening especially when he discusses his inner emotions about death, and his chilling way of expressing his views on the "life changing trips".I think this book is very educational depending on your view of education, and can teach people, things about other cultures that may not be their own, a counterculture if you will.I recommend High Priest to anyone with a thirst for knowledge and an open mind. ... Read more

Product Description
Timothy Leary (1920-1997) was one of the most controversial figures of the 1960s, the man who urged a generation to turn on, tune in, and drop out. Now, nearly two years after his death, this manuscript has emerged comprising his best writings about sexuality. Beginning with an account of his first sexual encounter -- his own conception -- Leary takes readers on an exploration of the link between sexuality and the mind. Each short chapter contains either a traditional or novel approach to what Leary called "improving your navigational control over your pleasure cruises," including Hindu methods for stimulation via hypnogogic yantras, chemical aphrodisiacs, and neurolingual tricks for arousal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Wonderful!!!
This book is wonderful! Its very honest in understanding Timothy Leary's mind. If you can get your male partner to read this one, you will have made great strides in what we need and desire from them!

Food for thought
I read this book a few years ago (knowing almost nothing about Timothy Leary, except his status as a 60's icon) and really enjoyed it. It helped me to redefine the way I think about pleasure and society's relationship to it. I was raised with such a puritanical "if it feels good, it must be evil" way of thinking that Leary's point of view - "if it feels good, it's probably good for you" - was downright liberating for me. Although I don't subscribe to everything Leary says in the book (for example, I don't think doing LSD once a week is a good idea), his essays are always provocative and full of food for thought. Even if you're put off by Leary's associations with hippie and drug cultures, I'd still recommend reading this book. Leary was an intelligent man with ideas worth listening to.

Trippy tome
"Turn on, tune in, drop out" the trinity of tripping, the credo of the sixties' psychedelic revolution, was coined by the "High Priest" of LSD, Dr. Timothy Leary. Though his Harvard research intothe consciousness-raising possibilities of psychedelic drugs might haveended with his, and Richard Alpert's, dismissal from the school-the firstfaculty to be sent packing since Ralph Waldo Emerson-Leary went on throughprivate funding to research mind-expanding drugs, especially as related tosexual ecstasy.

The Delicious Grace of Moving One's Hand: The CollectedSex Writings, compiled by Leary before his death in 1997, includeslectures, interviews, essays, and personal history that reveal this man'sremarkable wit and brilliant scientific mind. The words here are just asoften gorgeous prose as they are lucid scientific postulations. He writesof his "first sexual experience"-his own conception-in gorgeouslyerotic terms: "I was eased into this soft, creamy home, my slimserpent body sputtering with pleasure."

Accessible even to Learynovices-including those of us under 40, many likely born long after Leary'sescape from prison in 1970-Delicious Grace will tune you in and turn you onto one our country's most ingenious, controversial minds. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

greatness in a book
came on time and filled with wonderful knowledge about lollipops and butterflies (the psychedelic induced kind)

Dark Room for the 21st Century
This book is an excellent and concise manual on how to use the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying to be able to gain perception of the clear light.

The reason for this book is NOT to give instant enlightenment.The purpose of this book is to practice the art of correct and conscious dying by using your mind to properly navigate the bardo.

Traditionally in Tibet this book would be used in 2 instances.The first is during a retreat known as dark room where the monks and nuns literally go into complete light isolation for a period of 49 days.During the initial 2 weeks the brain chemistry is radically altered to produce endogenous entheogens believed to be DMT.This way the bardo thodol can be experienced in holographic 3D mind projections or hallucinations.The only other time the bardo thodol is used is to read it to a person whom is actually dying to utilize the time of death as an opportunity to reach enlightenment through the perception of the clear light.

Psychedelics and dark room retreats are used in the same way a pilot would use a jet simulator.You can practice dying over and over again until you are able to quickly and easily perceive the clear light upon death (ego loss) and attain nirvana.In this instance ones mindstream will instantly be transferred into the realm of pure light or the 4th dimension.

This book helps one to experience the state of samadhi or rigpa which is the state of non-dual consciousness.The experience of rigpa is necessary to the practice of the inner tantras like dzogchen.

Even though this book mentions LSD, I suggest that we should only stick with the time tested entheogens used through out history like ayahuasca, iboga, peyote, san pedro etc....

This book is for those who want to use entheogens in a way to learn to attain liberation upon death also known as mahasamadhi or powa.Reading the passages from this book during spirit walking on the entheogen is an excellent way this book is to be used to attain liberation through listening.

This book helps us to gain confidence during a usually frightening and uncertain time in our lives.We are all going to die one day and this book teaches us how to go about doing it right and what to expect.

shrooms
this book helped me control myself from becoming stuck on an ego game during a mushroom experience. very good, very informative

A Seminal Text on Consciousness
Anyone interested in exploring or playing with consciousness levels must read this book thoroughly and understand the wisdom in this guide!

