timothy leary's topics - tribe.net

Orphan Works Bill: Gov. Geared To Exploit Artists!

2008-09-29T04:19:32Z

Imagine a world where the things you made belonged not to you, but to someone else - unless you paid for the right to own them first. Under the Orphan Works Bill, anyone who produces a creative work would have to pay exorbitant sums of money for the simple act of creating art and for the continued ownership of their art through unending copyright registry fees.

This is what the Orphan Works Bill proposes: the bill proposes that as soon as any work of art is created, it would be required to be registered for a moderately high fee with ALL of SEVERAL copyright houses and entered into a giant database. Anyone who does not do this would risk any creation being taken and sold by someone else, and that would be legal because ALL UNREGISTERED WORK would be considered ORPHANED. This includes such simple things as family photos - if posted on the Internet and not registered with a copyright database, your photo album could be used in a series of ads by a major corporation for their latest campaign - and: 1) there would be nothing you could legally do to stop it, because 2) they could legally own your art just by registering it first, and 3) they wouldn't give you a dime. The only way you would regain control of your art is if the previous owner of the copyright allows it to lapse, thereby providing you the opportunity to purchase it.

The OWB extends to all the arts: illustration, photography, computer, mixed media, jewelry, ceramics, acting, performance art, singing, song writing, sculpting, costuming, etc., ad nauseam. It requires the constant registering of any artwork, over and over, ad nauseam; otherwise, your work *could* be used and sold by the government - which will own and run the giant registration companies and databases - for profit. And there is nothing you *would* be able to do about it - ever.

This adds up to a lot of money very quickly - for those who make art and register it, and for those who stand to profit from unregistered art. And not only that, but remember that the copyrights must constantly be renewed as proposed by this bill. Dare I say it? The Orphan Works Bill seeks to totally disempower any creative process in the entire United States of America.

Excerpt from The Illustrators' Partnership Orphan Works Blog, dated September 23, 2008:

Is it wise to concentrate our nations’ copyright wealth in the hands of a few corporate databases? With the meltdown on Wall Street, this might be a good time to ask Congress that question.

The Orphan Works bill would pressure copyright holders to subsidize the start ups of giant commercial databases. The contents of these databases would be more valuable than secure banking information. Yet who can watch the ongoing failure of investment banks that were “too big to fail’ without asking why government should want to create these privately owned image banks on the backs of small business owners who neither want nor need them. Here are some of the questions we’ve raised before about this bad legislative scheme:

• Who’s to be trusted with these databases?
• Who’s to manage them and in whose best interests?
• What happens when a database is hacked?
• What happens when one fails?
• What happens when one is acquired?
• What happens when the terms of service are changed?
• What happens when registration fees become prohibitive?
• What happens when maintenance fees are piled on?
• What happens when exorbitant commissions are imposed?
• What happens to artists who can’t afford to register?
• What happens when registered artists can’t afford to maintain their registrations?
• Will artists have to register their immense bodies of work in competing registries?
• What happens to your business when your clients start calling the databases, not you, to clear rights to your work?
• Why should small business owners be forced to entrust their business information to outside business interests?

Don't delay! Read the latest updates and archives on the Orphan Works Bill at The Illustrators' Partnership Orphan Works Blog found at: ipaorphanworks.blogspot.com/ - and inform yourself. Take it one step further and write to Congress using their handy link to do just that! The more people that know about and speak out against this Bill, the more Congress and your representatives will hear the people's voice and be moved to act in our interest. Our interest is presumably what got them into office, so presumably it is what keeps them there as well. Let them know what you think of the Orphan Works Bill!

If you have never written to Congress, it is easy! Short, one-page letters are highly recommended. See this helpful and simple to follow article on writing guidelines from about.com: usgovinfo.about.com/library/...0199.htm. Another article at itfs.org/webnow/licens...o_congress.htm provides a fast look-up for all your representatives addresses, and suggests that posted letters are much more likely to be recieve attention than emails - as do the guidelines at the United Nations Association of the United States of America (www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp).

***

To put the notion of the Orphan Works Bill into a perspective that has immediate relevance to lots of people on tribe, I'll ask you this: What would Etsy buyers - and more especially sellers - do if this bill was to pass?

Most artists can just afford supplies and a little self-promotion time - let alone registering EVERY SINGLE ITEM of their creation with SEVERAL copyright institutions.

Own your art!

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Tim Leary & the Pink Power Pills / Gain Ground

2008-09-28T11:02:18Z

Tim Leary & the Pink Power Pills / Gain Ground

by a friend of mine, who remains Anon.

TIM LEARY AND THE PINK POWER PILLS

A Friendly Account of an Infamous Year at Harvard

In September 1960 I was a young poet newly arrived in Boston with my wife who had a fellowship to Harvard. I quickly lucked into a job one night a week as the attendant at the desk of the poetry room at the Harvard library, and I got free-lance editing work at a good publishing house, Beacon Press. I called my friend Ben, a savvy mentor who lived in Berkeley, California. Ben said he was suffering in Berkeley but he had two friends who had just arrived at Harvard, Tim Leary and Frank Barron, and Tim had a big house in Brighton. Ben said that Tim might invite Ben to stay in the large house. Ben said that Tim and Frank were transpersonal psychologists from the psychology department at Cal Berkeley that were experimenting with a powerful new drug at Harvard. Ben gave me Tim's phone number. I called and found that Tim did think highly of Ben. Tim said that if I got Ben an airplane ticket to Boston, he could stay in Tim's house and maybe help with the drug experimentation. I was glad I was able to help Ben fly into new horizons, where I myself had just landed.

Within two days Frank Barron drove over to the apartment where Ann Rower and I lived on Beacon Hill, to visit a little and then to go to the airport to pick up Ben. Frank's wife Dell was with him, a tall beauty Frank had met when she was a show girl in Las Vagas who came from a family steeped in academic anthropology. Frank was considered the world's foremost expert on creativity. He had interviewed T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and other prominent artists to study the creative experience (See Appendix: Frank Barron, by Michael Murphy).

Frank told me about a remarkable experience he had the night before with the drug they were trying to study. He described going head on into death and through it, remaining aware. I figured it could be an enlightenment experience or a drug high or both. As we discussed Frank's experience from the night before I was sitting in front of the live fireplace, working the flames. Something paranormal and silent happened between Frank and me and the flames. The trip was on.

On the way to the airport I learned that Tim had been shocked profoundly back in the spring when his wife committed suicide, leaving him with their two children, a 13 year old girl and a boy of 11. On the way from Cal Berkeley to Harvard that summer, Tim, his children, Frank, and Dell vacationed in Mexico, at a rented Villa, for a month, and there Tim and Frank ingested large amounts of the famed psilocybe mexicana mushroom and had breakthrough experiences. Tim began to write a lyrical novel (which he once showed me).

Then, by a golden stroke of history, they learned that Sandos Pharmaceuticals had just synthesized the agents in the psilocybe mushroom into a pink, sugarcoated pill, bound to have a powerful effect on the mind.

Tim took to the phone and locked a deal with Sandos to be given a large stock of the drug to experiment with at Harvard. Sandos was so happy. Tim and Frank were rocking. They arrived at Harvard in early September and cases of power pills arrived quickly thereafter, about 2 weeks before I met them.

We got Ben at the airport and drove to Tim's big house in a Boston suburb, and there I met Tim. The scene had been designed by central casting with consummate genius. We went into a very large and comfortable living room. Ann and I sat on a couch near Tim and Frank. On a round table in front of us was nothing but a plastic drug container filled with small pink magic pills. On a couch across from us lay a human being, seemingly holding himself stretched out in tension, his arms at his sides. "Who's that?" I asked Tim. "That's the chairman of the Harvard psychology department," said Tim. "He's having a bad trip."

I had opened the container and spread out some of its hundred pink pills that felt like a potent psychotropic agent, used by shaman and seers of Mexico to access super-reality. The mushroom is called the Flesh of God, I was told. I asked Tim how many pills the guy took who was laying there fighting the experience. Tim said that was 2 pills. I asked Frank how many pills he had taken the night before to experience death and awareness. Frank said two. Without hesitating I took 12. Tim and Frank were amazed. Ann took two pills. I was sitting cross-legged on the couch, and there I stayed for hours, unmoving. Ann sometimes sat beside me, sometimes hung with Tim, Frank, and Dell. Across from me the professor laid out flat, tense and unmoving, for hours, and I sat cross-legged on the couch, hour after hour, silent, smiling, in open awareness, and having a very good time.

From time to time Tim or Frank would gently come up to me with clipboards, pens, and paper, seeking reports. I smiled at them knowingly, remaining silent. Finally, after several hours, the young poet spoke. I said something like I'd been experiencing the understanding beyond understanding. Ann also had a good trip on her 2 pills. Tim and Frank and Ben all seemed happy with Ann and me. We had done well on the superdrug.

At my request, Tim gave me a plastic container of 100 of the pink power pills to take home with me to experiment with. Score that for poetry. Can't beat that as a first meeting with Tim. I smoked marijuana, and was hip to other traditional drugs, but these pink pills took drug taking into new ground. Tim and I were to become friends, and that house had many memorable gatherings that storied year.

About 7 days later I had my first scheduled session to be attendant at the desk in the Harvard poetry library. I ate six pink pills, took a big stash of paper and a few pens, kissed Ann goodbye, and went off to work, through public transit to Cambridge, confident that I could extend the English language, right there in the hall of poetry at Harvard, on my very first night on the job.

The drug hit just about as I started up the steps into the library. Someone who worked there showed me the desk I had to sit at. I sat down and assumed command. No one bothered me for the 6 hours of my shift, and I wrote 55 pages of excited poetry, getting innuendo and overtone in the lyrical flow, finally feeling free as a poet. The language had been chemically liberated, but the drug felt like a timely tool of human development. That was indeed a memorable night.

To add to the generally charming scene Ann and I had landed in, Frank decided that I was "one of the two or three best poets alive." This stroked my ego big time. I was somehow relieved of my duties at the Harvard library poetry room after the one great session. But I continued to work on good books for Beacon Press and take six pink pills once a week to plunge into the untapped potential of English poetry. Or so it seemed on the joyride.

Frank showed my poetry to Charles Olson and Allen Ginsberg, who were among many people attracted to the powerful drug. One night Tim called me and asked for my help. He said that he'd brought William Boroughs to America, to his house, to help promote the use of drugs in society, but Tim had some big tasks and needed someone to pal with William in the house while he went to his office at Harvard. William at that time was my favorite new writer. I had read Naked Lunch twice. Being asked to take care of William for a while was as much fun as being given the Harvard poetry room to write in.

