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LEARY Original Art by Allen Atwell

&

Michael Green

New by

Edition Art

Howard

ini

RONIN PUBLISHING Berkeley California USA

Hallis

Original Edition Copyright Notices:

Published by

Ronin Publishing, Inc. Box 1035

P.O.

Berkeley,

CA 94701

Excerpts from The Divine

Comedy by Dante

Aligheri, translated Inc.

Ma$ud by John Fowles

Brown, and Company.

reprinted by permission of

Little,

Excerpts from The

Excerpts from Steppenwolfj by Hermann Hesse, translated by

High Priest

by Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

was

1968 by The New American Library in in

association with The World Publishing Company.)

rights reserved.

of this

Hermann

by permission of Harper G Row.

1954, reprinted

Excerpts from \6land by Aldous Huxley, Copyright

1962, reprinted

and

sion of Harper G Row. Excerpts from The Lotus Koestler, Copyright

1961

by permis-

the Robot by Arthur

by Arthur Koestler, reprinted by permission of The

Macmillan Company. Excerpts from The Epic

Gilgamesh, translated by N.K.

ofj

Sandars, reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd. Excerpts from The Religions

All

reprinted by permis-

Hesse, Copyright 1954 by Suhrkamp Verlag. Excerpts from Doors oj Perception

by Aldous Huxley, Copyright

(The Original Edition

published

Inc.;

Basil Creighton,

sion of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. "Within and Without" by

1968 and 1995

Copyright

1957 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston,

Copyright 1927,

ISBN 0-914171-80-2

by Lawrence

Grant White, reprinted by permission of Random House,

No part

book may be repro-

duced or transmitted

in

any

Form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includ-

oft

Man

by Huston Smith, Copyright

of Harper G Row. Excerpts from The Lord

1958, reprinted

ofj

by permission

the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. Excerpts from The I

Ching or The Book

ojj

Changes, translated by

R.

Wilhelm and

C.F.

Bollingen Series XIX (Princeton University Press, 1967), Copyright

by The Bollingen Foundation,

New

Baynes,

1950, 1967

York; reprinted by permission of Princeton

ing photocopying, recording,

University Press. Excerpts from "Minutes

or by any information stor-

ed by permission of Beach Books, Texts G Documents. Excerpts from the

To Go" by William Burroughs

reprint-

age and retrieval system,

Boston Herald Traveler reprinted by permission of the Boston Herald Traveler

without written permission

Corporation. Excerpts from "LSD-Hollywood's Status Drug" (Cosmopolitan,

from the publisher, except

September,

for the inclusion of brief in a

quotations

review.

1963),

Copyright

1963 by Hearst Magazines,

Inc.;

reprinted by per-

mission of Cosmopolitan. Excerpts from the writings of Allen Ginsberg reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from letters of Michael

Hollingshead reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from Inner

Credits For Ronin Edition Project Editors

Sebastian

Orfali

Space reprinted by permission of The

Rev. Michael Augustine Francis

Rt.

Itkin.

Excerpts from an interview with Timothy Leary originally appeared in Playboy

&

1966 by

magazine; Copyright

Beverly Potter

HMH

Publishing Co.

Inc.;

reprinted by permis-

sion of Playboy. Excerpts from "The Hallucinogenic Drug Cult" by

Front Matter Design

& Type

Gordon (The Reporter. August

15,

1963),

Copyright

Noah

1963 by The Reporter

Magazine Company; reprinted by permission of The Reporter and the author.

Judy July

Excerpts from "Return Trip to Nirvana" by Arthur Koestler reprinted by permis-

Original Edition Illustrations Allen Atwell

&

sion of the

Michael Green

Sunday

(Time. October

New

Edition Illustrations

Howard

1966); Copyright

Hallis

25,

Telegraph. London. Excerpts from "Instant Mysticism"

1963)

and "An Epidemic of Acid Heads" (Time, March

1963 by Time,

by permission of Time,

Inc.;

1966 by Time,

Copyright

Inc. Illustration facing

pages 46 and

Cover Design

Richard Davis Studio. Illustration facing page

Brian Groppe

McDarrah. Portions of Trip 6 appeared

in

128:

Inc.;

184:

Courtesy of

Courtesy of Fred

Esquire Magazine.

