Jeffrey Goldsmith interviews Timothy Leary in 1992.
DETAILS declined to publish it, but it’s a classic.
Photo of Timothy Leary for Interview
Q:Why did Richard Nixon once call you “the most dangerous man in America”?
A:Because I was perceived as a threat to the establishment which he controlled. I was one of the most prominent dissenters and I was able to use the media to encourage individuals to think for themselves and question authority.
Q:A decade earlier, in 1960, when you were 39, what gave you the urge to try Psilocybin mushrooms in Mexico?
A:I was a very prominent psychologist and I realized after fifteen years of research that talk therapy, using words, simply did not work and we needed a way to activate the right brain or to boot up new ideas in the human brain.
Q:Why did you say your first taste of Acid in 1962, “was the most shattering experience in my life”?
A;My first LSD experience showed me how I was imprisoned and limited by my left brain, by my mind, and it showed me how I could activate other circuits in my right brain and change my mind.
Q:But why was that revelation “shattering”?
A:You’re worried about words. It was the most educational experience. It shattered my mental structures, my mind.
Q:So shattering in a positive sense?
A:Oh, Absolutely. Absolutely. I could make up mind. It blew my mind and demonstrated I could remake my mind.
Q:Remake your mind? Is this what you meant by a “rational, philosophic, understanding of drugs”?
A:It’s useful to believe there are two brains. The left brain, which is rational, verbal, focused, external, and the right brain, which gains enormous potentiality from revelation and new ideas.
Q:O.k., but do you still experiment with psycho pharmacopoeia?
A:In the last ten years I’ve been developing methods of using electronic patterns, multimedia software, to produce trance states and right brain experiences.
Q:So you’re not using anything now?
A:I didn’t say I’m not. I’m saying that the center of my research is electrons.
Q:Right, but is there a new drug I wouldn’t know about?
A:There are the so-called designer drugs. They’re not new, but they’re improvements on the psychedelic drugs and plants which have been used for thousands of years. They’re improvements because they allow you to be more precise about which areas of your brain you’re turning on.
Q:I understand your reluctance to talk about this, but people who read this will be interested.
A:My message to readers who want to know about the new drugs: Fucking do it yourself. Why do I have to go out and do all the research? Do it yourself. You can’t spoon-feed someone. If you had it, I could sit up here in my office and answer any question as though I’m some… you know, that’s wrong. You’re supposed to be asking the questions and answering the questions.
Q:I’m supposed to be asking the questions and answering the questions?
A:Well, that’s my Sunday morning sermon.
Q:I’ve heard police once raided your house, but only found substances that weren’t yet illegal. What did they find?
A:Ketamine. That was like ten years ago.
Q:Isn’t Ketamine an anesthetic that in very small doses…?
A:Listen, I can’t, listen, you’ve got to find that out for yourself. I’m not trying to stress new drugs at all. So let’s drop the whole thing about Ketamine and drugs.
Q:O.k.
A:I mean it just isn’t… in using… ah… computers and images processors like Nintendo to produce trance states and to make up, remake your mind.
Q:Have you ever played Tetris on a Nintendo Gameboy?
A:I’ve used it.
Q:Why do you think it’s so addictive?
A:You’re getting instant feedback, you’re moving patterns of electrons around, and you’re creating your own patterns on the screen and it’s thrilling. You’re learning how to control what’s on your screen and it’s addictive.
Q:Your program, Mindmirror, is also addictive, but hard to find. Who distributes it now?
A:A company called Mindware in Santa Cruz. They have an 800 number if you want it.
Q: That’s alright. I’ll call information. What software are you working on now?
A:I’m demonstrating my new program in my performances. I’m working with the most famous audiovisual team in the world, Psychic TV, a man named Genesis and his wife Alaura. And there’re two Australian young men who spent five years in Japan and who started the rave movement in Japan. They’re called Hyperdelic Video.
Q:All of this seems audiovisual. What about Virtual Reality?
A:There’s no such thing as Virtual Reality. There’s been a lot of hype about it, but the head mounted displays are useful for flight simulation and can be used in video arcades. We’re developing 3-D software programs which will allow you to build up electronic environments.
Q:And what will these environments do for users?
A:You can develop your own electronic patterns using software to create your own psychedelic experiences. It’s been known for centuries that to have a revelatory experience, “You have to go out of your mind to use your head.”