William had been a heroin junky and was generally nervous, and double nervous about being back in America after decades of living in Morocco. He experienced America as a police state and was in serious need of drugs to calm down. Unfortunately Tim only had the pink psychotropic pills, two of which had almost killed William when he arrived the night before. What William needed was some good marijuana, but we didn't have any. Tim left, and William, Ann, and I were alone. In a back room I found some dried psilocybe mushrooms and shredded some which rolled nicely into fat joints which we smoked with a mild result.

William calmed down and since he liked young men, and liked Ann, we mellowed into a peaceful place, under clouds of smoke in a back room in Tim's house, getting into some free exchanges. Suddenly there was a loud knock and call at the door to the room we were in. I rose and opened the door. Two big Boston policemen were standing there. William froze. I jumped at the cops demanding to know what they were doing in the house without being invited.

I was aggressive, They were at fault and went on the defensive. The room stank of herbal smoke. I moved at them through the doorway, blocking them and sending them backwards. They were on their heels muttering about looking for two little girls in nightshirts from a slumber party next door.

"What!?" I said with a raised voice, moving them out the back door with my energy. "You walk in this house uninvited looking for little girls in pajamas?! They're not here but we'll help you look". William was delighted. We walked across the yard helping the cops seek the girls, for about two minutes. Then Tim returned with a big dinner, happy to see William smiling and for the moment at ease in America.

Throughout the year I continued to frequent Tim's house. I knew of his work in the prison system, including his tragic first effort in which two of the 6 inmates who participated committed suicide. Various applications were explored. Later in the year LSD entered the scene. There were visits by Alan Watts and Arthur Koestler. I somehow never connected with Richard Alpert (Ram Das), who had been Tim's teaching assistant, but I was well-connected with both Tim and Frank. Once Tim and I took mescaline together, sitting by ourselves in a room for hours. That was a mostly nonverbal session, but we pulsed together at that time like we were experiencing an acceleration of history and awareness.

The year ended with a crash for me. I was having one of my 6 pill poetry generation sessions, which had been fruitful and unproblematic on a once a week schedule. This time just minutes into the power ride something went wrong. I began to see only mutilated bodies, hellish disasters, twisting my mind. I told Ann I was having a bad trip and I was going out to walk it off. I walked along the Charles River, for hours, in a state of profound paranoia and horror, yet able to walk through it. Finally most of the drug effect wore off, but for 10 days or so I was beset by paranoia, and even if I didn't react to it the state was debilitating.

I went to see Tim. Alan Watts was there. Ideal, right? I had a chance to talk to them both about the downside of the drug experience. The downside was the opposite of liberation. It was self-inflicted sickness. Neither Tim nor Alan was of any help whatsoever. That's where it ended. I recovered and went on. I never saw Tim again, but his story is well known. What happened to me?

48 years later I see that my work in language became work in medicine, evolving a language of medical and childbirth methods. As an integral part of the process I devoted myself to Tibetan doctors and meditation teachers for 20 years, 1970-90. I slowly took my work in language into the fields of mind/body and energy medicine, in the paradigm shift. I've produced meditation programs for cancer care and HIV-AIDS care.

Samples of my work in the years following the 1960 events:

GAIN GROUND, 1967-68

In 1967 I was an art gallery director and art critic in New York, and because I was full of my need to have a new kind of gallery exhibition space for the use of language in three and four dimensional contexts, using various kinds of technology, in April, 1967 I opened Gain Ground, the first of what were later celebrated as the non-objective art galleries.

The initial exhibition showed more than 50 unique works by poets, including the first artwork books, works of mirror and words, language and color, language and light, and more.

A month later I followed with an eight-chambered magic theater called Rooms with Electric Mirrors. You entered through silver satin curtains in the gallery door into the first chamber, the Magic Well. Before you was a round lucite table with a mirror center. Above and below the mirror on the lucite were the words

LOOKING DOWN INTO THE MAGIC WELL

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY WILD IMAGES IN THE FACE

You approached the table edge and looked down into the mirror, and as you bent over the face in the mirror came up to you, from below, alive with species implications. You could see your ancestors and new faces as fast as you could see.

You exited out the back of that chamber into a room of 7 glimmering silver satin chambers. Most people next entered the chamber to the immediate left. And there you were, well-lighted and framed raw in a live photograph machine consisting of a full-length mirror with words. The words were captions that caught your image:

LOOK WHO'S ALIVE

SEE WHO MOVES

The words alive and move worked with your live image to make you the dramatic subject of a work of pictorial art. And there were 6 other live photograph chambers in which you were the dynamic subject.

In 1968 I produced another Gain Ground show reversing the subject-object relationship to get something alive in a work of art: Power Throne. The exhibition consisted of a series of rooms presenting heart sound. When it was your turn, an attendant guided you to the inner chamber and parted the curtains for you to enter a red fabric throne room. Two priestesses in red dresses came to you graciously to seat you in the power throne. The throne itself was a transformed dentist's chair, with racks of electronic equipment behind it. A red velvet sash was placed across your chest and your hands were placed one over the other over your heart. What you didn't know was that you were holding a very fine electronic stethoscope over your heart, and concealed behind the throne was the technology called harmonic compression, developed by Bell Labs, that would help you hear in a new way.

After you were seated, microphoned, and relaxed, the priestesses disappeared behind you to work the equipment carefully. In the first phase you heard your heart coming from 4 speakers in the walls of the chamber, with more information audible in the heart sound than anyone had ever heard. The sound system was engineered by Phillips Electronics and Norman Dolff of Columbia Records. There was an immediately perceptible feedback field. Far faster than thought, mind affected heart. Then the priestesses placed a pair of fine hi-tec head phones over your ears and you heard the full expression of your heart in your brain.
Then into electronic mix with your heart sound came a voice in harmonic compression, twice the speed as normal speech but with the same pitch as normal speech, so you hear twice as fast. And the words you hear are about what is beating in your heart.

YOU WON'T KNOW WHAT THE BLOODHEART IN YOU IS FROM MEDICAL

DEFINITIONS OF THE HEART, BUT THE DIAGRAMS OF ITS ELECTRIC

TISSUE WORKS ARE GOOD TO HAVE. THE ELECTRIC MECHANICS OF

THE POWERFUL ORGAN ARE HOT INTANGIBLE, BUT IF SOMETHING

GOES WRONG THERE THE WHOLE BODY OF LIFE HAS THE PAIN.

WHO KNOWS WHAT'S WORKING MIRACLES RED ALL LIVE IN YOU.

WHAT RUNS YOUR ORGANS GLEAMING WITH WHAT THEY DO.

WHO KNOWS WHAT ELECTRIC LIQUIDS CREATE IN YOUR HEAD.

THE UNIVERSE IS EMPTY WITH WHATEVER BEAT YOU HAVE.

HOW SHOULD YOU KNOW THE SPEED OF YOUR FLESH IN ITS ACTION.

IS IT REALLY BEST TO NOT KNOW YOUR ELECTRIC RUSH.

HAVE YOU EVER FELT YOUR HEART VIBRATE SUPERNATURAL TISSUES.

OR DO YOU ONLY FEEL YOUR HEART WHEN YOU'RE FRIGHTENED.

OR WHEN YOU MAY BE A LITTLE WORRIED YOU'VE OVERPUMPED IT.

OR AREN'T YOU THE ONE WHO'S PUMPING YOUR INCREDIBLE FLESH.

YOU MUST BE THE ONE WHO'S ALIVE IN YOUR HEART IN THE THROBBING,

OR AREN'T YOU BEING WORKED IN THE HEART YOU HAVE.

YOUR HEART IS SO RICH WITH BLOOD YOU MAY BE ALL LOVE IN IT,

NO MATTER WHAT YOUR GENES ARE DESIGNED TO BEAR.

THE BLOODFLESH OF YOU MAKES ITS CORONARY MAJESTY,

SO WHATEVER YOU CAN CATCH YOUR HEART WITH YOU BETTER GET.

DON'T HOPE THAT SLEEP WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE SOMETHING ELSE.

THE HEART BEATING IN YOU CAN GO EVEN FASTER IN SLEEP.

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Creative People

Frank Barron - In Memory

By Michael Murphy

Frank Barron, the internationally known UC Berkeley scholar, psychologist, and beloved Esalen teacher, whose work exploring the creative mind influenced a generation of researchers, has died. But for all of us who knew and loved him here at Esalen, his legend and spirit will live on.

As an emeritus professor at UC Santa Cruz, Frank shone as a scholar who blended the scientific study of personality with the more subtle and thus less readily quantifiable insights of philosophy, religion, spirituality, and the arts. It was this unique ability to see connections between what others might see as diverse subjects, thus creating new integral fields of exploration, that made him a force and a leader in psychology and at Esalen.

His intensive studies of highly creative people during the 1950s and 1960s at the Institute for Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR) at UC Berkeley made him famous. In these studies, highly creative thinkers in numerous fields including architects, research scientists, mathematicians, and such writers as Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, and Jessamyn West, all ranked by their peers for originality, were brought to IPAR for several days of rigorous interviews and comprehensive psychological testing.

Frank [Barron] once described the highly creative person as "both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner than the average person." In their studies, he and his colleagues found that the most highly creative participants appeared highly neurotic on personality tests but also showed high levels of ego-strength that allowed them to direct their pathology into their work. They also tended to resist conformity and proved to be more willing than others to take risks. Frank believed that important
creative advances require a high endurance of disorder and a predilection for complexity, working in concert with the ability to distill order from chaos.

Many of us who knew and loved him acknowledge that his personal style reflected many of these qualities. One of his friends from IPAR described Frank as someone who "worked in a way that might seem, if you hadn't followed it for very long, to be casual and without focus. But after a few years, it became clear (to me) that there was an inner compass that guided him, and continued to guide him for all of his life."

He once said in a discussion about his work: "Creativity requires taking what [Albert] Einstein called 'a leap into the unknown.' This can mean putting your beliefs, reputation, and resources on the line as you suffer the slings and arrows of ridicule."
Two of his books, Creativity and Psychological Health (1963) and Creativity and Personal Freedom (1968), are considered classics in the field, and the Barron Ego-Strength Scale and several other personality tests he designed are still in use.

