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00:24One evening this spring, as part of a student-run lecture series,
00:27two men vied for the souls of students who packed MIT's Kresge Auditorium.
00:31They were Dr. Timothy Leary, founder of the League for Spiritual Discovery,
00:35which advocates LSD as a religious sacrament,
00:38and MIT professor Jerome Letvin, who thinks of Dr. Leary as an agent of the devil.
00:44Timothy Leary began experiments with LSD as a lecturer in psychology at Harvard.
00:48Harvard dismissed him in 1963.
00:51He is now out on a $30,000 bond for possession of marijuana.
00:55Dr. Leary spoke first, mainly in darkness,
00:58while psychedelic effects were projected on a screen behind him.
01:01We have recreated these effects in color.
01:07I am beginning tonight's ceremony by offering this chalice,
01:16which I am drinking to all of us.
01:22The chalice contains a powerful and dangerous chemical given to me by the Boston Water Supply.
01:37It's odorless, colorless, tasteless.
01:41It's addictive.
01:47As a matter of fact...
01:53As a matter of fact, if you get hooked on it and they take it away from you,
01:57you crawl on your hands and knees and your tongue gets black and your eyes bulge,
02:04it's also a dangerous chemical.
02:08You have to know how to use it.
02:09Too much of it in the wrong place, like in your lungs, and it will kill you.
02:15Ten feet of it coming over your rowboat.
02:20Maybe we should pass a law against it, because it's so dangerous and so addictive.
02:27Maybe only scientists should be allowed to play with it.
02:32Or maybe we can learn how to teach our kids how to use it,
02:35in which case they'll discover that water has many uses,
02:39and indeed has been used for thousands of years,
02:42for millions of years, for billions of years, as a way of life.
02:50But it's also been used for thousands of years as a sacrament.
02:54Now you know what a sacrament is.
02:55A sacrament is a psychedelic technique.
03:00It's something that you use to get high.
03:01Get high? Yes.
03:03A sacrament is something that gets you high.
03:05Gets you off the television stage set.
03:10Pretty solid here.
03:12Amazing how solidly they make these sets these days.
03:18Gets you off the fake television stage set of
03:23MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America,
03:26and reminds you that you're not just a college student.
03:31You're not just 22 or 23 or 24 years old.
03:35You're 2 billion years old.
03:38Had you forgotten that?
03:41As a matter of fact, water can remind you where you came from.
03:45Remember you spent nine months in a watery medium.
03:49The first nine months this trip on this planet.
03:53Remember all that sloshing?
03:58Now could we have the lights out now, please?
04:04I opened a ceremony.
04:08Could I have all the lights on, please?
04:21You're going to see on the screen
04:28home movies and slide projections of little travels and trips that we take.
04:34The slides give you the LSD experience from the inside,
04:40and the movies present the observer's view of an LSD trip from the outside.
04:50The movies are unedited film that's been shot minute after minute,
04:56hour after hour, during LSD sessions.
05:00I lit a candle to open our ceremony tonight,
05:02again to remind us who we are and where we came from
05:06and what it's all about, because that's what you're here in MIT to learn, isn't it?
05:12Fire has been used as a sacrament for thousands of years.
05:15It reminds us that we're all creatures of the sun,
05:18that we all have little fires burning inside of us from solar energy.
05:27Now fire is dangerous.
05:29Fire can kill, fire can burn, destroy.
05:33As a matter of fact, the first fellow that invented fire, Prometheus,
05:36got in a lot of trouble with the FDA down in Washington, remember?
05:41They said, wait a minute, we're going too fast, maybe we're not ready for fire.
05:46As a matter of fact, that's a question that often occurs to many of us these days.
05:50Maybe man isn't ready for powerful chemicals like LSD
05:53and the many new ones that are coming.
05:56Maybe man's little mind isn't ready at this moment in evolution
06:01to deal with too much, too fast in the way of reality.
06:07Fire is dangerous, maybe we should pass a law against it.
06:13Maybe we should peck out the livers of everybody that uses it.
06:19So they can't let high school and college children have it.
06:23What are we going to do about it?
06:25How are we going to keep people from burning themselves up and hurting themselves
06:28and killing themselves with fire?
06:29Well, we've got to start training our kids from the time they can listen to us
06:34that fire is here, that water is here, that a lot of energy is around
06:39that are here that aren't going to go away
06:40and they better learn how to use them from the very earliest moments
06:44and know what they can do and what they can't do and how they destroy.
06:47Because sometimes when I see what fire is doing to the thin layer of topsoil on this planet,
06:52I wonder maybe they were right about Prometheus
06:55and maybe the human race isn't ready even now to deal with powers like fire.
07:02Now, it may seem eccentric to you that I come to an Institute of Engineering and Technology
07:07and start talking about sacraments and earth and air and fire and water and ceremonies,
07:15but I don't really think it should be that odd.
