https://archive.org/stream/psychedelicpraye00learrich/psychedelicpraye00learrich_djvu.txt

Full text of "Psychedelic prayers & other meditations"

«§£       ■:te       Z\()r,  A-       AIM      ()l  li     I'OI  IAI       lgfc-*~v  >v       ()  I       III  E     HUMAN      M       A  N  I )     S       /     I     ^  t     I  P-H"////,////  S.  Burroughs     fer#iYLEARY   CHEDEUC       fa       ft-   O    III    I       ;«       I       praise  for  Timothy  Leary's   Psychedelic  Prayers       "The  most  witty  of  all  Oriental  mystics  translated   by  the  funniest  of  all  American  philosophers,  who   could  ask  for  anything  more?  Lao  Tse  and  Tim   Leary  fit  together  so  well  I  almost  believe  in   reincarnation."     —ROBERT  ANTON  WILSON     0  0  0     "As  a  luminous  trajectory,  starting  fromTao  wisdom   of  the  6th  Century  BC  and  landing  in  the   American  scene  as  it  enters  the  21st  Century,   Psychedelic  Prayers  presents  us  with  visions  and   choices  we  can  no  long  ignore."     —LAURA   HUXLEY     0  0  0     "Psychedelic  Prayers  is  perhaps  the  best-loved  among   Leary's  many  books,  and  occupies  a  unique  place  in   psychedelic  literature."     —  MICHAEL  HOROWITZ     0  0  0     "Two  of  my  'oldest'  friends:  Lao  Tse  and  Timothy,   deep  in  conversation,  speak  with  one  voice."     —RAM   DASS       Tim^tfiYLEABY   OIEDElic     ar   ofHEi^niEDifAttons       Introduction   Ralph  Metzner     Bibliographical  Preface   Michael  Horowitz     Preface   Rosemary  Woodruff  Leary       RONIN  PUBLISHING     Berkeley  California  USA       Psychedelic  Prayers  and  Other  Meditations     ISBN:  0-914171-84-4     Copyright  ©1997  by  the  Futique  Trust     Published  by   Ronin  Publishing   P.O.Box  1035   Berkeley,  CA  94701     www.roninpub.com   www.leary.com     All  rights  reserved.  No  part  of  this  book  may  be  reproduced  or   transmitted  in  any  form  or  by  any  means,  electronic  or  mechanical,   including  photocopying,  recording,  or  by  any  information  storage  and   retrieval  system,  without  written  permission  from  the  publisher,  except   for  the  inclusion  of  brief  quotations  in  a  review.     Originally  published  as  Psychedelic  Monograph  II  by  Poets  Press   Library  of  Congress  Catalog  Card  Number  66-23650   Copyright  ©1966  by  Timothy  Leary     Project  Editors:  Sebastian  Orfali  &  Beverly  Potter     Manuscript  Editors:  Michael  Horowitz,  Ralph  Metzner,     Rosemary  Woodruff  Leary   Copy  Editor:  Dan  Joy     Cover  Design:  Brian  Groppe     Book  Design:  Judy  July     Production  &  Pre-Press:  Generic  Type     Art,  Illustrations,  Photos:  Page  border  from  wood  box  edition  which  apprears   on  Dedication  page,  and  as  vignettes  throughout  this  edition  by  Michael   Green.  Photos  on  pages  11, 12  &  126  by  Peter  Gould.  Photo  on  page  30  by   Robert  Altman.  Illustration  on  page  118  by  Bill  Ogden.       tABLE  of  corrf  Errf  s     Introduction  by  Ralph  Metzner 9     Bibliographical  Preface  by  Michael  Horowitz    23     Preface  by  Rosemary  Woodruff  Leary    31     Foreword  by  Timothy  Leary    35     PART  I  Prayers  for  Preparation 45     PART  II  The  Experience  of  Elemental  Energy 53     PART  III  The  Experience  of  Seed-Cell  Energy 65     PART  IV  The  Experience  of  Neural  Energy    81     PART  V  The  Experience  of  the  Chakras 89     PART  VI  Re-entry:  The  Experience  of  the  Imprinted  World  ...  97     Poems  on  the  Conduct  of  Life     117     with  Rosemary  Woodruff  Leary     Homage  to  the  Awe-full  Seer 125     Notes    133     Index  According  to  the  Tao  Te  Ching    139       Ralph  Metzner  with  Nanette   and  Timothy  Leary  at  the   Taj  Mahal,  1965.       infRpDvcTion     RALPH  METZNER     The  first  time  I  heard  Tim  Leary  broach  the  idea  of  adapting   the  Tao  Te  Ching  as  a  guide-book  for  psychedelic  sessions  was   in  Zihuatanejo,  in  the  summer  of  1962,  during  our  first  inten-   sive retreat  devoted  to  the  exploration  and  mapping  of  the   unusual  states  of  consciousness  opened  up  by  psychedelics.We  were  work-   ing on  the  adaptation  of  the  Tibetan  Book  of  the  Dead  as  a  manual  for  psy-   chedelic sessions  that  was  later  published  as  The  Psychedelic  Experience.  In   that  text,  Tim  explained,  the  main  teaching  was  to  recognize  the  beautiful   and  horrible  visions  that  one  encountered,  what  the  Bardo  Thbdol  called  the   "peaceful  and  wrathful  deities,"  as  emanations  or  projections  of  one's  own   mind.  With  such  recognition,  triggered  by  the  spoken  words  of  the  guide,   one  could  avoid  grasping  for  the  beauties  and  fleeing  from  the  terrors,  stay   centered  and  have  a  reasonable  chance  of  making  it  through  the  experience   to  a  balanced  re-entry  or  "rebirth."  Summing  up  the  basic  advice  repeated   many  times  throughout  this  guidebook,  we  would  tell  psychedelic  voyagers   to  "relax  and  float  down  stream."     In  one  of  our  discussions  Tim  said  that  after  we  produced  the   Tibetan  Book  of  the  Dead  manual,  we  would  adapt  the  Tao  Te  Ching,   which  he  considered  a  spiritually  more  advanced  text.  The  book's  essen-   tial teaching,  for  all  of  life,  was  to  be  like  water  ...  to  keep  flowing.  This   was  my  introduction  to  the  teachings  of  Taoism,  as  the  work  on  the   Tibetan  Book  of  the  Dead  was  my  introduction  to  Buddhism.  Both  have   remained  treasured  parts  of  my  life  ever  since.  Neither  my  undergradu-   ate education  at  Oxford  nor  the  psychology  graduate  program  at   Harvard  had  included  any  exposure  to  Eastern  philosophies  or  religion.   So  it  was  with  a  great  deal  of  intellectual  excitement  that  I  started  to   delve  into  these  texts,  both  of  which  are  among  the  pre-eminent  classics   of  the  world's  spiritual  literature.     I  believe  my  experience  also  paralleled  that  of  Leary.  A  psychologist   highly  trained  and  skilled  in  the  Western  methods  of  scientific  research,   he  felt  affirmed  in  his  spiritual  approach  to  psychedelic  experiences  by       iO  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       the  discovery  of  these  ancient  spiritual  writings.  Their  essential  message,   once  freed  from  the  prevailing  cultural  symbolism,  was  fully  consistent   with  the  insights  coming  from  psychedelic  experiences.  Psychedelic   drugs  and  plants  are  catalysts  for  transcendent  experiences — or  they  can   be,  given  the  appropriate  preparation,  attitude,  and  context  (the  "set  and   setting,"  in  Leary's  felicitous  phrase).     The  Asian  spiritual  texts  are  centrally  concerned  with  transcen-   dence, with  learning  to  go  beyond  the  ego-centered  perspectives  of   ordinary  human  consciousness,  beyond  the  dualities  of  right  and  wrong,   and  with  becoming  liberated  from  the  fears  and  cravings  that  character-   ize human  existence.  For  the  traditional  Asian  religious  teachers,  the   method  of  attaining  such  liberating  transcendence  was  not  psychedelics   but  meditation.  Their  goal,  however,  was  essentially  the  same  as  that  of   spiritually  oriented  psychedelic  explorers.     The  period  of  the  early  sixties,  when  these  explorations  of  con-   sciousness and  rediscoveries  of  ancient  spiritual  traditions  were  being   made,  was  a  time  of  extraordinary  excitement  and  challenge  for  Leary,   Alpert,  myself,  and  the  other  psychologists  of  the  Harvard  project.   