Tim Leary book

partial excerpts

Introduction

In 1966, the Harvard-Millbrook psychedelic researchers decided to exploit the religious metaphor in order to encourage people to take charge of their own brain functions. I was uneasy about failing back on the religious paradigm

Our own commitments and role-models were always scientific

But wisely or foolishly, we got scared off this scientific approach. After being expelled from Harvard, Mexico, Antigua, and Dominica in the late Spring of 1963, we cravenly decided that the authorities were not ready for the 21st Century concept—Every Citizen a Scientist. So we fell back to the familiar historical turf upon which most earlier freedom movements had fought the battle—religion.

Activating the Divinity Within

surely 400 years of Western civilization must support the right of Americans to worship the divinity within, using sacraments that worked for them

Our political experiences at Harvard also pushed us in the direction of the religious metaphor. When it became known on campus that a group of psychologists was producing revelatory brain-change, we expected that astronomers and biologists would come flocking around to learn how to use this new tool for expanding awareness. But the scientists, committed to external manipulations, were uninterested. Instead we were flooded by inquiries from the Divinity School.

Brain Change Taboo

Our problem—typical of time-travel agents dealing with primitive cultures—was that a dramatic change in neurology must be gently introduced in the language a culture traditionally uses for those “mysterious, unknown, higher powers” which its science has not yet explained. A review of 20th Century literature showed that there was obviously a strong taboo against “brain-change.”

Evolutionary Intelligence

A key factor in the evolution of intelligence is socialization.

Division of labor

Gaia works with gene pools, which produce specialized castes, individuals genetically geared to perform the different functions that contribute variously to the needs of the group. Sociobiologists have ruminated obsessively to explain altruism in social animals

One possible answer—that of inborn caste difference—has so far eluded the ethologists. Some birds are caste-equipped with nervous systems geared to scan more restlessly, and to react with speedier alarm-signalry. (Is that known or fake theory?)

Brain Castes

A human group requires a variety of brain castes to perform the highly specialized and complex acts necessary to keep the collective unit going. People are born with different minds, equipped with brains designed to be better at certain mental functions. Our minds are “made up” for us at the moment of conception

Chapter 16 - Imprinting the Taoist Experience

In 1960-63, we Harvard drug researchers realized that we did not know enough about the enormous range of reactions activated by brain-change drugs. Even after hundreds of voyages aloft, our veteran test pilots reported amazing new dimensions of galaxies within. For this reason we decided to postpone any navigational mapmaking of our own

The Tibetan Book of the Living, our first venture in updating old neurological-trip maps, was so successful we became alarmed. Thousands of people began using the Tibetan jargon of Bardos, and a definite fad-trend towards Buddhism was developing.

To head off this prescientific Oriental renaissance, we quickly sought another, less parochial text for describing and guiding brain astronauts. The advantage of the Tao Te Ching was that this Taoist text was almost content-free.

The Tao celebrates the constant flow of evolution, the eternal flow of always-changing energy processes. The basic advice of Taoism—“Everything changes according to regular cycles and rhythms. So keep cool, watch the ebb and flow—and when the waves are ready, surf them.”

Tao Te Ching

Tao is best translated as “energy,” or energy process—energy in its pure unstructured state—the “E” of Einstein’s equation—and in its countless, temporary states of structure—the “M” of Einstein’s equation. The Tao is an ode to nuclear physics, to life, to the genetic code, to that form of transient energy structure we call “man,” to those most static, lifeless forms of energy we call man’s artifacts and symbols. The message of the Tao Te Ching is that all is energy, all energy flows; all things continually transform.

81 verses that celebrate the flow of energy, its manifestations, and, on the practical side, the implications for man’s endeavors

Translation to Psychedeliceze

During that period I wrote Psychedelic Prayers from the Tao Te Ching—the first book ever specifically designed to reimprint human brains during the “critical periods” of neural vulnerability. By the way, it is the second book explicitly designed as a brainwashing manual. The insidious aim of this Dr. Frankenstein gambit was to prepare young people taking large doses of LSD to absorb a new reality-view based on post-Einsteinian, DNA science

Psychedelic Prayers has been reprinted over 20 times and has probably bent over 200,000 young brains

These translations from English to psychedelese were made while sitting under a bamboo tree on a grassy slope of the Kumaon Hills overlooking the snow peaks of the Himalayas. I had 9 English translations of the Tao. I would select a Tao chapter and read and reread all 9 English versions of it.

after hours of rereading and meditation, the essence of the poem would bubble up. Slowly a psychedelic version of the chapter would emerge.

The first-draft version would then be put under the psychedelic microscope. For several years I pursued the demanding yoga of one LSD session every seven days

Chapter 18 - You are a God, Act Like One

Our Do-It-Yourself-God-Kit Program—an innovative step in Self-Determination and the evolution of intelligence which was published in an East Village underground paper in 1966, and is of considerable historic interest, not for what it says, but for what it does not say. Our self determining theology was rooted in the premise: Control your own brain, be your own Divinity, make your own world. Master the God Technologies.

It imposed no dogma except one—Live out your own highest vision.