07:19The uniform I'm wearing may be out of date in this particular brief show you have going here,
07:25but people have been sitting barefoot as I am sitting now in front of you for thousands of years,
07:30in front of candlelight, talking about what I'm talking about, where are we going, what's it all about,
07:35what can we do about it, how can we figure it out, how can we tune it back in.
07:40Don't you know that the real, real goal of a scientist is to flip out?
07:45Don't you know that?
07:47Had you forgotten?
07:48Or you thought that the role of a scientist was to build bigger and bigger stage sets
07:52for the television show we got going here.
07:55Yeah, we have to have a big road running from the cops and robbers game here
08:00to the cowboy and Indian show over there.
08:02And you engineers are supposed to build them so that we can go faster and faster
08:06and farther and farther from television show to television show.
08:10But if you take science seriously, and if you take the history of science seriously,
08:17you'll realize that every great scientist wasn't in it for the TV show commercial payout.
08:26He was in it to find out what it's all about.
08:28What's the nature of energy?
08:29What are the many levels of energy?
08:31What are the levels of consciousness?
08:32How can we map them out?
08:33How can we use them?
08:34And as he got to know more and more,
08:37and to penetrate deeper and deeper into the mysteries of energy around us,
08:40he began to flip out.
08:43He began to flip out.
08:44Look at Einstein.
08:45E equals MC squared.
08:47Come on, you mean that that's all energy?
08:51Wow!
08:52Einstein did it without LSD.
08:55You have been led to believe, most of you,
08:58that religion is something that's serious and something that's mildly hypocritical
09:02and has really little to do with the basic questions in life,
09:06which are all the science.
09:07Well, the facts of the matter are that religion is supposed to be fun and ecstasy
09:12because, you know, it's all a play that we're involved in, of energy.
09:17And you think that a religious person is one who goes around with a long face
09:22reciting the Boy Scout Oath.
09:27Religion starts as science has always started in the pursuit, the quest for the ultimate questions.
09:33And it's fun.
09:34Science should be fun.
09:36Science should be pleasure.
09:37Science should be flipping out, going out of your mind,
09:41really stunned by the joy of this incredible energy situation.
09:47Now, the message I have is an old one.
09:50It's the simplest and most classic message that's ever been passed on in world history.
09:54It's those six words, drop out, turn on, then come back and tune it in.
10:01And then, drop out again, and turn on, and tune it back in.
10:09It's a rhythm.
10:11Now, most of us are brain damaged by what Marshall McLuhan would call the Gutenberg galaxy,
10:16and most of us think that God and the DNA code made this universe in the nature of subject-object
10:22predicates, sentences.
10:27There's no level of energy and no process in biology or physics that operates with subject-predicate sentences.
10:36Turn on, tune, and drop out, period.
10:38End the paragraph.
10:39Turn the page.
10:40It's all a rhythm.
10:42It's all a beat.
10:43Jackie, give us the beat.
10:49You turn on, you find it inside,
10:52then you have to come back.
10:54You can't stay high all the time,
10:55and you have to start building a better model,
10:57building a better building,
10:58building a better temple,
11:00building a better poem,
11:01building a better language,
11:02building a better music.
11:03It's always been done that way.
11:05But don't get caught.
11:06Don't get hooked.
11:07Don't get attracted by the thing you're building,
11:09because you've got to drop out,
11:10and it's a cycle.
11:11Turn on, tune in, drop out.
11:13Keep it going.
11:14Keep it going.
11:15Because the nervous system operates that way.
11:18Hundred thousand million signals a second, right?
11:20I'm sorry.
11:21A thousand million signals a second,
11:23coming into your nervous system.
11:24It's that same beat.
11:26You've got to keep it flowing.
11:27You've got to keep it flowing.
11:31I want to talk for a minute about the term, turn on.
11:36To turn on, you have to have a key to get in touch
11:40with the neurological, sensory, and cellular information
11:45that you've got stored in that two-billion-year-old receptacle
11:48you call your body.
11:52Now, how do you turn on?
11:53Well, I'll tell you this.
11:54You can't turn on with words.
11:56You can't turn on with thinking.
11:57You can't think your way out,
11:58the sticky black molasses chessboard of American education.
12:01I'm sorry.
12:02And good works won't do it for you either.
12:04You can be as virtuous and as good as you want to,
12:09but you're not going to turn on and get the key to the mystery that way.
12:12In order to turn on, you've got to have what the religious metaphor calls
12:17a sacrament.
12:19What's a sacrament?
12:20A sacrament is something that changes your body,
12:23that changes your nervous system.
12:26And if a sacrament that you use doesn't affect your body,
12:29doesn't bring about this internal change,
12:31then it's not a sacrament.
