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Home , Divorce law by country, Hair (musical), Peyote, Timothy Leary, Whatever (novel)

INTERVIEW: a candid conversation with the controversial ex-harvard prrifessor~ prime partisan and prophet of LSD

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in his Roman Catholic mother by abandon- problems such as where they 1960, beside the swimming pool of his ing Holy Cross two years before gradua- germinate-rather than in the textbook Tented summer villa in , a tion ("The scholastic approach to r-eli- or the lab orator», 39-year-old American ate a handful of gion didn't turn me on"), then affronted At the time, predictably enough, few odd-looking mushrooms he'd bought his [ather, a retired ATmy career officer, of these novel notions went over very [rom the witch doctor of a nenlUv vil- by walking out of !Vest Point after 18 well with Leary's hidebound col- lage. Within minutes, he recalled 'lateT, months ("Afy interests weTe philosophic leagues. But their rumblings of skepti- he felt himself "being swept over the rather than militaristic"). Not until he cism rose to a chorus of outrage when edge of a sensory niagara into a mael- transferred to the Leary rei limed 10 Harvard in 1960 fT0111 strom of transcendental visions and hal- did he begin to settle down academically his pioneering voyage into inner space- lucinations. The next fi.ve hOUTS could -to W01'k for his B. A. in .On beside the swimming pool in Cuemava- be described in many- extravagant meta- graduation in 1942, he enlisted as an ca-to begin cx perimentin e on himself, phors, but it was above all and without ATmy psychologist, served in a Pennsyl- his associates and hundreds of volunteer question the deepest religious experi- uania hospital until the end of the WaT, subjects with measured doses of psilo- ence of my life." The implications of then resumed his schooling and earned cybin, the chemical derivative of the that fateful first communion aTe as yet his Ph. D. at the University of sacred mushrooms. Vowing "to dedicate unmeasured; that they are both [ar- at Berkeley. Acquiring both eminence the rest of my life as a psychologist to Teaching and pTofound, houieuer, is and enemies with his [ust major jobs-as the systematic exploration of this new generally conceded=ior the fungi director of Oakland's progressive Kaiser instrument," he and his rapidly multi- were the legendary "sacred mushrooms" Fou ndation Hospital and as an assistant plying followers began to turn on that have since become known, and professor' at UC's School of Medicine in with the other psychedelics: morning- feared by many, as one of the psyche- Sa1/Francisco-Leary began to display glory seeds, nutmeg, marijuana, , delic (literally, mind-manifesting) chem- tile courage and sometimes rash icono- -and a colorless, odorless, icals that have created a national fad clasm Ihat have since mar-ked every phase tasteless but incredibly potent labora- among the nation's young and a scandal of his checkered -career. Contending that tory compound called LSD 25, {irst syn- in the press. The American was a Har- traditional psychiatric methods were thesized in 1938 by a Swiss biochemist vard psychotherapist named Timothy hurting as many patients as they helped, seeking a pain killer for migraine head- LeaTY, who has since found himself trans- he resigned in 1958 and signed up as a mogrified from scientist and research er lecturer on at Har- aches. A hundred times stronger than into progenitor- and high priest of a Tev- uard. There he began to evolve and , LSD sent its hallucinated olutionary movement spawned not by an enunciate the theory of social interplo» users on multihued, multileueled Toller- idea but by a substance that's been called and person a! behavior as so many stylized coaster rides so spectacular that it soon "the spiritual equivalent of the hydrogen games, since popularized by Dr. Eric became Leary's primary tool for research. bomb." Berne in his best-selling book "Games And as word began to circulate about the Few men, in their youth, icould have People Pia)'," and to both preach and fan iastic, ph an tasmagoricc I "trips" taken seemed less likely to emerge (is a, reli- practice the effective but unconventional by his students, it .10011 became a clan- gious leader, let alone as a rebel irith a n eio psychiatric research. technique of destine campus hick, and by 1962 had cause.At the age of 19, Leary distressed sending his students to study emotional become an underground cult among the

"In 3000 people that I have personally "An enormous amount of energy from HI think that anyone who wants to have observed taking LSD, we've had only four every fiber of )'OUT body is released under a psychedelic and is willing cases of prolonged psychoses-two or LSD-especially sexual energy. 'There is to prepare [or it and to examine his own three weeks after the session. All of these no question that LSD is the most power- hang-ups and neurotic tendencies should had been in a mental hospital bejore." ful aphrodisiac ever discovered by man," be allowed to have a crack at it." young aoant-gorde [rom London to Los Reagan even dragged the issue into his a wide range of mind benders running Angeles. successful campaign for the Republican from , energizers and stupefiers to By 1963, it had also become something gubernatorial nomination il1 California. marijuana and the other psvchedelic of an emb arrassment to Haruard., how- II was amid this mounting OUtC1Y . To middle-aged America, it may ever, which "regretfully" dismissed Leary against the dTUg that PLAYBOY asked Dr, be synonymous with instant insanity, and his colleague Dr. Richard Alpert, in Lear)' to present his side of the psyche- but to most Americans under 25, the order to stem the rising tide of avid un- delic storv=--arid to answer a few per- psychedelic means ecstasy, sensual dcrgraduate interest in the drug.Un- tinent questions about its putative unfolding, , revela- daunted, they organized a privately promise and its alleged perils. Consenting tion, illumination, with nature. financed research gTOUP called the Inter- readily, he invited us to visit him in Mill- There's not a teenager or young person national Foundation for Internal Free- brook, where we found him a few days in the today who doesn't dom (IF/F), and set up II psychedelic later reciting Hindu moming pm)'e1'S know at least one person who has had a study center in Zihuataneio, ; but with a gmup of guests