- 6 minutes ago
Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the copyright act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:10You
00:36Firing line with William F. Buckley, Jr. Tonight's guest, Dr. Timothy Leary. Here is tonight's chairman, C. Dickerman Williams.
00:46Ladies and gentlemen, our topic of discussion tonight is the world of LSD. Our guest is Dr. Timothy Leary, founder
00:55of the Modern Psychedelic Movement.
00:57Our student guests are from Queen's College. Mr. Buckley, will you proceed?
01:03Mr. Chairman, Dr. Timothy Leary is the pope of what he chooses to call a new religion, which is based
01:12on the consumption of drugs, particularly at the moment LSD,
01:17whose attractions are said to be sweeping the campuses and after whose initials Dr. Leary has named his new religion
01:23the League for Spiritual Discovery.
01:27Dr. Leary really is a doctor of clinical psychology.
01:33He went to school in Alabama and took a PhD in Berkeley and after experiencing Nirvana in Spain, went to
01:39Harvard where he was in due course fired.
01:43Now it is not easy to be fired from Harvard, at least not for misbehavior, but it transpired that Dr.
01:49Leary had become tour director for a lot of his students whom he was sending on long distance trips through
01:56the mists of psychedelic experience.
01:59Dr. Leary then went to Millbrook, New York, which has served as the headquarters of his movement, but he has
02:05traveled widely and is used to receiving standing ovations as he advances the position that, as someone observed, that opiates
02:15are the religion of the people.
02:17Dr. Leary, I would like to ask Dr. Leary, why is it so generally recognized that well-adjusted people tend
02:24to LSD and other drugs more so than less or rather less so than well-adjusted people?
02:34Would you repeat the question?
02:36Dr. Leary, why is it that it is the common impression that poorly-adjusted people tend in greater numbers to
02:46the world of LSD than normally-adjusted people?
02:50Dr. Well, I've never heard that suggested before.
02:54The people who are using marijuana...
02:56Dr. Then you're badly adjusted.
02:58Dr. ...today tend to be the highly-educated.
03:03They come from our so-called best colleges.
03:08There's no LSD or marijuana problem down in Podunk Junior College in Arkansas.
03:14It's at Harvard, Princeton, and even at Yale.
03:18That 50 to 70 percent of the undergraduates are seriously experimenting with the most important thing that can be experimented
03:26with, their own consciousness.
03:28Are you confusing adjustment with education?
03:30Dr. No, I'm not suggesting that.
03:33Why did you mention the difference between Podunk U and Yale University?
03:36What makes you think they are better adjusted at Yale than at Podunk U?
03:43You haven't thought about it. Nobody told you before, right?
03:45Dr. No, I'm trying to see what your problem is, and I think I've diagnosed it.
03:50Dr. Go ahead, Doc.
03:53Your approach to the word drug, I think, is that of many Americans, particularly over the age of 50.
03:59When the word drug is mentioned, think of some opiate, something that is an escape, something that takes you away
04:05from reality, something that you take if you're a failure.
04:09All of the statistics that I've seen indicate that the people who use psychedelic drugs are people who are pretty
04:15well adjusted by any standard or criteria you want to name.
04:19Income, education, creativity, productivity, and they want more because what psychedelic drugs produce is not the dull, glazed, free martini
04:33haze.
04:35Psychedelic drugs intensify consciousness, they're microscopic in their effect, and they're used by people who are looking for more.
04:46Well, they may be used by people who are looking for more, but they are also used by people who
04:52seem to feel incompetent to use natural experience as a means of getting more. Isn't that the case?
04:59Not at all.
04:59A fascinating discussion in progress and in store on Firing Line. We'll continue in a moment.
05:07You were saying, Dr. Leary.
05:09I was attempting to answer your question about who is using psychedelic drugs.
05:15Of course, this is like asking how many virgins are there at Vassar and who are they?
05:21There's no way. There's no way of getting an accurate statistic as to how many and what percentage of the
05:28population are experimenting with consciousness.
05:35But it's happening. It's happening in larger numbers.
05:39And from my observations, it tends to be young people, the creative minority, and the socially alienated minority groups in
05:50the United States, particularly the American Indian, the Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and so on.
05:55Oh, I don't doubt it's happening any more than I doubt that nervous breakdowns are happening.
05:59I'm simply interested in trying to confirm an impression, and that impression is that not that the world is divided
06:08into two groups, but that by and large you can identify people who symbolize two different groups.
06:16There is that one group which to use the conventional vocabulary of clinical psychology is well adjusted in the sense
06:28of being able to cope with reality.
06:30There is that other group that can't cope with reality and under the circumstances, whether out of adventurism or whether
06:38out of intrigue or whether out of hopelessness,
06:40it tends this year to look to LSD, to cocaine or alcohol, and the day after tomorrow as you have
06:50pointed out to something else.
06:53Now, are we entitled to infer anything from this fact?
06:58For instance, take people that by all accounts are considered pretty normal.
07:02Oh, Harry Truman's a...
07:06Could you imagine Harry Truman taking a trip?
07:10Nope.
07:12I'll give you the...
07:13Did you mean that to be an anti-Truman observation?
07:16Not at all.
07:18Drop out of politics, young people.
07:21The one sociological or psychological characteristic of the Psyduck movement is age.
07:31As a matter of fact, I think that the only important political issue in the United States today, the division,
07:39is how old are you?
07:41I think that people under the age of 30 come from an entirely different way of life.
07:47I think that they're mutants.
07:49But they're younger, yeah.
07:50No, they've been brought up in a world bill which is entirely different from the one that you and I
07:55knew.
07:56It's already gone beyond my comprehension.
07:59The kids today are into electronics.
08:03They're into experiments in consciousness.
08:05They're into a level of awareness which I can dimly grasp but can only, as it passes me by, take
08:15off my hat and say, Godspeed to them.