12:33It's a television show prop that they've given you
12:36to keep you nice and quiet in the corner of the studio.
12:39It staggers the imagination to think of the means
12:42and the methods that men have used in the past to turn on,
12:45to bring about a change in the sensory, neural equipment
12:49that we carry around with us.
12:50There's hardly any activity, physical, sensory,
12:53or even television, perhaps studio activity,
12:55that men have been using one time or another to get high,
12:58to go out of their minds, to come to their senses,
13:00to take the trip.
13:04Flagellation,
13:06solitude,
13:08putting together in large temples,
13:10silence, music,
13:13the tampura,
13:14the Indian beat,
13:17the drums in Africa,
13:20sexual,
13:23abstinence,
13:26carefully worked out in systematic routines
13:30of tantric sexuality
13:32in which you find the divine
13:34with a member of the opposite sex,
13:36fasting,
13:38or
13:40the ingestion
13:41of sacred foods.
13:46Now today,
13:47the sacrament is a chemical,
13:49or it's a series of chemicals.
13:51Now,
13:52let's not get upset about LSD.
13:55In the first place,
13:56there are longer, stronger, more powerful chemicals
14:00that have the same effect as LSD
14:03that are in circulation right now in the United States.
14:06There'll be many more coming along.
14:08I make this flat prediction,
14:10as fast as the government passes a law
14:11against one of these molecules,
14:13a new one will come along,
14:14because for thousands of years,
14:16Caesar's been trying to stop people
14:18from wandering off the stage set of the studio game
14:21and getting outside under the stars,
14:24getting back inside to figure out what it's all about.
14:30So let's not get too upset about LSD,
14:31because even the era of biochemistry
14:34for bringing about the cellular experience
14:37is almost over.
14:39Within your lifetime,
14:39you will see the new sacrament,
14:42or the new key,
14:43to the internal process developed.
14:45As a matter of fact,
14:47most of you are going to have a terrible time
14:49with your kids in about 25 years,
14:51because you'll be sitting around home
14:53smoking marijuana,
14:53and preparing for your next weekly LSD session,
14:57like good, tidy, conventional people should.
15:00And your kids are going to come and say,
15:01Hey Dad and Mom,
15:02down in Greenwich Village,
15:04there's a new technique called
15:05electronic brain stimulation.
15:07And you're going to say,
15:11No implanting electrodes in my children's heads.
15:15And your kids will be growing pigtails.
15:19And you're going to get upset and say,
15:20Why don't you use the old tried and true methods
15:25of finding out where it's at, like LSD.
15:32Now, there's much confusion about the scientific status
15:36and the scientific evidence about LSD.
15:41And I'll say this quite flatly.
15:46There's no evidence that I know of,
15:48and I read the literature pretty carefully.
15:51They can tell us very much about what LSD does to consciousness,
15:55or to the nervous system,
15:56or to the genetic material.
16:01Any time you hear anyone talking to you about LSD
16:05and pretending to give you scientific facts,
16:07whether they're pro or con LSD,
16:09I suggest that you be very skeptical.
16:12I don't know whether LSD is good or bad.
16:15I don't know the effects of LSD on the nervous system,
16:17on the brain,
16:18or on the genetic material.
16:20It's a gamble.
16:22It's a risk.
16:22The sacrament is always a risk.
16:24The new technique for expanding consciousness
16:27is always a risk.
16:28Did you really think that it could be guaranteed for you?
16:34Hey, wake up!
16:35Have you forgotten who you are and where you came from?
16:38That the whole thing is an adventure?
16:39And that you're from a long line of adventurers
16:41who got into leaky boats and leaky crafts
16:43and put strange things in their mouths
16:45and put strange things in the ground,
16:48not quite knowing what they're doing?
16:50Yeah, taking a psychedelic chemical is a risk.
16:53Taking LSD is a risk.
16:54It's a gamble.
16:55It's Russian roulette.
16:58What is it?
16:59But...
17:02What isn't?
17:05Can you name anything that you breathe
17:07or put in your body
17:08or let filter through the atmosphere
17:10into your nervous system,
17:12like television waves
17:13that aren't an unknown gamble?
17:15And of all the Russian roulette games I see around me,
17:17including Vietnam and polluted air,
17:21I would say that the Russian roulette of LSD
17:23is about the best gamble in the house.
17:31To show you the difficult nature of the scientific study of LSD,
17:37I want to tell you a story of what happened with the scientific study of marijuana in the United States.
17:47You know, marijuana has been around a long time.
17:50Everyone has their mind made up about marijuana.
17:54How many of you have ever read a scientific paper in a scientific journal following the customary checks and controls
18:04and language of science?
18:06How many of you have evidence about marijuana as sound as the evidence that you would expect that you'd have
18:14to have to base your opinions on any other aspect of the energy system around us?
