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The Harvard Psychedelic Club

Page 24

by Don Lattin


  Like I said, this book is not about me. It’s about four men who can help us figure out what it all means. Was it madness? Was it mysticism? What did it all mean? And what does it have to do with the way we lived the rest of our lives? Like many of us, Leary, Alpert, Weil, and Smith were transformed by their psychedelic revelations. Each in his own way discovered how to best bring those powerful experiences into his life. Like us, they stumbled along the way, but in the end, after the ecstasy, they found new meaning and new direction.

  So, in the end, perhaps this book is about me. It might also be about you. It’s the story of four men whose lives provide a kind of master narrative—a template through which some of us may hear our own stories and, in the process, learn a little something about ourselves.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Alpert, Richard [Ram Dass]. Be Here Now. San Cristobal, NM: Lama Foundation, 1971.

  ———. Grist for the Mill. Santa Cruz, CA: Unity Press, 1977.

  ———. Interview by Eliot Jay Rosen. www.vegetarianusa.com/feature_articles/bms/ramdass.html.

  ———. Journey of Awakening: A Meditator’s Guidebook. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam, 1990. First published 1978.

  ———. Letter to Nathan Pusey. Harvard Crimson, May 29, 1963.

  ———. The Only Dance There Is. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1974. First published 1970.

  ———.“Setisoppoess with Dick Alpert.” San Francisco Oracle, January 1967, 3.

  Alpert, Richard [Ram Dass], and Ralph Metzner, with Gary Bravo. Birth of a Psychedelic Culture: Conversations About Leary, the Harvard Experiments, Millbrook and the Sixties. Santa Fe, NM: Synergetic Press, forthcoming.

  Alpert, Richard [Ram Dass], with Sidney Cohen and Lawrence Schiller. LSD. New York: New American Library, 1966.

  Anthony, Gene. The Summer of Love: Haight-Ashbury at Its Highest. Oakland, CA: Sixties Foundation, 2002.

  Ballard, Paul, ed. Psychedelic Religion? Papers from a Colloquium. Cardiff, UK: Collegiate Centre for Theology, University College, 1970.

  Bedford, Sybille. Aldous Huxley: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1974.

  Bess, Donovan. “Experimenter’s Report on Pot and Addiction.” San Francisco Chronicle, December 14, 1968.

  Braden, William. The Private Sea: LSD and the Search for God. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967.

  Bryan, John. Whatever Happened to Timothy Leary? San Francisco: Renaissance Press, 1980.

  Chase, Alston. Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003.

  Cheever, Susan. My Name Is Bill. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

  Cohen, Allen. The San Francisco Oracle—Facsimile Edition. Berkeley, CA: Regent Press, 1991.

  Clark, Walter Houston. Chemical Ecstasy: Psychedelic Drugs and Religion. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969.

  Davidson, Alan. “Holy Man Sighted at Gay Porn House.” Outsmart Magazine, June 2004.

  Doblin, Rick. “Leary’s Concord Prison Experiment: A 34-Year Follow-Up Study.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 30, no. 4 (1998): 419–427.

  ———.“Pahnke’s ‘Good Friday Experiment’: A Long-Term Follow-Up and Methodological Critique.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 23, no. 1 (1991).

  Forte, Robert. Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1999.

  Gates, Barbara, and Wes Nisker. The Best of Inquiring Mind: 25 Years of Dharma, Drama and Uncommon Insight. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2008.

  Greenfield, Robert. Timothy Leary: A Biography. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006.

  Grim, Ryan. This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009.

  Hallgren, Dick. “One Man’s Incredible ‘Journey.’” San Francisco Chronicle, December 19, 1968.

  Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception. New York: Harper Perennial Library, 2004.

  ———. Island. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962.

  Kilduff, Marshall. “Leary ‘Free’—Now to Get Him Out.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 1973.

  Kleps, Art. Millbrook: The True Story of the Early Years of the Psychedelic Movement. Portland: Bench Press, 1977.

  Kramer, Jane. “Paterfamilias.” New Yorker, August 17, 1968, 32.

