Timothy Leary

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Timothy Leary : biography

October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996

He died at 75 on May 31, 1996. His death was videotaped for posterity at his request, capturing his final words. During his final moments, he said, "Why not?" to his son Zachary. He uttered the phrase repeatedly, in different intonations, and died soon after. His last word, according to Zach, was "beautiful."

The film Timothy Leary’s Dead (1996) contains a simulated sequence in which he allows his bodily functions to be suspended for the purposes of cryonic preservation. His head is removed, and placed on ice. The film ends with a sequence showing the creation of the artificial head used in the film.

Seven grams of Leary’s ashes were arranged by his friend at Celestis to be buried in space aboard a rocket carrying the remains of 24 others including Gene Roddenberry (creator of Star Trek), Gerard O’Neill (space physicist), and Krafft Ehricke (rocket scientist). A Pegasus rocket containing their remains was launched on April 21, 1997, and remained in orbit for six years until it burned up in the atmosphere.

Works

Leary authored and co-authored over 20 books, and was featured on more than a dozen audio recordings. His acting career included over a dozen appearances in movies and television shows, over 30 appearances as himself in others, and produced and/or collaborated in both multimedia presentations and computer games.

In June 2011, The New York Times reported that the New York Public Library had acquired Leary’s personal archives, including papers, videotapes, photographs and other archival material from the Leary estate, including correspondence and documents relating to Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Arthur Koestler, G. Gordon Liddy and other prominent cultural figures. The collection will take approximately 18 months to process, and should be open to researchers by July 2013.

Psychedelic experiments and experiences

On May 13, 1957, Life magazine published "Seeking the Magic Mushroom", a photo essay by R. Gordon Wasson that documented the use of psilocybin mushrooms in religious rites of the indigenous Mazatec people of Mexico. Anthony Russo, a colleague of Leary’s, experimented with his own use of psychedelic (or entheogenic) psilocybe mexicana mushrooms on a trip to Mexico and told Leary about it. In August 1960,Cashman, John. "The LSD Story". Fawcett Publications, 1966 Leary traveled to Cuernavaca, Mexico with Russo and consumed psilocybin mushrooms for the first time, an experience that drastically altered the course of his life.Ram Dass Fierce Grace, 2001, Zeitgeist Video In 1965, Leary commented that he had "learned more about … (his) brain and its possibilities … [and] more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than … in the preceding 15 years of studying and doing research in psychology."

Returning from Mexico to Harvard in 1960, Leary and his associates, notably Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass), began a research program known as the Harvard Psilocybin Project. The goal was to analyze the effects of psilocybin on human subjects (first prisoners, and later Andover Newton Theological Seminary students) from a synthesized version of the then-legal drug — one of two active compounds found in a wide variety of hallucinogenic mushrooms, including psilocybe mexicana. The compound in question was produced by a process developed by Albert Hofmann of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, who was famous for synthesizing LSD.

Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, after hearing about the Harvard research project, asked to join the experiments. Leary was inspired by Ginsberg’s enthusiasm, and the two shared an optimism in the benefit of psychedelic substances to help people "turn on" (i.e., discover a higher level of consciousness). Together they began a campaign of introducing other intellectuals and artists to psychedelics.Goffman, K. and Joy, D. 2004. Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. New York: Villard, 250–252