18:20As a matter of fact, you know, it's impossible in the United States for the last 15 or 20 years
18:24to do scientific research on marijuana.
18:27You see, there was a man named Anslinger back in the 30s who got Congress to pass a law saying
18:33that marijuana was bad.
18:36Now, as Judeo-Christians, we just have to have something that's bad.
18:39It has to be communists, it has to be witches, it has to be devils, it has to be possession,
18:43or the infidel or the pagan.
18:44But we have to have something that's bad, and then we pass a law against it.
18:54Now, the facts of the matter are that there were some studies done on marijuana, mainly in England, suggesting that
19:01marijuana could be useful as a psychiatric cure for depression.
19:05Because it sure makes you feel good.
19:11But for the last 15 years, it's been almost impossible to do research on marijuana.
19:15If a full-fledged, kosher, bona fide scientist at an institute like this wanted to research on marijuana, he had
19:23to apply for a government license.
19:25You know what happens if you apply for a government license?
19:27Government inspectors come around and say, what do you want to do research on marijuana for?
19:30You say, well, I want to find out what marijuana is about.
19:32And they say, what do you mean?
19:33We know what it's all about.
19:34It's written about what it's all about.
19:35Marijuana is a narcotic, addictive drug, and it causes rape, violence, aggression.
19:40You're not assuming I'm going to give MIT students in your laboratory marijuana.
19:46Because what would the Massachusetts State Legislature think about that, huh?
19:50It's been impossible to do research on marijuana.
19:53Now, I'd like to tell you a little research that I've done on marijuana.
19:57And I want to tell you, playing my cards right on the table, that I came into the research biased.
20:02I was very much against LSD.
20:05I happen to be an Irish-American and I like to drink.
20:11As a middle-class teacher at Harvard, or at the University of California, I'd heard about
20:16marijuana, but I had no occasion to use it, because beatniks used it.
20:21And I didn't know any beatniks, and they were people like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Carrick.
20:26They were having a lot of fun, perhaps more fun than I was having.
20:30But there was no way I could get marijuana and be interested in it.
20:33Then we got involved up at Harvard, doing research in LSD.
20:37And I found out, to my surprise, that enormous numbers of young people were using marijuana,
20:41even Harvard students and graduate students.
20:45Well, I have to laugh when I read about the problems of the dean at Harvard now,
20:49when the Crimson announces that 70% of the freshman class smoke marijuana,
20:53and the dean has to announce that they'll throw people out of Harvard if they use marijuana.
20:58Because seven years ago, I was saying exactly the same things to the people in our research project,
21:02because I didn't think we should study marijuana.
21:05Because of my contract with Harvard, we were going to study LSD, which was legal in those days.
21:10Amazing, you just right away get it.
21:14I didn't think it would be fair to mix marijuana up with LSD in our research.
21:17So I would go around, just like the dean's at Harvard, around our research projects in Newton or in Mexico,
21:22and I'd say, Daddy don't allow no pot smoking in here.
21:28It wasn't a matter of fact until I left Harvard and left institutional commitments,
21:37and I decided I would do some research on marijuana.
21:40But I actually didn't get around to doing it seriously until I went to India.
21:43And about the first week I was in India, I went to a place called a ganja shop, licensed, in
21:50the city of Calcutta.
21:51And I bought about four ounces of marijuana for a dime or so.
21:59And I was with a holy man, a guru named Asok Fakir.
22:03And he took me down to the Ganges River and we sat there with a group of Shivites sitting around
22:08the burning ghats.
22:09And I really began to learn something about marijuana.
22:12And I was in India for five months and I smoked marijuana every day, trying it out in different contexts,
22:21in different activities.
22:23Now the interesting thing about marijuana, you see, marijuana, I'm sorry to say, my beloved robots of Menopausal Institute of
22:29Technology,
22:31there's no good and evil in this world.
22:33Marijuana is neither good nor bad, LSD is neither good nor bad.
22:36As a matter of fact, there's probably no activity that you engage in from day to day or week to
22:40week
22:40that wouldn't be helped or hindered by the use of marijuana.
22:44And the scientific question is, which ones would be hindered?
22:48In which case, you don't ban marijuana, you just don't use the energy that way and find out which activities
22:57are helped by marijuana
22:57and go down to the licensed ganja shore in Cambridge Square and get it.
23:05Now, I want to conclude my sermon with some comments about dropping out.
23:14This, at the moment, tends to be the controversial part of the motto, turn on, tune in, drop out.
23:21Everyone nowadays accepts the notion of turning on.
23:24Even Madison Avenue is telling you that Salem cigarettes will turn you on.
23:27Everyone wants to be tuned in.
23:30But drop out.
23:32But you can't say drop out.
23:35You can't tell college students they should drop out of college.
23:38You can't tell middle-aged people who have mortgage pay they should drop out of their jobs.
