Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties/Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties (1996)(Rockument)(Disc 1 of 2)[Mac-PC].iso/mac/MAIN/TUNEIN/TUNEIN01.DIR/00415_Field_Another Session With Tim Leary Part 1.txt

Text File | 1995-06-01 | 31KB | 131 lines

Another Session With Tim Leary
Part 1

   Voice from the Audience:  Tim, we've been hearing a lot of things about chromosome damage and LSD.  Of course, we are all explorers and we wonder about all the new information and try to find out if it's truthful or not.  I wondered how you felt.
   Tim Leary:  Nobody knows what LSD does to the human nervous system or to the human cellular structure.  Anyone who says anything, pro or con, about the effects of LSD on the body is just laying his own trip on you.
   Everything that's been written about LSD and brain damage, LSD and suicide, LSD and chromosome breaks, LSD and genetic alterations, is lying.  This is one of the greatest scientific hoaxes in the last hundred years, perhaps in a long time.
   The FDA probably with the collaboration of the NIMH, that's the National Institute of Mental Health, has embarked on a systematic campaign to scare people about LSD.  Now, this is no big paranoid conspiracy in which people get together in a mahogany room and smoke cigars and say that we're going to do A, B, C.  It's a much more complex and effective conspiracy than that.  It's just a basic fear which these government scientists and government officials have about LSD and what psychedelic drugs do which expresses itself in a general campaign.
   For example:  the government gives money to do LSD research only to people whom they know are anti-LSD people and will come up with frightening findings.  So a top scientist who applied to the government for money to do research, testing whether LSD can help people, for example, to produce a religious experience, and they can't get money for this even though his credentials are tops and the sponsoring institutions are without question.
   When the Massachusetts Mental Health Institute in Boston, which is probably the top psychiatric research place in the country, applied for government funds to do research studying the effects of LSD and the religious experience, with top men like Panki, Sossburn doing it, the government wouldn't support it.
   The government also has a very close connection with science magazines so that in effect there's a systematic conspiracy, rather well-timed, to release scare stories about LSD.  The studies on LSD and chromosome breaks, first of all, the sampling is inaccurate.  The studies are ill-designed and ill-executed.  There is one study which shows chromosome breaks and two studies which show no breaks.
   The breaks themselves mean nothing because everyone has chromosome breaks, and it's simply a question of deciding what ratio you're going to call a significant series of breaks.  The breaks can be caused by color television, by ordinary dental x-rays or chest x-rays.  There's no control over the data they're getting and any conclusions drawn from such studies are simply fantasy.
   Plus the fact that even if LSD does cause chromosome breaks significantly more than chance in white blood cells, this tells nothing about genetics.  The white blood cells, as you probably know, are the shock troops of the body.  They're simply the most expendable cells in the body's dialogue with the outside world.
   Now I personally feel that LSD does bring about inter-cellular changes.  I've been saying for 5 years now that there's a cellular level of communication.  If this is true, you would expect that the cellular structure itself would be changed.  But which cellular structure?  The nerve cells?  The genetic cell which is found in the sperm and ova?  Or the white blood cell?  I consider that the possible finding that LSD changes chromosome structure in white blood cells, if anything, to be a positive finding and probably supports our hypothesis that the cellular system is a receiving transmitting center of consciousness and simply suggests that more research be done.
   Voice from the Audience:  What would you suggest about people using LSD--to use less, or more, or have faith, keep the faith?
   Tim Leary:  I've never recommended that anyone use or not use LSD.  I've never recommended that anyone lose or not lose their virginity.  These are the sacred intimate decisions that each person has to make on the basis of love and trust and wisdom.
   Pregnant women should think very carefully about using LSD during the first three months of pregnancy because this period is an extremely vulnerable time when the structure of the new baby is being worked out by the DNA code.  An overdose of bicarbonate of soda, which is often used for morning sickness, can bring about changes in the fetus during this first trimester.
   But again, even if LSD were to cause genetic changes, here we're grappling with the most mysterious choice of all:  what man, whose mind, what social institution is wise enough to say that they can interfere with what is essentially an evolutionary process?  Here we get mystical rather than scientific.
   I have an ultimate faith in the DNA code.  The DNA code has been around for two billion years.  It's always survived (by the skin of its teeth).  It's the highest repository of intelligence and energy that we know about; it knows what it's doing.
   It may well be that the DNA code, looking up through RNA and bodies of what man is doing to this planet, has decided that something like LSD is exactly what's needed to bring the harmony and unity of all life back together again.
   VA:  Are you interested in expansion of consciousness by means other than LSD?  Other psychedelics?
   TL:  Of course.  Anyway that can turn you on and bring you closer to the meaning and energy within should be prized and considered sacred.  There is no either or here, anyone who used LSD has got to use other yogic methods if they are going to get the most from it.
   The old temptation to build a religion, a dogma around your way of getting high is the oldest cop-out in history.
   The highly trained Sufi or the illuminated yogi is the person, for instance, who can use any form of drug energy to get high and who can weave them all together and can select from among the thousands of psycho methods exactly that one which is harmonious at the moment.  He may use LSD at one point.  He may use solitude or fasting at another time.  These quarrels about "my way of getting high is better than yours" should be completely discredited.

