Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Timothy Leary

1920 – 1996 CE

Pioneering psychonaut, performing philosopher, and counter-cultural hero

Harvard professor, "performing philosopher,” counter-culture hero, consciousness explorer, and famous psychonaut; Timothy Leary personified the rebel archetype from an early age. He was court-martialed from West Point for refusing to inform on fellow cadets, expelled from the University of Alabama for spending a night in the female dorm, fired from his professorship at Harvard for allegedly missing classes, and during the 60’s and 70’s was imprisoned in 36 different prisons worldwide. President Richard Nixon described him as "the most dangerous man in America.” In 1960, he teamed up with fellow Harvard professor, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) to launch the first scientific psilocybin research project; and later, with Allen Ginsberg began a campaign to introduce psychedelics and the discovery of higher levels of consciousness to the broader culture. He pioneered research into the benefits of psychedelics in curing alcoholism, inducing religious experiences, and reforming criminals (dropping recidivism rates rates from 60 to just 20%). He won a supreme court marijuana case and—with the support of John Lennon and Yoko Ono—ran for governor of California (Come Together was a Lennon-written campaign song). An early influence on Game Theory, Transactional Analysis, Aldous Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, and Huston Smith; Leary became a major influence on modern psychology but also created a back-lash that effectively ended psychedelic research until its revival in modern times.

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Quotes by Timothy Leary (11 quotes)

“The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen.”

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“We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the 21st century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art.”

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“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”

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“You're as young as the last time you changed your mind.”

Themes: Change Old Age

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“There are three side effects of LSD: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third.”

Themes: Forget Memory

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“We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.”

Themes: Education

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“In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.”

Themes: Philosophy

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“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close… the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the ‘normal people’ as they go about their automatic existences… Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence.”

Themes: Crazy Wisdom

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“Creativity and mental excellence will become the ethical norm. The world will be too dynamic, complex, and diversified, too cross-linked by the global immediacies of modern (quantum) communication, for stability of thought or dependability of behavior to be successful.”

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“Because you flow like water, you can neither win nor lose.”

from Tao Te Ching – Psychedelic Prayers

Chapters: 8. Like Water

Themes: Water Victory

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“Few writers have chronicled with such dispassionate lucidity and fearless honesty the progress of the soul through the states of life.”

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Quotes about Timothy Leary (5 quotes)

“Lao Tzu and Tim Leary—the funniest of American philosophers—fit together so well I almost believe in reincarnation.”

Robert Anton Wilson 1932 – 2007 CE

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“Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again... we had discovered something as surprising and powerful as the New World when Columbus came stumbling onto it. People like Leary have done the best they can to chart it sort of underground, but the government and the powers do not want this world charted, because it threatens established powers. It always has.”

Ken Kesey 1935 – 2001 CE

Themes: Creativity

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“We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the 21st century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art.”

Timothy Leary 1920 – 1996 CE
Pioneering psychonaut, performing philosopher, and counter-cultural hero

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“during the three years I was involved with that Harvard study, LSD was not only legal but respectable. Before Tim went on his unfortunate careening course, it was a legitimate research project. Though I did find evidence that, when recounted, the experiences of the Harvard group and those of mystics were impossible to tell apart — descriptively indistinguishable — that's not the last word. There is still a question about the truth of the disclosure.”

Huston Smith 1919 – 2016 CE
from Mother Jones article

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“Timothy Leary is the most dangerous man in America.”

Richard Nixon 1914 – 1994 CE via
Corrupt and immoral yet brilliant and accomplished politician

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