Chapter 12

Tools of Experimental Theolo^
(^1^0 master these Eight Pi\^ine Crafts may
/ seem hopelessly Utopian. Actually, to ascend -^ these levels of neurotechnology is becoming routine, because there now exist instruments to move contelligence to any desired level. The laboratory instruments for experimental theology, for internal science, is brain- activating chemicals — drugs, dope. Psychoactive drugs turn on the Eight Brain Circuits that mediate the levels of reality- experience:
The Origin Experience Is Possible
Anyone can noodle back down to swampy amoe- boid, unicellular, vegetative beginnings by self- administering narcotics, heavy doses of barbitu- rates. These neuro- chemicals turn off higher circuits of the brain and permit one to float in marine rapture. Three Quaaludes, for example, make it impossible to walk or master gravity.
50 Your grain l5 God
Emotional Stupor
Mammalian Excitement can be attained by alcohol or angel dust, which turn off the higher, cerebral centers and activate the midbrain. If you have mammalian feelings of rage, dominance, power, which you wish to experience — and to express in a safe- protective environ- ment — these drugs will do it.
Mental Acceleration
Mental acceleration is produced by cocaine, pep pills, and similar daily energizers — drugs that stimulate mental performance, propelling you into busy game manipulations. Don't expect creativity, however.
Domesticated Virtue
Social security is produced by tranquilizers, including the familiar Valiums, Libriums, Thorazines and Prozac. Indeed, it has been suggested that tranquilizers are the "glue" that holds the American middle class together in dulled, calm security.
The warm, cozy, comfortable feeling that Everything is Okay, that one is accepted and approved by the Hive Society, can also be maintained by television, pop religion, movies. The head of state feels tranquil when he sees the flag raised; the Iranian feels tranquil when he joins thousands of others in cheering the AyatoUah. Catholics feel the same wash of piety when they watch the Pope stride to his altar.
The Esthetic-Sensory- Hedonic-Erotic Experience
Esthetic- sensory- hedonic- erotic experience is pro- duced by any post- domestic psychedelic, mind- opening drug. Low doses of LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, DMT
Timothy Leary 51_
can turn off the 4 lower circuits — stupor, excitement, mental obsession, domestic virtue — and free the brain to experience direct- raw- naked- nerve- ending sensation. The traditional triggers for sensory awareness and cakra bliss are marijuana, hashish, and similar hedono- erotics.
The Ontological Revelation
The ontological revelation that the brain fabricates realities is produced by strong psychedelic — "mind- manifesting" — drugs, which allow one to observe the neuroelectric nature of consciousness. Drugs including LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin, give access to the billion- cell loom of flashing impulses and produce new imprints or new realities.
The
Teleological-Evolutionary
Experience
The teleological evolutionary experience can be produced by strong charges of psychedelic drugs. Psy- chedelic literature abounds in descriptions of pre- incarnation voyages down one' s cellular pathways — two- way conversation between the central nervous system and RNA and DNA.
The Cosmological Experience
The neuro- astronomical revelation has been reported by many psychedelic experimenters. Many believe that the boom in space consciousness reflected in the movies 2001, Star Wars, Star Trek, and such are predictable sequelae of the Neurological Revolution of the 1960s.
^ Your grain l5 God
Our knowledge as to which drug turns on which levels of consciousness is empirical, based on thousands of psy- chedelic experiences. There is haunting phenomenologi- cal evidence that spiritual insights accompanying the psychedelic experience might be subjective accounts of the objective findings of astronomy, physics, biochemistry, and neurology.
Question Your Advisor
No matter how parsimonious our explanations, LSD subjects do claim to experience revelations into the basic questions, and do attribute life change to their visions. How can you judge? Well, whenever you hear anyone sounding off on internal freedom and consciousness- expanding foods and drugs — whether pro or con — ask these questions.