Unimaginable  potentials  for  human  transformation  were  seemingly   being  opened  up.  Along  with  repeated  experiences  of  transcendent  states   of  consciousness  through  psychedelics,  we  were  experiencing  a  transcen-   dence of  the  usual  framework  of  life  in  an  academic  institution.  In  1962,   Leary  and  Alpert  were  dismissed  from  Harvard,  my  graduate  studies   were  completed,  and  the  psychedelic  research  project  that  was  initiated   there  had  to  find  a  new  home.  None  of  us  were  particularly  disappoint-   ed or  hurt  by  this  apparent  disgrace.  As  Tim  was  to  say,  it  was  as  "unrea-   sonable to  expect  a  university  to  sponsor  research  in  psychedelics  as  it   would  be  to  expect  the  Vatican  to  sponsor  research  in  aphrodisiacs."     The  research  and  explorations  of  consciousness  continued  unabated:   at  first  with  a  training  seminar  in  Zihuatanejo  (which  ended  with  our   group  being  expelled  from  Mexico)  and  then  (after  unsuccessful   attempts  to  continue  the  seminar  in  two  Caribbean  islands)  in  a  magnif-   icent mansion  owned  by  the  Hitchcock  brothers  in  Millbrook,  New   York.  In  the  late  summer  of  1963,  a  group  of  about  a  dozen  of  us,   including  Tim  and  his  two  children  Susan  and  Jack,  Dick  Alpert,  my   wife  Susan  and  myself,  and  several  others,  convened  in  Millbrook  and   hunkered  down  for  the  fall  and  winter.  Having  been  rebuffed  in  our       INTRODUCTION  ♦  RALPH  METZNER       //       The  Millbrook  Big  House   in  1965,  at  the  time  the   Psychedelic  Prayers  were   written.       attempts  to  establish  a  public  psychedelic  research  center  that  would   make  these  extraordinary  new  tools  accessible  to  anyone  with  a  respon-   sible attitude,  we  decided  to  retreat  and  concentrate  on  writing  and  lec-   turing and  our  own  personal  work  of  transformation  using  psychedelics   and  meditation.     It  was  a  time  of  great  creative  fervor  for  all  of  us,  but  especially  for   Leary.  Many  papers  describing  our  work  were  written,  lectures  given,   conference  presentations  made.  The  Psychedelic  Experience  was  published   in  early  1964. 1  continued  to  edit  and  publish  the  Psychedelic  Review,   with  the  assistance  of  Paul  Lee  and  Rolf  von  Eckartsberg.We  started  to   give  workshops,  in  which  altered  states  of  consciousness  and  changes  in   perception  were  induced  without  chemical  means.  We  called  ourselves   the  Castalia  Foundation,  after  the  mystical  retreat  center  in  Hermann   Hesse's  novel  The  Glass  Bead  Game.       12       PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Leary  in   Millbrook,   1966,  with  the   psychedelic   dog,  Fang,   and  Diane   di  Prima's   daughter,   Jeanne.       Our  experiences  in  Mexico  and  the  Caribbean,  as  well  as  in  earlier   group  experiences  when  we  were  still  at  Harvard,  had  brought  us  right   up  against  some  very  heavy  barriers  to  communication  and  coopera-   tion— -jealousy,  possessiveness,  competitiveness,  envy,  and  so  forth. There   were  also  experiences  of  feeling  a  warm  inclusive  unity  and  non-posses-   sive love  for  all  beings.  However,  after  these  experience  wore  off,  the   pre-imprinted  feelings  of  the  normal  personality  returned,  made  perhaps   more  acutely  uncomfortable  by  the  memory  of  the  free  consciousness   experienced  under  the  drug.  The  higher,  more  unified  level  of  con-   sciousness could  not  be  maintained.  We  saw  how  we  were  trapped  by   ancient  patterns  of  conditioning.     Perhaps  naively,  we  wanted  to  see  if  we  could  override  them  by   consciously  and  intentionally  choosing  to  do  so.  We  began  a  series  of   small  group  experiments  in  non-possessive  relationships,  which  were       INTRODUCTION  «■  RALPH  METZNER  13       mostly  abandoned  after  a  couple  of  weeks  as  being  too  artificial.  Out  of   all  this,  however,  came  some  powerful  learning  and  much  laughter  at  the   ridiculousness  of  our  preconditioned  attitudes  and  habits  and  the  diffi-   culty of  escaping  from  them.  Tim  Leary's  leadership  style  in  these  situa-   tions was  light,  humorous,  and  very  engaging.  Dick  Alpert  too  had  a   great  sense  of  humor  and  told  fantastically  intriguing  stories  of  his   adventures  on  the  lecture  circuit.  The  jazz  musician  Maynard  Ferguson,   together  with  his  wife  Flo  and  their  three  children,  lived  in  the  house  as   well.  We  all  became  very  close.     When  we  were  not  working  on  writing,  lecturing  or  giving  work-   shops, or  trying  to  free  our  interpersonal  relationships  from  pre-   imprinted  possessive  conditioning,  we  spent  time  working  on  the  fan-   tastic grounds  of  the  three  thousand  acre  estate,  clearing  shrubbery  and   building  little  retreat  centers  and  hermit's  nooks.  I  remember  winter   walks  in  the  moonlight,  when  the  only  sound  was  the  crunching  of  our   boots  in  the  snow.  One  crisp,  cold  day  in  November  1963  we  got  the   synchronistic  news:  Aldous  Huxley,  the  wise  elder  of  the  psychedelic   movement,  had  died,  and  had  taken  a  dose  of  LSD  to  facilitate  the  final   journey;  and  on  the  same  day,  John  F.  Kennedy,  our  charismatic  presi-   dent, was  assassinated  in  Dallas.  This  was  a  low  body-blow  to  the  collec-   tive American  psyche — a  sudden  loss  of  innocence  and  idealism,  and  an   ominous  foreboding  to  those  involved  in  the  movement  for  the  libera-   tion of  consciousness.     During  the  spring  and  summer  of  1964  the  Millbrook  group  con-   tinued their  psychedelic  explorations,  creative  writing  projects,  garden-   ing, and  connecting  with  artists,  musicians,  philosophers,  researchers,   journalists.  Ken  Kesey  and  his  busload  of  Merry  Pranksters  arrived   unannounced  one  day,  after  their  legendary  cross-country  tour.  Amazing   feasts  and  celebrations  took  place  in  the  extravagantly  baroque  mansion   that  we  called  the  Big  House.  Millbrook  became  a  kind  of  Mecca  for   psychedelic  seekers  and  adventurers.     Among  the  constant  stream  of  visitors  from  New  York  was  a   Swedish  fashion  model  named  Nanette,  whose  long-legged  form  was  at   that  time  adorning  numerous  New  York  transit  buses.  She  and  Tim  fell   in  love  and  moved  in  together.  Shortly  thereafter,  a  friend  of  hers,   another  model  named  Kathy,  with  auburn  hair  and  green  eyes,  arrived.   Kathy  and  I  fell  in  love.  Both  Tim  and  I,  introverted  intellectuals  that  we       14  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  «•  TIMOTHY  LEARY       were,  felt  initially  awkv/ard  with  these  glamorous  and  sophisticated   denizens  of  the  New  York  fashion  world.  Our  LSD  experiences  with   them  however  swiftly  took  us  all  to  undreamed  of  levels  of  archetypal   tantric  spirituality.     Another  Hermann  Hesse  novel  that  had  made  a  deep  impression  on   us  was  Journey  to  the  East,  a  story  of  a  group  vision  quest,  a  metaphorical   journey  to  the  lands  of  mystic  spirituality.  Each  of  the  seekers  on  that   journey  had  a  personal  goal,  but  all  shared  the  goal  of  enlightenment   and  liberation.  "For  our  goal,"  Hesse  wrote,  "was  not  only  the  East,  or   rather  the  East  was  not  only  a  country  and  something  geographical,  but   it  was  the  home  and  youth  of  the  soul."  