Chapter 16

Imprinting the Taoi§t Experience
A^T n 1960-63, we Harvard drug researchers real- ^^J ized that we did not know enough about the ^^ enormous range of reactions activated by brain- change drugs. Even after hundreds of voyages aloft, our veteran test pilots reported amazing new dimensions of galaxies within. For this reason we decided to postpone any navigational mapmaking of our own. Every week, new evidence changed the maps. We felt like those 16^^ Century cartographers in Western Europe eagerly debriefing crews returning from the New World. The Tibetan Book of the Living, our first venture in updat- ing old neurological- trip maps, was so successful we became alarmed. Thousands of people began using the Tibetan jargon of Bardos, and a definite fad- trend towards Buddhism was developing.
To head off this prescientific Oriental renaissance, we quickly sought another, less parochial text for de- scribing and guiding brain astronauts. The advantage of the Tao Te Ching was that this Taoist text was almost content- free. There are no pious monks, shaved heads.
70 Your grain bC^d
red hats, yellow hats, orange robes, or specific levels of heaven, purgatory, and hell in the Too Te Ching.
The Tao celebrates the constant flow of evolution, the eternal flow of always- changing energy processes. The basic advice of Taoism — "Everything changes according to regular cycles and rhythms. So keep cool, watch the ebb and flow — and when the waves are ready, surf them. "
Tao Te Ching
The Chinese Tao Te Ching, sometimes translated as The Way of Life — written some 2 , 600 years ago by one or several philosophers known to us now as "the old fel- low"— LaO' Tse — will remain timelessly modem as long as man has the same sort of nervous system and deals with the range of energies he now encounters.
Tao is best translated as "energy, " or energy pro- cess— energy in its pure unstructured state — the "E" of
Einstein' s equation — and in its countless. The mceeaqc of the T^O Te temporary states of
Ching \e that all 15 energy, structure— the "M" of
all energy f bW5; all things Einstein' s equation, continually tranefonm. The Too is an ode to
nuclear physics, to life, to the genetic
code, to that form of transient energy structure we call "man, " to those most static, lifeless forms of energy we call man's artifacts and symbols. The message of the Tao Te Ching is that all is energy, all energy flows; all things continually transform.
The Tao Te Ching is divided into 2 books — the first comprising 37 chapters, the second 44. It is a series of 81 verses that celebrate the flow of energy, its manifes-
Timothy Leary ^
tations, and, on the practical side, the implications for man' s endeavors. Most of the pragmatic sutras of the Too were directed towards the ruler of a state and his ministers. Like all great texts, the Tao has been rewrit- ten and reinterpreted in every century, the terms for Tao also change in each century. Advice given by philoso- phers to their emperor can be applied to how to run your home, your office, and how to conduct a psychedelic session.
Translation to Psychedeliceze
During that period I wrote Psychedelic Prayers from the Tao Te Ching — the first book ever specifically de- signed to reimprint human brains during the "critical periods" of neural vulnerability. By the way, it is the second book explicitly designed as a brainwashing manual. The insidious aim of this Dr. Frankenstein gambit was to prepare young people ■mhhhhh taking large doses of LSD to absorb a f^^ychedek new reality- view based on post- ^^ ^^
Einsteinian, DNA science. ^^^^^ ^^
Over the years since thousands OVGC 2O0 000 of young people with doctorates VOUn^^ brain5.
have entered careers in science, ^^^^^^^^
whose brains were directed by this book of hymns, odes, and paeans to the atom, to the DNA coil, and to the brain. Psychedelic Prayers has been reprinted over 20 times and has probably bent over 200, QiQO young brains
These translations from English to psychedelese were made while sitting under a bamboo tree on a grassy slope of the Kumaon Hills overlooking the snow peaks of the Himalayas. I had 9 English translations of the Tao, I
72 Your dr3ivr]]5 God
would select a Tao chapter and read and reread all 9 English versions of it. Each Western mind, of course, made his own interpretation of the flowing calligraphy. But after hours of rereading and meditation, the essence of the poem would bubble up. Slowly a psychedelic version of the For eCVCral chapter would emerge, years 1 pursued ji^^ f^j-gt^ draft version would
the demanding ^i^^^ ^^ put under the psychedelic yoga 0\ one microscope. For several years I LzAy session pursued the demanding yoga of one every 5e\/en L5J) session every seven days. And C\^y3. each time our Moslem cook walked
■■■^ down to the village , he would bring
back a crayon- size stick of attar, "essence, " of the resin of the marijuana plant sometimes called hashish. LSD opened up the lenses of cellular and molecular con- sciousness. Attar cleansed the windows of the senses. During these sessions, I would read the most recent draft of the Tao poems. A humbling experience for this poet — to have my words exposed to pitiless psychedelic magnification.