Considerations in Evaluating Psychedelic Experts
Is your expert talking from direct experience , or simply repeating cliches? Theologians and intellectu- als often deprecate "experience" in favor of "moral imperative. " Most often this classic debate becomes a case of "experience" versus "inexperience. "
Do hir words spring from a philosophic- scientific view? Is s/he motivated by basic questions, or is s/ he protecting hir own social- psychological invest- ment? Is s/ he riskily struggling toward all- out sainthood, or maintaining a hive conformity?
How would hir argument sound if heard in an African jungle hut, a ghat on the Ganges, in Periclean Athens, in a Tibetan monastery, or in a bull session led by any one of the great religious leaders? Or on
Timothy leary ^
another planet inhabited by a superior form of life? Or how would it sound to other species of life — to dolphins, to the consciousness of a redwood? In other words, break out of your usual earphones and listen with the ears of another of Gaia' s creatures.
How would the debate sound if you had a week to live, and were thus less committed to mundane issues? Our research group received many requests for consciousness- expanding experiences from terminal patients.
Does the point of view open up, or close down? Are you being urged to explore, experience, join a collaborative voyage of discovery? Or are you being pressured to close off, protect your gains , play it safe , accept the authority of someone who knows best?
Does your psychedelic expert use terms that are positive, pro-life, spiritual, inspiring, based on faith in your potential? Or does s/he betray a mind obsessed by danger, material concern, terrors, administrative caution, or essential distrust in your potential? There is nothing in life to fear; no philo- sophic game can be lost.
If s/ he is against what s/ he calls "artifical methods of illumination, " ask hir what constitutes the natural. Words? Rituals? Tribal customs? Prime time TV?
If s/ he is against biochemical assistance , where does s/he draw the line? Does s/he use nicotine? Alco- hol? Penicillin? Vitamins? Conventional sacramental substances?
If your advisor is against the neurotechnology of drugs, what is s/he for? If s/he forbids you the psychedelic key to revelation, what does s/he offer instead?
54 Your dranh God
Uncharted Territory
The Harvard Psychedelic Drug Research Project' s first goal was to train scientist- technicians in the use of powerful brain- change chemicals. LSD provided us with a method of changing consciousness and brain func- tion— the tool that philosophers and psychologists had been anticipating for centuries. Our problem was that there was no scientific literature on the subject. The situation was very similar to that of Janssen, Galileo,
Malpighi, Leeuwenhoek, early users ^■■^■■■■■^^ of the microscope, which drama ti- LIK6 Jan566n, cally expanded human perception, OalllCO, iVIalpigni, opening up entirely new levels of l^CUWCWOdf^WC reality. It was obviously necessary to \]3a no SCISntlT IC develop manuals to guide others in literature to ^he use of the new instrument.
^^^^^^ Our first step was to plead
enlightened ignorance. Any attempt to label- limit the activated brain' s potentials was prema- ture. Our second step was to scan, sift, scour the libraries for books on mystic experience. When all was read and said, it seemed to us that the best "clinical, " step- by- step description of a psychedelic experience yet published was The Tibetan Book of the Dead. This classic Buddhist text outlined the stages of the dying- rebirth process over a period of 49 days. Though couched in primitive rural language, the highs and lows, the "hallu- cinations" and visions were clearly similar to the altered states our Harvard subjects experienced.
During the summer of 1962 1 went through The Tibetan Book of the Living — as we re- named it — line by line, translating Buddhist imagery into American psy- chedelic jargon. The mimeographed versions were "tried out" on hundreds of LSD trippers, and the polished,
Timothy Leary 55
revised version published by University Books in 1964. Since that time, The Psychedelic Experience has been reissued in more than nine hardback editions and several paperback reprin tings. Hundreds of thousands of LSD experiences have been guided by this manual. This was probably the first detailed manual for managing drug- induced brain- change experiences. Because of mass- merchandising techniques, ironically, this book has probably turned on more persons to the Guatama's teachings than any single text since the Buddha' s en- lightenment 2, 500 years ago — although I doubt that you could get the Buddhist professional to admit it.