in the kitchen of good experience with marijuana or LSD. beiore they could resume full-scale LSD the 64-mom mansion. He greeted us The horizons of the current younger sessions, the Afexican government waTmly and led the way to a third-floor generation, in terms of expanded con- stepped in, anticipating adverse popular library,Instead of sitting down in one of sciousness, are light-years beyond those reaction, and demanded that they leave the room's well-worn easy chairs, he of their parents. The breakthrough has 1he country. crossed the room, stepped out of an open occurred; there's no going back. The Lear» had now become not only the window onto a tin roof over a second- psychedelic battle is won. messiah but the martyr at the psychedelic floor bay window, and proceeded to PLAYBOY: 'Vhy, then, have you called for movement. But soon afterward came a stretch out on a double-width mattress a a one-year "cease-fire" on the use of LSD dramatic l l th-h our reprieve from a young few feet from the edge. While we made and marijuana? millionaire named William ourself comfortable at the other end of LEARY: Because there have never been Hitchcock" a ueteran LSD voyager who flip. mattress, he opened his shirt to the two generations of human beings so far believed in the importance of Leary's tcarm sutnrn er sun, propped his bare feet apart-Ii ving essen tially in two differen t work-by now a mission-and toioard ag,ainst the shingles, looked down at the worlds, speaking two different languages that end turned over to him a rambling mansion's vast 1'01Iing meadow of a -as the people under 25 and the older mansion on his 4000-acre estate in Mill- lawn, listened for a moment to the song generation. Evolutionary misunderstand- b1'00k, New York, which has since become of a chickadee in the branches of a tree ing causes bloodshed and imprisonment. not 0111)'Leary's home and headquarters nearby, and then turned, read)' [or our To relieve this situation, I've asked (he but also a kind of shrine and sanctuary [ust question. younger generation to cool it for a year for psychedelic pilgrims [rom all over the and to use this moratorium period to ex- ioorld, On April 16 of this )'em', it also PLAYBOY: How many times have you used plain to their parents-and to their jail- became a target for further harassment LSD, Dr. Leary? ers-what LSD and marijuana are, and by what l.eary calls" the forces of middle- LEARY: Up to this moment, I've had 311 why we want and intend to use them. I aged, middle-class authority." Late that psychedelic sessions. have made clear that this is a voluntarv night, a squad of Duchess County police PLAYBOY: 'What do YOIl think it's done for waiving of the constitutional right to descended on the place, searched it [rom you-and to you? change your own consciousness. But I top to bottom, found a minute quantity LEARY: That's difficult to answer easily. suggested this as a conciliatory gesture to of marijuana, and arrested [our people- Let me say this: I was 39 when I had my mollify and educate the older generation including Leary. If convicted, he could first . At that and to allow time for the younger people be fined heavily and sent to prison for time, I was a middle-aged man involved to learn more about how to turn on. 16 years. Already appealing another con- in the middle-aged process of dying. My I'm demanding that this period also be a viction, Leary had been arrested in La- joy in life, my sensual openness, my crea- moratorium On hysterical legislation and redo the previous December as he was tivity were all sliding downhill. Since on punitive arrests of young people for about to enter Mexico tor a vacation, that time, six years ago, my life has been the possession of LSD and marijuana. If, when Customs oiiicials searched his air renewed in almost every dimension. at the end of one year, the older genera- and found a half ounce of mariiuana in Most of my colleagues at the University tion has not taken advantage of this the possession of his 18-year-old daugh- of California and at Harvard, of course, cease-fire, I predict and indeed urge a ter. Despite his claim that the drug was feel that I've become an eccentric and a firm statement on the part of everyone [or scientific and sacramental we in the kook. I would estimate that fewer than involved that they intend to resume the [urtherance of his work and his spiritual 15 percent of my professional colleagues use of psychedelics, to exercise their con- beliefs (as a practicing Hindu), he was understand and support what I'm doing. stitutional right to expand their own fined $30,000 and sentenced to 30 years The ones who do, as you might expect, consciousness- the cost. in prison for transporting rnarijuano and tend to be among the younger psychol- PLAYBOY: What do you say to the stand- failing 10 pay the Fedeval rnariiuana tax. ogists. If you know a person's age, you ard charge that LSD is too powerful and In the months since then, the L'IJ) know what he's going to think and feel dangerous to entrust to the young? con irouersy has continued to escalate about LSD. Psychedelic drugs are the LEARY: Well, none of us yet knows exact- along uiitli Leary's notorietv=-spurred by medium of the young. As you move up ly how LSD can be used for the growth a spate of headline stories about p.l),che- the age scale-into the 30s, 40s and 50s- and benefit of the human being. It is a delic p.I)'choses, dire warnings of "in- fewer and fewer people are open to the powerful releaser of energy as yet not stant insanity" [rom. police and public possibilities that these chemicals offer. fully understood. But if I'm confronted health officials, and pious editorials in- PLAYBOY: 'Vhy is that? with the possibility that a IS-year-old or veighing against the evils of the drug. In LEARY: To the person over 35 or 40, the a 50-year-old is going to use a new form 1Hoy arul. [une, two Senate subcommit- word "drug" means one of two things: of energy that he doesn't understand, I'll tees conducted widely publicized public doctor-disease or dope fiend-. back the 15-year-old every time. Why? hearings on LSD; and thee states-Cali- Nothing you can say to a person who Because a I5-year-old is going to use a [ornia, and New [ersey=enacted has this neurological fix on the word new form of energy to have fun, to laws prohibiting its illicit use, possession, "drug" is going to change his mind. He's intensify sensation, to make love, for distrib ut.ion or man uiocture.With a frozen like a