AllHippy.com

All Hippy: Timothy Leary - How to Operate Your Brain#Part2#

06 Oct 2008

6 Oct, 2008 Timothy Leary Videos

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This is a video version of a lecture that Timothy Leary used to give near the end of his life. Leary is of course best known as an "acid guru" from the 1960s and as rival of G. Gordon Liddy and President Richard Nixon. However he was also an intelligent man with a serious education in psychology and a lot of ideas about the way things work. This video gives a pretty good overview of his philosophy. The video is a kaleidoscope of colors and flashing images supplied by "Retinalogic". Despite the hallucinatory visuals this video is not about drug use. In order to understand this video you really need to understand the context in which it was made. Leary is echoing French theorists such as Gilles Deleuze in saying that life has too many rules and that we need to let go of the rules in favor of chaos. What he means by "chaos" is basically what anarchists mean when they use "anarchy" in positive way. There was a lot of this kind of talk in the 1990s due to the popularization of the internet, which was seen as a kind of leaderless utopia for the exchange of knowledge and experience, which was also concurrent to the unprecedented interest in multiculturalism. Lastly, there was also some "pop science" reporting in the mainstream media about "chaos theory" which often showed fractal imagery as shorthand for finding patterns in the universe or "order out of chaos". This video makes much use of fractals and "global" imagery (i.e.- showing native dancers, then showing cars driving). This is done to "deprogram" the viewer because "he who controls the eyeball, controls the brain". Or to use another quote from Leary: "In the Sixties we said 'Power to the People' .... in the Nineties we say 'Power to the Pupil'." If the above combination of ideas sounds familiar, its probably because you remember the "rave culture". Ravers had very lofty ideals about equality and uniting the world, however (like the hippies) their subculture was too dominated by drug use to be taken seriously by the establishment. In this video, Leary himself advocates a form of Humanism akin to the John Lennon song "Imagine": no countries, no religion, everybody sharing etc. He places his aims in the lineage of Socrates, Marshall McLuhan and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It sounds a little heady, but the cheesy electronic music insures that the rave audience won't be disappointed with the tape. Zo Hai SX The progressive rock band “Porcupine Tree” released a compilation album in 1992 entitled Voyage 34. The concept album is regarded as an auditory equivalent of an tripping on LSD. Most of its content is instrumental but spoken words are utilized to describe the LSD trip of a man named Brian. Since Lysergic Acid Diethylamide was the 25th lysergic derivative that was synthesized by Dr. Albert Hoffman, the substance acquired the name LSD-25. Dr. Hoffman hoped that LSD would benefit the respiratory and circulatory system because of characteristics that are similar to nicotinic acid diethylamide which is a known analeptic. Have a desire to learn more Click here Technorati This site in no way suggest the use or illegal narcotics. If you care about someone who could potentially be addicted to narcotics we suggest discussing with them about getting treatment.