KARMA YOGA
   VA:  Aren't there a number of young people now, though, who are gravitating toward forming a religion solely around the experience that's generated from lysergic acid?
   TL:  I hope so.
   VA:  But, perhaps excluding some of the yogic principles, I don't see how that's possible.
   TL:  If you're going to use the energy that's released by LSD, you have to harness it up with something.  Maybe a bunch of kids will go out to New Mexico and start building a community of adobe; well, that's the oldest form of yoga, karma yoga.
   The highest form of psychedelic wisdom that man has ever developed, in my opinion, is the Sufi.  The Sufis tell you it's all work; it's all energy.  You don't have to even drop out at all, visibly.  You can be a rug weaver, you can run the Oracle, or you can drive a cab in San Francisco.  And if you're dropped out and turned on inside, that's your work.  The great thing about the Sufis is that the great masters are to be found in every walk of life - just doing their gig as an act of grace and gratitude and beauty.
   We have to be very careful about what we call yogic.  As long as a person is straight inside, and is tuning it back in, it's some act of glorification he's doing.
   VA:  Among the people you've known and met, how long does it take for a person who uses LSD regularly, say once a month, to recognize that the yoga is a part of his experience?
   TL:  I don't know.
   VA:  Because there seems to be an amazing influx of yogic knowledge now.  Do you think that it's primarily caused by the people that have been using acid?
   TL:  Yes, I think so.  There's a very predictable and obvious cycle.  People take LSD.  They discover that there is an infinity of possibilities.  They stumble on the real questions of life.  Then, sooner or later, they discover that they have to do something about it in some systematic way.
   Very often, people at this point, say they are "quitting drugs."  That's great.  There are the Meher Baba people, all of whom came to Meher Baba through LSD.
   Now the Beatles are going to India; they are following a master who doesn't take drugs, well, that's great.  But you can't short-circuit the phenomena.  You can't jump from being a robot to becoming a follower of yogic method without being turned on first.  And the message of the Beatles and the Meher Baba people shouldn't be that the youngsters shouldn't take LSD.  They should encourage kids when they are ready to take LSD.  But when they stumble upon the basic questions, then come to Meher Baba, Maharishi, the Sufis.  If there's anything that the history of religion teaches us, it's that the religious yogic discipline without a turn-on is worse than just the material road of life.
   The thing that frightens me, what frightened me at Harvard for example, was the ruthlessness of this educational machine, which gets them clean, tidies up their minds, and gets them more and more symmetrical and metallic.  That's the thing that gives me the horrors.  And any way that a kid can be encouraged to step out of that, I don't care what he goes through.
   VA:  Once he's out.  Granted that he should come out.  Because we are not the educational machine, and we are not going through this thing.  So it's important to have dialogue about "here's the problem, what are our reactions as human beings to these people, these kids, human beings in the morass?  How do we react to them, and talk about it?
   TL:  I think that in the Haight/Ashbury you have between 50 and 100 men and women who have attained an incredible level of holiness and dedication and who are working day and night to tune the kids back in and harness them to something that's great.  I'm convinced that 9 men and women who are pure at heart and are turned on can change the world.  And you've got 50 or 100 of them here in the Haight/Ashbury--the people who are running the Oracle, the Thelins, the Communications Company, the underground papers, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg...
   VA:  Innumerable others