The Book
This book is still the most insightful guidebook to the psychedelic experience I've come across.Whereas most offerings that claim to be instructive resources amount to little more than particular individuals personal retrospectives including all their personal visions and associated dogma, Dr. Leary's present book is as deep and in tune with the core of the human experience as the text from which it is derived, namely the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which has remained one of the most profound manifestos of the human spirit ever set in language.

The tibetan buddhists are no strangers to that inward space now readily accessible by entheogenic enthusiasts, and Dr. Leary and company have succeeded in translating this deep mythology of the inner spaces so as to be contemplated and experienced by westerner for whom this information can prove to be profoundly revelatory. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Take with a grain of salt
Having been presnt during some of these events Tim relates, I find the narrative skewed through omission at best, and faulty of memory when it comes to items which reflect poorly on the good Doctor. Also, he isflippantly disrespectful of those who were his source of support in trying times.

A fairly Identifiable Page-Turner
Not much is left to be said about the King of Lysergic Dyamethide 25.

This book, in leary's candor, is a deranged trip through his life, telling all.. from his time is Folsom Prison to the Harvard funded Drug Research Trials he oversaw. Some are turned off by his all to frequent name-dropping, but it is also laying claim to the notion that not all was as it seemed in his era. More people were "turned on" than was contrary belief.

An engaging self-portrayal of a brilliant enigma
Dr. Timothy Leary, Havard professor, ground-breaking psychologist, West Point graduate, psychedlic guru, honorary Beatle, icon of the most tumultuous decade in 20th century US history, or ...just plain Uncle Tim;has recounted the various intriguing events of his life in a veryaccessable, humorous, and poignant manner. This is an essential read foranyone interested in psychedelia, pop culture, counter-culture, modernhistory, psychology, sociology, philosophy and metaphysics; and a highlyrecommended selection for anyone who would enjoy the wit, wisdom, andadventures of a true American spirit. ... Read more

Product Description
Dr. Leary explores the real issues of our time--Space Migration, Intelligence Increase and Life Extension--in this "Manual on the Use of the Human Nervous System according to the Instructions of the Manufacturers."

"The Info-Worlds our species will discover, create, explore and inhabit in the immediate future will not be reached from launch pads alone, but also through our personal computer screens." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

the 8 circuit model
so fascinated myself, as an aspiring mystic, I created a website around a system of initiation designed to trigger 8th circuit activation. the mind becomes an objective, quantum, indiscriminately loving processing unit, capable of accessing cosmic memories at will, & traveling into the past or future - in the sense of knowing. Not in the sense of Ability to Affect.

the 6th circuit, metaprogramming: merely acknowledging you can program your own emotions, I think, is extremely important. Meditation + objective: indiscriminate love.

my profile contains the link to the website, which definitely recommends reading this book.

although it is a bit more complex than RAWilson's presentation - a tad too intellectual. I think Wilson transcended the establishment because LSD triggered too much love for them to keep him, I don't think he completely killed his ego.

Dissapointing
Sadly, Tim re-wrote this edition in prison I believe had a big 'thing' about getting off the planet due to that. Clearly lacking the Leary sense of self depricating humor and sly wit. Try his other works.

Hey Yo 6th Circuit!
If you really want to know what Tim was thinking this is it. (Though The Game Of Life is good too!) By the way, he wrote something while in Harvard before the 60s thing took off. It had something to do with the way we react to others depending on the angle one is approached--very interesting. If he would have continued with that and hooked it with exo-psychology he would have had something interesting. I think the best way to incorporate exo-psychology is revaluate the second and fourth circuits to Swiss army knife evolutionary psychology--try Dunbar or perhaps Mithen.

One of My All-Time Favorite Books!
This was one of the most influential books that I read while i was in college. It helped me to understand my psychedelic experiences and to shape my ideas about the evolution of consciousness more than almost any other book. I think that Leary's 8-Circuit model of the brain, and his theory of neural imprinting and psychedelic reimprinting, is one of the important contributions to 20th Century psychology. Leary was a brilliant philosopher, an uncannily creative psychologist, and his extraterrestrial vantage point in this book can be hilarious at times. This is one of my all-time favorite books.

This is a more technical description on the Eight Neural Circuit model
This book is a more thorough and technical analysis of the Eight Neural Circuit Model of human consciousness.The diligent magical reader may more easily compare personal magical development to the circuits understood as general stages of consciousness evolution. ... Read more

Product Description
The articles in Start Your Own Religion, written at the height of the psychedelic era, embody Timothy Leary's core philosophy — unlimited personal freedom. Encouraging the youth of the 1960s to return to the temple of God — their own bodies — and live consciously in the here-and-now, Leary's ideas, including urging people to turn on, tune in, drop out, brought him legions of devoted followers and a host of enemies in the American government. Irreverent yet thought provoking, the ideas that revolutionized an earlier generation remain motivational principles. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

old but stil news
i start with a citat from the book
reward yourself for making choices that lead to friendship and pleasure.

i think many people can have a great insite and awakeningby understanding his book .
not only raid it like a novel ,BUT UNDERSTAND IT
then timothy is really alive and one of the pioniers of the conciousness of men
All his book are about freedom of mind and thinking ,this one tells a secret that ,not so many people can see and apply it in there dailly life. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (8)

Leary's best book - a psychedelic trip in itself
I have read through many of Leary's books, and this is the best, hands down. This is Leary at his most coherent, insightful, provocative, and enlightening. Many of his other books fail in one or more of those areas, but this collection (of essays, interviews, magazine articles, and so on) of his work offers a huge amount of food for thought. I don't know if it is 'the most influential book I have ever read,' as one reviewer put it, but it is certainly among the top ten.

