Your Brain Is God [Paperback]

Timothy Leary (Author)

Book Description

Series: Leary, Timothy | Publication Date: June 9, 2001

This collection of essays, written by the poster boy of 1960s counterculture, describes the psychological journey Timothy Leary made in the years following his dismissal from Harvard, as his psychedelic research moved from the scientific to the religious arena. He discusses the nature of religious experience and eight crafts of God, including God as hedonic artist. Leary also examines the Tibetan, Buddhist, and Taoist experiences. In the final chapters, he explores man as god and LSD as sacrament.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Ronin Publishing (June 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579510523
• ISBN-13: 978-1579510527
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,976 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Philosophy through confrontation with oneself..., January 1, 2005

By 

Takis Tz. (InYourHead) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Your Brain Is God (Paperback)

As substance induced psychedelia became almost a sweeping religion in the 60s certain great minds emerged that tried to conceptualise the goings on of that era and form them into new philosophies made of an amalgam of Eastern teachings, ancient western cosmotheories and modern realisations.

Among the many in that effort was T.Leary. Most of his books are known to the lay public as nothing more than acid-promotion but the truth is that they are excellent philosophical endeavours of the trippiest kind.

"Your brain is god" is a primary example of that. Allthough a mere 100 pages it summarises emphatically the vision those 60s luminaries had for ourselves. To realise that we are, or can be, gods. A much misunderstood concept to be sure, but one that has enormous merit in it not in an anthropocentric sense but more from a "know thyself" point of view.

Knowing thyself is of course no simple matter (if it were we wouldnt be on the verge of self-extinction). There have been many approaches and many philosophies over the eons that have tried to accomplish just that with various degrees of success. Leary came to that "field" through the confrontation with one's one brain that certain substances can provoke. His realisations might not sound like new discoveries to those few that are well philosophy-broken but his style and his way of formulating his beliefs are almost inimitable.

There's more to be taken from this book of Leary's than from many other bulky tomes that well known philosophers have written. Because, make no mistake here, he was unquestionably a philosopher and a darn good one. Leary has a way of condensing things in a modern 20th century type of way that will intrigue even the more focus-challenged out there.

My favorite quote from this book, is one that you can write a whole new book about in itself:
"...the smarter you become the smarter your world becomes".

A great "lil" book for those that are never content with the number of doors opened in their minds.

One objection that some might have is the later chapters of the book when Leary is basically giving out methodology on the use of acid. This is the time he comes from and this is the path he used. This though, does in no way mean that he promotes it as an absolute path. Life isnt one street. It would anyway be totally hypocritical of him to omit those chapters when he was known as the acid-guru. You should simply concentrate on taking out what's valuable for you, whatever that might be. And there's a lot of that here.

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Liberation is The Freedom from Mental Conceptual Redundancy, September 28, 2004

By 

R. Schwartz (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Your Brain Is God (Paperback)

A new science, with new practitioners - the psychedelic guides, having the profound opportunity and evolutionary significance of literally transforming humanity, changing the consciousness of social, cultural, environmental, linguistic and neurological patterns that inhibit humanity towards higher levels of awareness and being are briefly stated in this book. This was, and still is, revolutionary towards the beneficial growth of human development. What a sad document of fearful conditioned man to have rejected the science in this book, reverting back to simplistic, fundamental and dangerously limited snapshots of reality, each believing their "truths" as absolutes.

Apparently, there is a short time period as an infant only for many species, or both infant and early childhood for humans, which then ends shortly, permanently imprinting the human's social and cultural frame of mind through linguistics for the remainder of their lives. Experiments with birds and the immediate introduction towards a human, or even a ping-pong ball, causes the bird to search for this parental ideal the remainder of their lives. As humans we are subject to the attempt to the ideals that were first exposed to us in early childhood, attempting to get as close to that model for the remainder of our lives. Anotherwards we all take a still snapshot on reality, forever freezing our interpretation on what otherwise is a moving transient reality.