08:19Yeah, well, I say Godspeed to them too without necessarily handing them pot in the same gesture.
08:24Nobody's handing the kids today anything.
08:27They are finding what they need.
08:31They're using what makes sense.
08:33Manifestly, they are not.
08:34Well, I think they are.
08:35At least not the noisiest of them.
08:36The noisiest of them are making a great deal of noise precisely because they feel necessary to express either their
08:44refusal to come to terms with the world or their psychological incapacity to do so.
08:49I'm very much in sympathy with them.
08:50I think it's extremely hard to come to terms with the world of liberalism built.
08:54But at the same time, I haven't counseled the kind of disengagement that you have.
08:59Well, one of the things that fascinates me about you and a lot of things that do is your use
09:03of language.
09:04There is a sort of a 19th century tushery.
09:10There's sort of a mysticism there that causes you to write sentences like this when you describe dropping out, which
09:18you counsel everybody to do.
09:19Dropping out, you say, means to detach yourself harmoniously, tenderly, and gracefully from worldly commitments until your entire life is
09:29dedicated to worship and search.
09:32Now, to the extent that I can understand English, and I have a hard time sometimes, doesn't that really mean
09:39that you should abandon a commitment to your family, abandon a commitment to your church, to your country, to supra
09:48-personal ideals?
09:50And isn't this really a retreat into yourself and a failure to come to grips with the fact that the
09:57world exists other than merely of yourself?
10:00No, because what you diagnose as the world is actually the fake prop television studio of New York City and
10:10the United States today.
10:11The motto of our religion is, turn on, tune in, and drop out.
10:18Now, this happens to be the oldest message which has been passed on by spiritual teachers and spiritual searchers for
10:25thousands of years.
10:26You've got to detach yourself from the situation.
10:30Our country was founded on exactly that motto.
10:34Sorry, George III, we're dropping out.
10:36The Roman Empire fell as the American Empire will fall in the near future from exactly the same motive.
10:43People turning within and then coming back to found their spiritual and their political and their economic life.
10:51Not on the IBM mass assembly line society, but on the family and the tribe.
11:01I mentioned to you earlier, Bill, in the dressing room that I consider myself to be much more conservative than
11:06you.
11:07At Millbrook, New York, and in hundreds of similar places in the United States today, psychedelic people are leaving the
11:1420th century.
11:15We're leaving this fake prop television studio, and we're going back to exactly the values which have been fragmented and
11:21destroyed by American society.
11:22We're going back to the family.
11:24We teach our kids.
11:26We give our kids psychedelic sacraments like marijuana and LSD just the way you would perhaps...
11:34That's really old-fashioned, isn't it?
11:37Well, as a matter of fact, there's nothing that's more old-fashioned than a parent worshiping with his child and
11:45sharing in the shrine of the home the deep spiritual moments of life.
11:50Now, your idea, and perhaps the idea of many of your viewers, is that psychedelic chemicals are like heroin,
11:56or perhaps like a super alcohol, that you get drunk, or that you lose touch with reality.
12:04Of course, this is the myth which we try very hard to overcome, that like it or not, believe it
12:13or not,
12:14the LSD experience is a philosophic and a religious experience.
12:18Well, I know...
12:20It does lead you, as any religious experience has in the past, to detach yourself, not from the family,
12:26or not from your ideals, but from the fake prop society, and go back.
12:32That can be said of suicide, too.
12:34As a matter of fact, it can be said of any number of drugs.
12:39And let's go ahead and agree that LSD seems to be, in some particulars, different from other opiates or drugs
12:48or chemicals.
12:49I think that's the word you prefer to use.
12:50At the same time, agreeing that LSD is a departure from the normal world,
13:00and that under the circumstances, people who accept its influence are provoking themselves.
13:05But what do you mean by normal world?
13:07You mean Harry Truman?
13:09Is that normal?
13:10You mean Democrat-Republican?
13:11Is that normal?
13:12You mean this sort of a television studio?
13:14This is highly, highly un-normal to me and to thousands of people like me who are leaving the cities.
13:21We're going back...
13:22Assuming...
13:22Yeah, well, assuming that you accept the existence of existential reality,
13:27that is say, assuming that you are not a solipsist who believes that all of the world is yourself and
13:37your particular projections,
13:41then I say that there is a natural order.
13:43People who have eyes can see it, people who have noses can smell it, and people who have ears can
13:48hear it.
13:50And that's the kind of world I am talking about.
13:52And it seems to me that people who are willing to take LSD, even in spite of the fact that
13:58doctors are united in their judgment,
14:01that to do so is to take a drug whose consequences are simply uncharted.
14:06You can go to Bellevue tonight, as you know, and find people who took a trip.
14:11And the consequences of that, we will not know for years, perhaps, certainly.
14:19These people are driven out of a sense of desperation to find something new precisely because they can't cope with
14:24what is.
14:25A certain amount of escapism is perfectly natural.
14:28Granted, in a social movement in which you have hundreds of thousands of millions of people taking LSD every few
14:35months,
14:35granted, a few of these people take it out of a sense of desperation, out of a sense of failure
14:42in life.
14:43But I suspect that the percentage of these people is surprisingly small.
14:48Everyone who is listening to my words right now knows something about what LSD does.
14:54It really brings you down to where you're at.
14:59It's a relentless microscope.
15:00It's a spotlight on all of your egocentricities and all of your deceits.
15:06I suspect that most people don't take LSD because they're afraid to,
15:10because they don't want to face this rather brutal confrontation.
15:14Quite rightly, they should be afraid to.
15:15I've never advocated the use of LSD.
15:18You haven't?
15:18I'm not advocating it now.
15:20I'm warning people that psychedelic chemicals, of which LSD is the current,
15:25but we already have new ones coming along, is a powerful trip.