RETURN TO MAMA EARTH
   TL:  Hundreds, thousands of saints we don't even know about in places like Houston, Texas and Lincoln, Nebraska, who are radiating, who are showing by example how to tune it back in.  What more can be done than what we're doing right here in this room, in our clumsy, incoherent way attempting what we believe in.
   VA:  What type of evolutionary process do you expect to happen in this society, due to the influence of places like Haight/Ashbury, Drop City, and some of the places in New Mexico?  What level will it evolve to?  Will these people be listened to by the majority of our society, or will they be constantly harassed and perhaps wiped out?
   TL:  It can't be wiped out.  I keep saying this over and over again to the kids.  This is not new.  We've been through this a thousand times in history.  It's always a small percent that bring about a religious renaissance, or a new evolutionary lurch.  Haight/Ashbury has done it.  And the movement into the southwest, the movement back to the land, is going to carry this thing another notch forward.
   That doesn't mean that everyone is going to drop out of the city and go to live in teepees or hogans or domes.  But the fact that ten percent of your most energetic, beautiful and expressive people are doing it is going to bring the whole system up.  In fifty years you're going to have thousands of communities like Drop City.  That's still a small percentage of the community, but the fact that they exist will raise the level of Harvard Law School.  The kids that stay in the system will be hooked up to it.  In fifteen years your Supreme Court are going to be pot smokers and those people whose essence consciousness has grown out of Haight/Ashbury into Arizona/New Mexico will have changed it.
   VA:  And will these communities present a real alternative to the present way of life?

SPIRITUAL CENTER OF SOCIETY
   TL:  Not an alternative.  You see, a society is guided by its holy men and by its monasteries and ashrams.  Even though ten per cent or less are doing it, if they are the center of the larger society, the thing is going to move forward.  It has always been that way.  And a society is in trouble when it has lost its spiritual center, when the monasteries are no longer turned on.  And that is what has happened in the Western world.  And that is what we're changing.  The fact that places like Haight/Ashbury and Drop City exist brings American society back into the central beam.
   VA:  You have been through Drop City?
   TL:  Yes, I just finished a very psychedelic trip through the Southwest.  I visited Drop City.  I visited New Buffalo and several smaller communities there.
   TL:  The main function of an ashram is to survive, to keep the flame going and survive.  And Drop City is doing that.  You can't ask a monastery to turn out Christian Brothers' wine or psychedelic works of art.
   VA:  Did you see their work of art?  The one they are going to sell?
   TL:  Yes.  It's beautiful.  But I'm less impressed by these things.  There is psychedelic art being done every place.  I'm much more impressed by their domes and by their continuity and by the look in their eyes.
   VA:  How are they relating to the barren Southwest?  And the desert?
   TL:  In what way?
   VA:  Economically, mostly.
   TL:  They are desperately poor, but they are surviving from day to day.
   VA:  Hippies seem to be in the situation:  the role of David about to slay Goliath.
   TL:  That is not in my trip at all.  It is not fighting.
   VA:  I didn't mean literally.  I didn't mean fights and not specific people.  Right now hippies are barely eeking out an existence.  But the effect of what they're doing, as you said, is going to be like playing David, isn't it?
   TL:  (laughing)  You want me to say it is.  OK I must repeat again that all this has been worked out in manuals.  I urge all of you to turn on to the book The Sufis.  Or the new book, The Teachers of Gurdgieff which describes this ancient process of turned on people who pass on wisdom and keep the flame of religion and meaning going.
   And there are certain strategic and tactical moves for the inner message, which are exactly opposite to outer success.  If you want to be a spiritual success, you systematically do the opposite of what you would do to be a political success.  You let go instead of grabbing; you admit your wrongs instead of pretending you are right; you give up land.  By giving up space, you gain time.  Above all, you prefer to be poor than rich because we are always going to be struggling.  We're never going to have money.  We're never going to have his bank accounts or huge buildings like the established churches, and if we do we're in trouble because the facts of the matter are:  if you understand how to use poverty, it's harder to use poverty than to use love.  But if you understand how to do it, you understand that poverty is sensual, poverty is turned on, poverty is thrilling.  So I'm not worried at all about Drop City because they are scraping along from day to day, because that is the needle point of clarity upon which everything else is balanced.

