What do you think of Timothy Leary?

I admit that by becomming a snitch, and maybe other things too, he lost a lot of the respect that I and many other hippies would otherwise have given him, but, personally, i don't think that makes everything he ever said and did bullsh*t. What do you think?

 

i read several papers of his and ones he worked on, including the tibetan book of the dean and start your own religion, the most i know about his actual life was what was published in the elektrik kool aid acid tests, but can u tell me anything more, specifically wat is this rat business

 

I think he was a fraud and a huckster from the beginning. He was admittedly working for the CIA.

In 1976, W.H. Bowert interviewed Leary following his release from prison, where he openly admits he was knowingly working for the CIA...

 

heh, sounds like he was trying to cover up the fact that he didnt know shit...if i were cornered in that situation i would probably say i knew everything as well...its like good and evil u know, ure in hell and some angel comes down to u asking if u knew u were doing the devils work, of course ude say yes, or i would, i mean, im in the devils house, ude get in good with the devil and not look like a total imbecile in front of god

 

There are a lot of people who believed that Jerry Garcia was with the CIA as well, mainly due to his military background and unsympathetic statements about draft evaders and anti-war activists during the Vietnam War. I personally don't subscribe to that belief, but it's a pretty widespread belief. I'd not heard that of Leary.

I was going to ask Rat if he believes the Weather Underground was a CIA group too. But heck, I wouldn't consider that to be out of the range of possibility at all (however unlikely).

 

The only thing I know about Timothy Leary is his name, he died . his ashes got shot into space.. the rest is just babble...

 

Quote:Bill Cosby , "Its got to be the drugs.. cause ppl on pure air dont think that way"..

 

a good friend of mine and a fellow "dropper" is now convinced that Leary was a pawn and acid LSD for mind-control. personally, i have trouble believing that acid is either entirely good or entirely evil. i think there is a great deal that can be taken from a trip. it helps the un-spiritual, out-of-touch white guy tap into something universal. but psychedelics can be over-used and used for the wrong reasons, which is why i am skeptical about the way Leary presented the drugs in his books which were geared toward a rebellious counter-culture. He ain't no shaman, that's for sure. Nevertheless... i sincerely doubt he actually worked with the CIA in support of the war. That's a stretch.

 

Weather Underground was a CIA group ,, The Grateful Dead had a song Called Weather Report.

 

Jerry Garcia's military background totals about 6 months, with 8 AWOLs, which earned him a dishonorable discharge.

 

To be honest i really know very little about him myself. I haven't read any of his books. I just know that some of the things he said about society and psychedelics as they relate to spirituality and consciousness have seemed to me pretty right on. I never heard about the CIA thing though. I'm not sure what i think about all that.

 

psh YEAH, that's what THEY want you to believe

 

im a paranoid schizophrenic, and the idea that jerry was putting secret mind controls messages in his music, is not a tantalizing concept

 

Leary single handedly decided to take LSD out of the hands of academic research and spread it across the country. Kinsey and Ousley helped. LSD is dangerous in a non controlled setting, and many paid a huge price for experimenting. LSD got such a bad rap it was permanently banned as a research drug. Leary in his later years regretted the statement "turn on, tune out, drop out". For those who survived they may have benefited, but there are many others in mental institutions because of Leary's wrecklessness to this day.

 

i hate the "drop out" part.

 

I once saw Leary give a lecture at the University of Wyoming. I don't remember much of what he said, it was all pretty cosmic, but one thing he said was, "You don't ever have to die." Nothing like proving yourself wrong.

 

"You get the Timothy Leary that you deserve." - Timothy Leary


Read his books, critically think about the ideas he presents, then form your own opinion about them.

 

psh YEAH, that's what THEY want you to believe

I was expecting/awaiting a post about him getting kicked out, and was gonna post exactly what you did

Robert Hunter, if I'm not mistaken, was in the National Guard, and was in a unit deployed to fight rioters in Los Angeles during the Watts uprising. Maybe he's the CIA one. I mean that only jokingly, of course.

 

"I don't want to discount that there are people whose lives have been destroyed by drugs, but are they the result of Timothy's research or or the result of government policies? Leary's research was dosed down, and the media stopped quoting him a long time ago. Most people don't even understand what Leary's opinions were or what it was he was trying to communicate. By contrast, the government's policies have been carried out for 30 years, and now we have a major drug disaster in this country. Nobody, of course, thinks it's the government's fault - they think it's Leary's for trying to prevent it, for trying to have scientific controls over the thing. He deserves a better legacy than that."

- Robert Anton Wilson

 

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