Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In: Appreciations, Castigations, and Reminiscences by Ram Dass, Andrew Weil, Allen Ginsberg, Winona Ryder, William ... Huston Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, and Others [Paperback]

Robert Forte (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1999

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, provides 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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."
(

Bodhi Tree Book Review, Winter 1999 / Spring 2000

)

From the Back Cover

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. 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Park Street Press; 1St Edition edition (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892817860
• ISBN-13: 978-0892817863
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #909,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Multiperspective View of Leary, August 27, 2002

By 

Thomas M. Seay (Palo Alto, California USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In: Appreciations, Castigations, and Reminiscences by Ram Dass, Andrew Weil, Allen Ginsberg, Winona Ryder, William ... Huston Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, and Others (Paperback)

Timothy Leary is a mythological figure. Almost everyone has an opinion of him, even if they have never read a word he wrote.
Often opinions are second-hand filtered through this or that media source.

The editor for this book, Robert Forte, one
of Mircea Eliade's last students at the University of Chicago,
does not provide us with second-hand information that he has digested, but instead, gathers an anthology of viewpoints from those who knew Timothy Leary. Not all are positive, and I was surprized to read the negative remarks of Owlsley Stanley in regards to Leary. Thanks to this compendium, we are allowed past the veil of the myth and get a glimpse of the human Timothy Leary.

Robert Forte knew Timothy Leary personally and has edited another book, Entheogens and the Future of religion, that I highly recommend.

Thomas Seay

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a refreshingly honest multi-angled profile of Leary, November 16, 2000

By 

Charles E Hayes (Westchester County, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In: Appreciations, Castigations, and Reminiscences by Ram Dass, Andrew Weil, Allen Ginsberg, Winona Ryder, William ... Huston Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, and Others (Paperback)

Robert Forte is one of the most important living documentarians of psychedelic history and phenomonology. In this book, he's gathered a myriad voices of people who were really "there" when Leary was influencing people and who therefore have valuable commentary worth hearing -- both positive and negative. The folksy, chatty style of this book make it a pleasure to read. Along with his other book "Entheogens and the Future of Religion," Forte is performing an important informational and documentary service toward a fair assessment of the role that drugs have in society and also of the real-life figures who have affected this. This book is a must read for anyone interested in what Tim Leary (and for that matter, ...) were really like.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Distinguished contributors, comprehensive & even-handed., April 3, 1999

By 

Michael P. Abbott (Tiburon, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In: Appreciations, Castigations, and Reminiscences by Ram Dass, Andrew Weil, Allen Ginsberg, Winona Ryder, William ... Huston Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, and Others (Paperback)

For anyone having an interest in Leary, friend or foe, fan or scholar, it's all here from the best first-person sources. "You get the Leary you deserve", he said about himself, and an array of Leary's are presented, as remembered by a marvelous and distinguished group. Bravo to editor Robert Forte.