Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In
Appreciations, Castigations, and Reminiscences by Ram Dass, Andrew Weil, Allen Ginsberg, Winona Ryder, William Burroughs, Albert Hofmann, Aldous Huxley, Terence McKenna, Ken Kesey, Huston Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, and Others
- Pages: 352
- Book Size: 6 x 9
- ISBN-13: 9780892817863
- Imprint: Park Street Press
- On Sale Date: March 1, 1999
- Format: Paperback Book
- Illustrations: 19 b&w photographs
A memorial volume to one of this century's most colorful and pioneering figures in the consciousness movement
• A wide array of individuals from all stages of Leary's life provides a comprehensive view of the man and his impact on American culture
One of the most influential and controversial people of the 20th century, Timothy Leary inspired profound feelings--both pro and con--from everyone with whom he came into contact. He was extravagant, grandiose, enthusiastic, erratic, and an unrelenting proponent of expanding consciousness and challenging authority. His experiments with psilocybin and LSD at Harvard University and Millbrook, New York, were instrumental in propelling the nation into the psychedelic era of the 1960s. From the 1980s until his death in 1996 he fully embraced the possibilities of freedom offered by the developments in computer technology and the instant communication made possible by the Internet.
The essence of Leary's life has often been reduced to the celebrated formula of "Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out." The wider implications of this esoteric call to communion have been lost, just as the multifaceted nature of Leary's personality was obscured by the superficial spin put on his life and ideas. In this book a wide array of individuals from all stages of Leary's life, friends and foes alike, provide a more complete view of the man and his impact on American culture.
It is still too early to know how posterity will judge the man and his ideas, but Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In shows that Leary was often so far ahead of his time that few could follow the extensive range of his thought.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Timothy Leary's Dead
John Perry Barlow
An Unfinished (R)Evolution
Frank Barron
To Tim from John
John Beresford
Briefly
William S. Burroughs
Inviting in Tim Leary's Ghost
Caroline W. Casey
Tim Leary: A Personal Appraisal
Walter Houston Clark
Ram Dass Remembers Tim
an interview with Ram Dass
Observations on My Friend and Hero
Tom Davis
Road Man
Maynard Ferguson
Declaration of Independence for Dr. Timothy Leary
Allen Ginsberg
Changing His Mind
Anita Hoffman
My Meetings with Timothy Leary
Albert Hofmann
Prophet on the Lam
Michael Horowitz
Jaaz #7 for Tim Leary
Robert Hunter
Letters
Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard
The Rule of Love
Michael Kahn
St. Timothy on the Freeway
Ken Kesey
Letters to Timothy
Carolyn Kleefeld
A Game of Mind Tennis with Timothy Leary
Paul Krassner
A Word from the Control Group
an interview with Jaron Lanier
The Archaic Revival
an interview with Terence McKenna
From Harvard to Zihuatanejo
Ralph Metzner
The Esalen Institute, Sacred Mushrooms, and the Game of Golf
an interview with Michael Murphy
Euphorion Returned
Claudio Naranjo
A Few Memorable Moments
Mimi Raleigh
Farewell/Greetings to Timothy Leary
Thomas Riedlinger
Godfather
Winona Ryder
Climbing Jacob's Ladder
Zalman Schaehter- Shalomi
LSD: Let's Save Democracy?
an interview with Philip Slater
Timothy Leary and the Psychedelic Movement
an interview with Huston Smith
Owsley's Leary
an interview with Owsley's Stanley
Stolaroff on Leary
an interview with Myron Stolaroff
The Most Kind Man I Have Ever Known
Danny Sugarman
Let's Do Lunch
Jeremy Tarcher
Mistah Leary, He Dead
Hunter S. Thompson
The Harvard Crimson Story
an interview with Andrew Weil
Notes about Dr. Timothy Leary
Robert Williams
The Unreachable Stars
Robert Anton Wilson
Illusions
Rosemary Woodruff
Bodhi Tree Book Review, Winter 1999 / Spring 2000
“Timothy Leary’s Dead. No, no no no, he’s outside, looking in.”
--The Moody Blues, “Legend of a Mind”
“Tim was a chieftain. He stomped on the terra, and he left his elegant hoof prints on all our lives.”
--Hunter S. Thompson
“Tim Leary probably made more people happy than anybody else in history.”
--Terence McKenna
“What I learned from Tim didn’t have anything to do with drugs but it had everything to do with getting high. His die-hard fascination with the human brain was not all about altering it, but about using it to its fullest.”
--Winona Ryder
Timothy Leary inspired strong feelings in everyone he came into contact with during his momentous life. An unrelenting proponent of expanding consciousness and challenging authority, he was brilliant and erratic, extravagant and enthusiastic, wise and foolish. Ram Dass called him the most creative man he had ever known, while Richard Nixon called him the most dangerous man in the world. Many agree that his exuberant popularizing of psychedelics radically altered the course of the twentieth century. His research at Harvard University and subsequent dismissal from the faculty helped to inaugurate the counterculture of the 1960s, awakening a generation to its own potential. His later arrests, escapes from prison, asylum in Switzerland, and return to the United States mark him as an archetypal hero. His eventual embracing of computers and the Internet kept him at the forefront of the battle for personal freedom and creative expression.
The essence of Leary’s life has often been reduced to his celebrated formula “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” But the wider implications of this call to communion are forgotten, just as the complex nature of Leary’s personality is often reduced to the superficial spin put on his ideas by the media. In Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In, many of the great artists, thinkers, and rebels of our time discuss Leary’s life and legacy. In doing so, this gathering of minds goes beyond a simple tribute to the man and becomes a provocative dialogue on the evolution of consciousness.
ROBERT FORTE studied the history and psychology of religion at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and has taught at the University of California in Santa Cruz. He served on the board of directors of the Albert Hofmann Foundation and is the editor of Entheogens and the Future of Religion.