I dunno...people on the book forum think I'm too young for his stuff...but I like the lyrics about him in hair!
Timothy Leary was a very brave being and bestowed a grand spiritual psychedelic vision for mankind that equaled the yogic vision of the ancient Tantras in primeval India. Leary tried to bring us to the lotus feet of God with LSD and almost did. The U.S.Gov't stopped him. We would do well to emulate his quest.
A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of space-time dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key - it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. T.L.
I admire Timothy as an important figure of the 60's and as a person that taught us to find ourselves and break the chains of bondage that the government and people put on us. He taught us that we didn't have to follow like robots. And yes, he taught us how psychedelics can reveal to us our own souls. But before Timothy were the beats and if you haven't read Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" you are missing out. Not to change the subject, I just had to throw that in. The only problem with that book is that I read it after college. If I had read that in high school, my life would have been drastically different.
Reading Leary's "The Psychedelic Experience" was absolutely crucial for me before I first tripped on shrooms. It helped me prepare myself and really think about what I wanted from the experience, and I think it was instrumental in making that trip as wonderful as it was. I have great respect for Leary. Littlwing70, I'm curious. How do you think your life would have been different if you'd read "On the Road" earlier? I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list, so to speak.
I wouldn't have gone right to college. I would have traveled a bit and met some people. I think maybe I could have found the freedom I seek now. I would have seen the government and capitalism, "the machine", the way it really is, much earlier and this would have allowed me to make better decisions I think. Now I am dependent on a job. I have been through a divorce and pay child support, have debt and struggle financially. I just think I could have avoided all of this if somehow I could have found myself earlier in life. When I read on the road I thought, this is how I am feeling.....beat. Like I will never beat this and will be struggling all of my life. I know I have to have a job, it's not that, I just mean that we don't have to be so controlled, we can do it our way, it can just be harder. Once the bills pile up it is hard to get out of it. I think if I would have read on the road earlier I would have said screw this I am following my dreams......Hopefully this makes sense. The book is just about giving up on jumping into the machine and just allowing yourself to have and feel personal freedom. Jack traveled across the us many times depending on friends for food and housing or taking up a small job to make enough money to go to the next stop. It is the personal freedom that I dug. I see the rainbows as a culmination of these ideas. Get out of the machine, we can take care of each other. But it is scary to make that jump....and sometimes it feels that it is too late.