What's so great about this book? The insanely optimistic and original ideas, of course. The central idea running through the entire book, and much of Leary's life, is that YOU are responsible for your own neurochemistry, and hence states of consciousness. You have (or rather, ought to have, as no government in the world actually dares to follow such sane policies) the right to alter your own consciousness in any way you see fit, provided you don't harm or try to enforce an alteration of consciousness upon another.

This message almost seems simple, self-evident - yet as anyone can plainly see, nowhere is it legally permitted (never mind culturally encouraged). Many religious groups or philosophies advocate some kind of self-change or altered states, and many psychiatrists and neurologists will advocate some kind of improved neurochemistry to help prevent or ameliorate mental diseases and so on. But no one has ever before (as far as I know) or since (again, as far as I know) advocated such a radical and potentially liberating idea as: alter your own neurochemistry as you see fit; everyone is free to discover for themselves what is within/beyond.

It may be easy to be blinded by the fact that LSD apparently was not the wonder drug that Leary and his ilk were looking for. The changes don't seem to last for most people, and as is evident nowadays, it can be taken frivolously and with no insight gleaned whatsoever. But Leary was already (way back when this was written) talking way beyond LSD - the substances just didn't, and still don't, exist. He was advocating direct synaptic manipulation to engineer learning at the neuronal level (using RNA or proteins), and also to engineer the de-imprinting of fixed habits and concepts that are of no value to the individual, or even detrimental to him or her. He also advocated using various substances to enhance the sensitivity and sensuousness of sexual relations with one's partner. Further, he was recommending a thorough licensing system for psychedelic usage, such that people could be well trained by experienced guides to explore whatever it is that psychedelics have to teach us. If any or all of these ideas had been seriously followed up, we'd be living in a very different (and much improved, methinks) world today.

I feel this review has failed to convey the truly revolutionary nature of what is being said in this book - you should really just read it for yourself. I am about to start my PhD in Psychology and I only wish someone like this, with this kind of originality and vision, was still stirring things up in the academic world. Rest in peace, ye Irish madman. I encourage everyone to read this book and take to heart the wildly optimistic vision of humanity's potential and future contained therein.

DO NOT READ THIS BOOK...
...if you wish to stay the same because believe me, once you read it, you never will be. I got this book when I was about 26-27 years old when I felt as though I was just passing through life and not really living it. I felt like everything was "ho-hum". All of my senses were set to dull. Inside of me there was just this gnawing ache that there has got to be something more...not just "out there"...but "in here"...in my heart, in my soul, in my mind...

And then along comes Timothy.

Irreverent, Rebellious,Smart-Ass Timothy Leary espousing the Truth that all advancement in life is already in our very DNA. It dwells deep within the very marrow of our bones because we, as a species, were not meant to stand still...we were not meant to live lives of quiet desperation...we were meant to behold a world that burns and sparkles with Light.

People tend to think one is hallucinating when one sees vibrant colors, when everyday things seem to shine with a new brilliance, when even the song from a songbird feels like a musical triumph, but this is how life really is, boys and girls! We are hallucinating when we think that the world is dull and thick and leaden...we are hallucinating when we think that we are just these heavy clods of biodegradble clay that stalk the earth. We are here to discover...or should I say, uncover the paradise that is already within the invisible realms of the ancient mind that dwells within us and we in it.

Does this mean you have to take LSD in order to experience the jewelike radiance that all of life is made in and out of? Not neccessarily and I am not advocating that you do. What I am advocating is that you allow yourself to get enthused about life. Enthusiasm literally means to be filled with God. God wants to know Itself as you...as me...in each and every moment of creation.

Read Timothy Leary. Marvel at his excitement for life, join him in the mind & soul rebellion against flaccid governments and soul controlling religions and their warped politics and dissapointing creeds both of which are more than happy to think and decide for you, laugh in joyful relief that you are not a body with a soul, but you are a soul with a body,and be willing to stray from the pack of lemmings that's headed for the edge of the cliff only to drown in the shallow seas of mediocrity.

Open your eyes.
Open your mind.
Open your soul.
Open your heart.
Open this book and let the tingling in each of your 40 trillion cells remindyou are here to do more than exist, you are here to LIVE and to LIVE WELL.

Peace & Blessings to this this place we call the world.

Expanding Consciousness Beyond the Mind's Homocentric Limits
Wow! What a book! Leary is a real psychedelic guru, not in the orthodox sense, but really a man ahead of his time, a Galileo in the charter exploration of the mind and consciousness. He started off as a conservative Harvard professor, yet not so conservative, as he had his own ideas. But after his religious experience, and that's what psychedelics do - the expanding of your consciousness to a religious experience - he became aware of the societal and cultural chessboards - the games - and here became outspoken apart from the Harvard rationalistic mindset which rests on only one static frame of a multi-dimensional, dynamic existence.

