Timothy Leary and Parapolitics

[professorpan]

Wombat -- Re: ego dissolution and psychedelics

I'm currently working on an article about the Johns Hopkins study on psilocybin and mystical experience, and I interviewed one of the principal authors of the study this week. He worked with LSD in the treatment of alcoholism in the 70s, and did therapy with LSD and psilocybin and terminal cancer patients.

Note: the Hopkins team is currently recruiting volunteers for another study with psilocybin -- but you must have a diagnosis of cancer to participate:
http://www.bpru.org/cancer/insight/

He made a very good point: Most people who have taken psychedelics have taken recreational doses, and don't understand the effects of the high dosages that often lead to profound mystical experiences. At the high dosages used in research people frequently transcend what many consider "tripping" (i.e. visual effects, synesthesia, etc.) and enter a state of ego dissolution where they feel "at one" with the universe. In the Hopkins study -- the first of its kind in decades -- most of the volunteers rated the psilocybin experience as one of the most important of their lives.

It's not that the ego dissolves -- it's more like it gets out of the way so that something wiser and universal can move to the forefront of consciousness.

I'll be sure to post my article when it's published.

[Penguin]

Thanks, we`re interested .
re: dose vs. experience, yeah
You know when you took enough. But you may never know if you always took too little

[teamdaemon]

exojuridikwrote:

Leary, Liily and RAW were able to explore where no self-respecting spook or psychiatrist could allow themselves to go.

Leary, Lilly and Wilson's psychedelic experiences were all linked to the spook-world in certain ways, be they direct or indirect. The "Aquarius vs. Pegasus" model of good psychedelic spooks fighting bad ones may explain this, but I rather doubt it. Instead, it seems much more likely that psychedelics were in circulation in the 50's and early 60's due in part to a Cold War milieu, and that people who latched on to the experience were subject to cooptation by the powers-that-be.

This does not mean that these people weren't having powerful experiences, nor that they didn't believe in spreading the psychedelic gospel, but rather that others in the milieu may have been pursuing other agenda, for which they found these sorts of people somehow useful...

I can agree with that sentiment. If hard left causes get co-opted then this one can too, without a doubt. I guess all I will say is that, just because there are fake left operations happening doesn't mean that socialism is bad, right?

Also, I can really see that utility in putting the stuff into circulation and then criminalizing it. I definitely think that the government had a lot to do with the proliferation of acid initially but I see Timothy Leary as a person who was stepping out of line when it came to the master program. At least he was stepping out of line until they got to him.

[exojuridik]

Regardless of the underlying motives or intent of Leary and ilk, I am in debt to them for at least providing a vocabulary and analytic framework, which as an immature teenager, helped me escape the traps and trips of middle-class, middle america normalcy. And even if they were perpertrated an agenda that was in the best interest of no one, they still contributed to our overall understanding of how heuristics and conceptual maps are essentially programming that can be tweaked or twisted to affect behavior. Much of the less than savory aspects of the early psychonauts can be traced to the cold war academic milieu from which they emerged. yeah, they were egotistical assholes who hated the establishment not so much for its inhumanity but for its ignorance and blatent stupidity which they thought beneath notice of their Olympian gaze.
However, the beautiful thing about psychadelics is that through their use anyone can subvert the subliminal or embedded control subroutines that we use against ourselves and each other other daily. This freedom comes from the understanding that all concepts, ideas, doctrines are all mere post-facto reifications of true experience. I have yet to encounter any intellegence or power that can overwhelm the undeniable truth of pure inchoate awareness.

[Truth4Youth]

I can agree with that sentiment. If hard left causes get co-opted then this one can too, without a doubt. I guess all I will say is that, just because there are fake left operations happening doesn't mean that socialism is bad, right?

Also, I can really see that utility in putting the stuff into circulation and then criminalizing it. I definitely think that the government had a lot to do with the proliferation of acid initially but I see Timothy Leary as a person who was stepping out of line when it came to the master program. At least he was stepping out of line until they got to him.

Who is "they"? Even Henry Makow admits that:

http://margotbworldnews.com/archive/200 ... lture.html

(Note: Makow says Leary was a dupe, which I disagree with)

I've long had a suspicion that Leary knew that the CIA was "using" him, but that they didn't realize that he was actually "using." them.

There's a rather illuminating interview of Leary in a back-issue of Steamshovel Press that you can read in the SP compilation book Popular Paranoia.

In that particular interview Leary touches upon using computer technology to reporgram the mind. At first the idea of "reprogramming" the mind may sound similar to the gov't's MKULTRA experiments, but Leary wanted to reprogram the mind in order to get rid of the propaganda and indoctrination that society has placed on each of us.

Some people claim that Leary got his LSD from the gov't, and I think that may be true. It doesn't mean he was playing their game though, but rather he was using them to play his own game.

BTW, anyone know if there has been anyone following in Leary's footsteps with regards to his research into computer tech?

[exojuridik]

Back in 1990 I attended a talk by Wilson and Leary on the future of mind tech. Overall, it wasn't all that illuminating; more kitschy than anything else - at one point, Leary, drunk or on something, got up and started singing Trucking in response to a deadhead's question. Anyway, what I got from their talk was that biofeedback and virtual reality could be the evolutionary vechicle for our species expansion into inner/outerspace. Most of what they were suggesting techwise seemed to come to pass circa 1997. As for further research in this area, I believe the gaming industry probably has that under proprietary lock and key. For myself, I hate video games but loved that Bioshock.