THE CHOCOLATE STATEMENT;

Or, The Legacy of Dr. Tim

by Andrew Williams

Few people under the age of 64 will have a neutral reaction to the name

Dr. Timothy Leary. There will be those who will cry "Sellout!" and/or

"Snitch!" There will be others who will quote the band Klaatu, saying that

"he took the madness of a generation and made it madder still." And then

there will be those of us who revere his legacy as a scientist who

explored the realms and delights of consciousness and taught others how to

do the same.

It's easily forgettable now that, until the age of 40, Timothy Leary was a

relatively orthodox and academically respected psychologist. His first

book, *The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality* (1957), a forerunner to

Eric Berne's Transactional Psychology, was a critical and academic

success, and he had been instrumental in developing a multiphasic

psychological test which, ironically, was given to him in prison.

Then life started happening to him. His wife committed suicide. He went to

Mexico and endured a life-threatening illness that piqued (and peaked) his

life-long interest in altered states of consciousness. He turned 40. And

he started hearing about this hallucinogenic drug called psilocybin.

Many respected scientists, authors and celebrities had already written

about hallucinogens before Dr. Tim got in the game. The short list

includes Aldous Huxley, Gordon Wasson, Dr. Albert Hoffmann (the

serendipitous inventor of LSD), William S. Burroughs and Cary Grant. he

was the first, however--or one of the first--to systematically design

tests to determine as much as possible the effects of hallucinogens on

psyche and soul. His experiments became more and more unorthodox until

Harvard showed him and his associate, Dr. Richard Alpert (nee Ram Dass)

the gate.

From that point, Dr. Leary made it his mission to study and encourage the

expansion of consciousness by any means necessary. In the 1960s, it was

hallucinogens. In the 1970s, it was meditation and isolation tanks. In the

1980s and 1990s, it was computer programs and cyclic light devices to

induce meditative trance, plus music for same.

The one thing this writer wants the reader to take from this essay is that

Dr. Leary was among the first to write psychology texts for the Space(s)

Age--outer, inner, geo and cyber. We are multi-dimensional beings with

multi-dimensional minds, he wrote, and we had better develop an m-d

psychology to show us where we are and where we might be going. He posited

higher-level neural "circuits" (above and beyond primal instinct and

parental/social programming) that would, properly developed and

encouraged, enable our race to take the next evolutionary leap.

A note needs to be added here about his sexual writings. Volumes of

prose--most of it overheated--tout the aphrodisiac qualities of

hallucinogens and psychoactives. Leary believed the truth: the sexiest

organ is the mind. Being a better and smarter person leads to applying

intelligence and love to being a better and smarter lover. "The message,"

he wrote in 1997, shortly before his death, "is about erotic excellence

performed with humor and style." A healthy sexuality, he reasoned, was

just as necessary as a healthy mind and body in order for the human

organism to evolve beyond its primal primate programming and other

imprints.

People who espouse such viewpoints are either labeled visionaries or

madmen--sometimes both, depending on which camp you got to. Whatever Dr.

Tim did wherever he went--from West Point to Harvard to Millbrook to

California to Algiers to Switzerland to prison to back to California to

his death--he made an indelible impression. Love, like or loathe him, you

couldn't forget him. You could try to dismiss his work, write him off as a

Quisling, but even that requires attention.

Dr. Tim taught me that life is only hopeless if you believe it so. With so

much possibility in the universe, why not act as if there is a place for

you? Why not, as Paul Tillich urged, "Accept the fact that you are

accepted!" It sure beats suicide, depression and alcoholism. There's a

whole uni-verse waiting to be explored, with unimaginable vistas, ideas

and beings. Compared to the gray limbo of hopelessness or the blackness of

non-existance, the decision to live and love living seems like--a

no-brainer.

www.leary.com

www.rawilson.com