I read this book smiling, over and over again. I walked down the street with a smile, mostly for Leary's optimism, then his frank and bold statements, which in most part I agree with. His style sometimes just makes you laugh and smile and say to yourself "I wish I had the guts enough say this." And although his predictions did not come true, you can't help but subjectively comprehend the 60's atmosphere, enveloped with the baby boomers in their youth taking up the majority of the population and their experiential drug use in psychedelics, which in turn, brought forth all the femininity of creativeness, patience, tolerance, peacefulness and artistic development that was permeating the entire American culture and spreading around the world and thus brought on the male dominated aggression of control and police power. So Leary's optimism and predictions were really a good assessment of the time despite their failure to come true. And nothing makes me sadder than to see his predictions fail from the creative mind expanding youth to our current male power, controlling and agressive society.

You can write Leary off as a kook from the conservative's point of view, the rationalist who never "experienced," and that's the KEY here - never experienced a trip under favorable circumstances and environment. Leary is the same as other heretics and kooks of history, a Galileo of mind exploration and conscious expansion, a Guttenberg of exoteric enlightenment, as in this book as well as one who clearly recognizes the need for new symbols that relate the esoteric experience of LSD, of cellular memories, of DNA language outside the mind, of experiential journeys that can only be told under a new language, as the microscope discovered new world had brought forth, as quantum physics brought forth and every other new fields of exploration that can only be described outside the current symbols we currently use.

Leary on page 141: The lesson I have learned from over 300 sessions, and which I have been passing on to others, can be stated in 6 syllables: Turn on, tune in, drop out. "Turn on" means to contact the ancient energies and wisdoms that are built into your nervous system. They provide unspeakable pleasure and revelation. "Tune in" means to harness and communicate these new perspectives in a harmonious dance with the external world. "Drop out' means to detach yourself from the tribal game. Current models of social adjustment - mechanized, computerized, socialized, intellectualized, televised, Sanforized - make no sense to the new LSD generation, who see clearly that American society is becoming an air-conditioned anthill. In every generation of human history, thoughtful men have turned on and dropped out of the tribal game and thus stimulated the larger society to lurch ahead. Every historical advance has resulted from the stern pressure of visionary men who have declared their independence from the game.

On page 196: My philosophy of life has been tremendously influenced by my study of oriental philosophy and religion. Of course, what the American, regardless of his religious belief, doesn't understand is that the aim of oriental religious is to get high, to have an ecstasy, to tune in, to turn on, to contact incredible diversity, beauty, living, pulsating meaning of the sense organs, and the much more complicated and pleasurable and revelatory messages of cellular energy. To a Hindu, the spiritual quest is internal.

Different sects of oriental religion use different methods and different body organs to find God. The Shivites use the senses; the followers of Vishnu are concerned with cellular wisdom, contacting the endless flow of reincarnation wisdom which biochemists would call protein wisdom of the DNA code; Buddhist manuals on consciousness expansion are concerned with the flash, the white light of the void, the ecstatic union that comes when you're completely turned on, beyond the senses, beyond the body.

On page 202-203: What we're doing for the mind is what the microbiologists did for the external science 300 years ago when they discovered the microscope. And they made this incredible discovery that life, health, growth, every form of organic life, is based on the cell, which is invisible.

You've never seen a cell; what do you think of that? Yet it's the key to everything that happens to a living creature. I'm simply saying that same thing from the mental, psychological standpoint, that there are wisdoms, lawful units inside the nervous system, invisible to the symbolic mind, which determine almost everything.

And I don't consider myself that mystical - unless you'd call someone who looks through a microscope a mystic, because he's telling you about something for which you don't have the symbols. Or the astronomer who detects a quasar and speculates about it.

On page 208: Every time you take LSD you completely suspend - you step outside of - the symbolic chessboard which you have built up over the long years of social conditioning. And you whirl through different levels of neurological and cellular energy, continually flowing and changing.

Your symbolic mind is flashing in and out. You never love your mind during and LSD session. It's always there, but it's one of a thousand cameras that are flashing away. Of course, the LSD freak-out, or paranoia, is where the symbolic mind freezes any aspect of the LSD session and defines a new reality, which can be positive or negative.

Read this book.

Changed my life
This is the single most influential book I have ever read. Completely legitmizes and encourages religious experiences through psychedelic means. Anyone currently using psychedelic drugs or interested in them should read this to gain greater understanding of their power. Learn why LSD and other are really illegal, the government knows they free minds!

Let freedom reign
This work is a hallmark for questioning authority, pursuing individual freedom and happiness, and working to build a more enjoyable and enriched world. Lovers of liberty would be well-advised to study this work thoroughly, and then pass it along to the nearest religious extremist. It will surely get a reaction. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description

This book is the story of how three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman crossed paths in the early sixties at a Harvard-sponsored psychedelic-drug research project, transforming their lives and American culture and launching the mind/body/spirit movement that inspired the explosion of yoga classes, organic produce, and alternative medicine.