15:29It will show you things about yourself and about the divine process that you and your mind have been protected
15:38from.
15:39Of course, you're careful to say you don't urge it, because I gather it's against the law or something like
15:42that.
15:43But you did say somewhere that you figured 20 years from now,
15:46half of the members of the Supreme Court would be smoking pot.
15:48Yes.
15:49As a matter of fact, I think they probably have been already.
15:52We need to account for some of those decisions.
15:56But really, I think that you ought to level with us and say,
15:59if the law permitted you to recommend the use of LSD, you would.
16:03Isn't that correct?
16:03No, no.
16:05Dr. Timothy Leary is the guest on tonight's edition of Firing Line.
16:09Our host is William F. Buckley, Jr., and we'll continue in a moment.
16:16You are aware, Dr. Leary, that 50 or 60 years ago,
16:22young Sigmund Freud was very much taken with the uses of cocaine
16:26and advised his wife to use it and wrote a considerable treatise on it,
16:32only to find out that subsequently that it was addictive
16:35and that he went through an experience which might not end up being so dissimilar from your own.
16:41That is to say, let's look forward to the possibility that two years from now,
16:45you, with the acute conscience, would be willing to re-enter those worldly commitments
16:52and advise people that they had made a mistake
16:55by taking indiscriminately a drug as dangerous as LSD.
17:03Well, I've never urged anyone to take LSD,
17:05and what we have been doing for several years, Bill,
17:08in all of our publications and lectures is warning people about this power.
17:15People seem to think that we invented LSD.
17:18We didn't.
17:18You know, God made LSD, the divine process,
17:21the evolutionary sequence over billions of years
17:25has produced the plants and the vegetables and the molecules,
17:29which we now call psychedelic.
17:33Nor do we tell people to drop out of life or drop out of familial responsibility,
17:39but we tell everyone that wants to listen to us,
17:41drop out of American society.
17:43We think American society is an insane anthill,
17:47and the human being has been living for hundreds of thousands of years
17:52before we had any of the things we consider so necessary in American life today.
17:57You can actually live, you can make love,
18:00you can enjoy food,
18:03you can raise children
18:04without being a computerized, mechanized American.
18:08Well, no, exactly.
18:10Somebody's got to protect you so that you can see to do this.
18:12Without the American marines,
18:14you wouldn't have much chance to make love, you know,
18:16except maybe in Siberia.
18:17One of our student guests has a question for you.
18:20Good.
18:20Dr. Leary, in your new religion,
18:22have you found God?
18:24And if so, what is he like?
18:28Yes, I have found God.
18:31The LSD experience is a brutal confrontation with the divine process.
18:36I wouldn't say that I talk with God.
18:38That would be too arrogant.
18:39I say, I have listened to God.
18:42Now, do you want me to describe what God is like?
18:44You know I can't do that for thousands of years.
18:46An egalitarian?
18:47Yeah.
18:51For thousands of years,
18:52men in my position have been trying to describe the ineffable.
18:57I would use the words of St. Martin,
18:59saying that I can't describe God to you,
19:03but I can tell you how to find him.
19:05And then you're going to have to stand there naked
19:08in front of the divine process
19:10with your little 20th century ego behind,
19:12and you're going to have to surrender to it,
19:15or you're going to be frightened and call for a doctor.
19:18But that's what the psychedelic experience is all about.
19:21That's what the visionary experience is all about.
19:23It's always been a matter of heaven or hell.
19:25It's always required trust, confidence.
19:27It always taxes and tests your spiritual assets.
19:31It shows you where you're at.
19:33And then you come back and you define God the best you can.
19:37That's why we have a psychedelic art today.
19:40The new rock and roll beats,
19:42the new psychedelic design,
19:44is, I think, Bill, a symptom of the fact
19:46that this new religion has a certain validity.
19:49I think that the new confrontation with God
19:51always produces a new form of art.
19:56Now, the new form of art,
19:58the new religious language in the future,
20:00is going to be electronic.
20:02It's going to involve a vocabulary,
20:04an instrumentation that is just as new to me
20:07as the printing press was
20:08when Gutenberg came along a few hundred years ago
20:11and said,
20:11hey, do you know that you can turn on to God
20:14with a printed word?
20:16And I said, no, you can't do that.
20:18That must be against the law.
20:21Electronics is going to be the language
20:23of the theology of the future.
20:27If I may say so,
20:28I think that's,
20:30and I say this with all due respect,
20:32utter, total gobbledygook.
20:35Mr. Buckley?
20:36Well, let me comment on this, may I, Mr. Chairman?
20:38It may be that in the world of the future,
20:41we're going to be incapable
20:42of making sound distinctions.
20:45I don't doubt the possibility of that.
20:46It may be that we're heading for an Orwellian world
20:49in which IBM itself will assume
20:52some sort of metaphysical reality.
20:53But I say that if that happens,
20:55we will have lost whatever it is
20:57that makes civilization take any meaning at all.
21:00I don't think it's that easy to form new religions.
21:02Somebody once asked Voltaire
21:03how to found a new religion
21:04and his answer was,
21:06well, go out and get crucified
21:08and then rise again on the third day.
21:11It might be a threat
21:12that even LSD would be incapable
21:14of accomplishing for you.
21:15Mr. Buckley,
21:16we have a question for you from the student.
21:17Mr. Buckley.
21:19Aldous Huxley,
21:20who wrote a brilliant work
21:22called Brave New World,
21:23also wrote in
21:24The Doors of Perception
21:25that a man could use marijuana
21:28to open up such doors of perception.
21:30Why do you believe a man
21:32as brilliant and as prominent
21:33as Mr. Huxley
21:34would use such a thing as marijuana?
21:36Because Mr. Huxley,
21:37A, was eccentric,
21:39as he would have been
21:40the first to acknowledge,
21:41B, everything that he went on to say
21:45and to talk about
21:47in The Brave New World
21:49was not by any means
21:52based on his use
21:53not of marijuana
21:54but of mescaline.