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New series on YouTube about Timothy Leary

2008-07-14T20:49:32Z

Dear friends,
This is the first in a series of videoclips by Joanna Harcourt-Smith, in her own words, about her relationship with Timothy Leary:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=giKrvSD_12o

Watch and wink ; )

Jose Luis G. Soler

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The 8 Circuit Brain Model, Part 1 - Conversations with Antero Alli

2008-05-22T19:02:49Z

This group might be interested in these series of podcasts with Antero Alli on the 8 Circuit brain being published by the Radical Change Group at www.radicalchangegroup.com

#35 The 8 Circuit Brain Model, Part 1 - Conversations with Antero Alli
http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/blog/2008/05/18/35-the-8-circuit-brain-model-part-1-conversations-with-antero-alli/.

Released: May 18th, 2008
Recorded: September 28, 2007
OOOOO (2 votes)

icon for podpress 8 circuit brain model 1 [43:24m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download (417)

Antero AlliToday we are starting an exciting new series of conversations with an author, a ritualist, a film maker, a dramatist, and astrologer, and a theater director Antero Alli. These series of conversations are near and dear both to our hearts, and to the work that Antero does.

This series of conversations (3 so far to be published every week starting now) is on the topic called the 8 Circuit Brain model. It is something that Timothy Leary first brought into the western consciousness, and later Robert Anton Wilson in his book Prometheus Rising gave it a more wide spread appeal. It was further developed by Antero in his book “Angel Tech”

This conversation covers the following topics:

* History and introduction to the 8-circuit brain model
* Absorb, Integrate, Transmit: Intelligence Increase
* Embracing humility, flaws & paradox on the human journey
* Circuit 1: Bio-Survival intelligence
* Circuit 2: Emotional-Territorial intelligence
* Direct experience
* Meeting the needs of the second circuit

two more podcasts to come, over the next two sundays

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Albert Hofmann, father of drug LSD, dies in Switzerland

2008-05-13T14:46:58Z

Albert Hofmann, the father of the mind-altering drug LSD whose medical discovery inspired — and arguably corrupted — millions in the 1960s hippie generation, has died. He was 102.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hNDRiP53gl6YPZEcojTe2sK6ERWwD90C9KS80

posted in timothy leary - 5 replies

Joanna Harcourt-Smith

2008-05-01T18:29:12Z

Aside from the reputation from Leary insiders, and her interview at Pop occulture blog, and of course her collaboration at the Meta-History site, I have yet to formulate a full opinion on her role in Tim Leary's life. She strikes me as an Illuminati agent of influence, probably mind controlled at the time. I wonder if she still is an agent of influence? Comments?

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I am Joanna Hearcourt Smith Leary and I deserve it !

2008-05-01T18:23:56Z

Dear Friends of Timothy,
I was Timothy Leary's love and friend during his years in the State of California and the Federal prison system. I am proud and honored to have had the opportunity to work tirelessly for his relief and release from prison. Timothy was locked up in solitary confinement for almost 2 years in the cruelest prisons of the American Gulag for possession of a mere 00.1 grammes of weed. He and I, as his common law wife, were ridiculed and harassed by the powers that controlled his freedom.
I did everything I could to get him out of this intolerable situation. His life was in danger and I was constantly followed, wire taped and threatened by US Marshals and federal agents of many agencies. Frankly I would have done anything to save his life and I am deeply moved to have loved and cared for this man as much. To me he was not a symbol of my generation but the love of my life who was being tortured. I did what ever he asked me to do to get him out of this infierno. I am not now nor have I never been on the side of the right wing government perpetrators.
I have dedicated my life to being part of the solution to enslavement of any kind and I will die doing just that.
If you want to know more about my story please read my autobiography published on http://www.metahistory.org/Paramour/ParamourCH1.php
Also you can see and hear my work on http://www.futureprimitive.org/GAIAlogues.html#latest
Let's live and love and laugh together on this winding road to freedom,
Joanna

posted in timothy leary - 2 replies

8-Circuit Brain online course starts March 3rd

2008-03-15T09:28:54Z

I have been working with the 8-Circuit Brain model for intelligence increase since 1980 and a couple years ago, I started teaching an ONLINE course in this process. It's based on my 1987 book, ANGEL TECH (New Falcon, 1987) which Tim Leary graciously endorsed. The next version of my 8-week intensive course starts March 3rd.

This is a hands-on experiential approach that emphasizes safe activation of the circuits in real time through meditations, rituals, exercises, tasks and writing down the results in your lab book. A "circuit" is a term for a specific level of consciousness with its own function of intelligence. The eight "circuits", or functions of intelligence" are: Physical, Emotional, Intellectual, Social, Somatic, Psychic, Mytho-poetic, and Quantum.

The course introduces all new material previously unpublished in Angel Tech using private web pages designed especially for this course. Includes ongoing one-to-one feedback with myself plus interactive group forums at Maybe Logic Academy where the course is presented. If anyone has any questions or comments about this course, feel free to air them here or e-mail me at my profile page.

Course Prospectus
http://www.maybelogic.org/anteroprospectus.htm

Enrollment
http://www.maybelogic.org/academy.htm

Bio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antero_Alli

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Entheogens and the Planetary Shift

2008-02-11T23:00:29Z

Hi, friends,
I hope you enjoy..
I'm disseminating this fascinating conversation with psychologist, writer and researcher Dr Ralph Metzner. This is an candid and deep exchange of ideas about the past and the possible future, a historical document that speaks about the birth of LSD research at Harvard and beyond....
http://www.futureprimitive.org/GAIAlogues.html#latest

Warm regards,
Zorro

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Taoist Cauldrons as 8 Circuit Brain Analogs

2007-11-06T18:42:17Z

The 8 Circuit Brain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Circuit_Model_of_Consciousness

The Tryptophan--> Pinoline--> 5-MeO-DMT Cycle: Upper Cauldrons/Third Eye as Cicuits 7 & 8 (?): A Practical How To Guide
http://tribes.tribe.net/8-circuitbrain/thread/2acf5702-788d-491f-bc29-3c59d29715b8

http://www.universal-tao.com/dark_room/DarkRoom.pdf

Maximum Pineal Activation (Gravitational Fields)

http://www.universal-tao.com/dark_room/maximal.html

Glandular Steaming and Polar Reversal

http://www.universal-tao.com/article/kan&li.html

The Opening of the Crystal Palace (all with Illustrations)

http://www.universal-tao.com/dark_room/DarkRoomIntro.pdf

The House of the Rising Yang and the Muddy Pill

http://www.universal-tao.com/dark_room/DarkRoomTaoist.pdf

http://www.universal-tao.com/dark_room/index.html

"Heart Brain" as Circuit 6 (?) == Middle Cauldron
http://tribes.tribe.net/8-circuitbrain/thread/f87caf05-f559-4fbd-aa79-0113fdfb6840

http://www.heartmath.org/research/our-heart-brain.html

BioFields and Bliss

http://books.google.com/books?id=cKgPYsw67GwC&pg=PA105&dq=mantak+chia&as_brr=3&sig=ctjcS_Ow01csJm2BQGSc6KZ4NOI#PPP1,M1

Belly Brain as Circuit 5 (?) Taoist Lower Cauldron (Institute of Noetic Sciences)
http://tribes.tribe.net/8-circuitbrain/thread/4c46de89-4e5e-4ca0-a535-0fb5b8b68928

http://www.reflexologyinstitute.com/clinic_research1.php

http://www.kheper.net/topics/intelligence/MacLean.htm

http://www.wie.org/j25/gowygut.asp

"The Second Brain" (and the Enteric Nervous System)

http://books.google.com/books?id=AFTgHAAACAAJ&dq=the+second+brain

"Brain Circuits and Functions of the Mind"

by Nobel Prize recipient Roger Sperry.

http://books.google.com/books?id=NLM9_58fg0QC&pg=PA54&dq=belly+brain&sig=BO6PzL6ab-gSwFsOhcX_8jxn534#PPR6,M1

Bardo Thodol as Inter-Planetary Magnetic Fields
http://tribes.tribe.net/8-circuitbrain/thread/0cd29030-31cd-4d9a-aab6-496b7f4f7986

this excerpt is from mountain tao systems in china-thailand more than kalichakric tibetan-indian, but same general root ( i think)

from: "Cosmic Healing II" , at universaltao.com from Mantak Chia:

the solar system is an energy structure with nine major awareness belts, planets are materialized form of belts

each belt has unique frequencies and qualities.. the soul remains strongly connected to the sun.. two clearly distinguished forms of soul are discussed:

1) sun related cloud soul of hun
2) moon related white soul po

po half comes into being at birth, preceding emergence of hun

soul starts incarnation process by moving through world of stars attracted by solar system where sun acts as a giant satellite station between the world of stars and planets

karmic information carried by soul determines how long it will remain in different planets' frequencies.. these frequencies affecting our learning possibilities and distinctive character qualities

during this incarnation the soul moves from un-manifested world through the star world, external planets, internal planets, and moon earth sphere.. an electro-plasmic force of humanity around the earth functions as an awareness belt connecting the soul with life on earth

later info covers five star palaces and five cranial bones and the opening of the crystal room to star frequencies

***************************************************************************************************************************************************

so it's one thing to say, another to have subjective experience, and another to externalize as objective proof and technology...

but I think the point here (for anyone who cares to read), is this:

if birds can sense the planet's magnetic field and poles as well as each other in flight to coordinate and migrate vast distances via the metal in their pineal glands/root eye/third eyes also visible on any iguanas forehead

and the bardo thodol is thought to be systematic solar planetary magnetic fields..

then you are left with the idea of a human telepathic mental field where souls are essentially higher frequency light structures... whose dimension is attune-able to by humans in the same sense as the earths field is to aviaries..

or in other words souls are postulated as, at a minimum, interplanetary magnetic denizens whose field is attuneable

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

ANGEL TECH tribe forming

2007-06-18T19:42:32Z

I am starting a new tribe dedicated to the continuing education of the 8-Circuit Brain theory as developed by Timothy Leary ("Info-Psychology"), Robert Anton Wilson ("Prometheus Rising") and myself, Antero Alli ("Angel Tech"). As moderator, I will assist members towards a deeper personal understanding and application of the 8-Circuit Brain model to real life circumstances, rather than any pursuit of speculation, cross-referencing with other systems and over-thinking in general. ANGEL TECH will also host past, present and future students enrolled in the 8-Circuit Brain course of study that i teach at Maybe Logic Academy (www.maybelogic.net).