Pavlovian dog to this con- curiosity, for personal growth. Many 50- ringing I1tJPeal for still more stringent ditioned reflex. To people under 25, on year-olds have lost their curiosity" have legislation on a Federal level, Ronald the other hand, the word "drug" refers to lost their ability to make love, have dulled their openness to new sensations, off in your brain every second; during and merge. You not only hear but see and would use any form of new energy any second in an LSD session, you find the music emerging from the speaker sys- for power, control and warfare. So it yourself tuned in on thousands of these tem-like dancing particles, like squirm- doesn't concern me at all that young messages that ordinarily you don't regis- ing curls of toothpaste. You actually see people are taking time out from the ter consciously. And you may be getting the sound, in multicolored pa tterns, educational and occupational assembly an incredible number of simultaneous while you're hearing it. At the same lines to experiment with consciousness, messages from different pans of your time, you are the sound, you are the to dabble with new forms of experience body. Since you're not used to this, it note, you are the string of the violin or and artistic expression. The present gen- can lead to incredible ecstasy or it can the piano. And everyone of your organs eration under the age of 25 is the wisest lead to confusion. Some people are is pulsating and having orgasms in and holiest generation that the human freaked by this niagara of sensory input. rhythm with it. race has ever seen. And, by God, instead Instead of having just one or two or PLAYBOY: What happens to the sense of of lamenting, derogating and imprison- three things in tidy sequence, taste? ing them, we should support them, listen you're suddenly flooded by hundreds of LEARY: Taste is intensified, too, although to them and turn on with them. lights and colors and sensations and normally you won't feel like eating dur- PLAYBOY: If we wanted to take you up on images, and you can get quite lost. ing an LSD session, any more than you that last suggestion, how would we go You sense a strange, powerful force feel like eating when you take your first about it? beginning to unloose and radiate solo at the controls of a supersonic jet. LEARY: Find a beloved friend who knows through your body. In normal percep- Although if you cat after a session, there where to get LSD and how to run a ses- tion, we are aware of static symbols. But is an appreciation of all the particular sion; or find a trusted and experienced as the LSD effect takes hold, everything qualities of food-its texture and resil- LSD voyager to guide you on a trip. begins to move, and this relentless, im- iency and viscosity-such as we are PLAYBOY: Is it necessary to have a guide? personal, slowly swelling movement will not conscious of in a normal state of LEARY: Yes. Unless you have an exper i- continue through the several hours of awareness. cnced guide-at least for your first 10 the session. It's as though for all of your PLAYBOY: How about the sense of smell? or 15 sessions-it would be extremely normal waking life you have been LEARY: This is one of the most over- reckless. caught in a still photograph, in an awk- whelming aspects of an LSD experience. PLAYBOY: What if a person can't find ei- ward, stereotyped posture; suddenly the It seems as though for the first time you ther a guide or a source of LSD among show comes alive, balloons out to several are breathing life, and you remember his friends? Where does he go? dimensions and becomes irradiated with with amusement and distaste that plas- LEARY: LSD is against the law, and I cer- color and energy. tic, odorless, artificial gas that you used tainly would not advise anyone to vio- The first thing you notice is an incred- to consider air.During the LSD experi- late the law. I will say this, however: ible enhancement of sensory awareness. ence, you discover that you're actually Throughout human history, men who Take the sense of sight. LSD vision is inhaling an atmosphere composed of have wanted to expand their conscious- to normal vision as normal vision is to millions of microscopic strands of olfac- ness, to find deeper meaning imide the picture on a badly tuned television tory ticker tape, exploding in your nos- themselves, have been able to do it if set. Under LSD, it's as though you trils with ecstatic meaning. When you sit they were willing to commit the time have microscopes up to your eyes, in across the room from a woman during and energy to do so. In other times and which you see jewellike, radiant details an LSD session, you're aware of thou- countries, men would walk barefooted of anything your eye falls upon. You sands of penetrating chemical messages 2000 miles to find spiritual teachers who are really seeing for the first time-not floating from her through the air into would turn them on to Buddha, Mo- static, symbolic perception of learned your sensory center: a symphony of a hammed or Ramakrishna. things, but patterns of light bouncing thousand odors that all of us exude at PLAYBOY: If you can't say where one could off the objects around you and hurtling every moment-the shampoo she uses, buy LSD, can you tell us the formula for at the speed of light into the mosaic of her cologne, her sweat, the exhaust and making it? We understand it can be syn- rods and cones in the retina of your eye. discharge from her digestive system, her thesized in any well-equipped chemical Everything seems alive. Everything is sexual perfume, the fragrance of her laboratory. alive, beaming diamond-bright light clothing-grenades of eroticism explod- LEARY: That's true. But it would be irre- waves into your retina. ing in the olfactory cell. sponsible of me to reveal it. The un- PLAYBOY: Is the sense of hearing similarly PLAYBOY: Does the sense of touch become authorized manufacture of LSD is now ·intensified? equally erotic? against the law. LEARY: Tremendously. Ordinarily we hear LEARY: Touch becomes electric as well as PLAYBOY: Assuming you can get it, how just isolated sounds: the rings of a tele- erotic. I remember a moment during one do you take it? Can it be injected, or is phone, the sound of somebody's words. session in which my leaned over it mostly just swallowed in a sugar cube? But when you turn on with LSD, the and lightly touched the palm of my r LEARY: It can be injected or it can come organ of Corti in your inner ear be- hand with her finger.Immediately a in the form of powder or pills or in a comes a trembling membrane seething hundred thousand .end cells in my hand solution, which is odorless, tasteless with tattoos of sound waves. The vibra- exploded in soft orgasm. Ecstatic ener- and colorless. In any case, you're deal- tions seem to penetrate deep inside you, gies pulsated up my arms and rocketed ing with a very minute quantity.One swell and burst there. You hear one note into my brain, where another hundred hundred micrograms is a moderate dose. of a Bach sonata, and it hangs there, thousand cells softly exploded in pure, PLAYBOY: For a session lasting how long? glittering, pulsating, for an endless delicate pleasure.The distance between LEARY: Eight to twelve hours. length of time, while you slowly orbit my wife's finger and the palm of my PLAYBOY: 'Vhat's it like? 