23:42And I'm sorry, I mean, I didn't invent this.
23:44I'm just reading the lines that were given to me.
23:46You've got to drop out.
23:49Now, there's a lot said about education.
23:52Well, you've got to finish your education.
23:55When I hear that said, I shudder.
23:58And my cells shrink.
24:00Because...
24:01I'm sorry to say this.
24:02And I say this with great love and great affection.
24:04Because I'm part of this whole institution.
24:07The way I'm going.
24:08But the educational system, at the present time of the United States,
24:12does neurological damage to the nervous system.
24:14And functions as a narcotic-addictive drug.
24:23It rather shocks me to think about how we take our children at that...
24:26Our children who are born with 13 billion nerve cells.
24:29Our children who are Buddhas.
24:31Born the final product, up-to-date, last-minute version of a 2 billion year old assembly line back in
24:37some DNA Detroit.
24:38Checking the new models.
24:40Consumer research.
24:41Hey, how's the weather up there?
24:42Ah, yes.
24:43The ice age is going back.
24:45Alright, take a little more hair off the next model.
24:47Yeah.
24:50What color eyes does she like this millennium?
24:53Oh, blue.
24:54A little more blue on the next model.
24:55We were all born perfect.
24:57Right up-to-date models.
24:58But what happened at the age of four or five?
25:01Our parents, with the best intentions, turned us over to a bunch of strangers that they didn't know,
25:08and probably would have even had a dinner at their house.
25:13To be trained in the only crucial issue of life, control of consciousness.
25:20The educational process is a real, dangerous drug.
25:26So, use it carefully, because you're likely to get hooked.
25:33Now, you, the younger generation in particular, have got to drop out.
25:37And by drop out, I mean all the way.
25:39You can't vote.
25:40I urge you not to politic.
25:42Don't pick it.
25:42Don't get involved in any of these menopausal mind games.
25:48Because it doesn't make any difference.
25:51Remember 1962, we voted for a peace candidate?
25:55Ha-ha!
25:56And you think it makes a difference?
25:58Now, you face a problem that has ever been faced in this particular magnitude in human history.
26:06The speed up, the acceleration of technology and knowledge, and means of changing things.
26:11Your generation has grown up in a society that's a thousand or ten thousand years beyond the society of your
26:18grandfathers, and even of your parents.
26:21And, I want to present one scientific hypothesis, and there's plenty of evidence to back it up.
26:28One hypothesis, which is so shocking, and so frightening to our sense of the way it should be, that I
26:37suspect that this finding and its implications have been really repressed in the Freudian sense.
26:44That's because it's a staggering set of data.
26:51And it's this.
26:52After the age of twenty or twenty-five, neurological studies show us that the human nervous system begins to lose
27:02cells.
27:03That means you have less cells at thirty, and at thirty-five, and at forty, and at forty-five, than
27:08you had at twenty.
27:10You're losing brain cells every year of your life, after you leave college.
27:18Which means that at my age, forty-five, I'm partly brain damaged.
27:24It means...
27:27You like that, huh? You knew that anyway.
27:32Dr. Sidney Pellen in California has made me promise that I'll turn my brain over to a neurologist after I
27:37die.
27:39And he's going to do the same for me.
27:41Now what does this mean?
27:43It means that you young people cannot buy the system of a menopausal mentality generation.
27:49You know the men who are running this world, this country, this state, had their minds made up,
27:54like 1910 or 1915.
27:56You remember rat-a-tat-a-tat machine guns in the old World War trenches, and Prohibition and booze.
28:01You just can't buy their system.
28:03You just can't buy their system.
28:07If you ever get around to running for office, which I hope none of you will,
28:12if you ever get around to making laws, I suggest the first law you pass
28:16is based upon this neurological fact about brain damage.
28:21No one over the age of fifty years old should be allowed to vote or hold power over young seed
28:27-carrying people, should they?
28:29Does that make neurological sense to yourselves? It doesn't to mine.
28:36Now, in the next six months, a year, two years, there's going to be a lot of tension in this
28:41country about the control of consciousness.
28:43Because, like it or not, believe it or not, we have entered into a new age.
28:48And I would call it the age of consciousness.
28:50And the implications of this revolution in consciousness are much greater than the technological, or the atomic, or the electronic
28:57age,
28:58because this age is focusing inside.
29:01And for the first time in human history, at least in Western history,
29:04because they knew all this four thousand years ago in India,
29:06for the first time in human Western history, man has finally caught on
29:11that it doesn't make as much difference what goes on out there as it does how much control and freedom
29:16you have in here.
29:18The internal trip can be observed, it can be labeled, it can be manipulated, it can be controlled, and it
29:26can be replicated.
29:28Just as easily as any experiment in external science.
29:34And you've got to turn on your parents.
