Half a century has passed since Timothy Leary, a research psychologist at Harvard University, ingested some magic mushrooms in Mexico and decided that America was ready to embark on a long and strange journey.
so maybe it’s time to look back at the “high priest of lsd” and a few other men who gave rise to the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s. here are three books to start your journey.
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the doors of perception
by aldous huxley, paperback, 208 pages, harper perennial modern classics, list price: $13.99
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The psychedelic 1960s really began in the spring of 1953, when the famous British essayist Aldous Huxley had his first mescaline trip and published his account of the trip the following year. Huxley discovered mescaline in his library in the Hollywood Hills. he looked at the folds of her gray flannel pants and then at the curtains of his study, marveling at how the fabric was charged with “beingness”, alive with the “miraculous face of pure existence”.
in the fall of 1960, seven years later, huxley was in cambridge, massachusetts, giving a series of lectures to commemorate the centennial celebration at the massachusetts institute of technology. There, he would be introduced to Leary, who had returned from Mexico and immediately began a series of experiments with psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms that he had tried on his summer vacation.
timothy leary: outside looking in
edited by robert forte, paperback, 352 pages, park street press, list price: $16.95
leary took huxley’s psychedelic torch and blazed a trail into America’s mind, infamously advising baby boomers to “turn on, tune in, drop out”. many of us follow his advice. And since then, many books have been written by or about Leary, but my favorite is this relatively obscure collection of essays including Appreciation and Punishment by Allen Ginsberg, Winona Ryder, Ken Kesey, Huston Smith, Hunter Thompson, and many others.
leary was one of the most revered and reviled figures of the 1960s counterculture. Robert Forte cleverly sums it up in his introduction, calling Leary “a brilliant, charismatic, funny prophet, an innovative social scientist; a poet; a careless, conceited, self-destructive, fame-seeking chump; or a scapegoat, depending on your perspective”.
or, as leary once joked, “you get the timothy leary you deserve.”
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birth of a psychedelic culture
by ram dass and ralph metzner, paperback, 264 pages, synergistic press, list price: $29.95
Most of this book is an extensive dialogue between Ralph Metzner and the spiritual guru Ram Dass, known in his Harvard days as Professor Richard Alpert. The book documents the circumstances surrounding Leary and Alpert’s expulsion from college in 1963, and their subsequent arrival at an estate in Millbrook, N.Y., where the psychedelic celebration continued and eventually died out. But perhaps the main selling point of this voluminous volume is the dozens of never-before-seen black-and-white photos depicting Leary, Alpert, and Metzner’s transformation from buttoned-up academics to beatific, wide-eyed, beaded, bearded prophets. . of the new era.
Psychedelic drugs didn’t save the world. aldous huxley, timothy leary, ram dass, and ralph metzner took us on a journey that, for some, lasted a moment, for others, a lifetime. some of us never get home; others found kinder, gentler ways to bring the psychedelic trip into the rest of our lives. and many of us are still trying to figure out what it all means.
don lattin is a former reporter for the san francisco chronicle. His latest book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club, tells the true story of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), Andrew Weil, and Hustom Smith together at Harvard in the 1960s.
three books… is produced and edited by ellen silva.
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