'What happens to around it. Then, hundreds of years later, hand was about 50 miles of space, filled you? comes the second note of the sonata, and with cotton candy, infiltrated with thou- LEARY: If we're speaking in a general again, for hundreds of years, you slowly sands of silver wires hurtling energy way, what happens to everyone is the ex- drift around the two notes, observing back and forth. Wave after wave of ex- perience of incredible acceleration and the harmony and the discords, and quisite energy pulsed from her finger. intensification of all senses and of all reflecting on the history of music. Wave upon wave of ethereal tissue rap- mental processcs-which can be vcry con- But when your nervous system is ture-delicate, shuddering-coursed back fusing if you're not prepared for it. turned on with LSD, and all the wires and forth from her finger to my palm. Around a thousand million signals fire are flashing, the senses begin to overlap PLAYBOY: And this rapture was erotic' r

LEARY: Transcendentally. An enormous PLAYBOY: We've heard about sessions in present time, however, I'm under a 30- amount of energy from every fiber of which make love for hours on year sentence of imprisonment, which your body is released under LSD-most end, to the point of exhaustion, but never for a 45-year-old man is essentially a life especially including sexual energy. seem to reach exhaustion. Is this true? term; and in addition, I am under in- There is no question that LSD is the LEARY: Inevitably. dictment on a second marijuana offense most powerful aphrodisiac ever discov- PLAYBOY: Can you describe the sensation involving a 16-year sentence. Since there ered by man. of an orgasm under LSD? is hardly anything more that -rniddle- PLAYBOY: Would you elaborate? LEARY: Only the most reckless poet aged, middle-class authority can do to LEARY: I'm saying simply that sex under would attempt that. I have to say to you, me-and since the secret is out anyway LSD becomes miraculously enhanced "What does one say to a little ?" among the young-I feel I'm free at and intensified. I don't mean that it sim- The child says, "Daddy, what is sex this moment to say what we've never ply generates genital energy. It doesn't like?" and you try to describe it, and said before: that sexual ecstasy is the automatically produce a longer erection. then the little child says, "Well, is it fun basic reason for the current LSD boom. Rather, it increases your sensitivity a like the circus?" and you say, "Well, not When Dr. Goddard, the head of the thousand percent. Let me put it this exactly like that." And the child says, "Is Food and Drug Administration, an- way:Compared with sex under LSD, the it fun like chocolate ice cream?" and you nounced in a Senate hearing that ten way you've been making love-no matter say, "Well, it's like that but much, much percent of our college students are how ecstatic the pleasure you think you more than that." And the child says,"Is taking LSD, did you ever wonder why? get from it-is like making love to a it fun like the roller coaster, then?" and Sure, they're discovering God and department-store-window dummy. In sen- you say, "Well, that's part of it, but it's meaning; sure, they're discovering them- sory and cellular communion on LSD, even more than that." In short, I can't selves; but did you really think that sex you may spend a half hour making love tell you what it's like, because it's not wasn't the fundamental reason for this with eyeballs, another half hour making like anything that's ever happened to surging, youthful social boom? You can love with breath. As you spin through a you-and there aren't words adequate to no more do research on LSD and leave out sexual ecstasy than you can do mi- thousand sensory and cellular organic describe it, anyway. You won't know what it's like until you try it yourself- croscopic research on tissue and leave changes, she does, too. Ordinarily, sex- and then I won't need to tell you. out cells. ual communication involves one's own PLAYBOY: We've heard that some women LSD is not an automatic trigger to chemicals, pressure and interactions of a who ordinarily have difficulty achieving sexual awakening, however. The first ten very localized nature-in what the psy- orgasm find themselves capable of multi- times you take it, you might not be able chologists call the erogenous zones. A ple orgasms under LSD. Is that true? to have a sexual experience at all, be- vulgar, dirty concept, I think.'When LEARY: In a carefully prepared, loving cause you're so overwhelmed and de- you're making love under LSD, it's as LSD session, a woman will inevitably lighted-or frightened and confused- though every cell in your body-and you have several hundred orgasms. by the novelty; the idea of having sex have trillions-is making love with every PLAYBOY: Several hundred? might be irrelevant or incomprehen- cell in her body. Your hand doesn't ca- LEARY: Yes. Several hundred. sible at the moment. But it depends ress her skin but sinks down into and PLAYBOY: What about a man? upon the setting and the partner. It is merges with ancient dynamos of ecstasy LEARY: This preoccupation with the num- almost inevitable, if a man and his mate within her. ber of orgasms is a hang-up for many men take LSD together, that their sexual en- PLAYBOY: How often have you made love and women. It's as crude and vulgar a ergies will be unimaginably intensified, under the influence of LSD? concept as wondering how much she paid and unless clumsiness or fright on the LEARY: Every time I've taken it. In fact, for the negligee. part of one or the other blocks it, it will that