Q:That was the title of one of your lectures.
A:Yup. Many years ago. I still do it. You have to go beyond your verbal focused mind to activate the enormous potentiality of your brain.
Q:Can you go out of your mind via computers the same way you can via certain molecules?
A:What psychedelic drugs do, and what electronic programs do, is overwhelm your left brain which grabs onto little aspects of external reality that you can label and identify. Both psychedelic drugs and cyberdelic software inundate and overwhelm your eyeballs and your earballs so that you can’t focus. At that time you generate a trance state and you experience illumination, revelation, enlightenment, new perception, insight. Notice all of these ancient terms have to do with vision, the eyeballs.
Q:Like walking out into the desert and having a vision.
A:Exactly.
Q:Is this kind of work an update of those ancient methods?
A:Yes, but in those days you could use sunlight and fire and candles and jewels which reflect and dazzle the eyeball. Now, with the availability of electrons, you’re simply inundating your brain with patterns of electricity. The human brain loves to be strobed and inundated by electrons.
Q:That’s true. Look at television’s success, but doesn’t tv seem to manipulate our perception of reality?
A:Good question. That’s passive submission to the electronic patterns imposed by Big Brother.
Q:In that case, how can we think for ourselves or question authority?
A:Learn how to control your own screen and learn how to create your own vulnerable trance state and then you will not be susceptible to Big Brother’s mass media attempts, but you have to learn how to operate your brain and that’s what I’m putting out in my lectures. Think for yourself. That’s the old bumper sticker of Socrates. Know thyself.
Q:I try, but how do I learn to operate my brain?
A:Learn about the left brain, the right brain and methods of right brain meditative states and how to remake your mind.
Q:But aren’t we years from developing software that will allow us to remake our minds?
A:Am I ahead of my time?
Q:If that’s how you see it.
A: It’s better to be ahead of your time than behind your time. That’s my job. I’m a change agent. I’m a futurist. Someone’s got to do it. That’s what the weatherperson’s supposed to do, tell you what’s coming. Also, by pointing out the waves that are coming, I can prepare people for it and it may make the waves come a little faster. People always say to me, “You were a great scientist, but you went off the deep end.” Of course I did. What do you think? The shallow end?
Q:If you went off that end you’d’ve scraped your forehead.
A:On the other hand it’s very discouraging at times. The editor of Mondo 2000 found stuff I was writing 20 years ago, when I was in Folsom Prison, which predicted exactly what’s happening in the election today and she reprinted it, just as it was, 20 years later.
Q:It’s ironic that you conducted successful experiments, taking psilocybin in jail with prisoners, years before you were imprisoned yourself. What did you learn in prison?
A:I learned many wonderful, powerful lessons. First of all, I think anyone who wants to take a serious social or political posture is going to end up in prison. If you don’t, you’re doing something wrong. It’s only there that you realize the horror of the police state. I was put in prison and the wardens, the guards, they all looked at me and laughed, “You’re doing 20 years for $5 of marijuana.” The guards would tell me I was a political prisoner. I was just lucky I was in America where they couldn’t get away with raping me or torturing me or putting electrodes on my genitals, but the absolute corrupt, the total evil of all police politics is something that you can only realize when you’re down there… ah…
Q:In the hole.
A:Any philosopher or any political figure, cultural philosopher, who has not done long time for his or her work I think is just an ivory tower.
Q:Socrates was in prison.
A:I know. And they killed him.
Q:He poisoned himself with hemlock juice.
A:They made him though. They killed him. He had to do it.
Q:I’ve never heard that before, but 2500 years is a long time. You once wrote: “The caterpillar cannot understand the butterfly.” I feel like a caterpillar, don’t you?
A:I feel like I’m like a caterpillar who’s right in the middle of a mutation or a molt. I can see my caterpillar skin falling off and I’m beginning to grow wings. The most important thing is not that I’m feeling that I’m changing, but I see millions of people, not just young people, but the fuddenbebubs are beginning to change and open up their minds. We’re not alone here. There’s an enormous, confusing, chaotic mutation happening. Nobody knows exactly how it’s going to emerge, but everybody knows that change is in the air.
Q:If you had any wish, what would you wish for?
A:I’m not wishing, I’m doing it. It’s happening, so my wishes are coming true.