11,

reprinted

W.

DEDicATions 1968 This manuscript

My

was entrusted

to:

Beloved Daughter, Susan Leary

and to

My

Beloved Son,

Jack Leary

1995 Now the

manuscript

is

passed, by them,

Dieadra Martino Ashley Martino Sara Brown Brett Leary

Annie Leary Davina-Susana Martino

to:

iv

High Priest

William Burroughs

*

Timothy Lcary

ORJGlnAL ACKnOWLEDGEmEntS events related in this history reflect the collective consciousness

and collaborative behavior of several thousand people

The

researchers

who have

their emotion, muscle, brain,

spiritual

shared dark confusions and bright hopes, given

and risked scorn and

social isolation to pursue the

psychedelic yoga.

Homage and

gratitude to these fellow explorers.

Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner have participated in every phase of the long ascent and continue to climb higher. His-story

is

their story.

Three tender elvish flowers, Rosemary Woodruff, Susan Leary, and Jack Leary,

have endured the harshest ordeals of the journey

at

home and

in prison

and

have survived, blossoming. Loving thanks to the psychologists and religious philosophers

who have coun-

seled at our centers in Cambridge, Boston, Zihuatanejo, Antigua, Millbrook, and

Manhattan.

The

original art for this manuscript

is

the illuminated

work of Allen Atwell and

Michael Green.

The editorial acts of love were performed by Susan Firestone, Lorraine Schwartz, and Jean McCreedy.

The psychedelic revolution

is

a religious renaissance of the young, for the

young, by the young. This volume presents Old Testament background for the

new

witness of those born after 1946, children of the Atomic Age.

The authentic

priests, the real

and-roll musicians. Acid-rock

is

prophets of this great movement are the rock-

the hymns, odes, chants of the turned-on love gen-

eration. For the first time in history, teen-agers (our

have written their

own

songs, beat their

own

new advanced mutant

rhythm, created their

The work of the psychedelic scholar-politicians (described over, with love

own

species)

religion.

in this history)

is

and confidence we turn our work and our planet over to the young

and their prophets:

ORJGinAL HIGH PRJESt BAnDS The Beatles The Byrds The Rolling Stones The Beach Boys

The Jefferson Airplane The Mamas and the Papas The Grateful Dead

Moby Grape The Daily Flash The Doors Country Joe and the Fish Charlie Lloyd

The Monkees

Donovan The Association Buffalo Springfield

The Animals Big Brother and the Holding Company

The Quicksilver Messenger Service and many other

ecstatic combinations.

1995

HIGH PRIEST BAI1DS

Smashing Pumpkins

The Beastie Boys

Dots

Sonic Youth

Edward Ka-Spel

Blondie

Tear Garden

Jeff

Skinny Puppy Ministry

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

John Zorn

Nirvana

Cabaret Voltaire

A

Beck

The Cult

Elliot

Sharp

Throbbing Gristle

Glenn Branca

Negativland

Dr. Fiorella Terenzi

Tribe Called Quest

Dr.

Susumu Ohno

De La Soul

Soul Asylum

Digable Planets

Revolting Cocks

Nine Inch Nails

Camper Van Beethoven

Hole

The

Orbital

Blind

Plastic

Ono Band

Lemon Jefferson

Future Sounds of London

Cream

Aphex Twins

Syd Barrett

DeeLite

Janisjoplin

Prince

Iron Butterfly

Dead Can Dance

Strawberry Alarm Clock

The Cocteau Twins

The Carrie Nations

Who

This Mortal Coil

The

Wolfgang Press

Bob Dylan

Ride

Crosby

Stills

Nash and Young

Slowdive

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Blues Traveller

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention

Luscious Jackson

The

Soft

Machine

viii

Laura

High Priest

&

Aldous Huxley

Timothy Leary

1995

We

ACKJIOWLEDGEmEntS

transmit the 1995 re-issue of High priest with a certain amused,

confused, apologetic wonder.