In  Hesse's  novel,  the  group   quest,  though  initially  ecstatically  inspiring,  falls  apart  under  mysterious   circumstances  in  a  doomed  place  called  Morbio  Inferiore.We  were  also   reading  Ouspensky's  In  Search  of  the  Miraculous  and  Gurdjieff's  Meetings   with  Remarkable  Men,  in  which  a  20-year  quest  in  Asia  by  a  group  called   the  Seekers  after  Truth  is  described.  Stimulated  by  these  accounts  of  spir-   itual quests,  the  idea  of  an  actual  geographical  pilgrimage  to  India  had   formed  in  our  minds.     So  when  the  opportunity  arose  to  accompany  an  Indian  holy   woman,  Gayatri  Devi,  with  her  group  of  Indian  and  American  disciples,   on  an  ashram  pilgrimage  to  India,  I  jumped  at  the  chance  and  tried  to   persuade  Kathy  to  go  with  me.  Tim  and  Nanette  wanted  to  join  us  some   time  later.  Gayatri  Devi,  or  Mataji  as  she  was  called,  was  a  teacher  in  the   lineage  of  Ramakrishna  and  Vivekananda,  who  had  founded  ashrams  in   Los  Angeles  and  Boston,  had  tried  LSD  and  was  supportive  of  the   exploration  of  its  spiritual  potentials.  So  in  November  of  1964  I  found   myself  on  the  plane  to  India  in  her  company.  Kathy  had  become  very   anxious  and  conflicted  and  could  not  bring  herself  to  go  with  me,   though  she  held  out  hope  she  might  come  later.  After  a  week's  stopover   in  Kyoto,  Japan,  where  we  conversed  with  Zen  teachers  and  visited   shrines  and  temples,  we  landed  in  Calcutta,  where  Mataji  had  thousands   of  devotees.  Enormously  interesting  visits  to  temple  sites  in  Bhub-   haneshwar,  Puri,  Konarak  and  Benares  followed.  Then  we  went  to  Delhi   and  northwards  up  into  the  hill  country  of  Uttar  Pradesh  to  Rishikesh,   where  the  Beatles  later  visited  the  ashram  of  Maharashi  MaheshYogi.     Then  I  separated  from  Gayatri  Devi's  group  and  continued  further   northwards  and  into  the  Himalayan  foothills  to  the  village  of  Almora.       INTRODUCTION  +  RALPH  METZNER  15       Lama  Anagarika  Govinda,  the  Austrian-born  Buddhist  scholar,  lived   there  with  his  Parsee  wife,  Li  Gotami,  in  a  cottage  on  a  ridge  with  an   unbelievably  spectacular  view  of  the  snow  and  ice  peaks  of  the   Himalayas.  Every  day  I  would  walk  a  couple  of  hours  to  their  house  and   discuss  various  aspects  of  Tibetan  Buddhist  teachings  with  them.  Lama   Govinda  was  impressed  with  the  appreciative  dedication  we  had  written   to  him  in  our  adaptation  of  the  Tibetan  Book  of  the  Dead.  He  agreed  to   try  a  dose  of  LSD  that  I  offered  to  provide  and  guide  for  him.  After  an   initially  turbulent  period  of  confusion  and  anxiety  at  the  intense  somat-   ic changes  induced,  he  centered  himself  with  the  aid  of  mantra  and   mudra,  and  had  an  illuminating  experience  according  to  the  model  of   Bardo  Thodol.  He  expressed  his  pleased  anticipation  of  a  visit  from   Timothy  Leary.     During  my  travels  in  India  I  had  been  writing  Kathy  and  the   Millbrook  group  my  impressions  of  India.  Tim  wrote  back  letters  in   which  he  described  the  fantastic  and  joyous  spiritual  and  social  carnival   that  Millbrook  had  become,  his  deepening  relationship  with  Nanette,   their  wedding,  their  travel  plans  for  India,  and  his  evolving  ideas  about   the  processes  of  psychedelic  consciousness  expansion.  He  was  using  the   ethological  language  of  imprinting.  These  ideas  and  understandings   formed  the  conceptual  framework  for  his  work  in  translating  the  Tao  Te   Ching  into  a  session  manual  for  psychedelic  experiences.  Here  are  a  few   excerpts  from  these  letters:     The  political-education  battle  over  psychedelics  has  been  won   and  from  now  on  it's  just  a  matter  of  time...  next  generation...  my   only  concern  now  is  to  learn  to  use  my  own  head  and  to  pursue   the  incredible  complexities  that  develop  when  two  people  begin  to   explore  their  potentialities  together  and  in  small  tribal  groups.   Withdrawing  energy  and  commitment  from  externals  and   materials,  etc.  You  know.     Nanette  and  I  have  been  together  almost  every  minute  for  the   last  three  weeks  and  she  is  an  unending  series  of  beauty  and  wise   lessons...  We  are  visiting  the  Episcopalian  minister  in  town  to   arrange  the  most  romantic,  mythic  wedding  in  history...  very  soon.   You  have  to  give  everything  to  it  without  reserve  and  then  it  all   flows  from  one  moment  of  happiness  to  the  next...  well  you  know.       16  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       The  tribal  scene  is  wonderful.     The  trees  are  now  leafless  and  etched  black,  like  sumi-painting   strokes,  and  the  dusk  comes  quickly  late  afternoons  and  fires  are   glowing  in  most  of  the  rooms  and  the  house  breathes  softly  waiting   for  the  next  period  of  change  and  movement...  Nanette  and  I  will   probably  be  joining  you  after  the  first  of  the  year.     The  meaning  of  imprinting  is  "getting  involuntarily  hooked  to   externals,  accidentally  presented  externals  at  that!!!"  The  process  of   de-imprinting  is  getting  consciousness  back  to  the  flow  and  back  to   the  body.  Re-imprinting  is  planned  temporary  hooking  back  to   externals.     Marriage  plans...  we  are  inseparable  these  days,  keeping  humor   and  loving  detachment  while  the  turmoil  swirls  by.  We  think  now   we'll  leave  for  the  Orient  right  after  the  wedding.     My  understanding  of  the  "trap  of  externalization" becomes   clearer.  Imprinting  freezes  us  to  the  outside — the  trick  is  to  with-   draw once  a  week  and  then,  each  time,  make  a  carefully  planned   re-addiction  to  the  outside — systematically  reducing  the  number  of   externals — and  thus  allowing  for  new  complexity  and  subtlety.  You   know.     Nanette  has  changed.  More  quiet,  tranquil,  amazing  patience,   she  moves  through  the  turmoil  areas  with  calm.  She  has  Chinese,   Viking,  south  Sweden  farm  girl  things  at  her  core.     The  power  of  imprinting  continually  astounds  me.  Frightening,   unless  you  continually  and  vigilantly  recognize.  We  delight  in  the   prospect  of  seeing  you  soon.     Richard  (Alpert)  has  mutated.  He  has  taken  over  "Tim's  role,"   whatever  that  means,  and  is  genial,  hospitable,  radiating  plans  and   welcomes.  He  is  filling  the  house  with  creative  men  and  beautiful   women...  Wedding  in  four  days.  Incredibly  long  list  of  details  all   clicking  into  place.  Nanette  is  a  pure,  white  fire  of  honesty  and   love.  We  have  been  together  about  23  hours  a  day  for  the  last  four   weeks.     Kathy...  every  hour  a  new  crisis.  Nanette  and  I  have  bought  her   a  ticket  around  the  world  which  she  now  has  in  her  possession.  I   have  made  reservations  for  her  to  leave  when  we  leave.  We  are   putting  no  pressure  on  her — simply  giving  her  another  card  in  her       INTRODUCTION  ♦  RALPH  METZNER  1 7       hands — a  freedom  card  which  she  may  or  may  not  use.  She  is   miserable.  Your  letters  have  been  magnificent.  I  guess  that  is  all  you   can  do...  let  her  know  you  are  waiting,  without  putting  on  a  lot  of   pressure  or  emotion.  Perhaps  by  the  time  you  receive  this  she  will   be  on  her  way.     In  any  case,  and  in  all  cases  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to  free  one-   self from  internal  distortions  and  external  addictions.     