"Turn on,Tune in, and Drop out" with Timothy Leary Quiz

Answer: Harvard University

Leary worked at Harvard from 1959 until 1963, when he was fired. The official reason for his dismissal was that he was not holding his regularly scheduled classes, but many suspected that the real reason was that the administration, as well as students' parents, were deeply uneasy about Leary's research on the effect of psychedelic drugs - research that involved distributing the then-legal substances to students.

Answer: prison inmates

The aim of the Harvard Psilocybin Project was to prove that psychedelic drugs, administered in the right context and with a knowledgeable person to 'guide' the subject, could 'open up' the test subjects' minds and alter their behaviour. The Project began with Leary distributing a synthetic version of psilocybin (magic mushrooms) to grad students, professors and other members of the Harvard community.

The results indicated that the test subjects experienced revelations, breakthroughs in thought, and overall found the experience educational. The Harvard Project expanded into the Concord Prison Experiment, in which the same test (taking drugs) was given to convicted felons, with the intent of finding out whether they could alter the inmates' behaviour and lower the rate of recidivism (repeat offenses).

The initial research concluded that the rate of recidivism among the prisoners who had taken psilocybin was dramatically lower than it had been previously, but the experiment and Leary's methodology were seriously questioned.

He also experimented on homeless people.

Answer: Tibetan Book of the Dead

"The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead" was intended to be a guide to taking psychedelic drugs. The idea of having a leader or guide of some sort was essential to the culture of psychedelia, especially for those who believed that taking the drugs could be a religious or mind-opening experience. Without the guide, without 'knowing where to go' in the acid trip, the user could end up in a bad place inside their mind, i.e. could have a bad trip. "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" deals mostly with death and the after-life, with parallels being drawn to being conscious on other levels during an acid experience.

Answer: 8

The theory, created in the late 1960s, started with only seven circuits of consciousness. The theory was that you could activate each circuit separately and thus experience different levels of consciousness and thought. The eighth circuit was added to the theory in 1973.

The first four circuits (the Larval or Terrestrial Circuits) were thought to be ones that most people were able to access automatically in their every day life. It was the other four (the Stellar or Extra-Terrestrial) that needed to be tapped into - supposedly with drugs; experiencing the Stellar circuits was said to be like experiencing a marijuana high: floating and feeling uninhibited.

Answer: League for Spiritual Discovery

The League was founded on September 10, 1966. Leary claimed it to be a religion whose holy sacrament was LSD. This was a response to the on-going criminalization of LSD; if the group could convince the authorities that LSD was their religious substance, they would be allowed to continue using it. Leary limited the membership in his religion, but encouraged interested persons to form their own religions along the same lines, leading the publishing of his short work "Start Your Own Religion" in 1967. Another psychedelic religion/cult claimed Leary as their leader as well, though he did not start it - The Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

Answer: Come Together

Leary decided to run for Governor of California in 1969, against Ronald Reagan. His motto for the campaign was "Come together, join the party". Around this time, Leary was hanging around with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, even joining them during their 'bed-in' in Montreal, and singing in the choir for their song "Give Peace a Chance".

As a favour to a friend, Lennon wrote "Come Together" as Leary's campaign song. Unfortunately the campaign came to end on Leary's arrest.

Answer: possession of marijuana

Leary was first convicted in 1965 and sentenced to thirty years in jail, because he claimed responsibility when his daughter was found to be in possession of marijuana when crossing the US-Mexico border. Leary appealed the case, and in 1969 the Supreme Court overturned the 1965 conviction.

However, in the interim Leary had again been arrested for possession of marijuana, in 1968, though he claimed the drugs were planted on him by the arresting officers. This time, he received a ten year sentence and was sent to prison.

He managed to escape from the jail in September 1970, and he and his wife were smuggled out of America with the help of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. After being arrested in Afghanistan, Leary was extradited to the US, had his sentence increased to 95 years and was placed in solitary confinement.

He decided this time to cooperate with the FBI and become an informant, and he was released from prison in 1976.

Answer: space exploration

Leary liked the idea of space exploration, because it fitted in nicely with his idea of an "Extra-Terrestrial" set of circuits in the human brain. He believed the space colonization would improve and extend human life; he truly believed that humans would be living in outer space within his lifetime. Leary summed up his position on the benefits of space exploration with an acronym - SMI^2LE. That is, Space Migration = Intelligence increase + Life extension.

Answer: personal computers

Leary was interested in technology, as it so happened. Computers and Internet technology fit nicely into his idea of space colonization. He referred to PCs and the Internet as "the LSD of the '90s" because they gave people access to new worlds and new perspectives; they empowered the average person.

He also promoted virtual reality systems, drawing parallels between having out-of-body experiences due to technology and having similar experiences due to drugs.

Answer: False

Leary was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1995. His plan was to keep diaries until his final moments as life, as well as to record his final months on webcam, so that his followers could still be close to him. He had also been planning to commit suicide on webcam so that he would die on his own terms, but he died of natural causes before he could do it. Leary had expressed great interest in cryogenic freezing, not because he thought he would be brought back to life in the future, but because he thought it was his duty to donate himself to technology.

However, he ultimately decided on cremation and having his remains distributed among those who were close to him. On April 21, 1997, seven grams of Timothy Leary's remains were put aboard a Pegasus Rocket and launched into space, so that part of him could live on in space like he had wanted.