is what the LSD experience is all PLAYBOY: Still, there must be some sort of lead to a deeper experience than they about. Merging, yielding, flowing, un- physiological comparison. If a woman ever thought possible. ion, communion. It's. all lovemaking. can have several hundred orgasms, how From the beginning of our research, I have been aware of this tremendous per- You make love with candlelight, with many can a man have under optimum sonal power in LSD. You must be very sound waves from a record player, with conditions? LEARY: It would depend entirely on the careful to take it only with someone you a bowl of fruit on the table, with the amount of sexual-and psychedelic-ex- know really well, because it's almost in- trees. You're in pulsating harmony with perience the man has had. I can speak evitable that a woman will fall in love all the energy around you. only for myself and about my own expe- with the man who shares her LSD expe- PLAYBOY: Including that of a woman? rience. I can only compare what I was rience.Deep and lasting neurological LEARY: The three inevitable goals of the with what I am now. In the last six imprints, profound emotional bonds, LSD session are to discover and make years, my openness to, my responsiveness can develop as a result of an LSD session love with God, to discover and make to, my participation in every form of -bonds that can last a lifetime. For this love with yourself, and to discover and sensory expression has multiplied a reason, I have always been extremely make love with a woman. You can't thousandfold. cautious about running sessions with make it with yourself unless you've made PLAYBOY: This aspect of LSD has been men and women. We always try to have it with the timeless energy process hinted at privately but never spelled out a subject's or wife present dur- around you, and you can't make it with in public until now. Why? ing his or her first session, so that as a woman until you've made it with your- LEARY: The sexual impact is, of course, these powerful urges develop, they are self. The natural and obvious way to the open but private secret about LSD, directed in ways that can be lived out take LSD is with a member of the oppo- which none of us has talked about in the responsibly after the session. site sex, and an LSD session that does last few years. It's socially dangerous PLAYBOY: Are you preaching psychedelic not involve an ultimate merging with a enough to say that LSD helps you find monogamy? person of the opposite sex isn't really divinity and helps you discover yourself. LEARY: Well, I can't generalize, but one complete. One of the great purposes of an You're already in trouble when you say of the great lessons I've learned from LSD session is sexual union. The more that. But then if you announce that the LSD is that every man contains the es- expanded your consciousness-the farther psychedelic experience is basically a sex- sence of all men and every woman has out you can move beyond your mind- ual experience, you're asking to bring within her all women. I remember a ses- the deeper, the richer, the longer and the whole middle-aged, middle-class sion a few years ago in which, with hor- more meaningful your sexual communion. monolith down on your head. At the ror and ecstasy, I opened my eyes and looked into the eyes of my wife and was there is no question that a charismatic ically male, that they are basically at- pulled into the deep blue pools of her public figure does generate attraction tracted to females. The most famous being floating softly in the center of anel stimulate a sexual response. and public of such cases is that of Allen her mind, experiencing everything that PLAYBOY: How often do you return this Ginsberg, who has openly stated that she was experiencing, knowing every response? the first time he turned on to women thought that she had ever had. As my LEARY: Every woman has built into her was during an LSD session several years eyes were riveted to hers, her face began cells and tissues the longing for a hero- ago. Bur this is only one of many to melt and change. I saw her as a young sage-mythic male to open up and share such cases. girl, as a baby, as an old woman with her own divinity. But casual sexual en- PLAYBOY: Has this happened with Les- gray and seamy, wrinkled face.I counters do not satisfy this deep longing. bians? saw her as a witch, a Madorina, a nag- Any charismatic person who is conscious LEARY: I was just going to cite such a ging crone, a radiant queen, a Byzantine of his own mythic potency awakens this case. An extremely attractive girl came virgin, a tired, worldly-wise Oriental basic hunger in women and pays rever- down to our training center in Mexico. whore who had seen every sight of life ence to it at. the level that is harmonious She was a and she \\";IS \cry active repeated a thousand times. She was all and appropriate at the time. Compul- sexually, but all of her energy was devot- women, all woman, the essence of female sive body grabbing, however, is rarely ed to making it with girls. She was at an -eyes smiling, quizzically, resignedly, the vehicle of such communication. LSD session at one of our cottages aile! devilishly, always inviting: "See me, hear PLAYBOY: Do you disapprove of the idea went down to the beach and saw this me, join me, merge with me, keep the of casual romance-catalyzed by LSD? young man in a bathing suit and-flash! dance going." Now, the implications of LEARY: \Vell, I'm no one to tell anyone -for the first time in her life the cellu- this experience for sex and mating, I else what to do. But I would say, if you lar electricity was flowing in her body think, are obvious. It's because of this, use LSD to make out sexually in the and it bridged the gap. Her subsequent not because of moral restrictions or reo seductive sense, then you'll be a very sexual choices were almost exclusively straints, that I've been extremely monog- humiliated and embarrassed person, be- members of the opposite sex. amous in my use of LSD over the last cause it's just not going to work. On For the same reasons, LSD is also a six years. LSD, her eyes would be microscopic, and powerful panacea for impotence and fri- PLAYBOY: When you speak of monogamy, she'd see very plainly what you were up gidity, both of which, like homosexual- do you mean complete sexual fidelity to to, coming on with some heavy-handed, ity, are symbolic screw-ups. The LSD one woman? mustache-twisting routine. You'd look experience