This collection of Neuro-Adventure Stories

was

first

published in 1968 by

World Publishing-NAL. It

was Re-Issued, Re-Animated

in 1995

by Ronin Publishing.

I

am

grateful for

the visionary friendship of Beverly Potter and Sebastian Orfali and the graphic-

prowess of Howard

Hallis.

The "Acknowledgements" for the ancient 1968 version declaimed, "The psychedelic revolution

a religious renaissance of the young, for the young, by the

is

young. This volume presents Old Testament background for the those born after 1946.

.

.

new

witness of

."

Thus, 27 years ago, did

we pompously,

parentally,

announce the

Birth of

the Baby Boomers! So Pass out the Loaded Cigars. Here's

more

'68 pulpit-parent sermonizing.

"The authentic priests, the real prophets oF this great movement are the rock-and-roll musicians. .

.

.

teen-agers (our new advanced mutant species) have written their own songs, beat their own rhythm, created their own religion." For the First time

in

history

(!),

And then came the solemn-inspirational Locker-Room

Exhortation.

"The work oF the psychedelic scholar-politicians

(described

in

this history)

is

over.

.

.

."

With love and confidence we turn our work and our planet

young and

their prophets: (the rock 'n rollers).

(?)

over to the

x

High Priest

The 1968 edition celebrated

The Monkees,

19

Timothy Leary

+

rock groups: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones,

etc.

Ok. These pronouncements were breathless, pious, embarrassingly grandiose.

But they did

lurch

in the right direction.

The '60s Youth Movement

did

The inevitable

change human culture.

things, popularize-legitimize this astonishing

major

future. It

did,

among other

concept of "New Generation" as a

cultural issue. Globally.

GENERATIONALISMO! It is

hard for us to realize that

Agers Re-Creates a

this

concept that each generation of

New

Culture

Teen-

was not a major

historical

force before the 20th Century. For example, in the slow-witted 1975 edition of "The

New

(?)

Columbia Encyclopedia" the only reference to

this explosive

word

refers to

the "Generation of 1898", in Spain!

ThE GAY My

'90s

BOHEMIANS

WH$

NOJ TEENERS

charming, elegant, educated, worldly, Irish-Catholic grandparents, Sarah

Rooney S Dennis Leary, did not imagine that they belonged to a "generation". Dutiful Catholic teen-agers of the Victorian Age, 1860-1890, danced, dressed,

courted the way their parents (and the Protestants) did.

Polka*

And

&

Waltzed!

their coming-of-age trips

were not to Woodstock or Katmandu. Like the

Protestants they read about in the papers, they dutifully sailed to Europe on the traditional

Cunard steamships and made the

Louvre, the Vatican

classical, obligatory "trips" to the

Museums and the Opera Houses.

THE LOST GENERATION OF THE '20s Just recently

I

learned that

my

sophisticated Aunt Betty died in 1923 of a

cocaine overdose! Betty in her scandalous trips to Paris, semi-legal divorce) ful

member

was a

"hell-raising",

New York and Reno

"whoopee", sophisticated "flapper".

of the Roaring '20s counter-culture:

THE "LOST' GENERATION.

A

(for a

duti-

Neuv Acknowledgements was invented by

This catchy term

scientifically-trained sister

darling,

flaunted lesbian credentials and courageously glo-

beloved parents, Abigail S Timothy, were part of

These pious, prudish,

patriotic, middle-class Catholics

drug of the time!

illegal

a certain Gertrude Stein, an astute, brave,

concept of Counter-Culture.

rified the

My

who

xi

And they smoked

this

new

culture.

openly swigged the major

cigarettes (not in public, for ladies, of

course).

Abby and Tote belonged to the ences. They called

My the

it

parents (silently)

first

generation in

tures or

symphony

cohort to understand generational differ-

Model T Fords, canned goods,

knew they were

human

They were

radio and talk via electric

like the film stars. Their

concerts. They

lip-stickO).

different from their parents.

history to listen to

They smoked and drank

wires.

i.e.

"progress",

first

Radio Broadcasts were

were "teened" too soon

lec-

to be imprinted by

Decca Records playing Jazz and Dixieland. Television? tives.

