that the absolute is manifest in every appearance and relationship, and that Love is Wisdom in daily practice ... It is the development of another state of consciousness within one’s own self. One that leads to a vision of existence in which only the sense of wonder remains and all fear is gone. It is also the impetus that makes a few travellers in each generation set off in search of the grail, the genii in the bottle, the magic ring ...” 27
Dr. John Beresford was with Hollingshead and had also taken some of the pure LSD. When he returned to some semblance of normality he was just as impressed as his partner. Beresford would continue to champion psychedelics for the rest of his life, believing LSD to be a portent of evolutionary change and relating it to the first self sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the developmentof the nuclear bomb. “The reckless act of science in Chicago in December, 1942, was remedied in Basel four months later, with Albert Hofmann chosen as the instrument to perform the cure.” 28
The LSD experience both baffled and excited Hollingshead. It was, he thought, “... a bundle of solutions looking for a problem”. He phoned Huxley to discuss his findings, now speaking with the authority and perspective of one of the inner circle of LSD initiates. It seemed to Hollingshead that modern man had lost his way and was caught in a world of external illusion, a stranger to himself. Perhaps, he suggested to Huxley, LSD was the antidote to this existential malaise. Moreover the drug could even be “... a therapy for the widespread sickness of insensitiveness and ignorance which psychologists call ‘normality’ or ‘mental health.’”
Huxley was sympathetic to Hollingshead’s predicament but advised him that little was known about LSD. They spoke again a couple of days later, Huxley suggesting Hollingshead should meet a Harvard professor by the name of Dr. Timothy Leary. “If there is any one single investigator in America worth seeing,” Huxley assured Hollingshead. “It is Dr. Leary.”
There are numerous histories of Leary’s life that cover in minute detail his journey from trainee priest to LSD evangelist. In 1957, when he was a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University, he tried psilocybin mushrooms on a field trip to Mexico. The psychedelic experience, as it had done with so many others, profoundly changed Leary and he commented that he had “learned more about ... (his) brain and its possibilities ... (and) more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than ... (he) had in the preceding fifteen years of studying doing [sic] research in psychology.” 29
On his return from Mexico, Leary set up the Harvard Psilocybin Project with colleagues Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, using a synthesised version of the drug. Leary’s interest in behaviour change, in which he was an expert, led him to believe that psychedelics, in the correct dosage and set and setting, could radically alter behaviour. It was at this stage in Leary’s exploration of psychedelic drugs that he came into contact with Hollingshead. Leary had been warned off Hollingshead by someone he knew, amillionaire by the name of Winston London. A “no-good, two-bit English con-man” was London’s bodyguard’s view of Hollingshead and he advised Leary to have nothing to do with him. But Leary was intrigued by the persuasive, roguish Englishman and within weeks Hollinsghead had moved in with the Leary family as their lodger. 30
At first Leary was wary of LSD. He was a veteran of many psilocybin and peyote trips but believed these drugs were acceptable because they were organic and had long traditions of structured use among the world’s indigenous peoples. LSD, in contrast, was only partly organic, had been created in a sterile laboratory and was primarily used by the military and the secular psychiatric establishment. Psilocybin and peyote, Leary rationalised, were familiar to him. He knew
Dr. John Beresford was with Hollingshead and had also taken some of the pure LSD. When he returned to some semblance of normality he was just as impressed as his partner. Beresford would continue to champion psychedelics for the rest of his life, believing LSD to be a portent of evolutionary change and relating it to the first self sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the developmentof the nuclear bomb. “The reckless act of science in Chicago in December, 1942, was remedied in Basel four months later, with Albert Hofmann chosen as the instrument to perform the cure.” 28
The LSD experience both baffled and excited Hollingshead. It was, he thought, “... a bundle of solutions looking for a problem”. He phoned Huxley to discuss his findings, now speaking with the authority and perspective of one of the inner circle of LSD initiates. It seemed to Hollingshead that modern man had lost his way and was caught in a world of external illusion, a stranger to himself. Perhaps, he suggested to Huxley, LSD was the antidote to this existential malaise. Moreover the drug could even be “... a therapy for the widespread sickness of insensitiveness and ignorance which psychologists call ‘normality’ or ‘mental health.’”
Huxley was sympathetic to Hollingshead’s predicament but advised him that little was known about LSD. They spoke again a couple of days later, Huxley suggesting Hollingshead should meet a Harvard professor by the name of Dr. Timothy Leary. “If there is any one single investigator in America worth seeing,” Huxley assured Hollingshead. “It is Dr. Leary.”
There are numerous histories of Leary’s life that cover in minute detail his journey from trainee priest to LSD evangelist. In 1957, when he was a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University, he tried psilocybin mushrooms on a field trip to Mexico. The psychedelic experience, as it had done with so many others, profoundly changed Leary and he commented that he had “learned more about ... (his) brain and its possibilities ... (and) more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than ... (he) had in the preceding fifteen years of studying doing [sic] research in psychology.” 29
On his return from Mexico, Leary set up the Harvard Psilocybin Project with colleagues Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, using a synthesised version of the drug. Leary’s interest in behaviour change, in which he was an expert, led him to believe that psychedelics, in the correct dosage and set and setting, could radically alter behaviour. It was at this stage in Leary’s exploration of psychedelic drugs that he came into contact with Hollingshead. Leary had been warned off Hollingshead by someone he knew, amillionaire by the name of Winston London. A “no-good, two-bit English con-man” was London’s bodyguard’s view of Hollingshead and he advised Leary to have nothing to do with him. But Leary was intrigued by the persuasive, roguish Englishman and within weeks Hollinsghead had moved in with the Leary family as their lodger. 30
At first Leary was wary of LSD. He was a veteran of many psilocybin and peyote trips but believed these drugs were acceptable because they were organic and had long traditions of structured use among the world’s indigenous peoples. LSD, in contrast, was only partly organic, had been created in a sterile laboratory and was primarily used by the military and the secular psychiatric establishment. Psilocybin and peyote, Leary rationalised, were familiar to him. He knew
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