Timothy Leary - The Politics of Ecstasy

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

Dedicated to Abbie Hoffman

Please allow me to reintroduce this book called, so prophetically, The Politics of Ecstasy. I can modestly praise the magnificent, audacious, oxy-moronic, oxy-generic title because it was given to me by Abbie Hoffman, to whom I re-dedicate the book.

ECSTASY: The experience of attaining freedom from limitations, either self-imposed or external; a state of exalted delight in which normal understanding is felt to be surpassed. From the Greek "ex-stasis." By definition, ecstasy is an ongoing on/off process. It requires a continual sequence of "dropping out." On those occasions when many individuals share the ecstatic experience at the same time, they create a brief-lived "counter-culture."

SYNONYMS: Euphoria, high, rush, delight, bliss, elation, enchantment, joy, nirvana, rapture.

STASIS: Standing, a standstill

Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary

Foreword by Tom Robbins

jfr, on the face of it, the phrase, "poHtics of ecstasy," seems an oxymoron on the order of "wildlife management," please remember that in the Sixties virtually all political activism was connected, directly or indirectly, to the ingestion of psychedelic drugs and therefore was shaped by, if not centered in, ecstatic states of being.

In addition, there were the politics that plagued our ecstatic enterprises themselves, no matter how we twisted and squirmed to escape it. Many a commune, demonstration, or love-in wrecked on the twin shoals of property and control. Then, too, there were the political fires kindled by the friction of latter-day ecstasy cults rubbing up against the stiff hide of the old iguana-brained Establishment.

It is an understatement to write that Timothy Leary was privy to this stormy marriage of the mundane and the rapturous. Simultaneously observer and participant. Dr. Leary analyzed events around him even as he helped make them happen. Boundlessly energetic, keenly insightful, he was uniquely qualified to work both sides of Heisenberg Street. Imagine him studiously taking notes even as he skated on one foot along the vibrating rim of an indole ring.

For those whose image of Dr. Leary has been formed by shallow and often malicious reports in the press. The Politics of Ecstasy provides a more accurate picture of the brave neuronaut whom I believe to be the Galileo of our age, albeit a Galileo possessed of considerable Irish blarney (which makes him all the more agreeable). Of more importance, perhaps, is the Ught this book casts upon the century's outlaw decade at a time when Sixties revisionism is epidemic.

Whether out of ignorance of cowardice, far too many historians writing about the period are avoiding any discussion of those mind-altering substances without which the Sixties, as we know them, would

never had occurred. Dr. Leary, as might be expected, leaves no turn unstoned.

Ultimately, the Sixties may be viewed as a staging area for the next leap forward in human evolution. We have left them behind only as panicky climbers might flee their base camp for a temporary descent back into the dark and decadent valley of their origins. While millions may have retreated into materialism and ftindamentalism, however, Timothy Leary has continued up the mountain, his ropes coiled like a helix, his gaze on hyperspace.

For those of us who lag behind, his as-it-happened observations of where we've been are as crucial as they are entertaining. And they are entertaining, indeed, indeed.

Tom Robbins

Introduction by R. U. Sirius

/lere we have The Politics of Ecstasy a book that's so mid-Sixties you can virtually smell the incense and peppermints.

Were you there? Do you remember how tenderly and timidly even the most staid, square twentysomething of that time would loosen his tie or kick up her heels and...swf^ Burning draft cards. Joining the Peace Corps and going native for a year or two. Wife swapping. Interracial Marriages. Mini-skirts. Smoking Pot. The Great Society. What wild chaos!

How quaint and charming it all looks to us now. Note in this book Dr. Leary's delightftiUy straightforward Utopian idealism as he's swept up in the enthusiasm of the youthquake while still communicating about "the ancient 2-billion year old wisdom of our cells" to the Playboy-reading bourgeoisie. And here he is speaking with exquisite eloquence and painful earnestness about the depths of the religious quest and the need to turn one's back on the one-dimensional chessboard reality of Sixties society. "There will be green grass growing on Wall Street in ten years."

Well, no. But the Wall Street of thirty years hence offers visions even stranger, like Net-wired consultants manipulating fractally-constructed investment programs written by acidheads in 3-dimensional virtual reality systems to exploit a "free market" world wild and surreal beyond our best 300 microgram visions. It's not as kind and gentlealas!as the image of green grass growing on Wall Street. And therein lies as good a reason as any to cast back in time to this beguiling, sociopolitically naive (but admirably sophisticated in its erudite discourse on the various levels of god-intoxicated experience) collection and maybe book a round-trip ticket on trans-temporal airlines to smuggle back some of that sweet visionary stuff into the unholy chaos of now and make it just a little bit hoUer.

The power, voice, and vision that made Timothy Leary an American icon are embodied in The Politics of Ecstasy perhaps more than any other

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work. This book presents the "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" Timothy Leary of myth and legend, from the years when his influence was at its peak. When that Timothy Leary advised us to "drop out of the fake prop TV game" of society, he didn't anticipate the irresistible seduction of 101 channels, some of them filled with post-psychedelic hipster cynicism ampHfied by 124-frames-per-second flashing imagery all in the service of selling jeans and sneakers. How could that Timothy Leary have known about the adrenal thrills of hyper-pornographic bodies, movie-star quality cocaine, decadent trisexual glam rock star orgies, ultraviolet cinematic eyeball kicks. Donkey Kong, punk, cyberpunk. Total Distortion, gangsta, Internet, robots on Mars, virtual reality, billion dollar Silicon Valley babies, speed and chaos and chaos and speed and all of it within the "fake-prop TV set studio" of our entirely decentered and hypermediated hallucinatory so-called "society." Do we really want to drop out on this deliriously sexy headrush?

Read The Politics of Ecstasy. It may indeed make you want to turn your back on it all. To TURN ON to the much grander and more elegant 2-billion year old cosmic comedy show, TUNE IN to the rhythms and harmonies within your body and the universe and the natural seasons, log off from the super-accelerated TV-prop headrushand DROP OUT!

R. U. Sirius

Mill Valley, California

August 1998