A memorial volume to one of this century's most colorful and pioneering figures in the consciousness movement

• A wide array of individuals from all stages of Leary's life provides a comprehensive view of the man and his impact on American culture

One of the most influential and controversial people of the 20th century, Timothy Leary inspired profound feelings--both pro and con--from everyone with whom he came into contact. He was extravagant, grandiose, enthusiastic, erratic, and an unrelenting proponent of expanding consciousness and challenging authority. His experiments with psilocybin and LSD at Harvard University and Millbrook, New York, were instrumental in propelling the nation into the psychedelic era of the 1960s. From the 1980s until his death in 1996 he fully embraced the possibilities of freedom offered by the developments in computer technology and the instant communication made possible by the Internet.

The essence of Leary's life has often been reduced to the celebrated formula of "Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out." The wider implications of this esoteric call to communion have been lost, just as the multifaceted nature of Leary's personality was obscured by the superficial spin put on his life and ideas. In this book a wide array of individuals from all stages of Leary's life, friends and foes alike, provide a more complete view of the man and his impact on American culture.

It is still too early to know how posterity will judge the man and his ideas, but Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In shows that Leary was often so far ahead of his time that few could follow the extensive range of his thought.

PSYCHEDELICS / BIOGRAPHY "Timothy Leary's Dead. No, no no no, he's outside, looking in." --The Moody Blues, "Legend of a Mind" "Tim was a chieftain. He stomped on the terra, and he left his elegant hoof prints on all our lives." --Hunter S. Thompson "Tim Leary probably made more people happy than anybody else in history." --Terence McKenna "What I learned from Tim didn't have anything to do with drugs but it had everything to do with getting high. His die-hard fascination with the human brain was not all about altering it, but about using it to its fullest." --Winona Ryder Timothy Leary inspired strong feelings in everyone he came into contact with during his momentous life. An unrelenting proponent of expanding consciousness and challenging authority, he was brilliant and erratic, extravagant and enthusiastic, wise and foolish. Ram Dass called him the most creative man he had ever known, while Richard Nixon called him the most dangerous man in the world. Many agree that his exuberant popularizing of psychedelics radically altered the course of the twentieth century. His research at Harvard University and subsequent dismissal from the faculty helped to inaugurate the counterculture of the 1960s, awakening a generation to its own potential. His later arrests, escapes from prison, asylum in Switzerland, and return to the United States mark him as an archetypal hero. His eventual embracing of computers and the Internet kept him at the forefront of the battle for personal freedom and creative expression. The essence of Leary's life has often been reduced to his celebrated formula "Turn on, tune in, and drop out." But the wider implications of this call to communion are forgotten, just as the complex nature of Leary's personality is often reduced to the superficial spin put on his ideas by the media. In Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In, many of the great artists, thinkers, and rebels of our time discuss Leary's life and legacy. In doing so, this gathering of minds goes beyond a simple tribute to the man and becomes a provocative dialogue on the evolution of consciousness. ROBERT FORTE studied the history and psychology of religion at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and has taught at the University of California in Santa Cruz. He served on the board of directors of the Albert Hofmann Foundation and is the editor of Entheogens and the Future of Religion.

"The list of contributors to this book reads like a "who's who" from the consciousness movement of recent decades. Leary emerges as a remarkable and charismatic character. For a fresh look at the sixties, these accounts of one of the pivotal figures of that decade are thoughtful, informative and evocative."