No way! My parents stubbornly

rejected

TV

like suspicious primi-

The way Literary People today fear computers.

It

is

interesting to recall that those magic terms

GENEr\AjION were applied

to upper-middle-class adults.

Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Mabel Dodge, D.H. Lawrence,

BOrlEMJANS 8 LOSJ F.

Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest

T. S. Eliot,

James Joyce,

William Butler Yeats, Ford Maddox Ford, Georgia O'Keeffe, the Expressionist painters, the jazz musicians.

None of these

"avant-garde", cultural innovators

were

HiGH PrjesT

were

"teen-agers".

GEN

1:

THE SPOCK PARENTS

For example, the psychedelic experiences described in

organized and

made

arly attitude of this

Aldous S

Laura

credible

i960

Huxley, Sri

Walter Clark, Frank Barron,

Koestler, Allen Ginsberg, Harry

Gayatri Devi, Alan Watts, William

we Middle-Aged,

who had

like

Gordon Wasson, Arthur

S.

Burroughs,

And me.

Middle-Class, Naive, White, Harvard Faculty

Intellectuals expected that psychedelic drugs

Adults

"teened" 1920-1940. The quaint, schol-

book emerged from sages

Murray, Houston Smith, In

by people who

would be used by Academic Scholarly

read William James ("Varieties of Religious Experience") and the

Pop-Hindu and Pop-Bhuddist

texts.

Our mission was to

train graduate students to

xii

High Priest

Alan Watt
&

s r

January 1959

q

Guide: godsdog Oracle: III Difficulty at the

Beginning

The Abysmal, Water

The Arousing, Thunder

Clouds and thunder: The image of difficulty at the beginning.

Thus the superior man Brings order out of confusion. (IChing)

TRIP In the beginning God created the heavens and the

earth.

In the beginning was the turn on. illumination.

energy that The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

00

1

The

electric trip.

The flash, the The sudden bolt of

new system.

starts the

The turn on was God. All things were made from the turn on and without Him was not any thing made. In this turn on was life; and the life was the men.

light of It

has always been the same.

It was the flash that exploded the galaxies, from which all energy flows. It was the spark that ignites

in the mysterious Nicholas

The Magus by

in

John Fowles: For a while

wander

let

I

my mind

bottomless

a

into

madness.

Supposing my last year had been the very opposite of what Conchis life

so often said trick

me once

life in

That

that

so often, to about

again

lation.

The Divine satori,

the very opposite of

The

vision of

harmony,

which we now

call psy-

What happens when you turn on? Where do you go when you take the trip? You go within. Consciousness

Your nerve endings, neural

changes.

memory

banks, protein structures for the timeless

become broadcasting instruments

humming message

hazard.

union.

ecstasy

chedelic.

cameras, cellular

general.

is,

humming vine of organic life. It is the brilliant neurological glare that illuminates the shadows of man's mind. The God-intoxicated revesamadhi,

all

welding of amino-acid strands

that creates the

of

God

located

inside

your

body.

00

The external world doesn't change, but your experience of it becomes drastically altered. You close your eyes and the thirteen billion cell brain computer flashes multiple kaleidoscopic mes-

Symbolic thought merges with sensory explosymbolic thoughts fuse with somatic-tissue events; ideas combine with memories personal, sages.

sions;

And God light;

said

let

there be

and there was

light.

And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the darkness.

light

00

from

the

evolutionary, embryonic thoughts collapse into molecular patterns. You open your eyes and you see your tidy television-studio world of labeled stage-props fusing

cellular,

with sensory, somatic,

cellular,

molecular

flashes.

January 1959 00 3

Your nervous system is prepared to register and up to one thousand million units of

Nicholas

coordinate

I

flashing information each second.

were mad,

A

Each

hours.

from from a

lasts

psychedelic trip

trip takes off

to

five

twelve

stage-set struc-

in

stared

The Magus:

at

They

myself.

trying to drive to brainwash me

me in

some astounding way. But I

clung to

reality.

tured by the physical surroundings and the cast of characters present. Each person in the session is a

00

universe of two billion years of protein, protean memories, and sensations. A heady mix.