21:56And C,
21:58the use of mescaline
21:59was the use of a drug
22:00whose potency
22:01is one of five hundredth
22:03the strength of LSD.
22:06So mescaline was just his snuff,
22:09you know.
22:10Mescaline was no more important
22:11to him than snuff was
22:12to Lord Chesterfield.
22:14Bill, I'd like to ask you...
22:15But he happened to try
22:16to weave a mystique around it
22:17which bores most people
22:19into your course.
22:20They read Brave New World
22:21not because of the fact
22:22that mescaline features in it
22:24but simply because
22:25it's a brilliant job
22:26of improvisation.
22:27I want to ask you a question.
22:30Our position
22:32in relationship
22:33to the law of Caesar today
22:35is that the human body
22:37is the first and last frontier
22:39of freedom.
22:44the people who follow
22:45the psychedelic religion
22:46are always in trouble
22:48with the law these days.
22:49And our position is
22:51that whatever moves out
22:52in the streets
22:53behavior, property,
22:58weapons and so forth,
22:59Caesar's law holds here
23:01and obey the law
23:02as far as overt behavior
23:04is concerned.
23:06But when it comes
23:07to your own body,
23:08what you put in your body,
23:10who you put in your body,
23:12what you do in the privacy
23:13of your own home
23:14to bring about changes
23:15in consciousness
23:18is your own business.
23:20And we reject
23:21the right of any
23:23medical or legislative body
23:25to tell us
23:26what to do
23:27with inside the sacred premise,
23:30the temple of God.
23:30But my friend,
23:31you see,
23:31it's not that easy
23:33as well as the fact
23:34that a few months ago
23:35you were screaming around
23:36the joint asking
23:36for a tax exemption
23:37for your new religion,
23:38which right away means
23:40that us all
23:41has got to pay
23:41for you all
23:42in order to
23:45wallow in your nirvana
23:46in Milburg, New York.
23:47Not you all.
23:48The people who believe
23:49in our religion
23:50are going to support us
23:51just the way Catholics
23:52support the Catholic Church.
23:54Now, come on.
23:55But I would not object.
23:56Plus also there are people
23:56in Bellevue Hospital
23:57which are supported
23:58by the taxpayers
23:59who have taken LSD.
24:01I simply reject
24:03the absolute
24:04that a person's body
24:05is exclusively his own
24:06in a civilized society.
24:08The facts of the matter
24:09are that there are
24:10fewer people
24:11in mental hospitals
24:11today than there were
24:12five or ten years ago.
24:14Now, whatever's going on
24:15in this culture,
24:17psychologically,
24:18is keeping people
24:19out of mental hospitals.
24:20The facts of the matter
24:21are that there's
24:22a surprising low rate
24:24of casualties
24:25considering the
24:26enormous number of people
24:27I'm not sure why
24:28you advance that
24:28highly interesting datum,
24:30i.e. in connection
24:30with what.
24:32But let's...
24:33I think what's happening
24:34to the consciousness
24:36of American people
24:37is keeping them
24:37out of mental hospitals.
24:39But let's go back
24:39to this legal question,
24:40Bill, because...
24:41That's what I'm trying
24:41to do.
24:41I'm trying to strike
24:42a common ground here.
24:46I consider myself
24:47to be a very
24:48conservative person,
24:50highly orthodox
24:51in my defense
24:51of the individual.
24:53Yes.
24:54Now, not as far
24:56as money is concerned,
24:57not as far as
24:57property is concerned.
24:59There, we'll take
25:00our chances
25:01with the rest.
25:01But when it comes
25:02to your own home
25:04and your own body,
25:05I think Caesar
25:06has no right
25:06entering.
25:07You said that, yeah.
25:08And what I didn't
25:09have a chance
25:09to say was this,
25:11that in a civilized
25:12society, one acknowledges
25:15that what one does
25:16with one's body
25:17can very often
25:17have an effect
25:18on somebody else's
25:19body.
25:19For instance,
25:20to take the obvious
25:21case, if I have
25:23leprosy, let's say
25:24I'm quarantined,
25:28those who argue
25:30against permitting
25:33the propagandist,
25:35permitting people
25:35to proselytize
25:36the use of LSD
25:37do so on grounds
25:38that I find
25:40extremely persuasive.
25:41Namely, that if,
25:43in fact,
25:43you urge somebody
25:44to take LSD
25:45when, in fact,
25:46you're urging them
25:47to take a drug,
25:48the consequences
25:49of which are
25:50considered to be
25:50medically unsafe,
25:52there is a sense
25:53in which you are
25:53an aggressor.
25:54Now, I agree with you,
25:55there oughtn't to be
25:56a law that says
25:57that you can't take
25:59LSD, but there
26:00ought, in my judgment,
26:01to be a law saying
26:01that you can't urge
26:04other people to take LSD.
26:05That's an interesting
26:05point, and I debate
26:06this with Dr. Lurie
26:07all the time.
26:07He says he doesn't
26:08care if I take LSD,
26:10he doesn't want me
26:10to talk about it.
26:11And I'm willing
26:11to give the federal
26:13government the right
26:14to put the label
26:15on the package.
26:16I agree that cyanide
26:17is dangerous.
26:18There should be a label
26:19on the package,
26:20warning, cyanide
26:21will cause a lethal
26:22stomachache.
26:24Cigarettes,
26:25cigarettes are dangerous.
26:26Warning, nicotine
26:27will cause lung cancer.
26:30On the package
26:31of marijuana,
26:32which will be
26:32legalized very soon,
26:33it should say warning,
26:35marijuana will make
26:36you come to your senses.
26:38On the package of LSD,
26:40let them put any kind
26:41of warning they want.
26:42Warning, LSD will cause
26:44death and rebirth.