ANGEL TECH will emphasize process over content, meaning, if you are just seeking more content for the sake of increasing information alone, you may be better off without this tribe. However, if you are excited or motivated by the possibility of participating in a more hands-on testing of the 8-Circuit Brain model beyond your armchair, I would like to dialogue with you (see link below)

-- Antero Alli
(aka sherpa)

http://tribes.tribe.net/karmamechanics

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

8-Circuit Brain online course starts May 21

2007-05-19T08:31:14Z

Starting May 21st, I will be teaching an 8-week course on The 8-Circuit Brain and its application towards intelligence increase. If you believe you are already intelligent enough, this course may be especially useful.

This highly interactive online course can be taken anywhere on the planet by anyone with a computer and web access. Those enrolled work at their own pace as weekly assignments are given. These assignments are primarily task-related processes of exercises, meditations, rituals to engage a more direct firsthand experience of these "circuits." Everybody keeps a "lab journal" to document the results of your own experiments.

I wil be on hand to offer one-on-one written feedback as well as participate on the easy-to-navigate group forums where you can share your work and dialogue with others. My book, "Angel Tech", will serve as the textbook for this course along with a series of private web pages I have designed especially for this course. The fee for this 8-week course is $135 (which I receive 40%; the remaining 60% goes to Maybe Logic Academy). This will be my third time teaching this course thanks to the positively encouraging response from students.

For those interested, here are the relevant links to get you started:

The 8-Circuit Brain, basic terms & definitions.
http://www.verticalpool.com/8circuitbrain1.html

Course Prospectus
http://www.maybelogic.org/anteroprospectus.htm

How this online course thing works
http://www.maybelogic.org/academy.htm

Enrollment procedures (PayPal or check)
https://www.deepleafproductions.com/deepleafcart/home.php

Feel free to e-mail me with any questions you might have about this course.

-Antero Alli
aka sherpa

posted in timothy leary - 5 replies

USING LSD TO IMPRINT THE TIBETAN-BUDDHIST EXPERIENCE

2007-05-19T06:16:41Z

Using LSD to Imprint the
Tibetan-Buddhist Experience
by Dr. Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

A Guide to Successful Psychedelic Experience

Planning a Session
Preparation
Some Practical Recommendations
The Setting
The Psychedelic Guide
The Period of Ego Loss or Non-Game Ecstasy
Having read this preparatory manual one can immediately recognize symptoms and experiences that might otherwise be terrifying, only because of lack of understanding. Recognition is the key word. Recognizing and locating the level of consciousness. This guidebook may also be used to avoid paranoid trips or to regain transcendence if it has been lost. If the experience starts with light, peace, mystic unity, understanding, and continues along this path, then there is no need to remember the manual or have it reread to you. Like a road map, consult it only when lost, or when you wish to change course.
Planning a Session

What is the goal? Classic Hinduism suggests four possibilities:
Increased personal power, intellectual understanding, sharpened insight into self and culture, improvement of life situation, accelerated learning, professional growth.
Duty, help of others, providing care, rehabilitation, rebirth for fellow men.
Fun, sensuous enjoyment, esthetic pleasure, interpersonal closeness, pure experience.
Trancendence, liberation from ego and space-time limits; attainment of mystical union.
The manual's primary emphasis on the last goal does not preclude other goals - in fact, it guarantees their attainment because illumination requires that the person be able to step out beyond problems of personality, role, and professional status. The initiate can decide beforehand to devote their psychedelic experience to any of the four goals.

In the extroverted transcendent experience, the self is ecstatically fused with external objects (e.g., flowers, other people). In the introverted state, the self is ecstatically fused with internal life processes (lights, energy waves, bodily events, biological forms, etc.). Either state may be negative rather than positive, depending on the voyager's set and setting. For the extroverted mystic experience, one would bring to the session candles, pictures, books, incense, music, or recorded passages to guide the awareness in the desired direction. An introverted experience requires eliminating all stimulation: no light, no sound, no smell, no movement.

The mode of communication with other participants should also be agreed on beforehand, to avoid misinterpretations during the heightened sensitivity of ego transcendence.

If several people are having a session together, they should at least be aware of each other's goals. Unexpected or undesired manipulations can easily "trap" the other voyagers into paranoid delusions.
Preparation

Psychedelic chemicals are not drugs in the usual sense of the word. There is no specific somatic or psychological reaction. The better the preparation, the more ecstatic and relevatory the session. In initial sessions with unprepared persons, set and setting - particularly the actions of others - are most important. Long-range set refers to personal history, enduring personality, the kind of person you are. Your fears, desires, conflicts, guilts, secret passions, determine how you interpret and manage any psychedelic session. Perhaps more important are the reflex mechanisms, defenses, protective maneuvers, typically employed when dealing with anxiety. Flexibility, basic trust, philosophic faith, human openness, courage, interpersonal warmth, creativity, allow for fun and easy learning. Rigidity, desire to control, distrust, cynicism, narrowness, cowardice, coldness, make any new situation threatening. Most important is insight. The person who has some understanding of his own machinery, who can recognize when he is not functioning as he would wish, is better able to adapt to any challenge - even the sudden collapse of his ego.

Immediate set refers to expections about the session itself. People naturally tend to impose personal and social perspectives on any new situation. For example, some ill-prepared subjects unconsciously impose a medical model on the experience. They look for symptoms, interpret each new sensation in terms of sickness/health, and, if anxiety develops, demand tranquilizers. Occasionally, ill-planned sessions end in the subject demanding to see a doctor.

Rebellion against convention may motivate some people who take the drug. The naive idea of doing something "far out" or vaguely naughty can cloud the experience.

LSD offers vast possibilities of accelerated learning and scientific- scholarly research, but for initial sessions, intellectual reactions can become traps. "Turn your mind off" is the best advice for novitiates. After you have learned how to move your consciousness around - into ego loss and back, at will - then intellectual exercises can be incorporated into the psychedelic experience. The objective is to free you from your verbal mind for as long as possible.

Religious expectations invite the same advice. Again, the subject in early sessions is best advised to float with the stream, stay "up" as long as possible, and postpone theological interpretations.

Recreational and esthetic expectations are natural. The psychedelic experience provides ecstatic moments that dwarf any personal or cultural game. Pure sensation can capture awareness. Interpersonal intimacy reaches Himalayan heights. Esthetic delights - musical, artistic, botanical, natural - are raised to the millionth power. But ego-game reactions - "I am having this ecstasy. How lucky I am!" - can prevent the subject from reaching pure ego loss.
Some Practical Recommendations

The subject should set aside at least three days: a day before the experience, the session day, and a follow-up day. This scheduling guarantees a reduction in external pressure and a more sober commitment. Talking to others who have taken the voyage is excellent preparation, although the hallucinatory quality of all descriptions should be recognized. Observing a session is another valuble preliminary.

Reading books about mystical experience and of others' experiences is another possibility (Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, and Gordon Wasson have written powerful accounts). Meditation is probably the best preparation. Those who have spent time in a solitary attempt to manage the mind, to eliminate thought and reach higher stages of concentration, are the best candidates for a psychedelic session. When the ego loss occurs, they recognize the process as an eagerly awaited end.
The Setting

First and most important, provide a setting removed from one's usual interpersonal games, and as free as possible from unforseen distractions and intrusions. The voyager should make sure that he will not be disturbed; visitors or a phone call will often jar him into hallucinatory activity. Trust in the surroundings and privacy are necessary.

The day after the session should be set aside to let the experience run its natural course and allow time for reflection and meditation. A too-hasty return to game involvements will blur the clarity and reduce the potential for learning. It is very useful for a group to stay together after the session to share and exchange experiences.

Many people are more comfortable in the evening, and consequently their experiences are deeper and richer. The person should choose the time of day that seems right. Later, he may wish to experience the difference between night and day sessions. Similarly, gardens, beaches, forests, and open country have specific influences that one may or may not wish. The essential thing is to feel as comfortable as possible, whether in one's living room or under the night sky. Familiar surroundings may help one feel confident in hallucinatory periods. If the session is held indoors, music, lighting, the availablility of food and drink, should be considered beforehand. Most people report no hunger during the height of the experience, then later on prefer simple ancient foods like bread, cheese, wine, and fresh fruit. The senses are wide open, and the taste and smell of a fresh orange are unforgetable.

In group sessions, people usually will not feel like walking or moving very much for long periods, and either beds or mattresses should be provided. One suggestion is to place the heads of the beds together to form a star pattern. Perhaps one may want to place a few beds together and keep one or two some distance apart for anyone who wishes to remain aside for some time. The availability of an extra room is desirable for someone who wishes to be in seclusion.
The Psychedelic Guide

With the cognitive mind suspended, the subject is in a heightened state of suggestibility. For initial sessions, the guide possesses enormous power to move consciousness with the slightest gesture or reaction.

The key here is the guide's ability to turn off his own ego and social games, power needs, and fears - to be there, relaxed, solid, accepting, secure, to sense all and do nothing except let the subject know his wise presence.

A psychedelic session lasts up to twelve hours and produces moments of intense, intense, INTENSE reactivity. The guide must never be bored, talkative, intellectualizing. He must remain calm during long periods of swirling mindlessness. He is the ground control, always there to receive messages and queries from high-flying aircraft, ready to help negotiate their course and reach their destination. The guide does not impose his own games on the voyager. Pilots who have their own flight plan, their own goals, are reassured to know that an expert is down there, available for help. But if ground control is harboring his own motives, manipulating the plane towards selfish goals, the bond of security and confidence crumbles.

To administer psychedelics without personal experience is unethical and dangerous. Our studies concluded that almost every negative LSD reaction has been caused by the guide's fear, which augmented the transient fear of the subject. When the guide acts to protect himself, he communicates his concern. If momentary discomfort or confusion happens, others present should not be sympathetic or show alarm but stay calm and restrain their "helping games." In particular, the "doctor" role should be avoided.

The guide must remain passively sensitive and intuitively relaxed for several hours - a difficult assignment for most Westerners. The most certain way to maintain a state of alert quietism, poised in ready flexability, is for the guide to take a low dose of the psychedelic with the subject. Routine procedure is to have one trained person participating in the experience, and one staff member present without psychedelic aid. The knowledge that one experienced guide is "up" and keeping the subject company is of inestimable value: the security of a trained pilot flying at your wingtip; the scuba diver's security in the presence of an expert companion.

The less experienced subject will more likely impose hallucinations. The guide, likely to be in a state of mindless, blissful flow, is then pulled into the subject's hallucinatory field and may have difficulty orienting himself. There are no familiar fixed landmarks, no place to put your foot, no solid concept upon which to base your thinking. All is flux. Decisive action by the subject can structure the guide's flow if he has taken a heavy dose.