puts you in touch with the LEARY: Well, the notion of running like a consummate ass, and she'd laugh wisdom of your body, of your nervous around trying to find different mates is a at you, or you'd look like a monster and system, of your cells, of your organs. very low-level concept. We are living in she'd scream and go into a paranoid And the closer you get to the message a world of expanding population in state. Nothing good can happen with of the body, the more obvious it be- which there are more and more beauti- LSD if it's used crudely or for power or comes that it's constructed and designed Iul young girls coming off the assembly manipulative purposes. to procreate and keep the life stream go- line each month. It's obvious that the PLAYBOY: Suppose you met a girl at a par- ing. \\'hen you're confronted with this sexual criteria of the past are going to ty, developed an immediate rapport, and basic cellular fact under LSD, you real- be changed, and that what's demanded you both decided to share an LSD trip ize that your impotency, or your fri- of creatures with our sensory and cellu- that same night.Could it work uncler gidi ty, is caused by neuropsychological lar repertoire is not just one affair after those circumstances? hang-ups of fear or shame that make another with one young body after an- LEARY: You must remember that in tak- no sense to your cells, that have nothing other, but the exploration of the incredi- ing LSD with someone else, you are to do with the biochemical forces inside ble depths and varieties of your own voluntarily relinquishing all of your per- your body urging you to merge and mate identity with a single member of the op- sonality defenses and opening yourself with a member of the opposite sex. posite sex. This involves time and com- up in a very vulnerable manner. If you PLAYBOY: Does LSD always work as a sex- mitment to the voyage. and the girl are ready to do this, there ual cure-all? PLAYBOY: Do YOll mean to imply that would be an immediate and deep rap- LEARY: Certainly not. LSD is no guaran- you've had only one bed partner in the port if you took a trip together. People tee of any specific social or sexual out- last six years? from the LSD cult would be able to clo come. One man may take LSD and leave LEARY: I've had more than one long-term it upon a brief meeting, but an inexperi- wife and and go off to be a monk relationship eluring this period. But enced person would probably find it ex- on the banks of the Ganges. Another there is a certain kind of neurological tremely confusing, and the people might may take LSD and go back to his wife. and cellular fidelity that develops. I have become quite isolated from each other. It's a highly individual situation. Highly said for many years now that in the fu- They might be whirled into the rapture unpredictable.During LSD sessions, you ture the grounds for would not or confusion of their own inner work- see, there can come a microscopic per- be that your wife went to bed with an- ings and forget entirely that the other ception of your routine social and other man and bounced around on a person is there. professional life. You may discover to mattress [or an hour or two, but that PLAYBOY: According to some reports, LSD your horror that you're living a robot your wife had an LSD session with some- can trigger the acting out of latent ho- existence, that your relationships with body else, because the bonds and the con- mosexual impulses in ostensibly hetero- your boss, your wife and your family are nections that develop are so powerful. sexual men and women. Is there any stereotyped, empty and devoid of mean- PLAYBOY: It's been reponed that when truth to that, in your opinion? ing. At this point, there might come a you are in the of women, quite LEARY: On the contrary, the fact is that desire to renounce this hollow existence, a lot of them turn on to you. As a matter LSD is a specific cure for homosexuality. to collect your thoughts, to go away and of fact, a friend of yours told us that It's well known that most sexual perver- cloister yourself from the world like a you could have two or three different sions are the result not of biological monk while you figure out what kind of women every night if you wanted to. binds but of freaky, dislocating child- a life you want to go back to, if any. Is he right? hood of one kind or anoth- Conversely, we've found that in giving LEARY: For the most part, during the last er. Consequently, it's not surprising that LSD to members of monastic sects, there six years, I have lived very quietly in our we've had many cases of long-term homo- has been a definite tendency for them to research centers. But on lecture tours and sexuals who, under LSD, discover that leave the monastic life and to find a mat- in highly enthusiastic social gatherings, they are not only genitally but genet- ing relationship. Several were men in r

their late 405 who had been monks for ness-attested to by the experience of slowly drifting down dark red waterways 15 or 20 years, but who even at this ma- hundreds of thousands of trained voyag- and floating through capillary canals, ture age returned to society, married ers who've taken LSD-defines many dif- softly propelled through endless cellular and made the heterosexual adjustment. ferent levels of awareness. factories, ancient fibrous clockworks- It's not coincidental that of all those I've PLAYBOY: 'What are they? ticking, clicking, chugging, pumping re- given LSD to, the religious group-more LEARY: The lowest level of consciousness lentlessly. Being swallowed up this way than 200 ministers, priests, divinity stu- is sleep-or stupor, which is produced by the tissue industries and the bloody. dents and nuns-has experienced the by , barbiturates and our na- sinewy carryings-on inside your body can most intense sexual reaction. And in two tional stuporfactant, alcohol. The second be an appalling experience the first time religious groups that prize chastity and level of consciousness is the conventional it happens to you. But it can also be celibacy, there have been wholesale de- wakeful state, in which awareness is an awesome one-fearful, but full of fections of monks and nuns who left hooked to conditioned symhols: flags, reverence and wonder. their religious orders to get married after dollar signs, job titles, brand names, PLAYBOY: Is there a fifth level of aware- a series of LSD experiences. The LSD party affiliations and the like. This is ness? session, you