26:45I don't care.
26:45I'll let the doctors
26:46put the label.
26:47But they cannot put us
26:48in jail for possessing
26:50and using chemicals
26:52which change only
26:53our consciousness
26:55and our spiritual
26:59centeredness.
27:00The topic,
27:01the world of LSD.
27:03The host,
27:03William F. Buckley, Jr.
27:04The guest,
27:05Dr. Timothy Leary
27:06from the program
27:07Firing Line.
27:08We'll continue in a moment.
27:09I'm trying to get you
27:10to come out
27:10for the legalization
27:11of pot bill.
27:13Dr. Leary,
27:15we have a question
27:15for you from a student.
27:17Mr. Leary,
27:18before,
27:19in the beginning
27:19of the program,
27:20you sort of classified
27:22yourself as a sociological
27:23conservative
27:24and that you wanted
27:24stronger family ties
27:26and stronger family bonds.
27:28Now,
27:28don't you feel
27:29that LSD would be
27:30sort of a chemical crutch
27:32which would stifle
27:33the responsibility
27:34needed for caring
27:35for a family
27:36or for having
27:37the consciousness
27:38of perceiving
27:39the responsibility
27:39you need for a family?
27:41Not at all.
27:42You see,
27:42LSD expands consciousness
27:44and makes you
27:45more aware
27:46of what's really
27:47important in life.
27:48In our growing
27:50and very rudimentary
27:53utopian community
27:55at Millbrook,
27:56we believe in
27:57educating the children
27:59ourselves.
27:59We think that the
28:00children should take
28:01psychedelic drugs
28:02when they're old enough
28:03to know what's involved.
28:04We think that they
28:05should learn their
28:06professions the way
28:07men have always
28:08learned their
28:08professions around
28:10the village,
28:10around the tribe,
28:11watching their father
28:12or their uncle
28:13or the guy next door.
28:14The idea that the
28:17average American
28:19will send his child
28:20away to school
28:21and turn the mind,
28:23the precious consciousness
28:24of his kid,
28:25over to a stranger
28:26that he doesn't know,
28:28that he probably
28:28wouldn't even have
28:29to his house for dinner.
28:32I consider this to be,
28:33you know,
28:34like turning your
28:36child's mind over
28:37to drug pushers
28:38who hang around
28:38primary schools.
28:39The drugs they're
28:40pushing are symbols
28:41and the worst kind
28:44of robot values.
28:47We believe in
28:48educating our kids
28:49ourselves in our
28:51own community
28:52and we would never
28:54think of urging
28:56anonymous and
28:57personal education.
28:59We assume, Bill,
29:01that America,
29:02with its education
29:03system, has some
29:04kind of standard
29:05of norm.
29:06Actually, public
29:07education, as you
29:08well know, is a very
29:09recent, moderate
29:10innovation and I
29:11consider it to be
29:12a very unfortunate
29:13one.
29:14Mr. Buckley?
29:15We're doing our best
29:15to get away from it.
29:16We have a question
29:17for you from a student.
29:18Yes, Mr. Buckley,
29:19Mars McLuhan has
29:20mentioned that the
29:20electronic media may
29:21have no longer much
29:22similar effects as the
29:24psychedelic drugs do
29:25and affecting changes
29:26in consciousness on
29:27the populace as a
29:28whole, especially in
29:29reference to electronic
29:30tribalism and a new
29:32consciousness.
29:32I wonder if you'd
29:33react to this.
29:34Yeah, react is
29:35exactly the right
29:35invitation.
29:36I think that it's
29:38quite true that
29:40there are, whether
29:42the McGloon thesis
29:43and the Leary thesis
29:45are tied together,
29:47they have pretty much
29:48identical metaphysical
29:50conceits.
29:51They seem to, both of
29:53them, to assume that
29:55there is a means of
29:55operating, a means of
29:56cognition, a means of
29:57knowing, a means of
29:58proceeding into the
29:59future that is divorced
30:02from the exercise of
30:03the intellect and the
30:06intellect and the
30:07moral intellect by
30:08conventional means.
30:10Now, again, I don't
30:11profess completely to
30:12understand Mr. McLuhan
30:13and since every book by
30:16Mr. McLuhan is an
30:16explanation of his last
30:17book, I suspect that he
30:19shares my own difficulty.
30:21But I think that
30:23I agree with your
30:24observation most
30:26most emphatically that
30:28there is a relationship
30:30in a sense between the
30:31McLuhanite impatience and
30:34Dr. Leary's with the-
30:35Mr. Buckley, let me ask
30:36you a question.
30:38Aren't you overlooking the
30:39fact that Dr. Leary is
30:40giving you arguments for
30:42some of your theories?
30:43You're opposed to the
30:44large-scale bureaucracy.
30:46You said that his
30:48followers didn't like the
30:49world that liberalism has
30:50built.
30:51Isn't he giving you an
30:52argument against liberalism
30:53there?
30:54You keep coming back to
30:55drugs.
30:59No, he is in the phrase
31:00of somebody, sending
31:03somebody to the guillotine is
31:05a cure for a case of
31:05dandruff.
31:07However bad the dandruff
31:09is, a complete retreat from
31:12reality is not, in my
31:13judgment, the way to handle
31:15it.
31:15If all of us who objected to
31:17liberalism were to think
31:18things were that easy, we
31:19would simply pack up and go
31:20somewhere, there's presumably
31:21a quarter of the earth where
31:22it doesn't completely exist.
31:24Yes, but that doesn't show
31:25the-
31:25That happened to be, though,
31:26Bill, how this country was
31:27formed.
31:28People just dropped out and
31:30moved on to form their new
31:31religious group, and that's
31:32exactly what we're urging
31:34today.
31:35No, they didn't drop out.
31:35Saying to kids, drop out,
31:37start your new tribal thing
31:38fresh.