  Lattin, Don. “Another Visit to the Oracle.” San Francisco Chronicle, November 18, 1990.

  ———. “Chalk It Up to the Counterculture: 60s Survivors Take Some Credit for the World’s Social, Political Changes,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 26, 1990.

  ———. Following Our Bliss: How the Spiritual Ideas of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.

  ———. “Religion Expert Has Had a Long Strange Trip.” San Francisco Chronicle, January 20, 2002.

  ———. “Stroke Teaches Ram Dass Anew to ‘Be Here Now.’” San Francisco Chronicle, May 2, 1997.

  ———. “Writer Predicts a Return to Hippie Roots.” San Francisco Chronicle, May 19, 2002.

  Leary, Timothy. Confessions of a Hope Fiend. New York: Bantam, 1973.

  ———. Design for Dying. New York: HarperEdge, 1997.

  ———. Flashbacks: An Autobiography. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1983.

  ———. High Priest. Reprint, Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, 1995.

  ———. Interview. Playboy, September 1966, 93.

  ———. Neuropolitique. Scottsdale, AZ: New Falcon Publications, 1988, 1991.

  ———. The Politics of Ecstasy. Ronin Publishing, 1998. First published 1985 by Grove Press.

  ———, ed. The Psychedelic Reader: The Revolutionary 1960s Forum of Psychopharmacological Substances. New York: Citadel Press, 2007.

  Leary, Timothy, with Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert. The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. New York: Citadel Press, 2007. First published 1964.

  Lee, Martin, and Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond. New York: Grove Press, 1985.

  Lemley, Brad. “Alternative Medicine Man.” Discover, August 1999, www.discovermagazine.com/1999/aug/featweil.

  MacFarquhar, Larissa. “Andrew Weil, Shaman, M.D.” New York Times Magazine, August 24, 1997.

  Markoff, John. What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. New York: Viking Penguin, 2005.

  McFague, Sallie. “Conversion: Life on the Edge of the Raft.” Interpretation 32 (1978): 255–68.

  Metzner, Ralph. “Ten Classical Metaphors of Self-Transformation.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 12, no. 1 (1980): 47–62.

  Rambo, Lewis R. “Theories of Conversion: Understanding and Interpreting Religious Change.” Social Compass 46, no. 3 (1999): 259–71.

  Rossman, Michael. New Age Blues: On the Politics of Consciousness. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979.

  Salinger, J. D. “Teddy.” New Yorker, January 31, 1953, 26–45.

  Slater, Philip. The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970.

  Smith, Huston. Cleansing the Doors of Perception. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2000.

  ———. Forgotten Truth. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. First published 1976.

  ———. “The Master-Disciple Relationship.” First Victor Danner Memorial Lecture, Indiana University, February 26, 2003.

  ———. Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.

  ———. The World’s Religions. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. First published 1958 as The Religions of Man.

  Smith, Huston, with David Griffin. Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989.

  Smith, Huston, with Philip Novak. Buddhism: A Concise Introduction. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.

  Smith, Huston, with Jeffrey Paine. Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine, an Autobiography. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009.

  Stevens, J
ay. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

  Taylor, Michael. “How the Swiss React to Leary,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 26, 1971.

  Taylor, Robert. “Baba Ram Dass (the former Richard Alpert, PhD) Shares His Experiences.” Boston Globe Magazine, June 7, 1970.

  Thompson, Mark. Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.

  Ullman, Chana. “Cognitive and Emotional Antecedents of Religious Conversion.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 43, no. 1 (1982): 183–92.

  Walsh, Roger, and Charles Grob. Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005.

  Watts, Alan. The Joyous Cosmology. New York: Pantheon Books, 1962.

  Weil, Andrew. Dr. Andrew Weil’s Mindbody Tool Kit Workbook. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2005.

  ———. Healthy Aging: A Guide to Your Well-Being. New York: Anchor Books, 2007.

  ———. The Marriage of the Sun and Moon: A Quest for Unity in Consciousness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

  ———. The Natural Mind: A New Way of Looking at Drugs and the Higher Consciousness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.