We  think  of  you  always  and  with  great  joy  that  we'll  be  with   you  soon.     I  was  deeply  moved  and  exhilarated  by  Tim's  letters.  Readers  of   Psychedelic  Prayers  will  recognize  the  themes  of  freeing  oneself  from   "internal  distortions  and  external  addictions"  in  his  versions  of  LaoTse's   ancient  text.  The  Taoist  teaching  on  the  importance  of  attuning  oneself   with  the  flow  of  Tao  resonates  naturally  with  his  statement  that  "de-   imprinting  is  getting  back  to  the  flow  and  back  to  the  body."  As  his  let-   ters show,  he  was  acutely  sensitive  to  the  fragility  and  vulnerability  of   the  imprinting  process  involved  in  human  love  relationships.  There  was   an  exquisite  poignancy  for  me  in  his  messages,  since  my  romance  with   Kathy  was  hanging  in  the  balance.  For  Tim  and  Nanette,  although  they   could  hardly  have  known  this,  their  visit  to  the  Himalayan  village  of   Almora  involved  extraordinarily  heightened  creativity  and  spiritual   insight,  but  it  also  spelled  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  their  marriage.     I  took  the  three  day  journey  by  bus  and  train  down  from  the  Hill   Country  to  meet  Tim  and  Nanette  in  Delhi.  When  I  told  them  enthusi-   astically about  Almora  and  my  meetings  with  Lama  Govinda,  they   decided  they  wanted  to  go  there  too.  But  before  we  headed  back  up   into  the  mountains,  we  wanted  to  see  the  Taj  Mahal.  We  had  heard  that   once  a  month,  around  the  time  of  the  full  moon,  the  grounds  are  kept   open  to  visitors  at  night.  We  thought  this  would  be  an  extraordinary  set-   ting for  a  psychedelic  experience.  During  the  day  we  took  a  tour  of  the   mausoleum,  our  senses  heightened  by  legally  available  ganja.  Our  guide   enthusiastically  explained  the  history  behind  this  amazing  structure.   "Shah  Jehan,  who  built  this  monument,  was  not  only  in  love  with  his   wife,  Mumtaz  Mahal  ('Jewel  of  the  Palace')  but  he  also  had  a  mania  for   construction."  He  built  it  in  response  to  his  wife's  dying  request  to   create  something  by  which  she  would  be  remembered.       18  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Tim  Leary  was  very  impressed  by  the  fact  that  Shah  Jehan  built  the   Taj  as  an  expression  of  personal-human  love.  He  felt  that  the  quest  for   enlightenment  still  always  had  an  element  of  selfishness  ("my  enlighten-   ment") whereas  the  Shah's  love  for  his  wife  was  purely  other-oriented.   The  question  of  how  personal  passionate  human  love  could  be  integrat-   ed with  the  spiritual  quest  for  liberation  was  clearly  a  central  concern   for  Tim  during  this  period — and  perhaps  a  core  theme  of  his  entire   post-psychedelic  life.     As  the  sun  was  setting  and  the  full  moon  rising,  we  set  up  our  ses-   sion blanket  on  the  grass  in  front  of  the  Taj.  The  sight  of  the  Taj  Mahal   in  the  moonlight  is  indescribable,  even  with  normal  perception.  After   our  eyes  got  adapted  to  the  darkness,  the  light  of  the  moon  was  brilliant   as  daylight,  the  white  marble  dome  glistened  pale  blue  and  silver,  while   precious  stones  inlaid  high  on  the  dome  flashed  and  sparkled.  Like  a   mirage  it  hung  in  space,  separated  from  the  earth  by  a  thin  band  of  haze,   glowing  and  humming  with  radiance  in  perfectly  harmonious  wave-   field  patterns.     &  ©  &     In  his  autobiography  Flashbacks  Leary  described  how  in  Almora,   they  rented  a  house  high  on  the  ridge,  with  me  in  the  guest  room,  and   started  a  routine  of  visiting  Lama  Govinda  and  Li  Gotami  every  after-   noon. "It  turned  out  that  the  Lama  and  I  shared  an  intellectual  obses-   sion— a  compulsive  penchant  for  classification."  Govinda  had  made  an   exhaustive  study  of  Asian  systems  of  consciousness  and  Leary,  the  author   of  Interpersonal  Diagnosis  of  Personality,  had  spent  years  studying  Western   systems  of  personality.  They  got  along  famously.     Tim  had  brought  along  nine  English  language  translations  of  the  Tao   Te  Ching.  Each  day,  sitting  on  the  grass  in  the  warm  sun  under  the  pine   trees,  he  would  pick  one  of  Lao  Tse's  verses,  read  each  of  the  versions   and  attempt  to  distill  the  essential  meaning — using  the  perspectives   gained  from  his  psychedelic  experiences.  Lao  Tse's  cryptic  and  profound   meditations  on  the  invisible,  all-pervasive  universal  energy  flow  process,   were  rendered  into  language  that  psychedelic  voyagers  would  recognize   from  their  experiences.  Then  he  would  reduce  them  down  to  the  sparest   possible  formulations,  distilling,  extracting  the  essence,  carving  words       INTRODUCTION  +  RALPH  METZNER  19       like  a  sculptor  hewing  and  polishing  the  stone  to  reveal  the  figure.  Lao   Tse  had  been  a  counselor  to  rulers  and  princes.  Leary  translated  his   advice  to  them  into  suggestions  for  the  psychedelic  session  guide.     I  feel  these  meditations  on  psychedelic  consciousness  expansion  are   perhaps  Tim  Leary  s  most  inspired  writings.  They  are,  by  turns,  serene,   sensuous,  funny,  and  wise.  He  continued  to  work  on  them  after  he  had   returned  to  Millbrook,  where  they  were  organized  as  a  session  manual   in  six  parts,  to  be  read  by  the  voyager  or  guide  before  and  during  a  ses-   sion. I  suggested  the  name  "Psychedelic  Prayers." The  six  parts,  corre-   sponding roughly  to  the  outline  of  The  Psychedelic  Experience,  were  (1)   preparatory,  (2)  highest  point  of  pure  energy  flow,  (3)  visions  of  biologi-   cal or  seed  energy,  (4)  verses  focusing  on  the  perceptual  senses,  (5)  verses   focusing  on  the  chakras,  and  (6)  verses  about  re-entry,  re-imprinting,  or   return  to  everyday  life.     The  three  of  us  also  visited  Sri  Krishna  Prem,  an  expatriate   Englishman  who  had  lived  in  an  ashram  as  devotee  of  Krishna-Radha  in   the  nearby  village  of  Mirtola  for  over  forty  years.  He  was  an  extraordi-   nary figure,  who  had  integrated  Hindu  and  Buddhist  teachings  with  the   esoteric  wisdom  traditions  of  the  West,  including  Gurdjieff.  Where   Govinda  was  a  scholar,  a  pandit,  Krishna  Prem  was  truly  a  sage — a  very   down-to-earth,  unassuming,  humble  and  humorous  one.  After  our  initial   visit,  Tim  went  back  once  more  by  himself.  I  believe  that  with  Krishna   Prem  Tim  was  probably  the  closest  that  he  ever  came  to  accepting  a   spiritual  teacher.  In  Flashbacks  he  called  Krishna  Prem  "The  Wisest  Man   in  India."     For  me,  the  meeting  with  Sri  Krishna  Prem  was  also  a  turning   point.  When  he  talked  about  the  so-called  "left-hand  path"  of  the   siddhas,  the  tantric  yogis  of  ancient  times,  he  interpreted  this  to  be  the   path  of  integrating  the  weaker,  less  developed  function.  I  realized  that   my  meetings  and  readings  with  Lama  Govinda  were  only  strengthening   my  intellect,  which  was  already  over-developed.  I  suddenly  got  the   strong  feeling  that  I  should  go  back  to  the  States  so  that  I  could  piece   together  my  fractured  romance  with  the  insecure  Kathy.  In  addition,  it   was  obvious  that  the  relationship  between  Tim  and  Nanette  was  under-   going increasing  strain,  and  I  felt  I  should  leave  them  alone  to  work   things  out.  It  was  after  all  their  honeymoon.  What  was  I  doing  there?  I   left  shortly  thereafter.       20  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       When  I  returned  to  Millbrook,  it  was  to  a  scene  of  depressing  chaos.   A  seedy,  drugged-out  guy  met  me  at  the  door  wearing  my  clothes.   Gone  were  the  serenity  and  glowing  warmth  of  Castalia  weekends,  the   joyous  enthusiasm  for  consciousness  exploration  in  a  family  of  seekers.   Instead,  the  Millbrook  mansion  had  become  an  Addams  Family  house  of   horrors,  a  scene  of  decadence  and  depravity  and  dabbling  in  black  arts,   of  lost  souls  wandering  around  in  permanently  drugged  states,  of  vicious   conflicts  leading  at  times  to  physical  violence.  Kathy's  love  for  me  had   turned  to  hate,  as  she  blamed  my  and  Tim's  absence  for  the  destruction   of  the  Millbrook  dream.  When  Tim  and  Nanette,  their  relationship  in   tatters,  returned  to  Millbrook  some  weeks  later,  he  wrote  of  "the   changes  that  had  converted  Millbrook  from  a  community  of  scholars   and  scientists  to  a  playground  for  rowdy  omnisexuals."  Millbrook  had   become  our  Morbio  Inferiore.     The  league  of  seekers  did,  however,  recover  from  this  debacle.  Leary,   Alpert  and  myself  all  went  onto  other  phases  of  the  story,  told  in  other   books,  other  high  adventures  in  consciousness  exploration.  Nanette  went   on  to  marry  an  American  Buddhist  monk,  who  became  an  eminent   scholar-teacher  of  Tibetan  Buddhism;  one  of  their  daughters  is  a  famous   film  actress.  A  tantric  love  goddess  arrived  for  Timothy  in  the  form  of   the  very  beautiful  Rosemary  Woodruff.  The  Millbrook  community   flowered  again  with  music,  meditation,  laughter,  creativity,  happy  chil-   dren, and  remarkable  people.     §§§     Leary  s  path  after  this  took  him  increasingly  into  the  role  of  pio-   neering social  change  activist.  His  fearless  honesty  and  brilliant  mockery   in  expressing  radical  viewpoints  made  him  many  enemies  in  high  places.   He  had  the  dubious  honor  of  being  called  "the  most  dangerous  man  in   America"  by  none  other  than  Richard  Nixon.  He  spent  upwards  of  50   months  in  jail  on  several  continents,  an  experience  that  left  him  without   bitterness,  but  with  razor-sharp  insight  into  the  American  political  sys-   tem. He  wrote  20  more  books,  developed  theories  and  models  of  con-   sciousness and  contributed  to  numerous  group  creative  projects.  He   married  two  more  times  and  became  a  great-grandfather  before  his   death  in  May,  1996.  To  hundreds  of  thousands  of  his  friends  and  admir-       INTRODUCTION  ♦  RALPH  METZNER  21       ers,  he  remains  one  of  the  outstanding  visionary  geniuses  of  the  20th   century.  To  me  he  was  the  perfect  exemplar  of  one  of  those  who  in  the   last  of  the  Psychedelic  Prayers  are  listed  as  likely  to  be  closer  to  the  Tao —   "smiling  men  with  bad  reputations."     I  don't  believe  he  ever  again  had  the  opportunity  to  devote  himself   so  completely  to  the  exploration  and  description  of  spiritual  develop-   ment, and  how  higher  states  of  consciousness  can  be  integrated  into   ongoing  life.  His  psychedelic  prayers  based  on  the  Tao  Te  Ching  integrate   ancient  Eastern  wisdom  teachings  with  the  insights  of  modern  science,   and  the  practical  knowledge  gained  from  direct  experience  of  expanded   states  of  consciousness.  They  provide  the  spiritual  seeker  using  psyche-   delics  with  an  unsurpassed  guidebook  to  the  realization  of  the  highest   potentials  of  the  human  mind  and  of  these  amazing  substances.       Ralph  Metzner     Sonoma,  California     October,  1996       V       J*  mo  thi    Le>*>,       Hit       Hand-drawn  title-page  of  the   pre-publication  version.       BiBLiOGRAPHiCAL  PREFACE     The  Publishing  History  of  Psychedelic  Prayers   with  a  Note  on  the  Text  of  This  Edition       MICHAEL  HOROWITZ       Written  while  Timothy  Leary  was  visiting  India  in  1965   and  finished  at  his  celebrated  commune-estate  in   Millbrook,  New  York  the  following  year,  Psychedelic  Prayers   is  a  series  of  55  poems  divided  in  six  sections,  adapted  from   the  37  chapters  of  Book  I  of  Tao  Te  Ching  (Way  of  Life),  composed  by   the  immortal  Chinese  Taoist  philosopher  and  keeper  of  the  Royal   Archives,  Lao  Tse,  in  the  6th  century  B.C.     Leary  was  drawn  to  the  "psychedelic"  quality  of  the  ancient  work.   "My  objective,"  he  later  wrote,  "was  to  find  this  seed  idea  in  each  sutra   and  rewrite  it  in  the  lingua  franca  of  psychedelia."  Leary  succeeded  bril-   liantly in  his  aim:  intended  for  guided  meditational  use  during  LSD  ses-   sions, Psychedelic  Prayers  is  perhaps  the  best-loved  among  his  many   books,  and  occupies  a  unique  place  in  psychedelic  literature.     Psychedelic  Prayers  has  an  interesting  publishing  history.  The  first  edi-   tion was  printed  by  famed  Beat  poet  Diane  di  Prima  at  her  Poets  Press   in  Kerhonkson,  NY,  not  far  from  Millbrook.  The  first  edition  was  print-   ed on  textured  paper  and  bound  in  pink  wrappers;  between  one  and   two  thousand  copies  were  printed.  The  second  edition  was  printed  on   laid  paper  in  five  different  colored  inks  for  psychedelic  effect,  and  bound   in  yellow  wrappers;  two  to  three  thousand  copies  of  this  edition  were   published  (but  not  printed)  by  the  Poets  Press.     Psychedelic  artist  Michael  Bowen  created  a  Hindu  design  for  the   front  wrapper  of  both  editions;  the  back  wrapper  bears  the  publisher's   alchemical  emblem.  The  author  dedicated  his  book  to  William  and   Aurora  Hitchcock,  his  Millbrook  benefactors.  Both  editions  appeared  in   the  spring  of  1966,  about  a  year  before  the  psychedelic  Zeitgeist  reached   its  zenith.     University  Books  of  New  Hyde  Park,  NY,  publishers  of       24  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       The  Psychedelic  Experience  (1964),  brought  out  the  third  edition  in  August   1966:  a  photo-offset  copy  of  the  first  edition,  printed  in  dark  brown  ink,   with  nearly  identical  wrappers  to  the  second  edition,  in  a  print  run  of   5,000  copies.     The  fourth  edition  appeared  in  the  early  1970s  under  the  imprint  of   the  League  for  Spiritual  Discovery,  a  religious  organization  founded  by   Leary  in  1967  and  based  upon  the  sacramental  use  of  psychedelic  sub-   stances. Once  again  the  text  was  printed  by  photo-offset;  the  front  and   back  covers  have  entirely  different  designs  by  Dion  Wright.  This  edition,   published  by  the  Mystic  Arts  Bookshop  in  Laguna  Beach,  is  dedicated  to   The  Brotherhood  of  Eternal  Love,  the  legendary  group  of  underground   LSD  distributors  of  the  brand  named  Sunshine.  This  edition  appeared   after  the  author  escaped  prison  and  fled  with  his  wife  Rosemary  to   North  Africa  and  Europe.  The  printing  was  very  small,  probably  no   more  than  2,000  copies,  and  intended  to  raise  money  for  the  legal   expenses  of  the  fugitive  Learys.     The  fifth  North  American  edition  is  the  most  rare  and  unique.  Only   100  sets  were  printed  in  purple  ink,  with  each  poem  on  a  separate  leaf   having  a  border  design  depicting  sacred  plants  executed  by  Michael   Green.  The  calligraphy  was  done  by  Daniel  Raphael.  Each  set  of  sheets   was  contained  within  a  customized  wooden  box  with  a  sliding  top  panel   on  which  the  title  was  carved.  The  work  was  produced  in  Montreal  in   1972  through  the  efforts  of  Rosemary  Leary,  then  separated  from  her   husband  and  living  underground  as  a  fugitive.  It  was  not  intended  for   commercial  sale;  each  leaf  was  supposed  to  represent  "script"  (i.e.,  cur-   rency) which  could  be  traded  like  a  share  of  stock.     The  text  of  the  Prayers  varies  greatly  in  this  edition:  49  (of  the  55   total  poems)  were  printed,  one  to  a  page  (necessitating  some  cuts  in  the   longer  poems)  with  a  number  stamped  on  the  verso  of  each  sheet.  The   arrangement  of  many  of  the  poems  on  the  page  differs  from  their  origi-   nal lay-out,  with  aesthetic  considerations  uppermost.  Leary  expressed   satisfaction  with  this  edition — particularly  the  notion  of  poetry  as   "script,"  for  the  author  and  his  wife  had  sometimes  resorted  to  produc-   ing impromptu  manuscripts  which  they  sold  for  money  in  order  to  sur-   vive in  exile.     The  first  British  edition,  published  by  Academy  Editions,  London,   also  appeared  in  1972.  This  edition  follows  the  text  of  the  first  edition,       BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  PREFACE  +  MICHAEL  HOROWITZ       25       and  is  enhanced  with  Chinese  landscape  drawings.     The  first  foreign  translation,  a  bilingual  edition  printed  in  German   and  English,  appeared  in  Bern,  Switzerland  from  the  publisher  Mantram   in  1975  with  a  dust  jacket  designed  by  Swiss  artist  Hans  Giger,  later  of   Alien  fame.  Two  other  friends  of  the  exiled  Learys,  the  British  writer   Brian  Barritt,  and  Swiss  author  Sergius  Golowin,  wrote  introductions.   Pirated  editions  of  the  German  translation  appeared  from  God's  Press  in   Amsterdam  &  Kathmandu  in  1975,  and  fromVolksverlag  in  Linden,   Germany  in  1982.     A  possibly  unique,  self-described  "pre-publication  manuscript"   (actually,  mimeographed)  copy  in  the  Ludlow  Library  bears  the  variant   title  Psychedelic  Prayer  Book.  (This  copy  belonged  to  Rt.  Rev.  Michael   Francis  Itkin,  known  in  New  York's  East  Village  during  the  mid-1960s  as   the  "psychedelic  priest.")  The  author's  Harvard  and  Millbrook  colleague   Ralph  Metzner  is  listed  as  co-author,  and  Rabbi  Zalman  Schachter   (whose  LSD  trip  with  Leary  at  Millbrook  is  documented  in  High  Priest)   provided  some  "added  commentary."  In  their  one-page  introduction,   Leary  and  Metzner  describe  this  edition  as  "being  given  to  a  few   friends"  with  the  "hope  you  will  send  us  your  ideas  for  improving"  the   work.       Just  Published     PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS     From  the  Tao  Te  Ching     This  First  Edition  is  a  small  printing,  which  will  be  a  collectors  item  in   six  months.     Psychedelic  vellum  — ninety-six  pages.     Fifty-five  poems,  in  preparation  for  the  session,  for  re-entry,  odes  to   the  energy  process,  to  the  genetic  code,  to  the  external  and  internal   sense  organs.       Hard  cover:  S6.00   Soft  cover:  *3.00     Order  From:     CASTALIA  FOUNDATION   Post  Off  ice  Box  175   Millbrook,  N.Y.  12545       Advertisement   for  Psychedelic   Prayers  from   East  Village   Other.       P  tycheaehc     Piayei*     after   the     ^O     U     cniny     by     Timothy     Leary     POETS     PRESS     Kerhonkson,   New  York     University  Books  edition       Poets  Press  edition       \\mc\hu   Lcaiy       m       Wood  Box  edition       League  for  Spiritual   Discovery  edition       First  U.K.  edition       First  German  edition:     dust  jacket  art  by     H.R.  Giger       L0110110100000I,     LoionoiioooKv   )iooCV>oooo-/  S     1000:/  n^/n     '     L'i-4   D10C       28  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       A  NOTE  ON  THE  TEXT  OF  THIS  EDITION     Two  poems  from  PartV  (V-7  and  V-8)  have  been  moved  to   Part  II  (where  they  are  now  II-8  and  II-9)  as  it  seemed  to   the  editors  these  poems  properly  belonged  to  an  earlier  stage   of  the  psychedelic  experience.   Six  new  poems  from  later  chapters  of  the  Tao  Te  Ching  were  adapted   by  the  author  and  his  wife  Rosemary  in  Laguna  Beach,  California  about   two  years  after  the  first  publication  of  the  book,  and  published  in  the   January  17,  1969  issue  of  New  York  City's  underground  newspaper  the   East  Village  Other  under  the  title  "Poems  on  the  Conduct  of  Life."  The   text  of  the  poems  is  preceded  by  a  600-word  preface  in  which  the   author  discusses,  at  times  from  new  perspectives,  the  importance  of  the   Tao  Te  Ching,  and  states  his  intention  of  publishing  "a  newTaoist  guide-   book which  could  be  called  How  To  Live  The  Turned-On  Life  In  An   Uptight  Society."  Five  of  the  poems  are  reprinted  here  in  newly  edited   versions  (the  sixth  poem  is  an  experimental  sound  poem  that  is  better   recited  than  printed).     A  final  poem  has  been  added  at  the  end  of  the  present  edition.   "Homage  to  the  Awe-full  Seer,"  the  longest  poem  in  the  book,  was   originally  published  in  Psychedelic  Review  no.  9  in  1967.  Although  not  a   translation  from  the  Tao  te  Ching,  the  theme  of  the  poem  closely  associ-   ates it  with  the  wisdom-message  of  the  ancient  Chinese  text  and  the   impact  made  by  the  sage  who  wrote  it.     Regarding  the  text  of  this  edition,  readers  familiar  with  the  original   1966  edition  will  notice  occasional  revision.  The  editors,  who  have  all   worked  closely  with  Timothy  Leary  on  literary  projects,  have  been  long   aware  of  Leary  s  penchant  for  revising — often  substantially — each  of  his   books  at  the  time  of  their  re-publication.  During  the  last  months  of  his   life  Timothy  knew  of  the  plan  to  republish  Psychedelic  Prayers — which   pleased  him  greatly — but  was  too  ill  to  work  on  the  new  edition.  He   made  it  clear  that  he  expected  us  to  make  changes  we  deemed  necessary   ("It's  your  call,"  he  liked  to  say).     Ralph  Metzner,  co-author  with  Leary  and  Richard  Alpert  of  The   Psychedelic  Experience  (1964),  assisted  Leary  when  he  first  produced  these   translations  in  India  in  1965,  and  as  noted  earlier  is  listed  as  co-author  in   the  pre-publication,  mimeographed  edition  of  Psychedelic  Prayers.       BIOGRAPHICAL  PREFACE  +  MICHAEL  HOROWITZ  29       Rosemary  Leary,  who  became  engaged  to  the  author  while  he  was   still  completing  work  on  this  book,  recited  the  prayers  with  her  husband   at  public  events  during  the  mid-1960s,  making  revisions  in  the  text  as   they  went  along;  she  worked  on  the  adaptations  of  the  additional  poems   published  in  1969,  and  was  responsible  for  the  remarkable  1972  wooden   box  edition.     Michael  Horowitz,  the  author's  archivist  and  bibliographer,  has  per-   formed editorial  work  on  Leary  s  books  for  25  years,  from  Jail  Notes   (1970)  to  Chaos  and  Cyberculture  (1994).     While  the  editors  had  the  author's  encouragement  and  blessing  in   taking  on  the  daunting  task  of  re-editing  this  sacred  text  of  psychedelic   literature,  they  take  full  responsibility  for  any  and  all  revisions,  as   Timothy  Leary  passed  away  (May  31,  1996)  shortly  before  we  began   working  on  this  new  edition.     Note:  The  source  for  the  bibliographical  data  in  this  article  is:  An  Annotated   Bibliography  of  Timothy  Leary  by  Michael  Horowitz,  Karen  Walls,  and   Billy  Smith  (Archon  Books,  1988).  Acknowledgement  is  also  made  to  The  Fitz   Hugh  Ludlow  Memorial  Library,  where  the  printed  works  herein  described  and   illustrated  were  made  available  for  examination.       mmmmmmmmmmm       Rosemary  and  Timothy  at  their  home   in  Berkeley  in  1968.       PREFACE     ROSEMARY  WOODRUFF  LEARY     In  August  1965,  a  few  months  after  we  first  met,  Tim   picked  me  up  at  my  apartment  in  Manhattan  and  took  me   to  the  Millbrook  Estate  for  a  week  or  so  before  I  left  for   California.   Tim  led  me  to  the  tower  room.  The  window  overlooking  the  vast     grounds  was  framed  by  a  Hoya  plant  whose  blossoms  scented  the  air.     Later  that  evening  he  brought  a  bottle  of  wine  and  a  tattered  manuscript     to  read  by  candlelight.  His  voice  caressed  me  softly.     Gate  of  the  Soft  Mystery   Gate  of  the  Dark  Woman     I  stayed  awake  all  that  night  puzzling  over  his  adaptations  of  Lao   Tse.  I  didn't  go  to  California.     Recently,  I  rediscovered  a  manuscript  titled  1 08  Memories  of  Our   Present  Incarnation  which  Tim  wrote  for  me  while  in  the  California  State   Prison  at  San  Luis  Obispo  in  1970.  In  this  passage  Tim  recalls  writing   one  of  the  poems  in  Psychedelic  Prayers:     "Number  1 1.  Millbrook — During  LSD  session.  We  went   upstairs  and  made  love.  I  wrote  the  sex  chakra  poem  in   memory  of  your  trembling  earth  beauty.  Nov.  '66"     A  later  reference  in  the  same  manuscript  refers  to  reading  the   poems  together  on-stage  during  the  road  tour  of  the  Psychedelic   Celebrations  later  that  winter:     "Number  42.  Standing  on  stage  at  celebration  reciting  our   poetry  and  hearing  your  soft  voice  echoing  back.  What   beauty  our  love  created  for  the  world."       32       PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       I'd  like  to  think  so.     The  next  few  years  brought  summers  of  love  and  seminars,  fall  lec-   ture tours,  winter  harassments,  arrests  and  trials  that  culminated  with   Tim's  prison  escape  and  our  flight  to  exile  in  Algeria  and  Switzerland.     In  the  winter  of  1972,  after  Tim  and  I  had  gone  our  separate  ways,   the  Psychedelic  Prayers  re-entered  my  life.  A  fugitive,  I  was  hiding  out  in  a   farmhouse  near  Ste.  Agathe  in  Quebec.  The  snow  reached  above  the  first   floor  and  the  electricity  was  out.  Again,  by  candlelight,  I  reread  and  edit-   ed the  poems  while  my  friend  Brigitte  collated  the  pages  and  baked  oat-   meal cookies  and  her  husband  Sergai  made  the  beautiful  boxes  to  con-   tain them.  We  never  made  any  money  from  this  loving  endeavor,  but   Brigitte  and  Sergai  Mars,  with  their  baby  daughter  Sunflower,  traded   them  for  food  in  health  stores  across  the  country.  Brigitte  later  gave   these  sets  to  Dr.  Oscar  Janiger,  Terence  McKenna,  and  distinguished   herbalists.  Brigitte  is  including  a  few  of  the  poems  in  her  new  book  on   herbs.     If  you  knew  how  to  listen,     the  seed  would  hum  you  a  seed  song.     It  has  been  an  immense  pleasure  to  once  again  read  and  edit  Tim's   work,  this  time  in  the  company  of  dear  friends  Ralph  Metzner  and   Michael  and  Cindy  Horowitz.     I  hope  that  lovers  and  seekers  finding  these  poems  will     Keep  in  touch     and  be  at  home   everywhere.       Rosemary  Woodruff  Leary   1996       PREFACE  +  ROSEMARY  WOODRUFF  LEARY  33       Beloved  -     Here  are  forty-nine  sutras  baser1  on  Book  I  of  the   Tao  Te  Ching .     This  pre-publication  manuscript  is  being  given  to  a  few   friends.  We  hope  they  will  enlighten  you.  We  hope  you  will  send     us  your  ideas  for  improving  them.     The  sutras  are  divided  into  five  sections.  For  use  in  a     psychedelic  session  it  is  best  to  select  two  or  three  from  each     section.  They  should  be  read  very  slowly  and  in  a  serene  voice.     They  should  be  considered  prayers  to  be  whispered.     Part  I  is  read  before  the  session.  The  sutra  about  the   guide  is  especially  important  since  it  sets  up  the  contract  for   conducting  the  session.     Part  II  contains  sutras  about  pure  energy.  These  prayers   are  to  be  read  at  the  highest  point  in  a  session.     Part  III  concerns  biological  or  seed  energy  and  can  be   read  during  the  very  "high"  points  of  the  session.     Part  IV  is  prepared  for  experiments  in  body  awareness-   breaking  through  to  cakras  or  somatic  nerve  centers.     Part  V  is  t*  be  read  towards  the  end  of  the  session-  between   the  eighth  and  twenty-fourth  hour.     Keep  in  touch....     T.L.   R.M.       Early  version  of  Introduction.       Timothy  Leary  on   the  cover  of  the   San  Francisco  Oracle   (December  16,  1966).       FOREWORD     TIMOTHY  LEARY     The  psychedelic  or  visionary  experience  releases  a  wide   range  of  awareness-of-energy  and  tunes  us  in  to  patterns  of   neurological  signals  which  are  usually  censored  from  mental   life.     Understanding,  description,  and  intelligent  use  of  these  released   energies  have  puzzled  scholars  for  thousands  of  years.  Today,  LSD  ses-   sions puzzle,  enrapture,  awe,  and  confuse.     Mainly  they  confuse.     During  the  last  five  years,  1960-65,  we  have  witnessed  a  psychedelic   revolution.  Consider  the  statistics.     Over  one  hundred  and  fifty  million  Americans  share  the  same   imprinted  symbol  system — tribal  language  and  rituals.     Of  these,  a  good  ten  million  have  taken  the  first  psychedelic  step   and  experienced  the  neural  level  of  consciousness — have  transcended   symbols  and  contacted  raw  energy  hitting  their  nerve  endings.  Here  we   include  the  marijuana  smokers,  the  adepts  in  hatha  yoga,  and  meditators.     Another  group,  at  least  500,000  Americans,  have  contacted  cellular   consciousness — have  had  experiences  which  transcend  both  symbolic   game  and  the  sensory  apparatus.  We  include  here  the  peyote  eaters,  the   mushroom  eaters,  the  LSD  cult.  If  we  add  those  millions  of  persons  who   have  had  an  involuntary  psychedelic  experience,  those  institutionalized   mystics  we  call  psychotic,  the  ranks  of  this  group  swell  to  astounding   proportions.  More  than  any  other  group,  psychotics  need  the  sort  of   training  and  guidance  provided  by  psychedelic  manuals.  They  are   whirled  into  realms  of  raw  sensory  bombardment  and  cellular  hallucina-   tion— unprepared  and  socially  anathematized.  If  psychotics  were  trained   in  the  use  of  psychedelic  manuals  such  as  this  volume  they  would  have   some  understanding  and  control  of  the  multi-level,  multiple-exposure   experiences  we  call  hallucinatory.     Next  we  have  those  whose  consciousness  has  gone  beyond  game,   gone  beyond  direct  sensory  awareness,  gone  beyond  cellular  flow  and       mmmmmtm®***       36  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       contacted  the  molecular  and  elemental  energies  that  crackle  and  vibrate   within  the  cellular  structure.  Those  who  have  taken  large  doses  of  LSD,   mescaline,  DMT,  and  experienced  what  the  eastern  psychologists  call   the  "white  light,"  the  "void,"  the  "inner  light."     