31:39You know-
31:40Dr. Leary, isn't that the
31:41way the Roman Empire fell, by
31:42people simply leaving the
31:44plantations, leaving the cities?
31:46Let's be clear about that.
31:47The result of the
31:48psychedelic revolution is
31:50going to bring down the
31:50American empire, not by
31:52violence, by love, as you
31:53saw in Central Park, Easter
31:55Sunday, we had 2,000 kids
31:57out in the streets, cleaning
31:58the streets of Greenwich
32:00Village last week out of love,
32:02flowers.
32:03The American empire is going
32:04to fall, but it's not going
32:06to fall by violence or by
32:07force.
32:08I tell kids all the time,
32:09don't picket, don't protest.
32:12The left, the activist left,
32:14is very disturbed with me, as
32:17you probably know, Bill,
32:18because they rightly see that
32:22we are urging many of the
32:23dissident, anti-establishment
32:26young people to protest in the
32:29only effective way, a protest
32:31of loving passivity, a protest
32:34of familial turning on
32:36together, a protest of flowers
32:39and beauty.
32:40Mr. Buckley, we have a
32:41question for you from a student.
32:42Mr. Buckley, there seems to be
32:44some sort of discrepancy between
32:46your and Dr. Leary's feeling
32:48about the pathology of taking
32:50LSD.
32:51I was wondering if you or Dr. Leary
32:55could comment on that.
32:57Well, I suppose I simply start
32:58by saying that I am not a
33:02doctor of clinical psychology,
33:03but neither am I party pre on
33:06the subject.
33:07I don't expect Mr. Camel to hit
33:11cigarettes, and I don't expect
33:13Mr. Leary to hit LSD.
33:15In point of fact...
33:17But Bill, I'm not talking about
33:18LSD.
33:18In point of fact, people who
33:19defend its indiscriminate use
33:22are a tiny minority of the
33:24medical profession.
33:25In fact, I think you'd have to
33:26scrounge to find the name of a
33:28single person, unless he was
33:29somebody who had also been
33:30fired from Harvard University.
33:31Dr. Leary, a student has a
33:33question for you.
33:34Dr. Leary, I'm very confused by
33:36your term conscious expanding.
33:38Does this indicate an increased
33:41capacity of the mind to perceive
33:43in its conscious state, or only
33:45while it's high?
33:47In other words, do you achieve
33:51an increased awareness and an
33:53ability to perceive things while
33:55you are in your normal state, or
33:58only while you're home?
34:00Dr. Leary, psychedelic drugs are
34:01very much like the microscope or
34:03the telescope.
34:03You see, the microscope is
34:05psychedelic.
34:05It shows you something that is
34:07invisible to normal vision.
34:10And four or five hundred years
34:12ago, if I went before an audience
34:13and I told normal, well-adjusted
34:16people that there was a world
34:17around them of lawful beauty and
34:20predictability that you couldn't
34:22see with the naked eye, they'd
34:23probably send me up for more than
34:25thirty years.
34:26Then I say, look through this
34:28microscope, and indeed you can
34:29see that there's another level of
34:31reality, another level of
34:33consciousness.
34:34Now then, when you take your eye
34:35away from the microscope, and you
34:36go back to the macroscopic world,
34:38then you have to start thinking
34:40about, you have to start
34:41describing, you have to start
34:42making observations, you have to
34:44build up a textbook of cellular
34:47cytology, so that other people
34:49can take the microscope or can
34:50take LSD and check you out.
34:52Now the science of taking LSD is just
34:55as replicable, just as repeatable,
34:57just as checkable as looking
35:00through a telescope or looking
35:01through a microscope.
35:02Only one eye can do it at a time.
35:04At the present time in the United
35:05States today, we've had hundreds of
35:07thousands of people who have looked
35:08through the microscope of LSD and
35:11come back and said, yes, there's
35:13something there which is of
35:13importance, of power, of philosophic
35:17and religious import that demands
35:20serious study and eventually demands
35:23that you change your life.
35:24Now I've been studying the use of
35:26LSD in the United States for several
35:28years.
35:29Many people started to use LSD and
35:32have quit because the demands were
35:34too great.
35:35The yoga of LSD is not an escape,
35:37it's not an easy way out.
35:39It's the toughest and the most
35:41arduous yoga of all because you
35:44look through the microscope and then
35:45you come back to the level of
35:46reality, you try to change reality so
35:48that it fits your inner revelation.
35:51This happens to be of course...
35:52Those microscopes in the sense that
35:54you use them have been around for a
35:55long time as you said in another
35:56connection a moment ago.
35:58Yes.
35:59But incidentally, since the time
36:01that microscopes were discovered,
36:02I don't see that a lot of people
36:04spend their time looking into them.
36:06This is rather a job that has to
36:07be done but preferably is not done
36:09by everybody at all.
36:10It's hardly an aesthetic experience
36:12to look through a microscope at
36:14let's say a cancer cell, is it?
36:16I think...
36:17You are watching the William Buckley
36:18program and we'll continue in a
36:20moment.
36:26Dr. Leary, one of the reasons why
36:28you confuse it, it seems to me that
36:29you have, you use a terminology that
36:35sometimes is convenient for you to
36:37talk in terms of an ancient
36:39perspective, sometimes seems to be
36:41convenient for you to talk in terms
36:42of your own particular
36:46chileastic contributions as a
36:48newly arrived religious redeemer.
36:51But I don't quite understand two
36:53things and I'm very anxious for you to
36:56discuss them before we quit.
36:58Number one, I do have to accuse you of
37:02a lack of candour.
37:04On the one hand you say you never
37:05urge people to use LSD.
37:07On the other hand you've sung here a
37:11rhapsody to the virtues of LSD, which
37:16it seems to me would cause anybody who
37:19desires to be virtuous, assuming that
37:21he is impressed by what you say, to
37:23rush out and try to find this stuff.