  ———. Spontaneous Healing. New York: Ballantine Books, 1995.

  Weil, Andrew, with Winifred Rosen. From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983.

  Whitmer, Peter. Aquarius Revisited: Seven Who Created the Sixties Counterculture That Changed America. New York: Citadel Press, 1987.

  NOTES ON SOURCE MATERIAL

  CHAPTER ONE—FOUR ROADS TO CAMBRIDGE

  Seeker—This section is drawn from author interviews with Richard Alpert on Maui on January 29–31, 2008, and with Jim Fadiman in Palo Alto, California, on June 18, 2008. Other source material comes from Alpert’s Be Here Now.

  Trickster—Drawn from author interviews with Ralph Metzner in San Rafael, California, on February 20, 2008, and with Herbert Kelman, by telephone, on June 18, 2008. Other source material comes from the San Francisco Chronicle, October 23, 1955; Leary’s autobiography, Flashbacks; Robert Greenfield’s Timothy Leary: A Biography; and Robert Forte’s introduction to his Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In.

  Healer—Drawn from author interviews with Andrew Weil in Vail, Arizona, on November 28, 2007, and by telephone on December 4, 2008. Other material comes from The Natural Mind; Dr. Andrew Weil’s Mindbody Tool Kit Workbook; Discover magazine, August 1999; the New York Times Magazine, August 24, 1997; remarks by Weil at a lecture in Oakland, California, on February 9, 2009; and a 1998 Weil interview posted on the Web site of the Academy of Achievement (http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/wei1int-1).

  Teacher—Drawn from author interviews with Huston Smith in Berkeley, California, on January 10, 2002, and December 12, 2007, and an interview with Kendra Smith in Berkeley on February 5, 2009. Other source material comes from an early draft of Smith’s 2009 autobiography Tales of Wonder; Sybille Bedford’s Aldous Huxley: A Biography; Susan Cheever’s My Name Is Bill; and Forte.

  CHAPTER TWO—TURN ON

  Trickster—This section is drawn from Leary’s accounts in High Priest and Flashbacks.

  Teacher—Drawn from author interviews with Smith, along with Huston’s account in Cleansing the Doors of Perception. Other material comes from Forte’s interview with Smith and a tape recording of Humphrey Osmond’s account from remarks made at the Esalen Institute in May 1976.

  Seeker—Drawn from author interviews with Alpert.

  Healer—Drawn from author interviews with Weil and Alpert, along with an interview with Ronnie Winston conducted in Santa Barbara, California, on March 9, 2008. Some of the Leary quotes at his meeting with Weil and Winston were actually drawn from comments Leary made in a speech before the American Psychological Association on August 30, 1963. Other material comes from Weil’s account in The Natural Mind.

  CHAPTER THREE—SINNERS AND SAINTS

  Trickster—This section is drawn from author interviews with Metzner and Alpert. Other material comes from Leary’s accounts in Flashbacks; Osmond’s speech at Esalen; Metzner/Alpert conversations in Birth of a Psychedelic Culture; and Greenfield and Doblin (1998). The account of Bill Wilson’s UCLA trip is from Betty Eisner in Walsh and Grob.

  Teacher—Drawn from author interviews with Metzner and Smith; with Paul Lee in Santa Cruz on April 9, 2008; and with Harvey Cox in Cambridge on May 10, 2008. Other material comes from Leary’s 1983 remarks at Harvard; Smith’s account in Cleansing the Doors of Perception; and Doblin (1991).

  CHAPTER FOUR—CRIMSON TIDE

  Healer—This section is drawn from author interviews with Kelman, Lee, Weil, and Winston. Other material comes from author interviews with Robert E. Smith in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 14, 2008; and with Joe Russin and Bruce Paisner by telephone on May 29, 2008. Alpert’s comments at the meeting are partly based on his letter of May 29, 1963.

  Seeker—Drawn from author interviews with Metzner and Alpert, and from author interview with Peggy Hitchcock by telephone on February 18, 2008. Other material comes from Birth of a Psychedelic Culture.

