Who likes Leary?

You know I find the opinion alot that people think Leary did some not so good stuff. So I'm just curious as to what everyone thinks about Leary?

I also make this thread so I can babble on about what I liked about Leary.

I understand how some people thought he was a little nutty, crazed, did more damage than good at times. But, I feel that to understand Leary you have to keep him in context. Leary wasn't just some guy who took a bunch of LSD and wrote books, he wasn't just a typical psychonaut drawn to it all by cool stories. LSD found Leary. He was in the first waves of people to try LSD. You know imagine if you took LSD and you come back down and there is literally NO other writings about it. Theres no internent, no forum, no anything to go read that will resonate with you except ancient scripture. There is no wiser, older trippers to offer you little advices like 'flow' and 'we are co-creaters'. You know, imagine if you took LSD and you were the only person of perhaps a handful of people in your state who has felt this thing and basically you have to come up with everything on your own. That alone would make you produce some pretty nutty thoughts all over the place. Much of the toning down of psychedelism and making it more mainstream acceptable these days is only possible because Leary had to some degree paved the way.

But anyways. The other component of Leary was that he was a psychologist by proffesion, working at Harvard. LSD found him at Harvard, he did initial trials of it at Harvard and he approached it like a Harvard Psychologist. And with that, I believe Leary was years, and still is literally years, decades, ahead of even modern Pscyhology. Leary was the first psychologist to realize that your entire psyche is the product of conditioning, and that furthermore, these conditionings can be changed. He was the first to come up with the notion of meta-programming, programming your own brain, and coming to a realization of the mechanics of the programming of the brain and how to operate it utilizing set/setting.

Prior to this notion, it was considered broken brain, broken brain chemicals. Modern psychology STILL believes it is broken brain chemicals. I do honestly believe that at some point in the future psychology is going to realize a persons psyche is all the product of programming and at that point there going to look back, 100, maybe 200 years and see Leary and be like "Oh he was right". Had the psychological institutions followed Learys lead, modern psychiatrics would not be happening, we would have something incredibly better in it's place. We would have a system based upon learning to operate your own brain through various spiritual practices, rather than just taking a drug attempt to do it. Only in the past decade with MAPS.org and psychedellic research, 40 years after Leary, is the rest of psychological world FINALLY cathing up to Leary.

Leary really was one of the genius's that was so far ahead of his time he appeared completely insane to the normal people. I mean this one notion that, your psyche is subject to your control and your programming. This sounds like some newage self-help book in a sense, but it actually is the truth, and when Leary wrote about it, it wasn't coming from a self-help Author, rather it was coming from a Harvard Proffesor of Psychology that had just realized the true nature of mind through clinical research. But the notion that you program your brain was too dangerous to the insitutions, so it was ignored... (BTW many newage self-help authors are just like lesser versions of Leary, they follow in Leary's wake)

Now the other thing about Leary was that, he was kind of an asshole in some ways. But you know, I really think this was simply because he was like America's guru. And the guru has to be a reflection of the student. So if your going to be a reflection of America, you have to be an asshole. I mean they threw him in jail for nonsense. he was filling a role that had to be filled. We need a big dick to stand infront of conservative America and say fuck you.

The other thing of Leary is that, he was a modern prophet in a sense. He completely foresaw what the computers and internet would bring and lectured about it before many people. And pretty much all of what he believed would come to pass about the internet has come to pass.

Now, some people seem to think that Leary should not have made LSD so popular. And the truth about this actually is, Ken Kesey introduced many MANY times more people to LSD than Leary did. The popularizaiton of LSD was more from Kesey than anyone else. But that side, even if Leary was the sole component of it's popularization, and illegalization. I read one thing that was very interesting where Leary believed that the government would begin to start using media, in mass, to completely control and brainwash populations. Leary believed the only way for a person to decondition enough to see through this and avoid it was with LSD. This is why he went on such a crazy rampage of popularization. He believed the clock was ticking, that he had to wake up as many people as possible from the brainwashing of the media, make them aware enough to avoid it. And in truth, Leary was pretty accurrate with that notion. I mean you can see today this happening. So many people cannot comprehend outside their television... If Leary had actually managed to get LSD MORE popular, get more people to wake up, we would probably be living in a very different political climate today, a much better climate. I mean ya, he shook up the typical conservative mind quite a bit, but this is a good thing I think.

