TURN ON


Timothy Leary (1965, 1999). Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out


Leary was a University Professor at Harvard who is best know for his experiments with LSD. The book is part lectures, part interviews, and part essays.

Given all the media hype about Leary, i was surprised at how much common sense i encountered, and how much he speaks to learning, hope, and love. 

He begins with a chapter on how to start your own religion (to invoke the rights of the first amendment in US law) with family and friends, a tribe of people living together in community with their own laws...a place where sacrament is consumed (it need not be LSD, but anything that is spiritually meaningful to the community, something that binds the community together in ceremony)...a place preferably in nature where one feels protected and nurtured. 

The BIG ADVICE is to drop out of society's robot world/mind, and turn on to God/Goddess (the Spirit), nature, and the body and mind, and tune in (dropping back into society) with changes, projects, ideas, products, services that reflect the new vision from dropping out and turning on...Leary says this is the oldest message in the world: turn off the monkey mind, step away from selfish ego, look within to find the light, soul, divine flame, seed of life, white light...

American education teaches one to be a robot and play the social game...Leary suggests that a better education is to go and live at the center of a problem (for example, if one wants to be a lawyer, spend a year in jail, want to be a psychologist, live in a mental hospital for a year) to get direct experience (there is no substitute for this direct experience, one year of living at the center is worth years of higher education in the subject area)...one needs to explore the mind via meditation, prana, and chemicals...to do research on one's own consciousness is the core of life...there are 100's of ways to do this (to turn on) (see p. 77).


write your own declaration of evolution...for ideas see pages 145+





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