The psychedelic guide is literally a neurological liberator, who provides illumination, who frees men from their lifelong internal bondage. To be present at the moment of awakening, to share the ecstatic revelation when the voyager discovers the wonder and awe of the divine life-process, far outstrips earthly game ambitions. Awe and gratitude - rather than pride - are the rewards of this new profession.
The Period of Ego Loss or Non-Game Ecstasy

Success implies very unusual preparation in consciousness expansion, as well as much calm, compassionate game playing (good karma) on the part of the participant. If the participant can see and grasp the idea of the empty mind as soon as the guide reveals it - that is to say, if he has the power to die consciously - and, at the supreme moment of quitting the ego, can recognize the ecstasy that will dawn upon him and become one with it, then all bonds of illusion are broken asunder immediately: the dreamer is awakened into reality simultaneously with the mighty achievement of recognition.

It is best if the guru from whom the participant received guiding instructions is present. But if the guru cannot be present, then another expert. But if the guru cannot be present, then another experienced person, or a person the participant trusts, should be available to read this manual without imposing any of his own games. Thereby the participant will be put in mind of what he had previosly heard of the experience.

Liberation is the nervous system devoid of mental-conceptual redundancy. The mind in its conditioned state, limited to words and ego games, is continuously in thought-formation activity. The nervous system in a state of quiescence, alert, awake but not active, is comparable to what Buddhists call the highest state of dhyana (deep meditation). The conscious recognition of the Clear Light induces an ecstatic condition of consciousness such as saints and mystics of the West have called illumination.

The first sign is the glimpsing of the "Clear Light of Reality, the infallible mind of the pure mystic state" - an awareness of energy transformations with no imposition of mental categories.

The duration of this state varies, depending on the individual's experience, security, trust, preparation, and the surroundings. In those who have a little practical experience of the tranquil state of non-game awareness, this state can last from 30 minutes to several hours. Realization of what mystics call the "Ultimate Truth" is possible, provided that the person has made sufficient preparation beforehand. Otherwise he cannot benefit now, and must wander into lower and lower conditions of hallucinations until he drops back to routine reality.

It is important to remember that the consciousness-expansion is the reverse of the birth process, the ego-loss experiencee being a temporary ending of game life, a passing from one state of consciousness into another. Just as an infant must wake up and learn from experience the nature of this world, so a person must wake up in this new brilliant world of consciousness expansion and become familiar with its own peculiar conditions.

In those heavily dependant on ego games, who dread giving up control, the illuminated state endures only for a split second. In some, it lasts as long as the time taken for eating a meal. If the subject is prepared to diagnose the symptoms of ego-loss, he needs no outside help at this point. The person about to give up his ego should be able to recognize the Clear Light. If the person fails to recognize the onset of ego-loss, he may complain of strange bodily symptoms that show he has not reached a liberated state:

Bodily pressure
Clammy coldness followed by feverish heat
Body disintegrating or blown to atoms
Pressure on head and ears
Tingling in extremities
Feelings of body melting or flowing like wax
Nausea
Trembling or shaking, beginning in pelvic region and spreading up torso.
The guide or friend should explain that the symptoms indicate the onset of ego-loss. These physical reactions are signs heralding transcendence: avoid treating them as symptoms of illness. The subject should hail stomach messages as a sign that consciousness is moving around in the body. Experience the sensation fully, and let consciousness flow on to the next phase. It is usually more natural to let the subject's attention move from the stomach and concentrate on breathing and heartbeat. If this does not free him from nausea, the guide should move the consciousness to external events - music, walking in the garden, etc. As a last resort, heave.

The physical symptoms of ego-loss, recognized and understood, should result in peaceful attainment of illumination. The simile of a needle balanced and set rolling on a thread is used by the lamas to elucidate this condition. So long as the needle retains its balance, it remains on the thread. Eventually, however, the pull of the ego or external stimulation affects it, and it falls. In the realm of the Clear Light, similarly, a person in the ego-transcendent state momentarily enjoys a condition of perfect equilibrium and oneness. Unfamiliar with such an ecstatic non-ego state, the average consciousness lacks the power to function in it. Thoughts of personality, individualized being, dualism, prevent the realization of nirvana (the "blowing out of the flame" of fear or selfishness). When the voyager is clearly in a profound ego-transcendent ecstasy, the wise guide remains silent.

LearyRAW
The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension

DEOXY.ORG

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

Ghosts of Tim Leary and Hunter Thompson

2007-05-18T21:50:21Z

I found this link from the Psychonauts tribe http://psychonauts.tribe.net/thread/b3c13a90-c1d3-44a1-88da-39f0a742f898

It’s an awesome read

Enjoy

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

CHRIS GRAVES OR RETINA LOGIC

2007-04-26T01:04:11Z

HI, I am Lisa Ferguson, I was a child at Millbrook with Tim and I am looking for any of the Retina Logic people, Chris Graves, Joey Covallo....they did Tims video "how to operate your brain"....my email is FAIRYLISA2@YAHOO.COM

much love, Lisa (petunia)

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

8-Circuit Brain encapsulated update (2007)

2007-04-11T22:13:40Z

Part of my process of studying and practicing what I learn using the 8-Circuit model involves an occasional updating of what the grid means to me in as concise and meaningful way as I know how at the time. Here is the link to my most recent update (April 7, 2007):

http://www.verticalpool.com/8circuitbrain1.html

-Antero Alli
author, "Angel Tech"

posted in timothy leary - 6 replies

4/5; 8-Circuit Brain lecture in Berkeley CA

2007-03-18T21:44:54Z

For those residing in or visiting the SF area and who are interested in the 8-Circuit Brain model, I will be giving a rare public lecture on the topic on Thursday April 5th in Berkeley California . Details and location posted at:

http://www.verticalpool.com/8circuitbrain.html

For those who cannot make it, this talk will be videotaped and be made available as a dvd later this year (I will post those details as they materialize).

sherpa
(aka Antero Alli, author "Angel Tech")

posted in timothy leary - 2 replies

3/22; RAW commemoration in SF w. Antero Alli & Erik Davis

2007-03-14T19:37:39Z

Fields Book Store presents "An Evening in honor of ROBERT ANTON WILSON" with authors Antero Alli ("Angel Tech") and Erik Davis ("Techgnosis") on Thursday March 22, 8pm, at Fields Book Store, 1419 Polk Street (near California) in San Francisco. Free admission.

ERIK DAVIS
http://www.techgnosis.com/

ANTERO ALLI
http://www.verticalpool.com/books.html

FIELDS BOOK STORE
http://www.fieldsbooks.com

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

The League For Spiritual Discovery

2007-03-05T01:18:11Z

Dr. Timothy Leary's legendary group, The League For Spiritual Discovery, is now reforming. What was originally created in 1966, has been re-founded in 2006 to continue all that was it's dream, and more. We welcome you to view the website created below, and to contribute your passion where it will find it's greatest home, amongst other friends and explorers. -Ian

http://www.discovertheleague.org

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

tim leary reading list

2007-02-24T17:16:07Z

http://www.amazon.com/FREEDOM-Beat-Generation-more-UPdated/lm/R2X6T792LBZC2M/ref=cm_lmt_srch_f_1_rsrsrs0/103-8722387-8793400

check out #16

Iona
http://ionatopia.50megs.com

posted in timothy leary - 1 reply

Pharmacratic Inquisition & Psychedelic Torrent

2007-02-12T00:25:24Z

The definition of Pharmacratic Inquisition:
Pharmaco-, a combining form meaning drug, medicine, or poison used in the formation of compound words: pharmacology, pharmacy, etc.
-crat, a combining form meaning ruler, member of a ruling body, or advocate of a particular form of rule, used in the formation of compound words: autocrat; technocrat. Cf. -cracy.
Inquisition, n. 1. an official investigation, esp. one of a political or religious nature, characterized by lack of regard for individual rights, prejudice on the part of the examiners, and recklessly cruel punishments. 2. any harsh, difficult, or prolonged questioning. 3. the act of inquiring; inquiry; research. 4. an investigation, or process of inquiry. 5. a judicial or official inquiry. 6. the finding of such an inquiry. 7. the document embodying the result of such inquiry. 8. (cap.) Roman Catholic Church A. a former special tribunal, engaged chiefly in combating and punishing heresy. Cf. Holy Office. B. see Spanish Inquisition.
Pharmacratic Inquisition nov. verb.
- The Christian persecution of archaic religions based on sacramental ingestion of entheogenic plants and the consequent personal access to ecstatic states; whose first great victory was the destruction of the Eleusinian Mysteries at the end of the fourth century; which then reached a gruesome climax in the persecution of witches in the Middle Ages; and which continues in today's Pharmacratic State in the guise of a public health 'War on Drugs.'
1994 Ott Ayahuasca Analogues, 12. May the Entheogenic Reformation prevail over the Pharmacratic Inquisition, leading to the spiritual rebirth of humankind at Our Lady Gæa's breasts, from which may ever copiously flow the amrita, the ambrosia, the ayahuasca of eternal life!
Source: The Age of Entheogens & The Angel's Dictionary by Jonathan Ott

The Pharmacratic Inquisition:
http://www.pharmacratic-inquisition.com/main/ &
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-4555365073003895154

&

A large (8.7GB) collection of psychedelic and visionaryplant related video and other material available in torrent at
http://www.mininova.org/tor/260110
This includes loads of psychedelic audio, video, PDF, including the entire UK Channel 4's1998 Sacred Weeds series, interviews with Terence McKenna, Rick Strassman, Jon Ott, and others, as well as several selections from visionary flicks like Waking Life, Matrix, & 2001.
More information about this can be found at
http://www.salvia-divinorum-scotland.co.uk/mediastories/video and at http://www.salvia-divinorum-scotland.co.uk/mediastories/video/download
I’m about half way through in this download and I've found some Amazing stuff!

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

LSD Documentary on Youtube

2007-02-11T23:14:37Z

This four part documentary by Aron Ranen (who teaches at http://DVworkshops.com) is currently available at Realitysurfer on youtube. Part 1 includes Groucho Marx on LSD & the LSD-fueled brothel run by the CIA.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZdz0G4lG6k

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47vt5Z5wxoI

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNODtfw0K3o

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoSBuY54TIE

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

MOVIE (T.L. Last Trip)

2006-12-27T16:25:57Z

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/157252202X

Has anyone seen this? It looks good.

posted in timothy leary - 2 replies

Is this tribe.......

