Footnotes

Introduction

1. Unbeknownst to most people at that time, for a decade LSD had been the subject of clandestine research at Harvard and elsewhere in the United States. Now it is known that the CIA surreptitiously sponsored—through the Geschickter Foundation and the Human Ecology Fund—studies of the psychotomimetic (psychosis-mimicking) effects of LSD and other psychedelic drugs at Boston Psychopathic Hospital. In these studies Harvard students—including undergraduates—and other volunteers were given LSD to cause a temporary insanity. “The point was to make people crazy,” said Philip Slater, who worked on that project in 1952. “Yet despite the forbidding setting and conceptualization of the experience, most of us found it rewarding and often transcendent.” The United States Government embarked upon many such attempts to plumb the debilitating capacities of psychedelics, to control the mind and derange it, which they thought would be desirable for chemical warfare and espionage. These cruel and bizarre studies are carefully reported in Acid Dreams, by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain.

Tim Leary: A Personal Appraisal

1. Although with not one casualty.

2. In 1973 Leary wrote several books while in the Folsom prison maximum security. Whereas Neurologic is a major statement in the realm of mind evolution, Terra II, which promotes space migration, seemed at the time to be an extension of his fantasy to get out of jail. Later Tim mentioned that Carl Sagan had visited him in jail to talk about interstellar travel. Now it seems that NASA is seriously considering the Gerald O’Neil proposal (see The CoEvolution Quarterly, fall 1975, pages 4–28) for a space station. Tim, as usual, is so far ahead of his time that few can follow the extensive range of his thought.

—Jean Mayo

Declaration of Independence for Dr. Timothy Leary

1. It should be noted especially that Dr. Leary was on trial not for his opinions on LSD but for common possession of such a small amount of marijuana that contemporary U.S. punishment for middle-class offense of this kind is more often than not equivalent to the fine for motor traffic violation.

2. As it was termed by the New York Academy of Medicine report on drug addiction, Bulletin of The New York Academy of Medicine, July, 1963, Vol. 39, No. 7, p. 432.

From Harvard to Zihuatanejo

1. Timothy Leary, High Priest (New York: New American Library, 1968; Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, 1995).

2. R. Gordon Wasson, The Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980). In this book, Wasson points out that the accepted translation “flesh of the gods” is incorrect and served the clergy’s accusations of blasphemy against the mushroom cult. “Teonanácatl means divine or wondrous or awesome mushroom, nothing more and nothing less” (p. 44).

3. Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Madison Presnell, Gunther Weil, Ralph Schwitzgebel, and Sara Kinne, “A New Behavior Change Program Using Psilocybin,” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice 2(2), 1965, 61–72. For Leary’s account, see High Priest, 191–211. See also: Rick Doblin, “Dr. Leary’s Concord “Prison Experiment: A 34-year Follow-Up Study,” and Ralph Metzner, “Reflections on the Concord Prison Project and the Follow-Up Study,” both in a forthcoming special issue of Hallucinogen: The Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.

4. Timothy Leary, George Litwin, and Ralph Metzner, “Reactions to Psilocybin Administered in a Supportive Environment,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 137(6), 1963, 561–73.

5. Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion (New York: Grove Press, 1985).

6. Heinrich Klüver, Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucinations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966); Ronald K. Siegel, Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise. (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1989).

7. Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (New York: Basic Books, 1979).

8. Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987).

9. Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax, The Human Encounter with Death (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977).

10. Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1964); Timothy Leary, Psychedelic Prayers: Adapted from the Tao Te Ching (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1966; Rev. ed. Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, 1997); R. Gordon Wasson, Carl Ruck, and Albert Hofmann, The Road to Eleusis (Los Angeles: Hermes Press, 1998). See also the recent collection of essays edited by Robert Forte, Entheogens and the Future of Religion (San Francisco, CA: Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997).

11. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, “The Politics of Consciousness Expansion,” Harvard Review 1(4), 1963, 33–37.

12. Timothy Leary, High Priest, 264–79.

13. See High Priest, 233–61; also the autobiographical The Man Who Turned On the World by Michael Hollingshead (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1973).

14. Walter Pahnke and William Richards, “Implications of LSD and Experimental Mysticism,” Journal of Religion and Health, 5(3) 1966. Also, Rick Doblin, “Pahnke’s Good Friday Experiment: A Long-Term Follow-Up and Methodological Critique,” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 23(1), 1991, 1–28.

15. Ralph Metzner, “Molecular Mysticism: The Role of Psychoactive Substances in Shamanic Transformations of Consciousness,” Shaman’s Drum 12, spring 1988. Also in: C. Rätsch, ed., The Gateway to Inner Space (Avery Publishing, 1989).

16. Joseph J. Downing, “Zihuatanejo: An Experiment in Transpersonative Living,” in Richard Blum and Associates, eds. Utopiates: The Use and Users of LSD-25 (New York: Atherton Press, 1964).

17. In part, the Millbrook story has been told in some of Leary’s later books: What Does Woman Want? (Los Angeles: 88 Press, 1977); Neuropolitics (Los Angeles: Peace Press, 1977); and Flashbacks (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1983). See also the whimsical memoir Millbrook, by Art Kleps (San Francisco: Bench Press, 1977).

18. Ralph Metzner, Introduction to Psychedelic Prayers, 20.

Euphorion Returned

1. This piece was first written in 1995—ed.

The Unreachable Stars

1. Since the above was written Tim has died. According to a film called Timothy Leary Is Dead, his head was preserved. According to all other reports, Tim changed his mind and did not have his head preserved. I don’t know. But a month after his death, I received the following e-mail:

Dear Robert,

How are you doing? I’m doing fine over here, but it’s not what I expected. Too crowded.

Love,

Timothy