I just finished reading Timothy Leary’s “The Politics of Ecstacy”… (Wow.)
He is a lot of things in his book, and don’t think if I say I think he’s one thing, I will disagree with your raising the point that you think he’s also another thing. Theres no doubt he’s eccentric. Alittle occult. Has some important points. Riding the wave of 60’s optimism about the drug. Thinks its harmless. A little reckless I guess. Let me know what you think.
What do you make of his main point that LSD is the chemical equivalent of something like the bible in that it is a gateway to the answers of the typical religious, metaphysical, spiritual questions of a person about the universe? Now the bible gives you shit answers, but they’re true if you add faith… Leary has tremendous faith that LSD gives spiritual insight. Personally, I don’t buy that, which isn’t to say I don’t think theres some intellectual-good that could come out of an LSD session.
Does anybody know where Leary is now? Is he still ticking, or has he died? And if he died, what was he like in the last period of his life? If LSD has negative long term effects my guess is he’d of had every one of them… seeing as he did it “hundreds and hundreds” of times.
I think it can make you pay attention to things you otherwise would not have paid attention to, may have positive results creatively. But don’t count on those seemingly ‘profound insights’ meaning anything in every-day life – LSD can give significance to absolute gibberish. A bad trip can make you have delusions that last a while after the trip is over and take a while to shake. I don’t personally recommend it.
I don’t know much about the lysergates. I’ve done psyilicobin enough.
Yes, I tend to agree with that stuff you said.
My understanding was that lsd would mimic serotonin in your brain, and essentially you’d have your brain not knowing exactly how to filter your sense impressions. And if this is something like the case (from what I know it is) there is no room at all for profound spiritual insights. At least I don’t see any. Only room for a wacky experience.
But there are a lot of smart people who think its a potentially interesting experiment in consciousness. I see that. Maybe you just need a lot of time afterwards to coherize your experience. Not that lsd has shown you things, but that you’ve seen things from lsd.
Drugs of this type tend to “turn up the volume†at it were. If in your ordinary day-to-day consciousness you tend to pay attention to more mystical matters, then such a drug will likely give you more intense experiences of the same type.
A bad trip can feel like a journey through hell.
I think Tim Leary was of the mystical bent and his experience just turned up his volume. He had the idea that the drug and the drug alone gave him the experience. He might have failed to notice how much of his own personality flavored his experience.
Give such a substance to somebody who had a pessimistic attitude and you will tend to get a bad trip.
Such drugs draw your attention to functions that you mind always has, but which might have slipped your direct notice.
A drug won’t make everyone a mystic, but it can make a person who is geared towards mysticism more attentive to that area.
The mind itself if the source of all the experiences, the drug just gives it a bit of a nudge. Unless of course you trust Carols Castaneda’s teacher Don Juan Matus. Then the drugs produce a totally different effect.
Robert Anson Wilson, a later friend of Leary, also wrote some noteworthy book about his own drug experiences. “Final Secrets of the Illuminati” can be an enlighenting read.