Customer Reviews (26)

Interesting Look at An Interesting Era
Although I had read Timothy Leary's autobiography, Ram Dass' Be Here Now and most of Andrew Weil's early works, I was unfamiliar with how they all came together at Harvard in the early 60s and pretty much created mind expansion through LSD.It's unfortunate the drug became sensationalized and stigmatized, as it's evident that we can learn much about human behavior and how the mind works through careful and controlled study of its unusual effects.

Though some may not like the format, switching between the four protaganists, I found it works and kept the story moving along nicely.I also appreciated the interviews and research put in by the author.

Not a serious study by any means, but a light and refreshing overview of a remarkable era.

Now I Understand
Fantastic, eye-opening.Everyone who was a kid in the '60s and '70s with parents into this scene might benefit greatly from reading this. It'll give many insights into your own psyche as well as American social history and all utopian movements.And for those a bit younger or who were never part of it but are now popping the supplements recommended by Weil, deep breathing, doing zazen or asharm stints or ayahuesca-ing with shamans on eco-tours, or just bemoaning the dominance of left brain thinking in a corporate world, this will give you a fascinating backdrop to some important influences on your life, unbeknownst to you.
An entertaining, skillfully written romp through human psychology.
~ Lesley Thomas, author of arctic shaman novel Flight of the Goose

Interesting Look at the Harvard LSD Study & its Aftermath
Author Don Lattin discusses the impact that key participants in the 1950's HarvardLSD studies had on today's culture through four biographies. He shows how the lives of each of the four intersected and how each followed his respective passion.

New ideas on nutrition and medical treatment advanced by Andrew Weil and perspectives on religion advanced by Huston Smith and Richard Alpert/Ram Das, once considered unorthodox are now mainstream. The most famous participant of them all, Timothy Leary, was a "Trickster" bringing only trouble for himself and a backlash against the drug he was promoting.

The story of LSD research starting with the CIA (the Unabomber was a participant!) to the famous Leary/Alpert tests was fascinating, as was the story of the termination of the study and its two professors. Their immediate lives after Harvard were period pieces, and somehow, though few people lived this sort of life, are considered emblematic of the 60's.

Besides the commonly identified Leary circle (Ginzberg, Burroughs, etc,) interesting to me was the variety of "household names" thatflew into the Leary orbit: E Gordon Liddy, Aldous Huxley, Uma Thurmon (could she be called a step daughter?) Harry Winston (through his son Ronnie), Maynard Ferguson (name kept popping up), Bill W (founder of AA), Eldrige Cleaver, Bill Ayers (now again famous via Fox News) and (mystery woman) Mary Pinchot Meyer.

A small point, for a book with a generally smooth read, was the interchangeable use of first and last names. This works for those in the title, (i.e. sometimes it's Huston, sometimes Smith) but for those who have small "parts" it interfered with the read, since I had to flip back.

While this is a good book and each of the men profiled achieved, I don't buy the thesis about the depth of their impact. While each made a mark, there was a lot going on. The old ways of thinking were severely challenged by the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and later the Women's Movement.These forced changes in thinking that have influenced everything including health and religion far beyond any impact of these four men. For instance, while I can't prove it, I think that the very publication in of Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth with its straight talk on birth control, childbirth and menopause was far more influential in changing the thinking/practice of medicine than any of the natural food/healing advocates. While, for me, the thesis was weak, the book the book was an interesting read.

An excellent book on what the impact of the 60's I recommend: The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy

Fairly well rounded
Well, I was in 'early' on much of what went on in the story of these four folks. I knew Alpert and Leary from the Human Be-In, and I was part of Leary's getting out of the country. I personally think Weil could have been raked over the coals a little more.....

A solid popular history of the psychedelic drug culture and era
Don Lattin has turned in a very well done popular history of the turned on generation.

The book focuses on four self-promoters who used psychedelic drugs as their gateway to fame and fortune, while getting high often along the way.

Timothy "Tim" Leary became the most famous of all, a perpetual magnet for media attention - which he incessantly sought. Lattin, happily, takes Leary as he was, without turning him into a saint or a devil.

Andrew Weil, who ultimately became a health guru, starts off as a thoroughly disreputable character - and never changes. Like the rest of this smallgroup, Weil is an energetic self-promoter.

Houston Smith is a thinker, a student and teacher of world religions. He comes early to the realization that "tuning in, turning on and dropping out" through psychedelic drugs is not going to change the world.

Richard Alpert is, after Leary, the strangest of the lot, a man who never seems to find himself, but gains much fame and perhaps considerable fortune while flailing around. He becomes Ram Dass, teacher to the world.

Lattin groups the four together as the "Harvard Psychedelic Club", which was really a group of fellow-travelers seeking the path to self-enlightenment. The journey began with Leary's experimentation with "magic mushrooms" and progresses to laboratory manufactured LSD with a long list of other drugs included.