THE CITY IS AN ADDICTION
   VA:  Does it seem that most of the people come to Drop City for spiritual reasons, rather than running away from home, for economic or familial reasons?
   TL:  The beautiful thing about the Southwest is that it's pure and it's poor.  And it requires hard work.  You have to be ready to drop out of the city.  The city is an addiction...and we're all hooked to a certain extent on the power, the games, the glamour of the city.  You have to kick the city to go to the land.  That means a very few people are ready to do that.
   Once you get there, many people can't take it.  They can't take the straightness that's involved.  So after awhile, they leave.  But the people that are left in the Southwest, the people that are left in Big Sur, or the people that are left in Mendocino County, or the people that are left at Millbrook (and I'm just mentioning a few of the many places where this process is going on), these are those people that are ready to take the step.

TRIBALISM IS DIVERSITY
   The beauty of this land, this tribal concept, is that each group is completely unique.  It's got to be that way.  Each tribe has got to evolve its own style, its own way of building its shelter.  There is an incredible variety, and that's the great thing about it.  I would be shocked if groups that left the city and tried to root back in followed the plan of anyone else.
   Then we'd be in trouble.  Some groups are more middle-class than others.  I would say in general, the best communities roll their own cigarettes...that's one of the symptoms...they don't have electricity, they're dirtier.  But again, there are some people who can groove better behind more comfort.
   Millbrook, again, is not just one clan.  Millbrook is a tribe with five clans.  There are five separate groups living at Millbrook, and each of these five has its own spiritual teacher, its own way, its own diet, its own technique for making a living.  This is very healthy.
   VA:  Isn't there a danger when a community forms and divorces itself from technology that they are going to lose their children, and if not their children, their children's children?
   TL:  I don't think they are divorcing themselves from technology.  You mean by living in teepees?
   VA:  No, electricity.  That's one of the basic technological advancements of the century.  Our children growing up and discovering books of the world outside that has all these things.  "Where are these people, where are they at?  There's a whole world outside that they don't even know about.  Of course, we know about that, we came from it.  But we divorce ourselves from that.  We're going to lose our children, and if not our children, our children's children.
   TL:  To electricity?
   VA:  To the desire for these technological things.  Maybe that would be avoided because of a more healthful environment that they grow up in as opposed to what we grew up in.
   TL:  Well, none of us is suggesting that we turn our backs on science or technology.  Obviously, God created the television too, just like he created the lysergic acid.  I think what will come out of these communities is the notion of the sacred way of life.  You see, to the Indian, every sequence of technical activity is sacred.  When he hunts, it's a sacred dialogue between him and his brother, the animal.  When he plants, it's a sacred sexual union between him and the seed and Mother Earth.
   I feel that we would use every piece of technology and energy that's available, but for spiritual purposes...not for money or power, but for turning yourself and other people on.  So have no fear that the psychedelic kids won't know to use electricity .  They'll see that electricity is here not to shut the light on and off-because that's no place-but that electricity is here to make psychedelic lights, to make the sacred saw cut the sacred wood for the sacred fireplace.
   Again, to drop out is not a behavioral or visible thing.  Drop out is inside, and you come back and you groove behind every form of energy and every social possibility.