Another thing, you know this whole spiritual awakening thing occuring right now, all this modern interest in eastern philosophies, this whole greater respect for the earth, this want to eat organics and be more sustainable. All this is following in Leary's wake. Leary was the first person of an entirely western upbringing to make a radical jump over to eastern conceptions such as Hinduism. The popularism of Hinduism and Buddhism today among previously Christian or Catholic people is largely because of Leary, you have buddha statues in grocery stores today because of Leary. Leary was also one of the first people to stand up on a pedestal and say Christianity was wrong in a very harsh manner. Richard Dawkins is actually like a lesser succesor to Timothy Leary in alot of ways. This means this whole modern Atheist movement also is following in Timothy Leary's wake.

I mean, he was nutty, he produced some crazed ideas. But he certainly had an impact, and a VERY necessary impact. I do believe another Tim Leary needs to come about.

 

I love Tim Leary!

 

I have his autograph.

 

hopefully it's on a sheet of acid.

 

Leary was a man.

 

so I love him like a brother then.

 

It is, actually.

 

I would marry him, the age difference would make me a bit quezzy tho.....does that make me any less of a man?

 

Personally, he's a very well-intended man that I respect because of his intellectual and spiritual writings.. However, he's slightly self-righteous in that he believes that he's a little "all knowing".

Example, the 8 circuit model of consciousness.

There can't be exactly 8, there's an infinite amount, between and beyond these levels.

But still, I respect him greatly.

 

well circuit 8 is infinity itself

but I do get your notion. The thing about the 8 circuits is that its so easily comparable to the 7 chakras. The 8 circuits in alot of ways I think are just a reinterpretation of chakras

 

whoa, way too many fallacies and grammatical errors in your writing.

I get where you're coming from, but come on man

 

Mrs.O'Leary is one of my Professors names lol

 

:cheers2:

 

He was more than just a drug peddler, he was an enlightened being. Its sad that only a few people realized how in-tune he was with life. Instead of learning from him, society cast him out like a leper.

The world wasnt ready for him back then. it was like tossing an atheist into the whole Salem witch trials, they burned him at the stake.

 

Pseudo intellectual asshole who did too much acid and thought that he was the shit.

 

yup.

He did the right thing the wrong way.

 

I agree but he didnt go the wrong way i believe....I know the after-effects for me made me want to spread it as much as possible and i admit i ran my mouth off about how awsome everything was a little bit more than i should have...But was that the wrong thing to do?It was just my naturel reaction to something so great, to want to share it....Leary loved sharing as we can see haha...And he was a very "High-Ranking" om the Lsd World, or to to people who do acid

Thats just my Side, but i do see what you guys are saying:cheers2:

Edit- He over-reacted, or went with his instinct

 

thanks for the write-up Ry. very interesting stuff. I also acknowledge Leary's contribution of infusing us with a little more of the eastern stuff, viz. imprinting the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I think Leary represented many true sentiments and was a bit of a pioneer in describing the spiritual barrenness of the West. I definitely share his vision and I think we're making some progress. Didn't someone post a while ago that the FDA lifted the ban on medical research of lsd?

Leary's commentaries on tripping have proven useful to me, but I'm not about to consider it an official road map or guide for tripping. I think that if Leary were not as candid and flamboyant as he was that Pandora's box wouldn't have opened as wide as it did (er...YKWIM). I vote he was a net positive.

 

agreed. shit, would any of you be any different if you did as much lsd as he did

 

see, Richard Alpert was the actual real deal