Lattin's descriptions of how the group came together is interesting and well told. There was, for a while, a common belief among them that they would revolutionize mankind's understanding of itself, lead to the destruction of the myths of organized religion, forge new bonds between humans and cure all that ails you. Lattin's descriptions of their early goings-on is really well done and, frankly, makes the drug experience seem appealing.

All this was going on in the sacred academic precincts of Harvard University. The snake in the garden was a low-life named Andrew Weil. Without condemning Weil directly, Lattin's description of Weil leaves you not wanting to get your hands dirty touching him. Will too has been a relentless self-promoter since his youth: "exposing" the psychedelic drug "movement" at Harvard was his first taste of the fame he sought.

Leary and Alpert who taught at Harvard were expelled from Harvard as a result of Weil's betrayal.

The four principals went on to lives of fame, but the happiness they sought became more and more elusive. Leary lost a daughter to suicide (as he lost a wife earlier) and was an international fugitive and prison inmate. Ram Nass, nee Alpert, has journeyed far and wide. Weil has achieved success in the health industry.

Psychedelic drugs and the age they inspired for at least short time tremendously impacted American culture and not necessarily for the better.

Leary made a theatrical production of his dying and death. The others live on - as do the results of their early "Harvard Psychedelic Club" exploits.

This is, thankfully, not a rigorous academic history - and it is excellent and well worth reading to understand how we got to where we are at in this country.

Jerry


... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
President Nixon called him the most dangerous man in America, while Terence McKenna believed he made more people happy than anyone else in history. Few People have divided opinion as strongly as Dr. Timothy Leary. Leary, a brilliant behavioral psychologist, persuaded millions to tune in, turn on, and drop out. His influence was so wide-ranging that he had enormous impact on shaping the post-modern 21st century world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Turn on
A very entertaining and engrossing biography that manages to shed new light on aspects to Leary's life not covered in other works.

The author performs exhaustive research concerning Leary's history. This includes formative experiences and historical events that helped shape the fascinating and unpredictable directions Leary took his own brain AND an entire culture.

There is a respectable balance between showcasing the subject's remarkable intellectual and lifestyle achievements and providing insights into the more controversial inner workings of politics and supposed deals with government.

The human side of Leary shines through in the dynamic stories of his tumultuous family life and relationships with key friends; and notably several beautiful, intriguing women.

Leary was unique in that for every person who claimed him to be an egoist or megalomaniac, there seemed to be 20 or 30 proclaiming him to be the seminal inspiration to their lives. Both demonized and lauded as an eternal hero, we are presented with a protagonist unlike anyone who has ever lived.

Those close to him claimed he possessed an excitement and caliber of intellect that was unparalleled. Leary was a sort of anthropomorphic litmus test of where many of us have stood on issues of libertarianism, psychology, politics, and culture.

He ignited a storm of evolutionary thinking and suffered deeply for his stance - like other great historical figures.

The author succeeds in providing an objective overview of an otherwise incendiary topic.

Readers are happily left with the ultimate option that would have made Leary S.M.I.L.E.

Just Say Know

Best book on Leary so far...
As everyone else has said, this is a much better book than Robert Greenfield's hack biography. Higgs tries to understand Leary's theories (not always easy, it must be said, but beyond way beyond the intellectual capacity of Greenfield) and his significance to the sixties and beyond. He shows Leary's humour, adventurousness and selfishness. What a life Leary had and he had a great mind too, when he could focus it....

Higgs has said that one of the highlights of writing the book was that he got to interview Robert Anton Wilson. (Greenfield apparently did do too, but edited most of RAWs comments out because they were not negative enough.)

Recommended for anyone wanting to understand more about Leary, LSD and the sixties. It's fashionable amongst some of the weaker contemporary writers on psychedelics to blame everything on Leary-- even Sasha Shulgin has said that Leary had little to do with the banning of LSD.

The best Leary biography, a history of psychedelic culture
Unlike the Greenfield biography, this bio is told from the perspective of an insider to 21st century psychedelic culture. Higgs explores the many contributions that this flawed man made both to the methodology and history of psychedelics, but also the lasting contributions he made in the fields of psychological testing, the human potential movement, the personal computer, and the decade of the sixties.

You are likely to come away from this book convinced that everything good about the sixties was due to Leary, and if it had not been for Leary that decade would have probably been a much darker and more violent time.

Leary's serious flaws, the many people he disappointed, his many failures and drop-outs, and later collaboration with federal law enforcement are covered extensively. This biography is critical yet balanced, something that cannot be said of other biographies (including Leary's own).

A compelling, informed, and informative biography
British biographer John Higgs draws upon previously unavailable archive of documents in "I Have America Surrounded: The Life Of Timothy Leary", new biography of Timothy Leary, the brilliant Harvard University psychologist who was one of the leading proponents of using psychedelic drugs like LSD to expand the mind's perception. A figure of controversy who has achieved an almost cult-like status in the history of the 1960s drug culture - and the man who coined the phrase `tune in, turn on, drop out' as a mantra of that era - Leary conducted research that led to changes in popular American culture as reflected in its music, cyber-culture, the Mind-Body-Soul movement, and clinical psychological profiling. Very highly recommended reading and an appropriate addition to academic and community library American Biography collections, "I Have America Surrounded" is a compelling, informed, and informative biography of one of the key figures in the `hippie' cultural movement that stamped the baby boomer coming-of-age experience on and off the college campus.