37:25You say that it increases your
37:26experience, it increases your sense of
37:28love, it increases your sense of
37:29harmony, it increases your sense of
37:31perception, that it is to the modern
37:32world what the books were to the
37:35discoverer of books, that it is to
37:38the immediate world what the
37:40discovery of Maxwell was and so on and
37:41so forth.
37:41But you refuse to say, let's all go
37:44out and take a trip together.
37:47Now, I don't think it's lack of
37:48conviction on your part.
37:49I think it's a technique, whether
37:52it's a conscious technique or
37:53something that was about safety on
37:54one of your trips, I don't know.
37:56But I'm interested in that.
37:57Why don't you just say everybody
37:59ought to take LSD?
38:01Or is this a legal problem?
38:03Well, the key to our religion, Bill,
38:05and to our politics and to our
38:07economics is individual freedom.
38:09I have no right to tell anyone what
38:10You don't deny individual freedom
38:11by urging people?
38:12Pardon?
38:12What does that got to do with
38:13individual freedom?
38:13I'm individual freedom...
38:14I have no right to tell anyone
38:15else what to do with your body.
38:18Your body is the temple of God.
38:19It's ridiculous.
38:19You can say brush your teeth without
38:20interfering with their freedom,
38:22can't you?
38:24I don't want...
38:25There'll be a law, the dental
38:26society will pass a law of
38:27pretty soon saying I've got to
38:28brush my teeth and with so and so
38:30Who's talking about laws?
38:31I'm not saying we're going to
38:32have a law in which you require
38:33people to take LSD.
38:34I'm talking about you as an
38:36evangelist.
38:36I don't know what you're doing
38:37here if you're not an evangelist.
38:38But I want to know why there's
38:40schizophrenia here.
38:41Well, what do you mean?
38:41I'm trying to share time with a
38:44mind that I tremendously respect.
38:46I want to get you interested in this
38:48problem of millions of Americans
38:49having St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine
38:53experiences that's happening around
38:54you.
38:55I want to turn you on, Bill.
38:56I want to get you to drop out.
38:59I admire this man very much and it's
39:00a tragedy to me that one of the
39:02greatest minds in America is
39:04involved with such trivia as the
39:06mayoralty election in New York.
39:10You're much too big.
39:11I agree.
39:12I agree.
39:13You won that.
39:14I want to turn you on and drop you
39:16out.
39:16Yeah, but what would have happened
39:19if St. Augustine had taken this
39:22stuff?
39:22The answer is that he probably never
39:24would have been conscious to write
39:25those travails which are the most
39:27beautiful monuments to humans.
39:28Exactly.
39:29Exactly.
39:29I was reading St. Augustine about
39:33three weeks ago on the beach.
39:35In St. Augustine you will get one of
39:37the best descriptions of an LSD
39:39experience which has ever been
39:40written.
39:41It's right down there, the five
39:42levels of consciousness.
39:44St. Augustine took a trip.
39:47St. Augustine, St. Augustine,
39:49Florida.
39:52And St. Thomas Aquinas, as you
39:54well know, at the end of his life
39:55after all those years writing the
39:56Summa, said it's all a bale of
39:58straw compared to that one great
40:01high that he got towards the end of
40:03his life, there's so much in this
40:07that you're just about to turn on
40:09there.
40:10You're just about to turn on.
40:11What you're doing is co-opting any
40:13moment of historical sublimity as
40:17exactly equal to the kind of thing
40:19that you're able to produce in a
40:20five dollar sugar cube.
40:22Now that's not true.
40:23Well, it is true.
40:24People say to me, how can it be that
40:26you can take just this little pill
40:28because that's not what's involved?
40:30Any American today who takes LSD is
40:32taking it in defiance of the American
40:36Medical Association.
40:38Every doctor's warning you, you'll
40:40lose your mind, you'll lose your body
40:42if you do it.
40:43And if you do it anyway, that's more
40:45than a five dollar kick.
40:46You're laying your blue chips on the
40:49line as men have always done in
40:51history when they've had this experience.
40:53And the beauty of the AMA position
40:56denouncing LSD, I love it because it
40:58really tests the sincerity and the
41:01courage of a person who takes this
41:02trip.
41:03The trip has always been difficult.
41:05It's the trip of death and rebirth.
41:06It's the trip of Ulysses.
41:08It's the trip of Dante.
41:10It's the death-rebirth experience.
41:11And I'm delighted that the AMA...
41:13What are the AMA's motives?
41:14Pardon?
41:14I gather they're sinister because of
41:16the charade you went through.
41:17What are the motives?
41:18What is it that causes them to give
41:19bad advice intentionally?
41:22Caesar is always tempted to turn
41:26people off.
41:29Mr. Buckley, perhaps it's the same
41:31thing that urges them to recommend
41:34fluoridation, which is compulsory
41:35medication.
41:36Perhaps it's the desire of
41:38organizations to have their way.
41:40But that isn't sinister.
41:41If dentists recommend fluoridation
41:44on the grounds that that's going to
41:45reduce cavities, I wouldn't consider
41:47that sinisterly motivated.
41:48But if doctors are saying that the
41:51more people who take LSD, the more
41:53cases of illness you're going to have,
41:55it seems to me it would be sinister
41:57if they didn't recommend against
41:59taking it, you see.
42:00That's why I want something to
42:02justify Dr. Leary's contempt of the
42:06medical profession for giving us this
42:07advice.
42:08Something I can understand.
42:09It wasn't contempt.
42:09I'm glad they're doing it because
42:11today anyone who takes LSD knows
42:13he's running a risk.
42:14And let me say that you are running a
42:17risk if you take LSD.
42:19You're going to really be confronted.
42:21So that I'm not really being
42:25contemptuous of the AMA.