2006-12-27T16:23:28Z

......really as dead as T.L.?

posted in timothy leary - 2 replies

ALEX GREY AT VIRGIN MEGASTORE DVD SIGNING + LIVE PAINTING

2006-12-04T03:05:07Z

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13TH @ 6 PM

VIRGIN MEGASTORE IN NEW YORK'S UNION SQUARE

Come celebrate the DVD release of CoSM THE MOVIE and see Alex Grey perform a live painting on the mainstage of Virgin Megastore in New York's historic hotbed for revolutionary activity, Union Square. Chance to purchase the DVD and get it autographed by Alex. There will also be a raffle with some cool prizes.

WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT SO COME OUT AND PARTY WITH US!

CoSM THE MOVIE is now available on DVD @ www.CoSMTheMovie.com

You can also check out our featured interview for GreenCine @ http://www.greencine.com/article

www.CoSM.org

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

Alex Grey documentary movie trailer + DVD Release

2006-11-13T00:08:48Z

Join our tribe page and check out the trailer for the new feature length documentary CoSM THE MOVIE featuring visionary painter Alex Grey.

Available on DVD November 28th!

View trailer @ http://one.revver.com/watch/76737/format/flv/affiliate/29888

"Grab" the url and post video on your own tribe site!

Also visit us @ www.myspace.com/cosmthemovie

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

The 8-Circuit Brain at Maybe Logic Academy: an interactive online course

2006-09-05T07:51:02Z

This is to announce an online course I will teach on Timothy Leary's 8-Circuit Brain system based on twenty years of research since the publication of my book, "ANGEL TECH (New Falcon Publications). Course structure is 35% theory and 65% praxis and includes meditations, exercises, rituals, thought adjustments and perceptual shifts to assist the fullfillment of the overall objective of intelligence increase. All eight circuits will be covered, as well as their specific internal supports and, the initiation into and out of Chapel Perilous.

Tuition for this 8-week course is $110. and starts Sept. 24 and runs thru Nov. 19. You don't have to be online all the time, as the assignments are presented once a week. Ample opportunities are offered to interact with others in the forums and my own intrepid private e-mail feedback.

Course prospectus is outlined at:
http://www.maybelogic.org/anteroprospectus.htm

Enrollment details at:
http://www.maybelogic.org/enroll.htm

feel free to e-mail me via my tribe profile page if you have any questions or comments about this course.

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

Tim on Gila Copter by Revolting Cocks

2006-09-01T23:16:40Z

Not sure how many people have heard this track, but it's alot of fun... The Revolting Cocks was a side project of Ministry, and on their 1993 release 'Linger Fickin Good', Tim does the voice over for the first track, Gila Copter... I only mention it now, as it started playing while I was catching up on Tribe.. :)

posted in timothy leary - 1 reply

Exo-Psychology Revisited

2006-08-12T04:48:39Z

I have updated the star larvae site with an exposition of Dr. Leary's Exo-Psychology that ties it in with neoteny, cetacea, and evolutionary teleology. Czech it out at http://www.starlarvae.org/Star_Larvae_Addendum_Exo-Psychology_Revisited.html

This aspect of Dr. Leary's work gets overlooked (as in the new Leary bio by Greenfield) but deserves a re-assessment in the light of developments since Leary's passing.

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

Transpersonal Psychology Conference

2006-08-03T23:30:57Z

YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND
THE 2006 ATP-ITP
TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE
September 7-9, 2006, Palo Alto, California

<www.atpweb.org/> & <www.atpweb.org/Conference...ration.asp>

The Association for Transpersonal Psychology
is teaming up with The Institute for Transpersonal Psychology
to put on an annual Transpersonal Psychology Conference on
"100 Years of Transpersonal Psychology"
to be held in Palo Alto, CA
on September 7 through September 9, 2006

One-hundred years ago, William James used the word "transpersonal" for the first time, in reference to that which is shared amongst people. A century later, the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology invite you to our annual professional conference, to teach, learn, and share the innovations and discoveries that have shaped the field since that auspicious day, and to chart the future for the next 100 years.

* Keynote Speakers: Stanislav Grof, Jeanne Achterberg, Marilyn Schlitz, James Fadiman.

* Special Thursday evening opening event: Honoring Women in Transpersonal Psychology with Louisa Teisch, Christina Grof, Leslie Gray, Olga Louchakova, Rosemarie Anderson, Judy Schavrien, Kate Wolf-Pizor and others.

* Special Friday evening media Premiere of two documentary films, including Kevin Page’s, "The Science of Soul," a documentary of transpersonal psychology,

* Other outstanding presenters include Stanley Krippner, Estelle Frankel, Daniel Benor, Ronald Jue, Frances Vaughan, Brian Wittine, Ruth Cox, Charles Tart, Neil Fiore, Kirk Schneider, David and Cristel Lukoff, Stuart Sovatsky and Sylvia Nakkach.

Topics: transpersonal psychotherapy, therapy, transpersonal approaches to trauma, healing, transpersonal education, entheogens, Kaballah, dreams, expressive arts, women in transpersonal psychology, the contributions of William James, Otto Rank, C. G. Jung, & Baruch Spinoza, experiential workshops at no extra cost, and poster sessions.

Please visit the Association for Transpersonal Psychology website at www.atpweb.org for Conference information, the program of the presenters and topics, and lodging information. You can register at the website online, and by fax and mail. Rates increase after August 24th.

<www.atpweb.org/> & <www.atpweb.org/Conference...ration.asp>
Phone: (650) 424-8764.

Continuing Education units are available. Special rates for students, members of ATP and AHP, and presenters.

Please feel free to forward this invitation to colleagues and others who may be interested. Since this is our main way of announcing the conference, we appreciate your assistance.

Sponsored by the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. Conference sessions will be held at ITP and the Unity Church of Palo Alto.

<www.atpweb.org/> & <www.atpweb.org/Conference...ration.asp>
<mailto: Dan@atpweb.org>

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

ACID REDUX review

2006-06-27T05:27:43Z

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/060626crbo_books

ACID REDUX
The life and high times of Timothy Leary.
by LOUIS MENAND
Issue of 2006-06-26
Posted 2006-06-19

The good Lord—or maybe it was natural selection, but, when you look at the outcome, how plausible is that, really?—gave us, in addition to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, the fantastic variety of fungi with which we share this awesome planet: yeasts, rusts, mildews, mushrooms, and molds. Among them is ergot, a fungus that destroys cereal grasses, particularly rye, and that, when eaten, can cause hallucinations. Ergot is the natural source of lysergic acid, from which lysergic acid diethylamide is readily synthesized—LSD. What purpose, divine or adaptive, this substance might serve was once the subject of a learned debate that engaged scientists, government officials, psychiatrists, intellectuals, and a few gold-plated egomaniacs. Timothy Leary was one of the egomaniacs.

Leary belonged to what we reverently refer to as the Greatest Generation, that cohort of Americans who eluded most of the deprivations of the Depression, grew fat in the affluence of the postwar years, and then preached hedonism and truancy to the baby-boom generation, which has taken the blame ever since. Great Ones, we salute you! Leary was born in 1920, in Springfield, Massachusetts, which is also the home town of Dr. Seuss, of whose most famous creation Leary was in many respects the human analogue—a grinning, charismatic, completely irresponsible Lord of Misrule. Leary’s father was a dentist whose career was ruined by alcoholism; he abandoned the family in 1934, ending up as a steward in the merchant marine. Leary’s mother was a fierce guardian of her son’s interests, which required a considerable amount of guarding. Leary was intelligent, and he did not lack ambition, but—as Robert Greenfield meticulously documents in his exhaustive biography, “Timothy Leary” (Harcourt; $28)—his education was a game of chutes and ladders: Holy Cross (where he came near to flunking out after two years), West Point (from which he was obliged to withdraw after being charged with a violation of the honor code), the University of Alabama (from which he was expelled for spending a night in the women’s dorm), the University of Illinois (from which he was drafted into the Army, where he served in a clinic for the rehabilitation of the deaf, in Pennsylvania), Alabama again (which he talked his way back into and from which he finally graduated, by taking correspondence courses), Washington State University (where he got a master’s degree), and, with the help of the G.I. Bill (a welfare fund for Great Ones), Berkeley, from which, now married and with two children, he received a Ph.D. in psychology, in 1950.

There was no more opportune moment to become a psychologist. Psychology in the nineteen-fifties played the role for many people that genetics does today. “It’s all in your head” has the same appeal as “It’s all in the genes”: an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are. Why should someone feel unhappy or engage in antisocial behavior when that person is living in the freest and most prosperous nation on earth? It can’t be the system! There must be a flaw in the wiring somewhere. So the postwar years were a slack time for political activism and a boom time for psychiatry. The National Institute of Mental Health, founded in 1946, became the fastest-growing of the seven divisions of the National Institutes of Health, awarding psychologists grants to study problems like alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, and television violence. Ego psychology, a therapy aimed at helping people adapt and adjust, was the dominant school in American psychoanalysis. By 1955, half of the hospital beds in the United States were occupied by patients diagnosed as mentally ill.

The belief that deviance and dissent could be “cured” by a little psychiatric social work (“This boy don’t need a judge—he needs an analyst’s care!”) is consistent with our retrospective sense of the nineteen-fifties as an age of conformity. The darker version—argued, for example, by Eli Zaretsky in his valuable cultural history of psychoanalysis, “Secrets of the Soul”—is that psychiatry became one of the instruments of soft coercion which liberal societies use to keep their citizens in line. But, as Zaretsky also points out, leading critics of conformity and normalcy—Herbert Marcuse, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Norman O. Brown, Paul Goodman, Wilhelm Reich—thought that it was all in the head, too. For them, normalcy was the neurosis, for which they prescribed various means of personal liberation, from better drugs to better orgasms. In the early years of the Cold War, personal radicalism, revolution in the head and in the bed, was the safer radicalism. The political kind could get you blacklisted.

Leary spent the first part of his career doing normative psychology, the work of assessment, measurement, and control; he spent the second as one of the leading proselytizers of alternative psychology, the pop psychology of consciousness expansion and nonconformity. But one enterprise was the flip side of the other, and Greenfield’s conclusion, somewhat sorrowfully reached, is that Leary was never serious about either. The only things Leary was serious about were pleasure and renown. He underwent no fundamental transformation when he left the academic world for the counterculture. He liked women, he liked being the center of attention, and he liked to get high. He simply changed the means of intoxication. Like many people in those days, he started out on Burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff.