see, is an overwhelming the level that most people-including LEARY: Yes, and this one is even more awakening of experience; it releases po- psychiatrists-regard as ; they strange and terrifying. This is the precel- tent, primal energies, and one of these is don't know the half of it. There is a lular level, which is experienced only the sexual impulse, which is the strong- third level of awareness, and this is under a heavy dosage of LSD. Your nerve est impulse at any level of organic life. the one that I think would be of celis are aware-as Professor Einstein For the first time in their lives, perhaps, particular interest to PLAYBOY readers, W,IS aware-that all matter, all structure, these people were meeting head on the because most of them are of the younger is pulsating energy; well, there is a shat- powerful life forces that they had generation, which is much more sensual tering moment in the deep psychedelic walled off with ritualized defenses and than the puritanical Americans of the session when your body, and the world self-delusions. older generation. This is the sensory around you, dissolves into shimmering PLAYBOY: A great deal of what is said level of awareness. In order to reach it, latticeworks of pulsating white waves, about LSD by its proponents, including you have to have something that will into silent, subcellular worlds of shut- you, has been couched in terms of reli- turn off symbols and open up your bil- tling energy. But this phenomenon is gious . You spoke earlier, in lions of sensory cameras to the billions of nothing new. It's been reported by mys- fact, of discovering "divinity" through impulses that are hitting them. The tics and visionaries throughout the last LSD. In what way is the LSD experience chemical that opens the door to this level 4000 years of recorded history as "the religious? has been well known for centuries to cul- white light" or the "dance of energy." LEARY: I t depends on what you mean by tures that stress delicate, sensitive regis- Suddenly you realize that everything you religion. For almost everyone, the LSD tration of sensory stimulation: the Arab thought of as reality or even as life itself experience is a confrontation with new cultures, the Indian cultures, the Mogul -including your body-is just a dance forms of wisdom and energy that dwarf cultures. It is marijuana. There is no of particles. You find yourself horribly and humiliate man's mind. This experi- question that marijuana is a sensual stim- alone in a dead, impersonal world of raw ence of awe and revelation is often de- ulator-and this explains not only why energy feeding on your sense organs. scribed as religious. I consider my work it's favored by young people but why it This, of course, is one of the oldest Ori- basically religious, because it has as its arouses fear and panic among the mid- ental philosophic notions, that nothing goal tbe systematic expansion of con- dle-aged, middle-class, whiskey-drinking, exists except in the chemistry of your sciousness and the discovery of energies bluenosed bureaucrats who run the nar- own consciousness. But when it first within, which men call "divine." From cotics agencies. If they only knew what really happens to you, through the ex- the psychedelic point of view, almost all they were missing. perience of LSD, it can come as a religions are attempts-sometimes limit- But we must bid a sad farewell to the terrorizing, isolating discovery. At this ed temporally or nationally-to discover sensory level of consciousness and go on point, the unprepared LSD subject the inner potential. Well, LSD is West- to the fourth level, which I call the cel- often screams out: "L'm dead!" And he ern yoga. The aim of all Eastern reli- lular level. It's well known that the sits there transfigured with fear, afraid gion, like the aim of LSD, is basically to stronger psychedelics such as mescaline to move. For the experienced voyager, get high: that is, to expand your con- and LSD take vou b evon d the senses however, this revelation can be exalting: sciousness and find ecstasy and revela- into a world of ~ellular "awareness. Now, You've climbed inside Einstein's formula, tion within. the neurological fact of the matter is penetrated to the ultimate nature of mat- PLAYBOY: Dr. Gerald Klee, of the National that everyone of your 13 billion brain ter, and you're pulsing in harmony with Institute of Mental Health, has written: cells is hooked up to some ~5,OOO other its primal, cosmic beat. "Those who say LSD expands conscious- cells, and everything you know comes PLAYBOY: Has this happened to you often ness would have the task of defining the from a communication exchange at the during a session? terms. By any conventional definition, I nerve endings of your cells. During an LEARY: It's happened to me about half of don't think it does expand the conscious- LSD session, enormous clusters of these the 311 times I've taken LSD. And every ness." What do vou think? cells are turned on, and consciousness time it begins to happen, no matter how LEARY: Wel l, he's using the narrow, con- whirls into eerie panoramas for which much experience you've had, there is ventional definition of consciousness we have no words or concepts. Here that moment of terror-because nobody that psychiatrists have been taught: that the metaphor that's most accurate is likes to see the comfortable world of there are two levels of consciousness- the metaphor of the microscope, which objects and symbols and even cells dis- sleep and symbolic normal awareness. brings into awareness cellular patterns integrate into the ultimate physical Anything else is insanity. So by conven- that are invisible to the naked eye. design. tional definition, LSD does not expand In the same way, LSD brings into aware- PLAYBOY: Do you think there may be a symbolic consciousness; thus, it creates ness the cellular conversations that are deeper level of consciousness beyond the . In terms of his conventional inaudible to the normal consciousness precellular? symbol game, Dr. Klee is right. My con- and for which we have no adequate sym- LEARY: I hope so. We know that there tention is that his definition is too nar- bolic language. You become aware of are many other levels of energy within row, that it comes from a deplorable, processes you were never tuned in to be- and around us, and I hope that within primitive and superstitious system of fore. You feel yourself sinking down into our lifetimes we will have these