How

to describe this multiple, jumbled, rapidly changing process? What do you do after you turn

on?

The Light

shineth in the darkness and the dark-

ness comprehendeth

You TUNE IN. tune in means all

it

And God saw

that

it

was

good.

not.

oo to

bear witness to the Light, that

men might believe.

The turn on

bolt shatters structure. Reveals the

frozen nature of the

artificial

stage-set

men

call

reality. Certitude collapses. There is nothing but the energy which lighteneth every man that cometh 2 into the world. E =

MC

We

discover

we

.

are not television actors born

onto the American stage-set of a commercially sponare twosored program twenty centuries old.

From The Magus: I

cannot believe Maurice

evil.

You

will

We

is

understand.

00

billion-year-old carriers of the Light, born not just of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will

man, but of the Light that flashed cambrian mud, the Light made flesh.

of

tune in means that you

sit

in the Pre-

in the debris of

your

shattered illusions, and discover that there is nothing, you are nothing except the bearer of the wire-

your body is the temple of the Light and you begin once again to build a structure to preserve and glorify the Light. You bear witness coil of life, that

And God made

the beasts earth according to their kinds and the cattle of the

Sun that comes after me is preferred before me, and your days are spent preparing the earth for the Son to come. That is tuning in.

crying, the

And to tune in you must drop out. drop out means detach yourself tenderly, aesthetically, harmoniously from the fake-prop studio of the empire game and do nothing but guard and glorify the Light.

My of this

first

life

came in the middle of the journey (when I was thirty-five years old) and

trip

according

to

their

kinds,

and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

00

4 00

Death of the Mind

From The Magus:

come are now

awoke

you that you elect." shook my head violently from side to side. "You have no choice." "I

to tell

I

to the consciousness that I was trapped in a dark room, in a hastily constructed, thin-walled

stage-prop home in Berkeley, California, and the ribbon of light had been lost. I

00

was

tutional

a rootless city-dweller. An anonymous instiemployee who drove to work each morning

commuter cars, and drove home each night and drank martinis and looked like and thought like and acted like several million middlein a long line of

class liberal intellectual robots.

Woke up, fell out of dead Made the bus in fleconds flat There was no connection with

My

racial past.

soil

or with

clan gods slumbered.

My

my

tribal

banners were hidden, forgotten in cellular repositories.

How

I

entered this flimsy stage-set I cannot well was I of sleep at the time.

recall, so full

Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; will make I

him a helper

fit

for him."

I dropped out, taking leave from my job (as Director of Psychological Research for the Kaiser Foundation Hospital) and sailing for Spain on the

S.S.

00

Independence, American Export Lines, with children, Susan, age nine, and Jack, age

my two seven.

We

the field

home

in Torremolinos on the There the kids trooped off across to school each morning while I stayed

settled in a villa

Costa del

Sol.

to die messily.

The

coast of Spain Malaga to Gibraltar is the southernmost part of Europe, and down to this

bottom

sift

and

fall

Continent drunken

the psychological dregs of the Danes, Swedes, cashiered

twisted Germans, sodden British. The main occupation of the Torremolinos colony was drug taking and the drug was alcohol.

Found my way upstairs and had a poke had brought with me a trunk full of psycho-

From The Magus: I

I

turned away again, to

try

to get her to say more. But she sat in the chair and I

felt I

her eyes on

knew

there,

she in

her

my

was

back. sitting

corn-gold

and that she was like Demeter, Ceres, a goddess on her throne; chair,

00

thousands of test scores and numerwhich demonstrated with precision why psychotherapy did not work. In America, I had a staff of statisticians and clerks and rooms of calculators and computers to handle the data. But I had said good-bye to all that and sat sweating in a small room in a Spanish house adding and subtracting long columns of figures. Hour after hour. logical data

ical indices

NY*'*;



M W w n HH en M February 1961 C/3

2

Guide: richard alpert Oracle:

XXV en

Innocence

(

The Unexpected )

The

Creative,

Heaven

H HH

H h