Timothy Leary 101: A fascinating bio of one of the most influential minds of the 20th century
Harvard psychologist, LSD guru, and transhumanist pioneer Timothy Leary was found of saying, "There are 24 Timothy Leary's" and "You get the Timothy Leary you deserve." John Higg's insightful biography "I Have America Surrounded" reads like a mystery novel focusing on Timothy Leary, the fugitive. Higg's explores in depth the events of Leary's escape from prison and adventures on the run beginning in 1970 after announcing that he would face Ronald Reagan in the race for Governor of California.

Unlike Robert Greenfield's recent bio-tabloid or Leary's auto-biography "Flashbacks," "I Have America Surrounded" is a much more complete story of a fascinating, flawed, and yet undeniably brilliant mind. Higgs explores the motivations, misteps, and impact of Leary's works and life with insight from many of the people who were closest to Leary at the time including Brian Barritt, Michael Horowitz, and Joanna Harcourt-Smith.

If you are looking for Timothy Leary 101, this is it. I can't recommend this book highly enough and look forward to hearing reviews from other readers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

be a winner at the game of life
Game of Life is one of the wisest, most insightful and uplifting books I have ever read.It is a sacred text for the silicon-space age.After much struggling with ancient wisdom (tarot, kabbala, the Vedas, alchemy, etc) and it's pre-modern explicators (Crowley, Gurdjieff, Guenon et al) I find this book, and suddenly the occult cliche "as above, so below" makes perfect sense, and so many other ideas and phenomena, contradictory on the surface, become clear and harmonious.

For example, the raging culture war between Darwinism and creationism is exposed as a petty juvenile playground drama.Leary, ever the integrator, is a proponent of "intelligent design" although the meaning of that phrase is infinitely deeper than trying to sneak creationism into school curricula.

You could say that all Leary has done is translated old-fashioned mystical woo-hoo into modern psycho-techno-babble, and there is truth in that statement, but at this level in human evolution (the "insectoid welfare hive" as Leary put it), our socio-political-economic reality is created semantically and symbolically.Words and images are keys, and the key that starts up your father's Oldsmobile will not start your hybrid Prius, let alone my fusion powered quantum tunneling chariot!

Of course, primitive social defense mechanisms dictate that Game of Life is "out of print" and primitive information storage technology demands that you "buy a used copy" but thankfully we can read it now for free at scribd dot com.

How to become ones'elf
we love everything Timothy Leary has written...
dear seekers after truth,
... but this is our favorite book. It combines Tarot, Science and nearly everything else to create Astrological types based on Terrestrial and Post-Terrestrial understanding and evolutionary development. It's brilliant (as all his work is), funny, enlightened (far beyond his time) and we never get to the end of one of his books without wishing there were a another 2 to 3 hundred pages to read, and this one is no exception. We may not agree with all his conclusions, more often than notwe don't even understand all he is telling us, but we are always more enthusiastic about life and its purpose after reading him. He truly was the Magus of the Age.
kyela,
the silver elves
<[...]>

The premiere book on Leary's Eight Neural Circuit Model of consciousness
The eight neural circuits of human development are described in an unusual way as Leary's prose is scattered over various parts of the page.It's the best available introduction on his system.The interested magician may trace her/his own development by the neural circuits understand as general stages of consciousness evolution.

An Evolutionary Masterpiece & Manual For Post Terrestrial Life
For a nominal fee:It Will Shock!It Will Amaze!Step right this way...

This is my favorite Timothy Leary book, and that's saying a lot when compared to the likes of The Politics Of Ecstasy, Neuropolitics, Exo-Psychology, The Intelligence Agents, Confessions Of A Hope Fiend, Flashbacks, etc.This is the one that ties it all together.Presented in sensational tabloid fashion, tongue-in-cheek, he masterfully combines and correlates the Periodic Table, chemistry, evolutionary theory, microbiology, psychology, Tarot, astrology, mysticism, religion, history, terrestrial politics, science-fiction, and so forth.An amazing bit of propaganda for progress and higher intelligence (sorely needed on this backward and primitive orb).He should have won the governorship of California and gone on to be President of these United States---not Reagan.This land would have turned out very very different (all kidding aside, man), and we might now be colonizing space (with H.O.M.E.s---that's High Orbital Mini Earths), the moon and Mars instead of talking about it.His laissez faire and mercantilist outlook would certainly have been better for the economy, to say the least, especially nowadays (argh!).More than a nod is given to such divergent luminaries, psychotics and "futants" as Aleister Crowley (whose scholarship, among others, was an inspiration for this book), Werner von Braun, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Edward Teller, Adolf Hitler, etc.

