Psychedelic Salon 160
1966 Interview of Dr. Timothy Leary on The League for Spiritual Discovery

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations below are by Dr. Timothy Leary.]

âPsychedelic art is the public face of the communication device of our new religion.â

âManâs attempt to turn on just staggers the imagination. Thereâs hardly anything that hasnât been used one time or another, or in one culture or another, to get this [psychedelic] experience.â

âWe donât care what method people use [to turn on]. We treasure and glorify any method that can get you high, that can turn you on. But we also insist that no one tell us that we canât use our sacraments that seem to work for us.â

âWeâre convinced, and I think it wouldnât be hard to prove my point, that most Americans are involved in a meaningless, robot, assembly-line series of activities. They donât really know what theyâre doing and why theyâre doing it, but theyâre just pushed off to this assembly-line and off they go.â

â[By drop out] we mean drop out of the meaningless and tune in to the productive.â

âYou have to go out of your mind to come to your senses.â

âThereâs no more room for mythological, supernatural religious teachers.â

âWe use this word âpsychosisâ the way we used the word âdevilâ or âdevil-possessionâ or âwitchcraftâ two or three or four or five hundred years ago.â

âWhen the time comes, let your kids turn you on. Thatâs my message to the middle-age, middle-class, whiskey-drinking American suburban family.â

âSo jail to us is not a middle class disgrace. Here I am, a former Harvard professor, Iâve been arrested three times in the last year. Isnât that disgraceful? To me that just means Iâm doing my job. And if I donât get the establishment a little worried, I wonder if my message is not getting through.â

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews