Timothy Leary: Outside Looking in

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, provide 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.

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.