29:38And I can't turn on LBJ, but he's got some young people around, and if they've been to good colleges,
29:43the statistics tell us that half of them, which means either she or a roommate, is turned on.
29:49So that's the way we've got to do it.
29:51We've got to say, Daddy Bird, you've done enough.
29:56Daddy Bird, there was 30 years ago you ran for the president of the bank,
30:00and you've got steel over the world now, Daddy Bird, and you've done enough.
30:03Come on, drop out and turn on and learn how to make love all over again, and come to your
30:06senses.
30:10I think it's time to stop.
30:12Drop out.
30:32When Dr. Timothy Leary, the high priest of the League for Spiritual Discovery, finished speaking, Dr. Jerome Letvin took the
30:39floor.
30:40Dr. Letvin was senior psychiatrist at the Mantina State Hospital in Illinois.
30:45He is now professor of communications physiology in the departments of biology and electrical engineering at MIT.
30:52He also lectures in the humanities department.
30:56Dr. Letvin, who has three teenage children, is known at MIT as a man students can talk to.
31:01Now, Tim, your argument is exceedingly seductive.
31:11And in the main, I must admit that I find the press of middle age and middle class enormously powerful
31:23here in Cambridge irritating as all hell.
31:29Dr. The horrid part is that I, too, sit in front of TV sets, feel myself slumping, pay the taxes.
31:37But the problem is whether the naval really replaces TV.
31:43I mean, you sitting in front of your navel strike me as being, in a sense, very little better off.
31:57First, let's put it this way, no surprises are likely to come about.
32:04And you aren't even beguiled by good commercials.
32:11Nevertheless, I think that we must take your thesis extremely seriously.
32:16And I will not do you the dishonor of either attacking you on scientific grounds,
32:23because the question, as is very obvious, is not scientific but moral.
32:29Therefore, for this reason, I would like to confine my remarks strictly to the...
32:36Turn that damn thing off.
32:45I would like to confine my remarks strictly to the eschatological questions involved.
32:52By that, I mean simply questions of what constitute good and evil.
32:57But I feel somehow or another that this man is in the hands of the devil.
33:03That is to say, he is in a private hell of a curious and somewhat Sartrean devising.
33:11That is, having made his pact with the devil, this is what he asked for and that's what he gets.
33:19For I suspect that in making these pacts, very much like monkey's paw pacts,
33:26that what we get, we get literally, and what we lose, we lose rather much of.
33:34To look at this man sitting there with a smile, this supernal smile, ecstatic smile.
33:43I feel sick.
33:44I don't feel that I want to trade.
33:46I feel sick for him.
33:49And I ask, of you, how many would trade?
33:55He assures you he is in the utmost ecstasy when you can get to him.
34:01Otherwise, he's in that ecstasy.
34:04Why would not any of you trade?
34:08Let us take another trade that has been offered in the past.
34:14You and I live through the period of lobotomies.
34:18You walk into the office, I don't like my mama, they lift your eyelid up, you know, slash, slash.
34:23And you go out, it doesn't matter.
34:26You see, you have traded for it doesn't matter, a hunk of brain tissue.
34:32After all, brain tissue. As he tells you, you're losing so much of it, what's a little bit more?
34:37You know, does it really matter?
34:41No.
34:42Here, you trade it.
34:44How many of you would take a lobotomy, giving the guarantee that thereafter you don't care?
34:52You come in saying, I don't want to care.
34:55Everything is bothering the hell out of me.
34:58Everything is bothering the hell out of me.
35:01I want to stop caring.
35:03I want to be happy.
35:05And so he takes, you know, bang, bang.
35:09Is this a trade you would make?
35:12Why not?
35:16No, wait a minute.
35:18This is strictly a rhetorical question.
35:28I'm asking the question of myself.
35:31For I found Tim's presentation extremely compelling.
35:35Sean, if you'll excuse me of those adornments.
35:39I think you ought to change them.
35:41They're not beautiful.
35:42They're symmetrical but not pretty.
35:45At any rate, I find Tim's thesis terribly compelling and for this reason I feel that I have to answer
35:54it for myself, you see.
36:00You are selling off the noietic functions, you're selling off exactly those functions which have set you aside critically in
36:11every possible way.
36:12You're abrogating.
36:14You're dissolving these.
36:17Henceforth, suspended judgment for a while.
36:20You take your martini at five o'clock.
36:22You come home.
36:22You don't want to remember what sort of a damn fool you were during the day.
36:27You don't want them to remember, you know, being pushed down by this guy.
36:31The compromise you made that was against your grain, you see.
36:34All of these things, you've got to forget them.
36:37You cop out with the martini.
36:39But with the reassurance that when the alcohol wears off, you are possibly back to a state where judgment miraculously
36:49has been restored.
36:51This is the same, incidentally, with marijuana.