The popular conception of Leary is that he was a distinguished academic who went off the deep end, a Harvard professor who blew his mind. For obvious reasons, this account suited Leary, and even Greenfield refers to him repeatedly as a Harvard professor (as does the Columbia Encyclopædia). Leary did teach at Harvard, but was not a professor. He began his career at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Oakland, where he was the director of clinical research and psychology. His early work involved personality tests; his first book, “The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality,” came out in 1957. It was a success, but, Greenfield says, some of Leary’s colleagues felt that he had failed to credit their research. Even then, he seems to have been blessed with an incapacity for shame, a gift for which he had many occasions to be thankful.

Leary had already had a bad run of personal troubles. His first wife had committed suicide on his thirty-fifth birthday. (When she complained, during a night of heavy drinking, about his having a mistress, he is supposed to have said, “That’s your problem.”) Leary then married the mistress, but, soon afterward, he struck her, the landlady called the cops, and the marriage ended. In 1956, Leary’s father, with whom he had just reconnected, died, destitute, in New York City. Soon after, a former faculty adviser, a married man with whom Greenfield believes Leary was having a sexual affair, was arrested while cruising a public men’s room, and Leary had a nervous breakdown. He travelled to Europe, where he met David McClelland, the director of the Center for Personality Research at Harvard, who was on a sabbatical. McClelland was trying to start a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology, and, impressed by Leary’s charm and intelligence, he offered him a lectureship for the 1959-60 academic year. Leary accepted, and moved to Cambridge. At the end of the year, McClelland advised him to cultivate a less cavalier notion of science, but he renewed Leary’s appointment. That summer, Leary went to Mexico, and there, for the first time, he ate some “magic mushrooms.” He found the experience entirely enchanting, and when he returned to Cambridge he set up, with McClelland’s approval, the Harvard Psychedelic Project.

The hallucinogen obtained from Mexican mushrooms is psilocybin, and in 1960 psilocybin was not illegal. Neither was LSD, which Leary tried for the first time in late 1961. Both were manufactured by Sandoz Laboratories, in Switzerland, and were readily available to researchers. It seemed to almost everyone who encountered them that substances so potent must have a use. Hence the Harvard project, a latecomer to organized efforts to determine what God had in mind when he designed those curious fungi.

The great hippie drug was introduced into American life by the suits: the medical profession and the federal government. Beginning in the early nineteen-fifties, the military and the C.I.A. had hopes that LSD could serve as either a truth serum or an instrument of mind control, and, according to Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain’s history of the drug, “Acid Dreams,” they used it often, both operationally, during interrogations, and experimentally, frequently with unwitting subjects. Clinical psychologists (many funded by government agencies) regarded psychedelics as psychotomimetics: their effects appeared to mimic psychotic states, and they were used to study psychosis and schizophrenia.

LSD was also administered to alcoholics, drug addicts, and patients with emotional blockages. The most famous of these patients was Cary Grant, who took LSD under the supervision of a psychiatrist. “All my life, I’ve been searching for peace of mind,” Grant said. “Nothing really seemed to give me what I wanted until this treatment.” Allen Ginsberg was introduced to LSD at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, in 1959, where his responses were measured by a team of doctors as part of a federally funded research program. Ginsberg eventually became one of the chief publicists for LSD, along with Ken Kesey, who first used it at the Veterans Hospital in Menlo Park, in 1960, where, in another federally funded program, he was paid seventy-five dollars a day to ingest hallucinogens. The experience led to Kesey’s first novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and, later on, to the Merry Pranksters, the subject of Tom Wolfe’s book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” (Wolfe, who reluctantly tried LSD out of journalistic scruple, recalled, “I had the feeling that I had entered into the sheen of this nubby twist carpet—a really wretched carpet, made of Acrilan—and somehow this represented the people of America, in their democratic glory.”) Alan Watts, whose book “The Joyous Cosmology” was published in 1962 and became, as Greenfield says, “the model for the psychedelic experience for millions of people,” first took LSD in a program at U.C.L.A. It seems like quackery now, but Lee and Shlain say that between 1949 and 1959 a thousand papers on LSD were published in professional journals.

While he was at Harvard, Leary did experiments that involved, for example, giving psychedelic drugs to prison inmates in an attempt to reduce recidivism rates; Leary claimed that the program was remarkably successful, though Greenfield says that the numbers Leary gave to support his claim don’t add up. But what really attracted Leary was an altogether different theory about the purpose of psychedelics. This was the theory that they were designed to reveal to mankind the true nature of the universe, and its leading exponent was Aldous Huxley. Huxley had taken mescaline, a drug derived from the peyote cactus, in 1953, under the guidance of a British medical psychiatrist named Humphry Osmond. (It was Osmond who coined the term psychedelic, which means “mind-manifesting.”) In 1954, Huxley published a short book about the experience, “The Doors of Perception” (from which the rock group later took its name). He had his first LSD experience in 1955; it provided him, he wrote, with “the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact.”

After his experience with Mexican mushrooms, Leary read “The Doors of Perception” with excitement. This was a style of mystico-pseudoscience that suited him perfectly, a kind of shamanistic psychology delightfully immune to empirical challenges. As it happened, Huxley was then lecturing at M.I.T., and Leary arranged a meeting. They had lunch at the Harvard Faculty Club, which was, and remains, the unlikeliest venue in which to plan the future of a psychedelic movement. But that is what Leary and Huxley did. Huxley’s idea was that, if the world’s leaders could be turned on, the lion would lie down with the lamb, and peace would be at hand. The vision was appealing to Leary. It was, after all, simply psychiatric social work on a global scale, and administered not to convicts and juvenile delinquents but to the political, social, and artistic élites—much more fun. The person Leary eventually teamed up with in the business of spreading acid illumination was not Huxley, who died in 1963, on the day President Kennedy was assassinated; it was Ginsberg, a man who took pride in knowing the address and phone number of everyone who mattered in the cultural world. Turning important people on was their mission.

The Harvard Psychedelic Project started going off the rails in early 1962. Self-administered drug use seems to have been the principal form of research. “A bunch of guys standing around in a narrow hallway saying ‘Wow’ ” is the way one participant later described the scene. Leary and his colleagues were confronted, at a faculty meeting, with charges that drugs were being administered to subjects without medical supervision, and a report about the meeting appeared in the student newspaper. The story was picked up in the national press, which led the F.D.A. to start regulating the use of psychedelics. Leary was compelled to turn over his supply of psilocybin to the university health service, and the project was shut down. But rumors began circulating that Harvard undergraduates were dropping acid, and at the end of the 1962-63 academic year Leary’s appointment was not renewed. This was for the official and sufficient reason that he had stopped meeting with his classes. He had gone to California: he told his secretary to hand out a reading list and then dismiss the students.

Leary was not, technically, fired, but his Psychedelic Project sidekick Richard Alpert was. Alpert was a Harvard assistant professor from a very wealthy family; he owned a Mercedes, an M.G., a sailboat, and a Cessna (and this was at a time when most assistant professors at Harvard could barely afford the Cessna). He was charged with giving LSD to a male undergraduate—according to Greenfield, in exchange for sexual favors. Alpert’s story generated huge publicity, from which Leary, whose case was relatively mundane, benefitted. Both men wisely adopted the pose that they were better off without Harvard, and articles featuring them appeared in Look, Esquire, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Times Magazine. They became famous as the two Harvard professors—geniuses? rogues? who knew?—who had been fired for being too far-out. A large and undiscriminating audience for things far-out was just around the historical corner, and it was an audience for whom being kicked out of Harvard was evidence of righteousness. Leary managed to stay on its stage for about six years before the law caught up with him.

Leary’s immortal message to this audience—“Turn on, tune in, and drop out”—was quickly picked up on and widely pastiched. Greenfield cites a commercial for Squirt: “Turn on to flavor, tune in to sparkle, and drop out of the cola rut.” This is not very surprising, for a couple of reasons. One is that in the mid-nineteen-sixties the language of commercial culture was drug vernacular. Almost everything advertised itself as the moral, legal, and sensory equivalent of a drug experience, from pop music to evangelism. (Billy Graham: “Turn on Christ, tune in to the Bible, and drop out of sin.”) All sorts of products claimed to turn you on, get you high, blow your mind. But the other reason Leary’s phrase was adopted as an advertising slogan is that it was designed to be an advertising slogan. The inspiration came from a fellow pop visionary, Marshall McLuhan. In 1966, McLuhan and Leary had lunch at the Plaza Hotel in New York City; there, in Leary’s account, the media-wise McLuhan offered the following counsel:

The key to your work is advertising. You’re promoting a product. The new and improved accelerated brain. You must use the most current tactics for arousing consumer interest. Associate LSD with all the good things that the brain can produce—beauty, fun, philosophic wonder, religious revelation, increased intelligence, mystical romance. Word of mouth from satisfied consumers will help, but get your rock and roll friends to write jingles about the brain.

Also:

Wave reassuringly. Radiate courage. Never complain or appear angry. It’s okay if you come off as flamboyant and eccentric. You’re a professor, after all. But a confident attitude is the best advertisement. You must be known for your smile.

Whether or not McLuhan ever uttered these precepts, they guided Leary for the rest of his public life. He was a counterculture salesman, and he wore, on every occasion, the same blissed-out smile, a rictus somewhere between a beatific, what-me-worry grin and a movie star’s frozen stare into the flashbulbs. One of his ex-wives described it as “the smile of the ego actually eating the personality.”

Leary’s “drop out” advice is one of those things which give historians the illusion that mass behaviors are driven by popular ideas, when it is usually the case that ideas are made popular by mass behaviors already under way. Because of the spike in the birth rate that began in 1946, the number of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds in the United States grew from fifteen million in 1955 to twenty-five million in 1970; during the sixties, college enrollment more than doubled, from three and a half million students to just under eight million. Times were prosperous; these were the “go-go” years on Wall Street, the era of guns and butter, Vietnam and the Great Society. Government spending primed the pump. Young people dropped out because dropping out was economically sustainable, and because there were more of them in the pipeline than the system could absorb. The phenomenon was more complicated, of course—social systems don’t self-regulate quite so tidily—but young people found it natural to renounce grownup ambitions in the nineteen-sixties, and they got their mantras from grownups like Leary.

Leary unveiled his slogan at a conference on LSD at Berkeley, in 1966. (Possessing LSD was still not illegal, although its unauthorized manufacture had just become a misdemeanor.) He was on the crest of his personal wave. After leaving Harvard, Leary and Alpert had tried to set up shop at a hotel near Acapulco, where they explored the religious potential of psychedelics and offered customers an experience in transcendental living, but the Mexican government had them deported. They were rescued by a wealthy young stockbroker named Billy Hitchcock, who made available his family’s twenty-five-hundred-acre estate, Millbrook, in Dutchess County, two hours north of New York City. Millbrook became the scene of an extended countercultural happening, a place where dozens of residents (many of them with children, who were fed drugs as well) and a changing cast of visitors engaged in chanting, meditation, sex games, and psychedelic-drug consumption, with Leary and his third wife, Nena von Schlebrugge (later the mother of Uma Thurman), and fourth wife, Rosemary Woodruff, presiding. The god Krishna enjoyed an unexpected surge in prayers directed his way from upstate New York, and the Beatles were on the record-player twenty-four hours a day. At one point, the Merry Pranksters’ bus pulled in, with Neal Cassady, the male muse of the Beats and the hero of “On the Road,” at the wheel. But the Pranksters were accustomed to horsing around with Hell’s Angels; they had little patience for spaced-out peaceniks, and the visit went badly. Bummer.

By this time, Leary had confected a science of psychedelics, which he laid out in a long interview in Playboy, billed as “a candid conversation with the controversial ex-Harvard professor.” LSD, Leary explained, puts the user in touch with his or her own ancestral past and with the genetic memory of all life forms, which is encoded in each person’s genes. In a psychedelic future, Leary explained, “each person will become his own Buddha, his own Einstein, his own Galileo. Instead of relying on canned, static, dead knowledge passed on from other symbol producers, he will be using his span of eighty or so years on this planet to live out every possibility of the human, prehuman, and even subhuman adventure.” The interviewer, an admirable straight man, asked whether this meant that time travel was possible. Leary allowed that it was:

LEARY: That happens to be the particular project that I’ve been working on most recently with LSD. I’ve charted my own family tree and traced it back as far as I can. I’ve tried to plumb the gene pools from which my ancestors emerged in Ireland and France.
PLAYBOY: With what success?

Being your own Einstein sounds pretty cool; still, the magazine’s readers probably felt that other uses of LSD mentioned by Leary spoke more directly to their immediate concerns.

LEARY: An enormous amount of energy from every fiber of your body is released under LSD—most especially including sexual energy. There is no question that LSD is the most powerful aphrodisiac ever discovered by man.
PLAYBOY: Would you elaborate?

But the seeds of destruction were already planted. Leary had been arrested in 1965, in Laredo, Texas, on federal marijuana charges. At the trial, he asserted his First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion, an argument that the judge, Ben Connally, the brother of John Connally, the governor of Texas, undoubtedly took into account in handing down a thirty-year sentence. Still, the trial was good for publicity. Greenfield says that in the hundred and eight days after the verdict the Times ran eighty-one articles about LSD.

Leary remained free on appeal, but, meanwhile, the activities at Millbrook had attracted the attention of local law enforcement. Leary’s chief nemesis there was the assistant district attorney for Dutchess County, G. Gordon Liddy, who staged a raid on the house, and had Leary arrested on marijuana-possession charges. Then, in 1968, Leary was pulled over while driving through Laguna Beach and, along with his wife and children, arrested again after drugs were found in the car. Leary’s son, Jack, was so stoned that he took off his clothes in the booking room and started masturbating. When he was shown what his son was doing, Leary laughed. Rosemary was sentenced to six months, Jack was ordered to undergo psychiatric observation, and Leary got one to ten for possession of marijuana.

He was sent to the California Men’s Colony Prison in San Luis Obispo, and this is where the story turns completely Alice in Wonderland. Assisted by the Weathermen, Leary escapes from prison and is taken to a safe house, where he meets with the kingpins of the radical underground—Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd. With their help, he and Rosemary (in violation of her probation) are smuggled out of the country and flown to Algiers, where Leary is the house guest of Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panthers’ minister of defense. Cleaver would seem to be Leary’s type, since his book “Soul on Ice” contains such sentences as “The quest for the Apocalyptic Fusion will find optimal conditions only in a Classless Society, the absence of classes being the sine qua non for the existence of a Unitary Society in which the Unitary Sexual Image can be achieved” and (to explain why white women want black men) “What wets the Ultrafeminine’s juice is that she is allured and tortured by the secret, intuitive knowledge that he, her psychic bridegroom, can blaze through the wall of her ice, plumb her psychic depths, test of the oil of her soul, melt the iceberg of her brain, touch her inner sanctum, detonate the bomb of her orgasm, and bring her sweet release.” But, alas, the visionaries do not get along.

Though the Panthers hold a press conference in New York to announce that Leary, formerly contemptuous of politics, has joined the revolution—Leary’s new slogan: “Shoot to Live / Aim for Life”—Cleaver is eager to get him out of Algeria, an Islamic country not exactly soft on drugs. He begins to harass Leary and his wife, and they manage to get to Switzerland. There Leary meets a high-flying international arms dealer named Michel Hauchard, who agrees to protect him in exchange for thirty per cent of the royalties from books that Leary agrees to write, and then has Leary arrested, on the theory that he is more likely to produce the books in jail, where there is less to distract him. Thanks to his wife’s exertions, Leary is released after a month in solitary, but she leaves him. He takes up with a Swiss girl, and begins using heroin, then meets a jet-setter named Joanna Harcourt-Smith Tamabacopoulos D’Amecourt, who becomes his new consort.

Leary’s visa is expiring, so he and Joanna seek refuge in Austria, where Leary issues a statement that Austria “for us personally and I think for the world at large exists as a beacon of compassion and freedom.” (Half of all Nazi concentration-camp guards were from Austria.) It is not clear that Austria feels equally warmly about Leary, and, after Leary’s son-in-law shows up, a plan is hatched to go to Afghanistan, where there are friends among the hashish suppliers. Leary flies to Kabul—it is now January, 1973—and is immediately busted. The son-in-law, it turns out, had set him up. Leary is flown to Los Angeles in the custody of an agent of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and remanded to Folsom Prison, where he is put in the cell next to Charles Manson’s. King Kong meets Godzilla.

The rest is bathos. The United States Supreme Court had thrown out the Laredo conviction, but Leary clearly faced major jail time. He met the problem head on: he coöperated fully with the authorities and informed on all his old associates, including his lawyers and his former wife Rosemary, who had gone underground. Leary also wrote articles for National Review, William F. Buckley’s magazine, in which he attacked John Lennon and Bob Dylan (“plastic protest songs to a barbiturate beat”), in order to demonstrate that he was rehabilitated. When he was released, in 1976, he was placed in the Witness Protection Program. He eventually made his way to Los Angeles, where he thrived in a B-list Hollywood social scene. Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler, was a friend, and Leary became a regular contributor to the magazine. He was also a welcome guest at the Playboy Mansion, and he went on the road “debating” his former adversary Gordon Liddy. His new promotion was space migration. He fell out of touch with his son; his daughter committed suicide, in 1990. He died, of prostate cancer, in 1996.

The best that can be said about Greenfield’s biography of Leary is that it will never be necessary to write another one. Greenfield spent a long time with his subject; they first met in Algiers in 1970, when Leary was a guest of the Panthers. He has been thorough, but not efficient. It is good that he interviewed many of the survivors of those years; it is not so good that he let them ramble on unedited in his text. Oral history is an unreliable genre to begin with; in an era when most of the witnesses were intoxicated much of the time, the quotient of credibility that attaches to their anecdotes is low. The job of the historian is to select and condense. Also, to tell a story.

Greenfield’s Leary is a heartless and damaged man. The portrait is convincing. Still, people did find him magnetic—not only beautiful women but colleagues and fellow-celebrities. He was obviously reckless, fatuous, exasperating, and full of himself, but people liked him, and they liked being around him. The career that Leary’s most resembles is that of another renegade psychologist, Wilhelm Reich, whose orgone box—meant to accumulate the energies of the cosmic life force—was a fad among enlightened people in the nineteen-fifties. Norman Mailer used an orgone box; so did Dwight Macdonald and Saul Bellow.

In the early days, LSD, too, was an élite drug. Many people unconnected with the counterculture “experimented” with it: Henry Luce and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, were enthusiasts. (Mrs. Luce thought that LSD ought to be kept out of the hands of ordinary people. “We wouldn’t want everyone doing too much of a good thing,” she said.) Leary administered psilocybin to the founder of Grove Press, Barney Rosset, who didn’t like it (“I pay my psychiatrist fifty dollars an hour to keep this from happening to me,” he complained). Psychedelics were tried by Lenny Bruce, Groucho Marx, and Arthur Koestler (“I solved the secret of the universe last night, but this morning I forgot what it was,” he said). Leary, in accordance with Huxley’s policy, would have been happy to restrict the use of psychedelics to people like these and to administer them in controlled environments, but at a certain point psychedelics got onto the street, and he found himself preaching to kids. The popularization of LSD wasn’t Leary’s doing; it was the music’s. When he finished listening to “Sgt. Pepper’s” for the first time, at Millbrook in 1967, Leary is supposed to have stood up and announced, “My work is finished.” Psychedelia had become a fashion.

It didn’t last long. Congress made the sale of LSD a felony and possession a misdemeanor in 1968, and handed regulation over to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. In 1970, psychedelic drugs were classified as drugs of abuse, with no medical value. Scientific reports circulated that LSD caused genetic damage; recreational drug use began to acquire a negative aura. And after 1968 the economy began to tighten. It was the Nixon recession; people were anxious about moving on with their careers. Getting wasted was for losers. And where were all those great insights, anyway? Huxley probably believed that LSD provided a window onto the hidden essence of things as a matter of conviction, and Leary probably believed it as a matter of convenience. But the LSD experience is completely suggestible. People on the drug see and feel what they expect to see and feel, or what they have been told they will see and feel. If they expect that the secret of the universe will be revealed to them, then that’s what they will find. An illusion, no doubt, but it’s as close as we’re likely to get.

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

R.U. Sirius interviews Antero Alli on the 8-Circuit Brain (audio)

2006-06-27T02:31:10Z

Antero Alli discusses Timothy Leary's 8-Circuit Brain and metaprogramming as applied through his book, Angel Tech and other related topics in this 33- minutes interview by the former Mondo 2000 editor

mp3 audio file
http://download.mondoglobo.net/neofiles/shows/neofiles-044.mp3

if that doesn't work, try this:
http://www.mondoglobo.net/neofiles/

(episode #44): Antero Alli

posted in timothy leary - 0 replies

New Timothy Leary bio

2006-06-08T02:08:25Z

Robert Greenfield's biography of Timothy Leary is scheduled for publication on June 5, 2006. I am half-way through an uncorrected proof and it is far from complementary (most of the chapters so far end with something like "And that's when Osmand and Huxley realized they had passed the psychadelic torch to the wrong man."

More to come...

posted in timothy leary - 7 replies