With psychedelics, there is an opening again as in infancy and early childhood where a person can perceive the moving essence of reality outside our snapshot of imprinted mindset, our still schematic, and see the moving, multifaceted reality in its many different levels, through more than one of the chakras, where one then reimprints their minds with new perceptions of reality and refocuses on previous chessboard structures, thus re-entry into society with much broader and wider perceptive capabilities with significant healing properties that are extremely beneficial.

I am moved by Leary's Galilean venture into the neurological areas of subjective experience, experiential awareness to cellular memories, DNA communication of evolutionary and primordial psychological areas. To venture beyond the grasp of conditioned minds, outside the held structures into a transient moving reality, areas of non-communicative being. It is here Leary introduces a few of the psychedelic prayers of a previous book, moving symbols in language for the lysergitized conscious.

On page 48: "It is crucial philosophic importance to understand that neurology, genetics, and quantum physics are all - in their separate narrow vectors into the future - coming to understand that evolving human intelligence is apparently designed to shape the universe, to navigate the process of evolution, and to fabricate the structure of personal reality. All modern sciences accept that pay respect to the subjectivity of the experience."

"To understand that your are designed to be God-the-Universe-Creator, you must first grasp the implication of the Heisenberg principle of determinacy - abjectly, cravenly, primitively called indeterminacy. Heisenberg's wonderful, liberating discovery states that the scientist determines the nature of experiment. Modern quantum physics is currently producing scenarios involving multiple realities, indeed, infinite universe, determined by the attitudes and mental structures and measurements of the observer. Prominent and distinguished physicists have actually suggested that the universe which we measure with our instruments is a production of our thought."

On pages 66-67: "Liberation is the nervous system devoid of mental conceptual redundancy. The mind in its conditioned state, limited to words and ego games, is continuously in thought-formation activity. The nervous system in a state of quiescence, alert, awake but not active, is comparable to what Buddhists call the highest state of dhyana or deep meditation. The conscious recognition of the Clear Light induces an ecstatic condition of consciousness such as saints and mystics of the West have called illumination."

On page 86: "The "turned on" person realizes that every action is a reflection of where s/he is at. The "turned on" person knows his world is created by his consciousness-existing only because s/he has arranged his sensory and neural cameras to shoot these particular scenes. His movements, dress, grooming, room, house, the neighborhood in which s/he lives, are exact external replicas of his state of consciousness. If the outside environment doesn't harmonize with his state of mind, s/he knows that s/he must move gracefully to get in tune.

This book touches on the ego-loss, preparing for a session, the use of the Tibetan book of the dead and the non-religious symbols of Taoism, LSD as a Sacrament and our dropping out of the chessboard games, turning on to our neurological divnity, and tuning into our divinity, making our environment, our place of dwelling, our clothes, our walk, our talk - our psyche divine, flowing and "beautiful."

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guild as psuedo-scientific shaman of sorts, December 4, 2002

By A Customer

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This review is from: Your Brain Is God (Paperback)

Honestly, I think that Leary was being extremely daring tackling the subject of psychadelics in the manner which he did. Also though, this book runs through a brief history of the beginning of his working with psychadelic experiences in the sixties, and offers an outline for reproducing and guiding such experiences. Not only htat though, but his "summa Theologica" is transmitted in the psycho-philosophical banter on spiritual questions. In my opinion leary has seriously done his part in making spirituality and science one and the same. He has been accused of being overly radical and highly speculative, - even by me - but this is precisely why I respect his work as much as I do. Personally, I do not use psychotropic drugs, but I am indescriminately into Dreams as a medium for psychadelic experiences. In my opinion Leary describes poetically, and precisely, the most efficient method for guiding a session that is psychological in nature, be it psychadelics, journeying, self-analysis, etc. In my opinion the personal and comfortably set setting and atmosphere should be adopted by professional psychological doctors. Of corse, that's just my opinion, what do I know?