36:55And as an aside, Tim, let me agree with you.
36:59I can conceive of no more immoral thing than has been done by the government in the wholesale banning of
37:07drugs.
37:07For I suspect that since the time of Mellon, this is like the Hearst papers trying to abolish pornography.
37:15The more there is of it around, the more they thrive.
37:21There's a fundamentally monstrous thing about forbidding rather than reasoning people out.
37:31If you have a thesis, you advance the thesis.
37:33There's a counter-thesis.
37:34As one argues, one does not go with force of the kind that the government has done, spurring the crime
37:41rate as it has been done by the morphine addicts, etc.
37:44And I feel very violently about this because I used to take care of an addict ward when I was
37:50back in Mantino.
37:54As I say, I'm perfectly willing to admit with you that the government has done a monstrous thing in forbidding
38:02many of the drugs that are around.
38:05The forbidding of marijuana, I believe, is pure nonsense in the light of the LaGuardia report.
38:12It is, however, the law of the land, and therefore I cannot advise people in conscience to break the law
38:19of the land for the very simple reason that I'm not permitted to.
38:23Alright?
38:30But when it comes to LSD, to psilocybin, to all of these other drugs that you have been handing out,
38:40that you have been talking about,
38:43at this point, sir, I look upon you as a tool of the devil.
38:48And I look upon you as a fundamentally vicious tool of the devil.
38:52And I will explain to you why.
38:56In general, when one takes something like a drink, a martini, or a drink of wine,
39:03or gets drunk with one's friends in the evening and wakes up the next day with a hangover,
39:09there is a reassurance, the miraculous reissuance, somehow or another, of judgment to yourself.
39:19Question, with LSD and with psilocybin, with mescaline, do we have this reassurance?
39:28You have said, sure, it's Russian roulette.
39:32Sure, it's dangerous.
39:34But let us look specifically at the danger.
39:37And I'm not going to talk neurologically because it would only be gobbledygook.
39:41What is the fundamental danger?
39:45Let us say that one person out of 50 will have a reaction like this.
39:53He will take a dose.
39:56He will take a trip.
39:58And three days later, he takes a return trip.
40:02And a week later, he takes a return trip, not having taken any more drugs.
40:07How is it possible for anybody on observing this to say to any person, you take one chance in a
40:16hundred, the return trips, they're for free.
40:20What is a return trip?
40:23Let me ask you, if there is no cause, how come the return trip?
40:30The flipping in suddenly and the flipping out suddenly.
40:34Suddenly the colors whirl about.
40:37Suddenly smells have color.
40:40Suddenly colors have sounds.
40:41And then you're back in the normal world.
40:44And what does this smell like?
40:46Clinically, Tim, what does this smell like to you?
40:49As a clinician, what is this?
40:51If you saw a patient who complained of this, what is it that he would have, Tim?
40:59What would you diagnose him as?
41:02Visionary mystic.
41:04Bullshit.
41:17You would diagnose him as a temporal lobe epileptic with an aura.
41:22And you know that goddamn well.
41:26Where else?
41:29He looks this way at me.
41:32Those of you who are...
41:34Don't tell me what I know.
41:35Well...
41:35Don't tell me what I know.
41:38If you read a description of the aura, either in Penfield and Erickson's book called Epilepsy and Cerebral Localization, written
41:48many years ago,
41:50or if you'll get hold of an exceedingly charming book by MacDonald Critchley called The Parietal Lobe, where he discusses
41:57also these things,
41:59or if you will simply read Dostoevsky, which is far safer for most of you, you'll get a notion of
42:09what this aura is.
42:11And you can become addicted to an aura.
42:14When a man comes to me and says, I haven't had a shot, I haven't had any LSD for three
42:23months, but I still flip in and flip out, as a clinician, what do I think about?
42:30What do I worry about?
42:32And what I worry about here, specifically, is that he has a functional lesion.
42:39This sounds a joke to you.
42:40Functional lesion, because I can't show it by cutting him open, but a functional lesion because clinically it goes along
42:48with other things that have turned out to be like tumors, like scars, like hits on the head and things
42:55of the sort.
42:57Very well, this is one thing.
43:00Temporal lobe, very weird stuff about the temporal lobe, and I will not go into it.
43:06I will simply remark that it is that particular portion of the brain that is affected in half the axe
43:15murderers that we have in this country.
43:17Has it ever occurred to you, why is it you read about a guy coming home and he locks off
43:24his wife, his three kids, you know, and at the station, he stands there and says, I don't remember.
43:30You know, everybody, aha, you know, a real amnesia, you know.
43:34But let me assure you, half of these things are, in fact, temporal lobe syndrome, what are called psychomotor seizures.
43:44What this fellow had who shot in Texas at the campus, shot the various people.
43:50This is roughly the sort of seizure he had.
43:52In his case, they found a tumor.
