TIMOTHY LEARY AND THE MILLBROOK ESTATE
Seven grams of Timothy Leary’s cremains were launched into outer space, slightly over a year from the date of his death in 1996. Purportedly, they orbited the earth for six years before the Pegasus rocket carrying them burned up in the atmosphere. Many would counsel me to let their remnants and the man they represented remain wherever they may be and not even to mention the “L word.” Whether it stands for “Leary” or “LSD,” it tends to evoke strongly irrational and stereotypical responses. Some may view him as a charismatic, prophetic hero, far ahead of his time; others see him as an irresponsible, psychologically troubled researcher, who abandoned the disciplines and cautions of science to seek publicity with movie stars and encourage teenagers to break laws and allow their lives to be derailed by the seductive traps of drug abuse. Either way, his name and image have assumed almost archetypal status in many modern minds.
How history will judge him is an open question. In 1963, the construction of William James Hall was completed at Harvard University, a stunningly attractive high-rise building that has become home to the social science departments, designed by Minuoru Yamasaki (the same highly regarded architect who designed the original World Trade towers in New York). Although in his days as a Harvard professor William James made many contributions to psychology and philosophy that are often respectfully acknowledged by current scholars, he also explored alternative states of consciousness with nitrous oxide gas and openly wrote about his experiences. Whether or not Harvard will ever erect a building or even install a modest sculpture in the shaded corner of a quadrangle in honor of Timothy Leary remains to be seen. President Nixon’s description of him as “the most dangerous man in America” still reverberates in many minds.
While studying in Germany and encountering my first psychedelic experiences in 1963 and 1964, I read about Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner in Time magazine, along with news of the “Harvard scandal.” I was not sure what to make of this controversy in the United States, as research with psychedelic drugs in Europe was progressing without fanfare in reasonable, academically respectable ways. Nonetheless, I decided I wanted to meet these men, collect my own impressions, and make my own decisions. So it was that, on the day of my return to the United States, after my plane from Luxembourg landed at Kennedy Airport, I immediately boarded a train to Millbrook, New York. At that point in time, psychedelic research at Harvard had ceased and Timothy and his colleagues were living on an estate owned by the family of Peggy Hitchcock, an heiress of the Mellon fortune. Having established through prior correspondence that I was welcome, a taxi dropped me at a stone gatehouse similar to the entrance of a European castle.
With a knapsack on my back on a hot August day, I followed a long, curving road toward an impressive, old white mansion with an imposing turret. Someone greeted me, led me up two flights of stairs to a small room with a mattress on the floor, and informed me that Timothy was “swimming at the waterfall with his companion, a Swedish model,” but would return soon and that I could hike to the waterfall and join them if I so desired. The idea appealed to my sweaty and weary self, but, as I followed the woodland trail to the waterfall and saw Timothy nude in the distance, I decided to return to the mansion, shower in an ordinary bathroom, and await his return. I needed some time to adjust to a world very different than my life in German academia.
The mansion itself proved to be an intriguing place, full of fascinating architectural details, and occupied by diverse people from different cultural backgrounds and careers, all open to expressing stimulating and potentially innovative ideas. There was a delightful monkey in the kitchen. No one seemed obsessed with order or cleanliness; all was comfortable and casual—or what some would call chaotic and disordered. Meals, incidentally, were quite flavorful and were typically preceded by a period of silence, during which all present were encouraged to attune themselves to gratitude and to focus attention with full sensory openness on appreciating the taste of the first morsel of nourishment.
When Timothy appeared on the day of my arrival, he gave me his full attention, genuinely interested in what had been occurring with Leuner’s research in Göttingen and within me as a person. His companion, Nena von Schlebrügge, who became the third of his five wives, impressed me as being as beautiful spiritually as she was physically. When I left a few days later, Timothy personally drove me to the train station and wished me well. We maintained periodic communication and he welcomed me for occasional weekend seminars during the following two years. Many of those seminars were conducted and attended by highly respected scientists and academicians.
It was clear that more was going on at Millbrook than merely some sort of hedonistic, countercultural protest. Along with the seminars and attempts to establish a successful community, I was told of nights disrupted by raids of DEA agents and arrests, reflecting the clash of two very different value systems. In spite of the controversies surrounding him, our personal connection was strong enough that my fiancée and I chose to invite him to our wedding in 1966. Timothy respectfully declined, but gifted us with a copy of his Psychedelic Prayers, his own adaptation of the first book of the Tao Tê Ching, attractively published on embossed paper. Earlier, with Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, he had published The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a guidebook for navigating within alternative states of awareness that still remains helpful for people preparing for psychedelic sessions.
Two images stand out for me in my memories of the psychedelic community at Millbrook. One is a once-magnificent but now defunct fountain in front of the mansion, overgrown with weeds, that no one seemed motivated to repair. The other was a deserted bowling alley, artistically designed as a long, separate building with a high ceiling, located in a quiet woodland setting, which was also neglected and abandoned. When I saw it, I immediately imagined how it could be transformed into a very distinctive meditation hall. There was a small square building designated for meditation near the mansion with pillows on the floor, but, like the rest of the estate, it was dusty and poorly maintained. As a whole, I felt as though Millbrook was a secular ashram or monastery with hardly any structure or discipline. It is not surprising that it proved unable to sustain itself.