BLACK POWER
   VA:  A lot of people have been saying that in our country the spiritual, or religious or psychedelic movement is primarily a movement of white men.  Whereas the black race is moving in a different direction toward a unity in tribalism.  What do you feel about that?
   TL:  I don't like to generalize about the white people and the black people because millions of individuals are involved.  I think that healthy things are happening to the Negroes.  And I think that their discovery of their own power and energy is a glorious thing.  Naturally it is going to express itself in many different ways; there are more and more Negroes who are turning on to LSD.  This will be inevitable.  I don't see why the Negro has to sew himself up into a black power bag only.  Shouldn't he have as many alternatives and possibilities to go beyond the current political situation?  I think the more black power there is, the more black drop outs there will be from black power, which is healthy.
   VA:  So they will have to go through the same changes that we've gone...the people who are now in their 30s and 40s, through political education and political thrust...political activity, and we dropped out from that.  Well, do you think a black man is going to have to do the same thing when he goes through the black power and then the black drop-out?
   TL:  Maybe it will be Stokely Carmichael's kids who will turn on to the next step.  I hope the Negro doesn't have to go through this dreary white middle class process.
'   VA:  Another question about people that are in a minority and what relationship they are going to have to Americans who have had psychedelic experiences.  How about these young men who are coming back from Viet Nam who have the rest of their lives to work out the state of mind they've been forced into living with--what kind of changes do you think they are going to go through when they come back to the United States?  Regardless of what you may think the future is, war with Red China, or anything like that, what kind of a time do you think these young men are going to have when they come back to the U.S.?  Indeed, already are having.
   TL:  I don't know.  I suppose the Viet Nam War Veterans are like the rest of us;  they vary.  I do know that some of the best pot you can get around the New York City area is Viet Nam grass.  If there's enough of them turning on to that in Saigon, they'll come back just like a kid comes back from Harvard--ready for something better.
   VA:  What is the incidence of drugs fucking up people that you've seen in your experience?
   TL:  Well, by drugs, do you include alcohol and...?
   VA:  Well, in each drug, perhaps...you could probably break it down to coffee and nutmeg also...(laughter)
   TL:  I think that psychedelic drugs--marijuana, peyote, LSD, STP--are sacraments.  I think that they are developed by the divine process, the DNA code, to help man survive.
   All this has been argued out thousands of times before.
   In the early period of the Catholic church, when the bread and wine were psychedelic and really flipped people out, you'd take bread and wine once and, man!  You'd take off your Roman centurion uniform and you'd run naked in the street barefoot crying "Praise the Lord."  That's what bread and wine did 2000 years ago, and that's why it was against the law.  That's why they nailed people on crosses.
   The issue came up:  is the sacrament bread and wine still good if it's given you by an evil priest who wants your money for the bread and wine, or who may be connected with the Mafia?  Or who is giving you the bread and wine because he wants to cop your mind, or because he wants to cop your girl.  Is it still a sacrament?  This is called the Donatist heresy.  The Donatists know that the drug is only good if it is used by good people.  And the Catholic church in its wisdom said "No."  The sacrament is put here by God, for our use, and it's always good--no matter who gives it or who sells it or why.
   I'm very orthodox.  I think that psychedelic drugs are good.  Nothing happens with LSD or marijuana that wouldn't happen to you anyway...it's all a test.  The bad sessions are really the best trips because they are the ones that show you what you have to see.
   A reaction to one of these experiences must be seen over a long period of time.  The worst freak-out horrible trip five years from now, you may look back on to say "wow!  That's what really did it."  I don't know, I'm just laying my trip on you.  But my trip is that if it works, if it flips you out, turns you on, blows your mind, it's holy.
   It may well be that the value of your bad trip won't show up for three generations.  And the next messiah may come from that time when you ended in the mental hospital.  That's my trip...
   VA:  We spoke with a monk from the Himalayan Academy, that's the Christian Yoga Society here, and he said that everything that causes you, everyone who causes you to have a reaction is your guru.
   TL:  Right.  And the more powerful the reaction, the greater the guru.  One thing I might say, which concerns me somewhat, although I'm not very concerned these days, is the fear of the State, the fear of arrest.  A bust causes panic and terror in the hearts of hippies.  You just purify yourself about that.  Welcome arrests.  I've been arrested eight times in the last three years, and each one is a test.  Gives me a chance to share time and space and the vibrations with the cops.  There is nothing to be afraid of.  It shows you where you're at.  If you just keep that focus, you won't be arrested for one thing.  Cause you won't bring in the cops, and if you do, it won't harm you or them.
   VA:  In other words, is it a certain vibrational wave length or something that the cops are on that you happen to get on and then you run into them?  Or, what's your trip on that?  In other words...can you put yourself into that wave length and then you are arrested?
   TL:  When I was arrested in Canada, it was like the Yankee/Dodgers ballgame.  I marched down to the field, and they marched their team and the arrest took place.
   VA:  You knew about it beforehand?
   TL:  Well, I gave them a chance to do it... like going to bat, and they had the ball...and the glove.
   VA:  You joined the game...
   TL:  Yes.  It didn't do any harm.
   There is one other piece of technical information which might be useful.  There is a lawyer in Denver, Marshall Quiat, who is fighting the legality of LSD arrests.  He has a chemist from a well-known university who has testified that the government's methods of testing for LSD are a)  very inadequate; that they don't really isolate LSD; and b)  the procedure itself is illegal because it's not public, and the defense doesn't have the opportunity to test using the same methods that they do.  On these grounds, any arrest on possession of LSD can be challenged.  I urge anyone who gets into trouble for LSD possession to write Marshall Quiat in Denver and get the details.
   There are two issues here:  one is that the tests which the government uses to detect LSD are inadequate.  It could be many other substances in addition to LSD, but presumably the thing they are looking for is LSD.  It's taken for granted it's LSD.  So the government evidence can be ruled out on that basis.  Secondly:  the method itself is not public, and they are going to have to make available to the defense the particular test they use.
   VA:  Is the defense allowed to test the evidence also?
   TL:  Yes.
   VA:  Colorado seems to be a mainstay now for resistance against drug laws.  Hasn't Mana had a recent State Supreme Court ruling upholding the use of peyote in religious ritual?
   TL:  Yes, Mana, the Apache from Denver, won his peyote case on religious grounds.
   VA:  What are the ramifications of that?  What does that cover now, as a precedent?  Does it mean that anyone that sets up a religion in their own state, should they get busted under the same circumstances, can they use that as precedent to try to beat the case?
   TL:  Mana is a member of the Native American Church which has precedent behind it which other religions don't.  Each case will have to be fought on it's own merits.  But the fact that Mana won is encouragement, is a good omen.