opened consciousness. My system of conscious- the soft tissue swamp of your own body, up to us, because the fact is that there is no form of energy on this planet that reach all the time, but there are certain system. They provide unspeakable pleas- isn't recorded somewhere in your body. untidy corners in my racial path that I ure and revelation. "Tune in" means to Built within every cell are molecular often get boxed into, and because they harness and communicate these new per- strands of memory and awareness called are frightening, I freak out and open my spectives in a harmonious dance with the DNA code-the genetic blueprint eyes and stop it. In many of these ses- the external world. "Drop out" means to that has designed and executed the con- sions, back about 300 years, I often run detach yourself from the tribal game. struction of your body. This is an an- across a particular French-appearing Current models of social ad justment- cient strand of molecules that possesses man with a black mustache, a rather mechanized, compu terized, socialized, memories of every previous organism dangerous-looking guy. And there are intellectualized, televised, Sanforized- that has contributed to your present several highly eccentric recurrent se- make no sense to the new LSD genera- existence. In your DNA code, you have quences in an Anglo-Saxon country that tion, who see clearly that American the genetic history of your father and have notably embarrassed me when I re- society is becoming an air-conditioned mother. It goes back, back, back through lived them in LSD sessions-goings on anthill. In everv generation of human his- the generations, through the eons. Your that shocked my 20th Century person. tory, thoughtful men have turned on body carries a protein record of every- PLAYBOY: What sort of goings on? and dropped out of the tribal game, and thing that's happened to you since the LEARY: Moments of propagation-scenes thus stimulated the larger society to moment you were conceived as a one-cell of rough ancestral sexuality in Irish bar- lurch ahead. Every historical advance organism. It's a living history of every rooms, in haystacks, in canopied beds, in has resulted from the stern pressure of form of energy transformation on this covered wagons, on beaches, on the moist visionary men 'who have declared their planet back to that thunderbolt in the jungle floor-and moments of crisis in independence from the game: "Sorry, Pre-Cambrian mud that spawned the life which my forebears escape from fang, George III, we don't buy your model. process over two billion years ago. When from spear, from conspiracy, from tidal We're going to try something new"; LSD subjects report retrogression and wave and avalanche. I've concluded that "Sorry, Louis XVI, we've got a new idea. reincarnation visions, this is not mysteri- the imprints most deeply engraved in Deal us out"; "Sorry, L. B. J., it's time to ous or supernatural. It's simply modern the neurological memory bank have to mosey on beyond the Great Society." biogenetics. do with these moments of life-affirming The reflex reaction of society to the PLAYBOY: Tell us more about these visions. exultation and exhilaration in the per- creative dropout is panic and irritation. lEARY: Well, we don't know how these petuation and survival of the species. If anyone questions the social order, he memories are stored, but countless PLAYBOY: But how can you be sure they threatens the whole shaky edifice. The events from early and even intra-uterine ever happened? automatic, angry reaction to the creative life are registered in your brain and can LEARY: You can't. They may all be noth- dropout is that he will become a parasite be flashed into consciousness during an ing more than luridly melodramatic on the hard-working, conforming citizen. LSD experience. Saturday serials conjured up by my fore- This is not true. The LSD experience PLAYBOY: Do you merely remember them, brain. But whatever they are-memory or does not lead to passivity and withdraw- or do you actually relive them? imagination-it's the most exciting ad- al; it spurs a driving hunger to comrnu- lEARY: The experiences that come from venture I've ever been involved in. nicate in new forms, in better ways, to LSD are actually relived-in sight, PLAYBOY: In this connection, according to express a more harmonious message, to sound, smell, taste and touch-exactly a spokesman for the student left, many live a better life. The LSD cult has al- the way they happened before. former campus activists who've gone ready wrought revolutionary changes in PLAYBOY: If it's an experience from very the LSD route are "more concerned American culture. If you were to con- early life, how can you be sure it's a true with what's happening in their heads duct a poll of the creative young musi- memory rather than a vivid hallucination? than what's happening in the world." cians in this country, you'd find that at LEARY: It's possible to check out some of Any comment? least 80 percent are using psychedelic these ancient memories, but for the most LEARY: There's a certain amount of truth drugs in a systematic way.And this new part these memory banks, which are in that. The insight of LSD leads you to psychedelic style has produced not only built into your protein cellular strands, concern yourself more with internal or a new rhythm in modern music but a can never be checked on by external ob- spiritual values; you realize that it new clecor for our discothe q ties, a new servation. Who can possibly corroborate doesn't make any difference what yOU do form of film making, a new kinetic what your nervous system picked up be- on the outside unless you change the in- visual art, a new literature, and has fore your birth, inside your mother? But side. If all the Negroes and left-wing col- begun to revise our philosophic and the obvious fact is that your nervous sys- lege students in the world had Cadillacs psychological thinking. tem was operating while you were still and full control of socie tv, they would Remember, it's the college kids who in the uterus. It was receiving and re- still be invo lved in an anthill social sys- are turning on-the smartest and most cording units of consciousness. \Vhy, tem unless they opened themselves up promising of the youngsters. What an then, is it surprising that at some later first. exciting prospect: a generation of crea- date, if you have the chemical key, you PL.

"Reprinted from the issue of PLA YB9Y .magazine