AMOK DISPATCH

Neuropolitics

We’ve all listened to and read our share of breathless reports from trippers, yet for most people this discovery is a glorious surprise. Mystics come back raving about higher levels of perception where one sees realities a hundred times more beautiful and meaningful than the reassuringly familiar scripts of normal life.

For most people it’s a life-changing shock to learn that their everyday reality circuit is one among dozens of circuits, which, when turned on, are equally real, pulsing with strange forms and mysterious biological signals. Accelerated, amplified some of these alternate realities can be microscopic in exquisite detail, others telescopic.

Since psychedelic drugs expose us to different levels of perception and experience, use of them is ultimately a philosophic enterprise, compelling us to confront the nature of reality and the nature of our fragile, subjective belief systems. The contrast is what triggers the laughter, the terror. We discover abruptly that we have been programmed all these years, that everything we accept as reality is just social fabrication.

In the 21 years since eating mushrooms in a garden in Mexico, I have devoted most of my time and energy to the exploration and classification of these circuits of the brain and their implications for evolution, past and future. In four hours by the swimming pool in Cuernavaca I learned more about the mind, the brain and its structures than I did in the preceding 15 years as a diligent psychologist.

I learned that the brain is an underutilized biocomputer, containing billioins of unaccessed neurons. I learned that normal consciousness is one drop in an ocean of intelligence. That consciousness and intelligence can be systematically expanded. That the brain can be reprogrammed. That knowledge of how the brain operates is the most pressing scientific issue of our time.

— Timothy Leary, from Flashbacks: An Autobiography

Reviews

Flashbacks: A Personal and Cultural History of an Era

Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

The bigger-than-biopic-style exploits, adventures and narrow escapes of the renegade academic turned acid evangelist, prophet of space migration and cyberdevotee told in his own irrreverent words: “Harvard Department of Visionary Experience… Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico… Secrets of the Beatniks… Drugs Are the Origin of Religion and Philosophy… Ambushed by the Harvard Squares… Psychedelic Summer Camp… Earthly Paradise… Life on a Grounded Space Colony… Pranksters Come to Millbrook… Busted at Laredo… Brotherhood of Eternal Love… The Exiles… Captured in Kabul… Folsom Prison… Escape Plot… Kidnapped by the Feds… Freedom?” SS

Publisher: Putnam
Paperback: 405 pages
Illustrated

The Game of Life

Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

The Game of Life is not simply a book: It is an experience. It is an organic computer. Leary uses ancient symbols to get his point across. But when he uses ancient symbols, they are no longer ancient, they are simply intelligence. Aleister Crowley's most dedicated student, Israel Regardie, wrote of Timothy Leary: “Posterity, I am certain, will have a finer appreciation of what he has contributed to the world than we have today.” DW

Publisher: New Falcon
Paperback: 294 pages
Illustrated

High Priest

Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

“High Priest chronicles 16 psychedelic trips taken in the days before LSD was made illegal. The trip guides, or “high priests,” include: Aldous Huxley, Gordon Wasson, William S. Burroughs, Godsdog, Allen Ginsberg, Ram Dass, Ralph Metzner, Willy (a junkie from New York City), Huston Smith, Frank Barron and others. The scene was Millbrook, a mansion in upstate New York that was the mecca of psychedelia during the 1960s, and of the many luminaries of the period who made a pilgrimage there to trip with Leary and his group, the League for Spiritual Discovery. Each chapter includes a chronicle of what happened during the trip, marginalia of comments and quotations, and illustrations.”

Publisher: Ronin
Paperback: 347 pages
Illustrated

Info-Psychology

Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

Leary pilots us off-planet and out-of-body through an updated version of Exo-Psychology (circa 1975) which takes account of cyber-realities of the 90s (neuroelectronic networks)… “The metamorphosis of human species from terrestrial to extra-terrestrial was signalled by the almost simultaneous discoveries of neuroactive drugs, electronic instruments, DNA code, sub-atomic nuclear energies, quantum physics, computers, electronic communication.”

Publisher: New Falcon
Paperback: 139 pages

The Intelligence Agents

Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

Imaginative science fiction pseudo-dossier collage encoding the philosophy of Leary’s “future history” book series. “Commodore Leri, the Out-Caste Agent who serves as quest-editor for this manual, is better known to galactic soap opera fans for his later work in High Energy Fusion in the Sagittarius Sector. The Intelligence Agents is a collection of 20th century documents which has enjoyed considerable popularity throughout the galaxy because of its Juvenile Charm. It is a classic portrait of a group of fledgling Agents, just graduated from Cadet status, facing their first mutational duty.”—from the Publisher’s Notes.

Publisher: New Falcon
Paperback: 214 pages

Neuropolitique

Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

Expanded and updated edition of Neuropolitics: “The message of the DNA code is: Migrate from the Nursery Planet.” LERI encounters G. Gordon Liddy (first as his prosecuting attorney at Millbrook), Charles Manson (in the jail cell next door), media manipulation and mass brainwashing, and moves from LSD to Zero G.

Publisher: New Falcon
Paperback: 187 pages

The Politics of Ecstasy

Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

“The Politics of Ecstasy is Timothy Leary's most significant work on the social and political ramifications of psychedelics. First published in 1968, this collection spans the period from research at Harvard to the San Francisco Summer of Love. Included are 'The Seven Tongues of God,' 'The Fifth Freedom—The Right to Get High,' 'Ecstasy Attacked—Ecstasy Defended,' 'American Education as an Addictive Process and Its Cure,' 'M.I.T. is T.I.M. Spelled Backwards,' 'The Buddha as Drop Out,' 'The Mad Virgin of Psychedelia,' and many more. Much of The Politics of Ecstasy appeared in a variety of publications including The Psychedelic Review, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Esquire, Harvard Review, Playboy, The Realist, Evergreen Review and The San Francisco Oracle.”

Publisher: Ronin
Paperback: 371 pages
Illustrated