STARTING A RELIGION

   VA:  You have done some writing on how to start your own religion and how to set up that type of situation where it would indeed be used under the best most spiritual mode, most advantageous surroundings.  What are the basic things that would be done to allow that situation from the legal point of view?  How would the sacraments be kept?  Would it be in a separate room?
   TL:  I've written a manual which I would be glad to give anyone who writes to Millbrook about it on the details of this.  In general, if you just put down on a piece of paper why you are smoking pot, why you're taking LSD, and with whom, and where you're doing it, where your shrine is...this is a religion.
   I think that one of the problems is that the average person doesn't do this ahead of time.  He may be completely sincere in his spiritual use of marijuana.  But, the fact that he doesn't make it explicit leaves him and the law in doubt.
   There is absolutely no restriction here.  You can say:  "My religion is me and my wife.  We want to use marijuana to get higher levels of love-making.  Our temple is our bedroom.  And we have a little candle that we worship in front of."  Or, "We like to worship with the lights out."  That is religion.
   VA:  What has to be done with that paper?  Post it on the wall?
   TL:  Post it on the wall, mail it to yourself in a sealed envelope, keep it unopened.  The very fact that you do that puts you way ahead of the game--because the love-making with your wife will be better.  (laughter)
   VA:  Whether you mail it or not...
`   TL:  The interesting thing about how to form your own religion is that anything you do that will make explicit and valid for the law, if it is right, will make it a better trip for you.  It means you've given some thought to it..to arranging the circumstances and purposes of your trip.  You'll find that if you just put on paper the things you have learned about how to have a good session, man, that's your religion.  And it's probably more effective than anything the Protestant church has come up with.
   VA:  How may organized lysergic acid based sacrament religions are there now?  In the United States?
   TL:  There must be hundreds.
   VA:  Recently, Tim, there has been a lot of publicity about marijuana.  Most of it seemingly pretty favorable.  You said a few months ago that you thought that marijuana wouldn't be legalized for 5 years.  Do you think recent months have sped up the potentiality of that prediction?