Ed note: Timothy Leary is the man Pres. Richard Nixon once described as “the most dangerous man in America.” 
If you were a conservative committed to maintaining the status quo, you might agree. Leary and fellow explorer Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass), who later veered into a more spiritual path, had a huge influence on the way we perceive reality. This interview with Timothy Leary took place in the early 1990s. The man was thoughtful and brilliant, impatient and peremptory, a kinetic force in a tangled, jangled web. At his death from prostate cancer in 1996, his last words were reported to have been, “Why not.”
Timothy Leary’s name inevitably conjures visions of psychedelic flashing lights and journeys into outer mind space. Musically immortalized (the Beatles, Moody Blues, the musical Hair), this controversial American legend has a prestigious academic background. Before his introduction to psychedelic drugs at the age of 40, Leary had achieved a Ph.D. in psychology. His professional writings included Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, named “the best work in psychotherapy” in 1957 by the Annual Review of Psychology.
It was after his appointment to the Harvard faculty in 1959 that Leary began his university supported clinical study of psychedelic substances, which were legal until 1966.
After being dismissed from Harvard on a slim pretext in 1963, Leary established a research center in Millbrook, New York. A minor drug bust (less than 1/2 ounce of marijuana eventually landed him a 10-year jail sentence. He escaped, but ultimately was captured by DEA agents in Afghanistan, and returned to Folsom Prison. Three years later he was paroled.
Leary has 25 books and monographs to his credit, and has also appeared on television, in several films, and in comedy clubs throughout the country.
Although his exploration has shifted somewhat, Leary is still a visionary seeking to expand consciousness and bring human beings to a greater degree of fulfillment of their potential.
WLT: In the 1960s, when you first came to public attention, it was in relationship to psychedelics. What effect do you think psychedelics have had on our culture?
Timothy: The concept “our culture” means nothing to me. I have no affiliation with the collapsing United Soviet States of America. The wonderful thing about America is we’re uniting now into many, many regional cultures. The growth of some of these cultures has benefited tremendously from psychedelics, so there’s no more “one American culture.”
WLT: A lot of people are feeling very disenfranchised from the present government and looking for a change. Do you think there’s going to be some kind of catalyst for change in the ’90s, as psychedelics were in the ’60s?
Timothy: Yes, I’m working very diligently to bring about this change, which will happen anyway. The change is this: At the present time, the American people are totally brainwashed by mass media TV, which creates hallucinations which lead us to believe, for example, that we won a war in the Persian Gulf. The number one enemy of American cultures is mass media TV.
What I’m talking about is Marshall McLuhan—Marshall McLuhan said “the media is the message.” As long as the media is mass media, you’re going to have mass conformity. But we’re changing the media, and there are now in the market CD ROM video players that allow you to store many, many hours of film, or many, many books of history, an encyclopedia or whatever. These empowers individuals to create what’s on their own screens and to create telephone-linked, modem-linked small groups. Electronics in the hands of people are going to start a new language and are going to break down the barriers, the walls of language and class and economics and religion. So yes, it’s happening very visibly. The Nintendo kids are going to grow up. They’re tolerant and open-minded and they know how to use electronics, and they’re going to make a global village, which Marshall McLuhan predicted would happen. Now that’s my hopeful message for the moment.
WLT: And what is your role in this?
Timothy: I’m a cheerleader for change, and I’m involved in the most advanced virtual reality and telepresence, CD ROM, home movie editing, and I’m lecturing and developing programs for it.
WLT: Can you tell us a little more about Virtual Reality?
Timothy: It’s where you’re kind of walking around inside an electronic environment. You can meet other people there.
The programs I’m developing are programs that help you operate your mind and package your thoughts, dimensionalize your thoughts and communicate them clearly to other people. There’s another group of programs we call “brain operating systems” that allow you to boot up and activate different circuits in your brain, create hallucinations, reprogram your own brain. So what we were trying to do in the ’60s and ’70s with LSD—by “we” I mean people at Harvard and serious scientists—you’ll be able to do now using computers.
WLT: So do you think we’re moving away from introducing artificial substances into our bodies and moving toward using electronics?
Timothy: Artificial substances? What are artificial substances, marijuana leaves?
WLT: Some psychedelics are created in a laboratory, are they not?
Timothy: No, they’re not. They exist in nature, shamans have used mushrooms, and they say Christianity was started by a mushroom cult. [Ed note: Although mushrooms have long been used to alter perceptions of reality, LSD and other substances have been created in a laboratory.]
WLT: Do you still use psychedelics?
Timothy: Yes, I do. I have no allegiance. I have disavowed my pledge of allegiance to the flag of the indivisible American Union, and I’m a native of Los Angeles. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of California, and I don’t pay any attention to the federal government telling me what to do with my body or my wife’s body. We’re living quietly without any dependence on, or respect or allegiance to, the federal government of the United States. That’s going to be a bumper sticker within the next two years. Pledge allegiance to yourself, pledge allegiance to your friends and family, pledge allegiance to your neighborhood, pledge allegiance to the flag of your city, county and state, but the Soviet government in Washington D.C. is like the Soviet Union.
WLT: This is a presidential year. Will you vote?
Timothy: Well, I’ll talk about that. The number one problem facing the world today, and it’s been going on for thousands of years, is the pervasive, brutal, unending repression of women and children by men. And I’m backing the move now for a women’s party, which is being organized by the National Organization for Women. Of course, when women start their own party—they’re a majority to begin with—intelligent men will join in, unless it’s [just] a women’s party, it doesn’t mean only women would run for office. The women’s party would defend, what? The rights of children, the rights of weak people, the rights of education, the rights of women. So I’m definitely for a women’s party politically. None of the candidates will discuss that issue. Every nine seconds a woman is beaten up by someone she knows in this country, every nine seconds. Within the last two sentences I’ve said, two women have been beaten up, and it’s pervasive. We can’t understand it, it’s so pervasive. That’s the issue of the 21st century: freeing women and children from male, macho oppression.
WLT: I heard Hilary Clinton speak and thought she might be a more satisfying candidate than her husband.
Timothy: I agree with you, absolutely, all the way down the line.
Abigail: What is going to be your focus at the Brain and Mind Symposium?
Timothy: How to operate your mind, how to operate your brain. I’m going to have manuals. There are five million installed users of human brains out there, and they don’t know how to use it. In my symposium, I’m going to teach you to operate your mind and your brain. I’m going to issue licenses so you can drive your brain home.
