By Marianne Schnall (1994)
This interview originally appeared in Ocean Drive Magazine.
I was born in 1967, too young to appreciate the psychedelic Sixties of hippie love-ins and flower power. In fact, the first time I ever heard of Timothy Leary was as a child singing along to the soundtrack of
Hair. In 1989 I learned of his psychedelic research at Harvard while I was an undergraduate at Cornell University. Four years later, in 1993, I had the good fortune of actually meeting the world-famous psychologist at a press party thrown in his honor at a trendy New York restaurant. He kindly invited me to a lecture he was giving the next day on Virtual Reality. The talk was fascinating. Dr. Leary was a powerfully charged and spellbinding speaker who reached people on many levels.
A few weeks later, I called him at his house in Beverly Hills. He said he would call me back to schedule an interview and I spent the next two days waiting by the phone, snowed in, reading his historic autobiography,
Flashbacks. His book is entertainingly provocative and offers insights into the psyche of a legend. His story is one of resilience and a commitment to truth. He challenged conventional wisdom with his controversial ideologies and experiments devised to expand consciousness, spearheading a psychedelic revolution. Later, he became a political prisoner, ending up in jail for four years for possession of a small amount of marijuana. It was there that he wrote one of his most acclaimed books about the Eight Circuit Model of the Brain. Forty years later, his Harvard research into psychedelic drugs is being updated and continued. He has been honored for his past work with two national awards, from the American Association of Psychology and the American Humanist Psychological Association.
By the time he called me I was eager with anticipation of our conversation. Throughout the interview he was sharp, high-energy and electrifyingly eloquent. His knowledge is vast and diverse – he wears hundreds of hats, among them those of revolutionary, satirist, modern-day philosopher, computer pioneer, impassioned humanist and distinguished psychologist. He is also prone to sudden, emotionally charged asides, as when he stops to condemn “the relentless, ruthless repression of women and children by men” or to stress his catch sayings like “Question authority” and “D.I.Y. – do it yourself.” Despite a celebrated life, he was a genuinely humble man – a visionary with a big heart who has dedicated his life to the cause of personal liberation and the empowering of the individual. His prolific scholarly output and urgent empirical findings continue to advance the frontiers of the human experience.
Note: Two years after this interview, on May 31st, 1996, on a full moon just slightly after midnight, Dr. Timothy Leary died in his sleep surrounded by friends at his mountaintop home in Beverly Hills. He was seventy-five and died from inoperable prostrate cancer, and according to his son Zachary, his last words were, "Why not?" and "Yeah." A cyber-memorial took place at his site on the World Wide Web (
http://www.leary.com), where he had posted health updates and described the process of "designer dying", which included his daily intake of both legal and illegal drugs. His last book "Design for Dying" explored his experience and offers, in his words, “ common-sense, easy-to-understand options for dealing planfully, playfully, compassionately, and elegantly with the inevitable final scene .” Leary, always an iconoclast, had originally planned to capture his final moments on videotape for possible broadcast on the Internet, and arranged in advance of his death to have a portion of his cremated remains sent into space, which they were in April of 1997, alongside those of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry.
Rather than mourn his passing, Tim would have wanted us to celebrate his life, and continue to ponder and learn from all the wealth of research, insights and wisdom he left with us. It is in that spirit that I share this interview, portions of which originally appeared in
Ocean Drive Magazine in 1994. His observations are certainly as potent and relevant today as they were when this interview was first conducted. But that should be no surprise since Timothy Leary was always ahead of his time.
Marianne Schnall: You’ve had an incredible career. How would you describe your work?
Timothy Leary: My profession is I’m a dissident philosopher. I’m from the school of Socrates – it’s humanism – the Socratic methods which appeared in Greece over 2,000 years ago, it reappeared as the romantic movement in the eighteenth century – it’s the same movement. It’s called humanism, and its motto is “Think for yourself,” “Question authority” and, as Socrates said, “Know thyself.” The aim of human life is to develop yourself as a philosopher, and it goes along with what’s known as paganism or pantheism or polytheism – that divinity, the divine intelligence – is found within, and is not to be found in institutions. I have one further thing to say about this. This philosophy, which is over 5,000 years old, was assimilated and streamed through the Ganges 4,000 years ago and is the basis of Buddhism, it’s the basis of Taoism in China, it’s the basis of mystical Christianity and Islam – it’s that basically, the interest is Chaos. From the standpoint of a human being, you can’t figure it out and you should avoid people who try to give you rules and regulations and laws, because the laws they’re imposing on you are simply local ordinances to benefit themselves. So that this school of philosophy has always been irreverent, it’s always been outsider, it’s always been dissident and in my life I’ve been lucky enough to have lived through four stages of humanism all based on new media, new forms of communication which have changed our culture. Now we’ve set up this background of what I’m doing in the context that it’s been done throughout all of human history. And it’s called humanism.
MS: I really enjoyed your lecture on virtual reality. How is virtual reality going to change the landscape of the human experience?
TL: Well, the word virtual reality has many different meanings. It basically means electronic realities. And it means that we're developing very inexpensive equipment that will allow you to have goggles that you can wear just like two television screens, so you're actually kind of walking around immersed in an electronic environment. So, when you think of virtual reality, think of immersive realities in which you can move through the rooms and the halls of an electronic house. You can click on electronic books and open them up. You can click on paintings and you can go through the Louvre. It's simply the use of electronic realities. The nice thing about it is, you see, you can design your own realities and you can invite other people around. Within three or four years - even right now, some kids are doing it - but within two or three years, your average kid in America or Japan will be designing their own little homes. And you'll click through telephone, you'll modem over and you'll be in the person's home, and the person will say, "Hey, look at this new painting I have!" Click. Or "Hey, I've got my friend here Joe from Tokyo." Click. "Talk to Joe."
MS: You’re also a well known advocate for space migration. What ideas do you have for a future evolution where families migrate in space?
TL: Well, in the 1970s there was a big civilian movement for space migration. What happened was that in 1980 Ronald Reagan took NASA over and made it very military and Star Wars. Since that time, cyberspace is taking the place of intergalactic space. We are going to migrate from the planet, I have no doubt about that, but it’s not going to happen as soon as we had hoped. And in the meantime, the way to get ready for this is build up communities of people from different countries who share cyberspace. It’s a very interesting comment that they call it cyberspace. In other words, this new electronic environment that you can visit, which in some ways is analogous to going out into real space out there in Jupiter and Mars – they call it cyberspace. This is a very interesting metaphor.
MS: How do you feel about your own time as a political prisoner?
TL: Well, I learned a lot. My task is to learn wherever I find myself with an opportunity to learn a lot, and I certainly learned a lot from prison. In a way, you never really understand politics unless you’ve logged a little time in prison as a political prisoner. I was in prison for my ideas and I learned a lot and I’m very grateful to the American government to give me a four-year scholarship, full-paid with board and room.
Read entire interview here:
http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/tim.htm