43:55What about LSD?
43:57What about psilocybin?
43:59I know a set of physicists who took a while ago in group because they're curious people.
44:07All physicists are curious people.
44:10That is, I mean, they're not curious to look at.
44:18They took, in a group of about five or six of them, they took some psilocybin on the recipe gotten
44:25from the telephone number here in Cambridge that you're supposed to call to get that recipe.
44:31And having taken it, they got violently sick the first day.
44:36And every one of them, for three months thereafter, was incapable of doing any theoretical work.
44:43On all behavioral accounts, the same, but clearly aberrant in their higher critical functions, as Tim said.
44:54But with a hangover of this, a hangover that lasts not an hour or two hours, but several days, several
45:05months.
45:05Let us give it only several days.
45:08Let's be conservative.
45:09A hangover for a few days.
45:12Something happens and your judgment by which you weigh things goes down.
45:17You're now in the position of regenerating this by taking, say, one trip every three days.
45:24One trip every four days.
45:27And you pay for the vision of yourself by the loss of judgment.
45:34You pay for getting out by the loss of judgment.
45:38You pay for whatever visions you get by this loss in judgment.
45:43And a loss in judgment that stays and stays.
45:48Now, you might say, how do I know this?
45:51Have I ever taken it?
45:52Huh?
45:53No.
45:55And I haven't taken it for a rather simple reason.
45:59The price seems to be a little bit big, a little steep to pay.
46:05I'm giving the devil my judgment, my soul, my intellect, all of the things I've worked for, for this kick.
46:14Like a nymphomaniac.
46:16Not like an erotic person, but like a nymphomaniac.
46:20Does anybody here envy the nymphomaniac?
46:24After all, there she is, having orgasm after orgasm, wonderful, all day long without a stop.
46:33Beautiful, terrific.
46:35And anybody envy her?
46:38Does anybody envy?
46:40Why?
46:41Because you didn't envy that guy who was sitting in the state hospital either.
46:46The kick is cheap.
46:48The ecstasy is cheap.
46:50And you are settling for a second-rate, permanent second-rate world by the complete abrogation of the intellect.
46:57In the old days, if it wasn't done by lobotomy, it was done by psychoanalysis.
47:02Now it's done by drugs.
47:05I can find in myself no joy in such an outlook.
47:23Now, I share the basic concerns that we've listened to tonight.
47:29I don't know whether LSD is a delish toy.
47:33As a matter of fact, I spend many hours a week, many, many hours in the last few years, thinking
47:39about, you know, it's very possible that LSD is the worst thing that could ever come on.
47:45And that maybe the insidious thing is that as I take it, as I have over 400 times, I've lost
47:55discriminating ability.
47:56And maybe I may feel better and better as I'm lying in the gutter with my nose drooling, but I'm
48:03too brain damaged or too dazed to realize.
48:10So several years ago, I began myself, urging other people who are taking LSD, to keep a checklist, an objective
48:18checklist as to where you are.
48:21Not in television game terms, about whether your grades are high or lower and that sort of thing, but where
48:27you are basically in terms of your 2 billion euro status on this planet.
48:31Now, each one of you would have a different checklist.
48:33Mine had to do with how much time I'm spending out of doors as opposed to indoors, which percentage of
48:38time I'm spending with children as opposed to game playing with adults.
48:41Am I making more money or less? I'm making less, and I think that's good, and so forth.
48:47But I still don't know, and I still have an open mind on this question as to whether I am
48:51a spokesman for, I wouldn't say the devil, but for a dangerous and diabolical situation.
49:04However, I just wanted to underline one difference that I see here, and it is a philosophic difference, it is
49:12a clear difference, and it's an ancient difference.
49:16We've heard a great deal of praise about the noetic function of the mind.
49:21Do you want to keep your mind?
49:23Well, if you want to keep your mind and that judgmental function, stay away from LSD!
49:30Stay away from the religious experience!
49:34Because when you take LSD, you realize that what you call your mind is about twenty years old, or at
49:40best two or three hundred years old, and that the experience that I've been talking about is a much more
49:46ancient and a much liberating experience.
49:52I want everyone to be warned!
49:54Don't take this trip unless you know you're playing around a blind roulette game with the most precious thing you
49:59have, your thirty billion cell nervous system.
50:01Read the labels, read Dostoevsky, read the New England Journal, read our journals, read the ancient stories of mystics and
50:07visionaries, and when you've read the whole thing, then forget the books and talk to people who have the experience,
50:11and then look yourself in the mirror and you decide yourself, because the only control of LSD is self-control.
50:18The color films shown during Dr. Leary's presentation were excerpts from The Psychedelic Experience, produced by Gene Mayo and Alan
50:25Willis, music by Ravi Shankar, and Report from Millbrook, produced by Jonas Mekas.
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