  CHAPTER FIVE—TROUBLE IN PARADISE

  Trickster—This section is drawn from author interviews with Metzner, Alpert, and Hitchcock. Other material comes from Flashbacks and Birth of a Psychedelic Culture.

  Seeker—Drawn from author interviews with Lee, Alpert, and Metzner, and from remarks by Leary and Alpert at Harvard in 1983. Other material comes from Flashbacks and John Bryan’s Whatever Happened to Timothy Leary?

  CHAPTER SIX—IF YOU COME TO SAN FRANCISCO . . .

  Trickster—Drawn from author interview with Robert Forte in Santa Cruz on June 7, 2008. Other material comes from the San Francisco Oracle of January and February 1967; the San Francisco Chronicle of May 19, 2002; the New Yorker of August 17, 1968; Gene Anthony’s book The Summer of Love; and Playboy, September 1966.

  Seeker—This section is drawn from author interviews with Alpert and from an author interview with Caroline Winter, via e-mail, on May 26, 2008. Other material comes from Greenfield, Leary’s Neuropolitique, the San Francisco Oracle of January 1967, the San Francisco Chronicle of October 29, 1964, and November 3, 1965, and the Boston Globe Magazine of June 7, 1970. Additional details came from Jay Stevens’s Storming Heaven and Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain’s Acid Dreams.

  Teacher—Drawn from author interviews with Lee and Smith, and from works cited in text.

  Healer—Drawn from an author interview with Weil; the San Francisco Chronicle of December 19, 1968; The Natural Mind; and other works cited in text.

  CHAPTER SEVEN—PILGRIMAGE AND EXILE

  Seeker—This section is based on author interviews with Alpert; with Mirabai Bush in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, on May 13, 2008; and with Wes Nisker in Berkeley, California, on July 7, 2008.

  Other material comes from the San Francisco Chronicle of May 28, 1968, and March 25, 1973, and the Boston Globe Magazine of June 7, 1970. Additional details come from Be Here Now and Alpert’s remarks at the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco in February 1970 and from his interview in Walsh and Grob.

  Teacher—Drawn from author interview with Smith. Other material comes from an early draft of Smith’s 2009 autobiography; his 2003 book, Buddhism: A Concise Introduction; and Smith and David Griffin’s book Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology.

  Healer—Drawn from Weil’s accounts in Spontaneous Healing and The Marriage of the Sun and Moon.

  Trickster—Drawn from author interviews with Nisker and from author interviews with Brian Barritt, by telephone, on July 18, 2008, and with Dieter Hagenbach, by telephone, on July 11, 2008. Leary’s accounts come from Confessions of a Hope Fiend and Flashbacks, with other details from Bryan and Greenfield.

  CHAPTER EIGHT—AFTER THE ECSTASY . . . FOUR LIVES

  Healer—This section is based on interviews with Weil, and on an interview with his business manager, Richard Baxter, by t
elephone, on December 15, 2008. Other material comes from Time magazine, May 12, 1997; the New York Times Magazine, August 24, 1997; and the New Republic, December 14, 1998.

  Seeker—Drawn from author interviews with Alpert and Bush, and from the San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 1991. Other material comes from a 1985 Ram Dass interview in Inquiring Mind; his interviews with Mark Thompson, Alan Davidson, and Eliot Jay Rosen; and Michael Rossman’s New Age Blues.

  Trickster—Drawn from author interview with Forte. Other material comes from the San Francisco Chronicle of June 2, 1973, Greenfield, and Forte.

  Teacher—Drawn from author interview with Smith. Other material comes from Tales of Wonder and Why Religion Matters.

  CONCLUSION—HEALER, TEACHER, TRICKSTER, SEEKER

  The section on early LSD research in the United States was based on the author’s interview with Philip Slater in Santa Cruz on June 8, 2008, along with material from Stevens, Forte, and Lee and Shlain. For more details on the statistics about LSD use in recent decades, see This Is Your Country on Drugs by Ryan Grim.

  Index

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Page numbers of photos appear in italics.

 

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