Each consecutive page is presented as a whole, that is (for one thing), they don't end with sentences that need to be completed on the next page.They are complete texts (along with whatever provocative titles and graphics that are attendant).This, as well as the fact that the book is roughly 8 1/2 X 11 inches, makes it ideal for those copy shop guerilla Intelligence Agents who like to make illicit postings in public places.I suppose that was the idea...(heh heh)

The book is not only immensely informative and inspiring---it is fun!Also, since he deals with his subject matter with patient good humour and high (sorry) spirits, it is absolutely hilarious.And though Leary treats terrestrial politics with the biting satire it so richly deserves, it is easy to see that he was quite serious about humankind's future and evolution, as symbolized in his oft referenced acronym S.M.I.L.E (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, and Life Extension).The self-described "cheerleader for change" promoted his passion for space migration and evolution with the zeal of an evangelist and the skill of a mass media marketing wizard.

The Game Of Life is absolutely essential to any post-larval wondering what happened to the electric kool-aid 60s party.

And remember:INTELLIGENCE IS THE ULTIMATE APHRODISIAC.

© 2006 RAPWreckerds

The Einstein of Psychology will turn on your genius circuit.
An ultimate Trip Manual and yogic navigation guide. A Bible.

This is my favorite book and my second-most influential. It can literally turn on your genius circuit (the 7th circuit of the 8 described). It will seem ridiculous and mostly metaphorical until you realize that Timothy Leary (at least while he was 'high') was, and is, literally communicating here as DNA consciousness, aka the Word of God.

I think there are some small inaccuracies in the correspondences, but the scope of knowledge integration here is overwhelming. Your mind will blow and re-fuse relentlessly on the first and subsequent readings.

Like all scriptures, it will seed your mind with key ideas that will pop open and grow synergistically.

What other book sythesizes the key patterns in psychology, ontogeny and phylogeny, technological development, sociology, neurochemistry, physics, linguistics and yoga?

Leary himself never mastered the 8 circuits of consciousness he describes in The Game of Life, or he wouldn't have suffered from cancer or even old age. But he actualized and demonstrated the use of all 8 of these neurological systems in his lifetime and I suppose he is in the same business now in the Hyperlife.

Timothy Leary will be recognized as the Einstein of Psychology early this century. Did you know he wrote the seminal 'Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality' in the 50's? And that was before he 'discovered' his brain and then his DNA via inter- and intra-neuronal yoga, using the biochemical keys that can be used to activate these domains of experience.

This book is real magic and is inspired by the Holy Spirit though it appears blasphemous. It is for many an initiation like the Gospel of John or Yogananda's Autobiography, and it reveals many of the same principles; though with more humor than either. ... Read more

Product Description
SERIES TAGLINE: The O'Leary Series is the true step-by step way to develop computer application skills.

Its design emphasizes the step-by step visual approach with screen captures for every concept. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not Pleased!
I ordered this book on 8/27/2010 and as of date 9/7/10 still have not received it.This seller does not give you the option to cancel this order!And on top of that does not respond to inquiries sent to him/her.Do not order from this seller unless you need your merchandise a month later!!!!!!!! ... Read more

Product Description
In these collected essays, Timothy Leary explains his belief that humans are morphing into space beings. He describes eight circuits of human metamorphosis, analyzing in depth the consciousness — and its purpose — manifested by each change. Fifteen chapters cover a range of topics from "Spinning Up the Genetic Highway" to "Neurogeography of Terrestrial Politics" to "Twelve Stages of Post-Cultural Evolution." In each of these insightful pieces the author describes the complicated psychological metamorphosis that precedes the launch of humans into space beings. This collection of Leary’s early work at his imaginative and provocative best had an enormous impact on psychology and the humanist movement. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Theories presented here are science fiction
This book is fun to read and adds insight into the beyond. i dont feel like right a good review for this book but if you want a good read then read it, know it, think about it, and live it. ... Read more

Product Description
Computing Essentials 2008 Intro edition is a computing concepts text that focuses on current coverage of a broad range of computing topics, including computer components, applications software, databases, storage devices, etc.This O'Leary concepts text provides a complete learning package focusing on the most important and essential concepts of information technology. Students are given a streamlined, concise, attractive approach to the fundamental issues surrounding the world of computing.Features include strong concept reinforecement, relevant research, new application-based material, easy-to-follow design and student friendly design.This text also correlates with SimNet Online, our online training and assessment program for office 2007 and also computing concepts! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

I love this book.
This book is in excellent shape, and arrived in a timely manner. Thank you.

Computing Essentials 2008 Introductory Edition (O'Leary Series)
This book took a week to get to me.It was in pretty good condition with little marking inside of book.It came the day that the first book assignment was due.It made just in time.

Computing Essentials 2008
Excellent book, very informative.After reading this book, you WILL know everything there is to know about computers.

Not the best choice for Ashford INF 103
The book itself was pretty informative and followed fairly well with my course work, but there were some things I could not find in the book.I suppose I should have gotten the Ashford custom edition instead.It still did the trick, but it would have been more helpful to have the custom edition.

Great deal on new text book!
New text at almost half price of university.
Quicker than quick shipping. Great deal!! Thanks! ... Read more