42:27The stronger Caesar's legions are,
42:29the happier we are.
42:30Because that means the ball game is
42:32playing out with greater energy.
42:38Mr. Buckley, you keep coming back
42:40to drugs all the time.
42:43Do you agree or not agree in the
42:45evils of modern society that Dr. Leary
42:48keeps emphasizing?
42:49Of course I do.
42:51Of course I do.
42:52You think the conservative party is
42:53the better solution.
42:54But as somebody said a moment ago,
42:58that actually if you find people who
43:01are acutely pressed emotionally or
43:04psychologically, you'll find that
43:05they're exactly pressed by the
43:08problems that pressed people 2,000
43:09years ago and 1,500 years ago and
43:1110,000 years ago.
43:11The existence of the bomb is in and
43:14of itself interesting.
43:14But the pressure that each of us
43:16feels individually is not greater,
43:18for instance, than that that was
43:19felt by somebody living in Rome,
43:21not knowing whether two days later
43:23he would be alive.
43:25He's thrown alive.
43:25That's right.
43:26And I think that it is true that
43:28chemistry has come along as Dr.
43:30Leary has known us and has given us
43:32an opiate, i.e. it has made
43:34popularly available little quickie
43:36means by which we can force
43:38ourselves through chemical means to
43:42get away.
43:43You could say the same thing about
43:44the printing press.
43:45But what happens is, and let me
43:47quote somebody I respect very much,
43:49a psychoanalyst in New York, who
43:50says, as his tolerance, the drug
43:53taker for life without drugs
43:55increases, his competence for such
43:58life diminishes, so that with
44:00every return to the drug he is in
44:01the spirit of Heraclitus, a
44:03different and lesser person who
44:04attempts to cross the same stream
44:06twice.
44:07And that's why I think the more
44:08people rely on drugs, the more
44:10incompetent they become to handle
44:12life without them.
44:14And under the circumstances they
44:15end up mostly complete addicts.
44:17Dr. Leary, you were comparing the
44:19present situation with the late
44:20Roman Empire, when the serfs
44:22deserted the plantations and took
44:24to the mountains.
44:25If people today take LSD, won't
44:28their ability to go to the
44:29mountains and live a self-sufficient
44:31life be seriously impaired?
44:33By LSD?
44:33Yes.
44:34No, you're mis...
44:36you're laboring under the
44:36misapprehension that LSD is like
44:38booze that you shoot it up and
44:40stagger around.
44:41You can do anything that you do
44:43normally better if you know how
44:45to use LSD.
44:46I'm not making a guarantee here.
44:47You can drive a car better.
44:49I've often told this story that...
44:50You can go over Niagara Falls
44:51better, can't you?
44:53Well, if that's your trip, Bill.
44:57My trip... your trip seems to lead
44:59people to Niagara Falls or the
45:01mental hospital.
45:02My trip leads people out to the
45:04country away from this horrible city
45:06and we can make a living.
45:10Yes, but that requires vigor,
45:11energy, strength.
45:12And I'm afraid that...
45:13Mr. Buckley is afraid that they'll
45:14lose that vigor through taking LSD.
45:16We disagree.
45:17Look around at the people who are
45:18taking LSD.
45:20I don't want to use the word vigor
45:22because I know that has political
45:23overtones today, which I don't
45:24want to go along with.
45:25But the LSD movement, I think, has
45:31betrayed a great deal of vigor to
45:33have brought about this mass
45:36movement.
45:36We haven't been sitting around,
45:38Bill, just shooting up and
45:40contemplating our navel and the
45:42glories of our own intuitions.
45:44We have been changing your
45:46society almost as fast as you can
45:48watch.
45:50Now, whether you like it or not,
45:51Bill, you must grant that we've
45:53been activists and we've been
45:54rather effective at it.
45:56And I would say this is one
45:59testimony to the fact that the
46:00drug doesn't set you off into
46:03some passive...
46:04Well, you don't have to be
46:05activists.
46:06The man who invented whiskey
46:07didn't have to be an activist.
46:08Mr. Buckley, we have one more
46:09question for you.
46:10I'm just wondering if one can
46:11tune in, turn on and not drop
46:13out and thereby reorganize the
46:15experiences one is having.
46:17So perhaps if Mr. Buckley would
46:18tune in, turn on and not drop
46:20out and thereby become mayor,
46:22could he, for example, function as
46:23a mayor?
46:25Why don't you handle that?
46:27An anti-climax like, for God
46:29would be for Yale.
46:31I feel very good tonight and I
46:34have a great deal of affection
46:35and respect for you.
46:36I do feel you're misusing your
46:38God-given talents, which is so
46:40easy for a Yale graduate to do.
46:44And I want to appeal to you at
46:46the level of kind of a challenge
46:48that if you examine the
46:50philosophic and ontological issues
46:52of the Psychotic Revolution, I
46:54think you'll see some overtones
46:57from the history of the Catholic
46:59Church.
47:00In many respects, I would be more
47:02at home, Bill, in the Middle Ages
47:03because the things that obsess us
47:05and concern us at Millbrook is
47:08what is the meaning of God?
47:10The basic ontological question is
47:12what is real?
47:14In a funny way, we're combining
47:16the Middle Ages, which I think
47:17is not a dark ages, but indeed
47:19an age of tremendous meaning and
47:21dedication, with the electronic age
47:23because we can't throw out
47:24electronics.
47:25And no one is more concerned
47:28with this IBM...
47:33Well, then everybody who can
47:34loosely be called a conservative...
47:36The guest on tonight's
47:37William Buckley program is
47:38Dr. Timothy Leary, and we'll
47:40continue in just a moment.
47:45Gentlemen, we must bring this
47:47most interesting discussion to a
47:48close.
47:49We are out of time.
47:50Thank you, Dr. Leary.
47:52Thank you, Mr. Buckley.
Comments