The image of a classic Tibetan mandala comes to mind, a symmetrical design made up of concentric squares and circles, one within the other, with gates on each of the four sides of the squares, leading to a central point of meditative focus. Insofar as such mandalas depict the healthy, centered psyche, there is a balance between squares and circles. Squares, rectangular lines, and right angles in art therapy tend to be interpreted as manifestations of the masculine or active pole of our minds: cognition, reason, structure, decisions, commitment, assertive behavior. Circular or curved forms, in contrast, are understood to reflect the feminine or passive pole: receptivity, trust, patience, openness, gentleness. It has always been fascinating to me to observe how people struggling with alcoholism tend to produce artwork dominated by curved, paisley-type lines, whereas those struggling with obsessive-compulsive tendencies tend to rely almost exclusively on rigid, straight lines. From my perspective, the community at Millbrook urgently needed a wise and stern abbot and the position appeared vacant. Paisley forms dominated there, at least when I happened to visit.
It is easy for present psychedelic researchers to complain about Timothy Leary and make him a scapegoat for the three decades of lost research progress from which we are just recovering. In all fairness, however, it should be acknowledged that, with his colleagues, he did publish some significant research studies and attempted to communicate cogently with academic colleagues before he abandoned traditional science in favor of seeking attention through a sensationalistic press. For example, he published a report in the
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease that included statistical analyses of the responses of 175 volunteers to whom he had administered questionnaires following their psilocybin experiences. He also spearheaded a creative pilot study that explored the use of psilocybin in the rehabilitation of thirty-two inmates from the Concord State Prison, a maximum-security facility for young offenders. Earlier in his career, he had published a respected book,
The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality. Also, some compassion is in order for a single troubled human being who had struggled with alcohol abuse in the past and who found himself as a single parent of two young children after the suicide of his first wife. He was a colorful and tragic human being, but only one person among many dedicated clinicians and researchers in the early days of psychedelic studies.
It is thought provoking to reflect on how differently his two primary associates responded to their psychedelic experiences. Richard Alpert went to India, changed his name to Ram Dass, became established as a respected meditation teacher, and helped to create the Hanuman Foundation and the Seva Foundation, which have reached out to serve prisoners, the terminally ill, and the homeless. Ralph Metzner continues to have a productive career, has brought the Green Earth Foundation into being, and has called attention to nature, to the care of our planet, and to the respectful, spiritual use of ayahuasca.
INTEGRATING RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES INTO RELIGIOUS LIVES
Huston Smith, as noted earlier, was among the first to articulate a distinction between religious experiences and religious lives, having observed that the first does not automatically guarantee the latter. This is true not only of mystical experiences, whether facilitated by entheogens or by other technologies or seeming to occur naturally, but also of conversion, prayer, and meditative experiences of many varieties. Perhaps the principle extends beyond experiences we call religious to any profound and intense episodes or adventures in life—other peak or nadir experiences and even those experiences we label as traumatic.
To some extent some people seem to have a choice between “sealing off” the emotions and insights from experiences that break through the limits of routine, everyday reality or choosing to expend effort to work toward their integration. Some experiences bring with them a transformed sense of self and a strong impetus toward changed behavior in the world; others seem to “sit there” as intriguing memories that could remain isolated from daily routines. I recall a successful business leader who had a spontaneous mystical experience while lying on my office couch that met all the criteria in the definition of mystical consciousness. When he subsequently sat up on the couch, he said, “That was nice. What is it good for?” He had only glimpsed
samadhi, the spiritual goal of life for many in Eastern religions.
There are no indications that St. Paul required a second vision of the risen Christ after his experience on the Road to Damascus; he experienced a shift in his view of the world and set off on a mission. Yet even he may well have valued the companionship and support of others as he sought to help establish and stabilize the fledgling congregations of early Christianity. Many of the research volunteers who have encountered profoundly spiritual experiences during the action of psilocybin at Johns Hopkins, all well-functioning people to begin with, have subsequently addressed issues of career or human relationships and reconfigured parts of their lives as they have progressed in the integration of their newfound knowledge. As examples, one person resigned from a job that entailed contributing to the design of military weaponry and a few years later was ordained as a Zen monk; another chose to join the Peace Corps and move to Africa.
What we call integration seems to entail a repetitive, intentional movement within awareness between memories from alternative states of consciousness and the demands and opportunities of everyday existence, including former habits of thought or action that may feel out of sync with the new knowledge or self-concept. For instance, the person who has suffered from alcoholism and who during the action of an entheogen has experienced a sense of unconditional love and acceptance cannot return to the former feelings of low self-worth and wallow in them without feeling a disconnect and a need for integration. He or she may well feel humility, but it arises not out of a sense of worthlessness but rather out of awe and reverence.
The gradual process of integrating religious experiences is often assisted by participation in supportive communities. It is here that one may value belonging to a church, temple, synagogue, mosque, or group of some kind where one can speak of one’s insights, hear about those of others, and unite in practical applications that may effect social and cultural change. Along with such social involvement, many may find instruction in and the committed practice of meditative disciplines significantly helpful. Within community life, one may also learn a language with which to express the insights that have occurred and may find it easier to adjust to changing patterns of attitudes and behavior. Those who have struggled with addictions may especially value participation in Alcoholic, Narcotic, or Overeaters Anonymous fellowships. If more churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, and sanghas offered support and study groups for those who had experienced profound alternate states of consciousness, whether engendered by entheogen use or occurring in other ways, the number of people responding could be surprising.
For some, the process of integration may be aided by a period of counseling, psychotherapy, or spiritual direction. When this occurs, it need not be assumed that one was damaged by a psychedelic experience and thus requires treatment or spiritual support to return to a prior baseline condition. Rather, especially when people uncover traumatic memories, often of physical, verbal, or sexual abuse, that have been sealed away within their minds, interaction with a skilled therapist may prove very helpful in assimilating those memories into the overall functioning of the mind, thereby decreasing chronic anxiety and depression and facilitating the establishment of a more mature, better-integrated identity. Such treatment or disciplined interpersonal interaction may prove to be hard work, but the rewards can be significantly meaningful.