Each  of  these  psychedelic  levels — neural,  cellular,  molecular — are   beyond  symbols,  incoherent  to  the  symbolic  mind.  And  each  of  these   levels  of  consciousness  is  different  from  the  others.  This  wide  spectrum   of  whirling  energies — all  uncharted  and  unlabelled — confronts  the  psy-   chedelic explorer.     So  what  is  the  net  effect  of  these  millions  of  visionary  voyages?     A  linguistic  babel.     A  chaos  of  potentiality.     A  confusion  of  promise.     Most  of  these  psychedelic  voyagers  are  now  aware  of  the  limitless   realities  stored  in  the  nervous  systems,  but  there  is  no  conception  of  the   meaning  and  use  of  these  potentials.     There  are  of  course  no  pat  solutions,  no  easy  answers  provided  by   LSD.  On  the  contrary,  every  paradox,  every  ambiguity,  every  problem  of   static-symbolic  life  is  intensified,  raised  to  exponential  powers.  Where   there  once  was  a  blind  robot  symbolic  uncertainty  (Johnson  or   Goldwater?),  there  is  now  an  uncertainty  compounded  and  multiplied   by  the  knowledge  of  the  illusory  nature  of  routine  reality  and  the  exis-   tence of  countless  realities.     From  the  beginning  of  the  Harvard-IFIF-Castalia  exploration  into   consciousness  two  facts  were  apparent.  First,  that  there  were  no  extant   maps,  models,  myths,  theories,  languages  to  describe  the  psychedelic   experience.  Second,  that  the  temptation  to  impose  old  models,  prema-   ture theories  must  be  resisted.     No  current  philosophic  or  scientific  theory  was  broad  enough  to   handle  the  potential  of  the  13  billion-cell  computer.     Our  decision  then  was  to  maintain  an  open  posture,  to  collect  data   on  psychedelic  sessions  from  a  wide  variety  of  subjects,  in  a  wide  variety   of  settings,  and  to  continue  to  look  for  better  models  and  theories  to   explain  the  psychedelic  experience.     It  became  apparent  that,  in  order  to  run  exploratory  sessions,  manu-   als and  programs  were  necessary  to  guide  subjects  through  transcenden-   tal experiences  with  a  minimum  of  fear  and  confusion.  Rather  than  start       FOREWORD  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY  37       de  novo  using  our  own  minds  and  limited  experiences  to  map  out  the   voyage,  we  turned  to  the  only  available  psychological  texts  which  dealt   with  consciousness  and  its  alterations — the  ancient  books  of  the  East.     The  Tibetan  Book  of  the  Dead  is  a  psychedelic  manual — incredibly   specific  about  the  sequence  and  nature  of  experiences  encountered  in   the  ecstatic  state.  A  revision  of  this  text  published  under  the  title  The   Psychedelic  Experience  was  our  first  attempt  at  session  programming.     For  the  last  two  years  we  have  been  working  with  another  old,   time-tested  psychedelic  manual — the  Chinese  text  Tao  Te  Ching,   sometimes  translated  as  The  Way  of  Life.     Written  some  2600  years  ago  by  one  or  several  philosophers  known   to  us  now  as  "the  old  fellow"  (LaoTse),  this  text  is  still  timelessly  mod-   ern and  will  remain  so  for  thousands  of  years  to  come — as  long  as  man   has  the  same  sort  of  nervous  system  and  deals  with  the  range  of  energies   he  now  encounters.     The  Tao  Te  Ching  deals  with  energy.  Tao  is  best  translated  as  "ener-   gy," as  energy  process.  Energy  in  its  pure  unstructured  state  (the  E  of   Einstein's  equation)  and  energy  in  its  countless,  temporary  states  of   structure  (the  M  of  Einstein's  equation).     The  Tao  is  an  ode  to  nuclear  physics,  to  life,  to  the  genetic  code,  to   that  form  of  transient  energy  structure  we  call  "man,"  to  those  most  stat-   ic, lifeless  forms  of  energy  we  call  man's  artifacts  and  symbols.     The  message  of  the  Tao  Te  Ching  is  that  all  is  energy,  all  energy   flows,  all  things  are  continually  transforming.     The  Tao  Te  Ching  is  a  series  of  81  verses  which  celebrate  the  flow  of   energy,  its  manifestation  and,  on  the  practical  side,  the  implications  of   this  philosophy  for  man's  endeavors.  Most  of  the  pragmatic  sutras  of  the   Tao  were  directed  towards  the  ruler  of  a  state.  How  can  the  king  and  his   ministers  use  this  knowledge  of  the  energy  powers  to  govern  harmo-   niously?     Like  all  great  biblical  texts,  the  Tao  has  been  rewritten  and  re-inter-   preted in  every  century  and  this  is  as  it  should  be.  The  terms  for  Tao   change  in  each  century.  In  our  times  Einstein  rephrases  it,  quantum  the-   ory revises  it,  the  geneticists  translate  it  in  terms  of  DNA  and  RNA,  but   the  message  is  the  same.     The  practical  aspects  of  the  Tao  must  also  be  rewritten  and  adapted   to  the  everyday  situation.  The  advice  given  by  the  smiling  philosophers       38  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       of  China  to  their  emperor  can  be  applied  to  how  to  run  your  home,   your  office,  and  how  to  conduct  a  psychedelic  session.     The  Tao  Te  Ching  is  divided  into  two  books — the  first  comprising   thirty-seven  chapters,  the  second  forty-four.     In  this  volume  of  Psychedelic  Prayers  from  the  Tao  Te  Ching  you  will   find  fifty-six  poems  which  are  based  on  the  thirty-seven  chapters  of   Book  I  of  the  original.     These  translations  from  English  to  psychedelese  were  made  while   sitting  under  a  bamboo  tree  on  a  grassy  slope  of  the  Kumaon  Hills  over-   looking the  snow  peaks  of  the  Himalayas.     The  work  went  like  this.  I  had  nine  English  translation  of  the  Tao.  I   would  select  a  Tao  chapter  and  read  and  reread  all  nine  English  versions   of  it.  Each  translator,  of  course,  made  his  own  interpretation  of  the  flow-   ing calligraphy.  Nine  western  minds.  But  after  hours  of  rereading  and   meditation  the  essence  of  the  poem  would  slowly  bubble  up.  The  aim   was  to  relate  this  essence  theme  to  psychedelic  sessions.  Slowly  a  psy-   chedelic version  of  the  chapter  would  emerge.     The  first  draft  version  would  then  be  put  under  the  psychedelic   microscope.  For  several  years  I  have  pursued  the  yoga  of  one  LSD  ses-   sion every  seven  days.  The  neurological  amplification  of  cannabis  was  also   available.  Each  time  our  Moslem  cook  walked  down  to  the  village  he   would  bring  back  a  crayon-size  stick  of  attar.  Attar  means  essence.  The   essence  resin  of  the  marijuana  plant  is  sometimes  called  hashish.     LSD  opened  up  the  lenses  of  cellular  and  molecular  consciousness.   Attar  cleansed  the  windows  of  the  senses.     During  these  sessions  I  would  read  the  most  recent  draft  of  the  Tao   poems.  A  humbling  experience  for  the  poet — to  have  his  words  exposed   to  the  pitiless  magnification  of  the  psychedelic  perspective.     Psychedelic  poetry,  like  all  psychedelic  art,  is  crucially  concerned   with  flow.  Each  psychedelic  poem  is  carefully  tailored  for  a  certain  time   in  the  sequence  of  the  session.  Simplicity  and  diamond  purity  are   important.  Intellectual  flourishes  and  verbal  pyrotechnics  are  painfuly   obvious  to  the  "turned  on"  nervous  system.     During  these  examinations  a  ruthless  process  of  polishing,  cutting   away  takes  place.  Slowly  the  most  blatant  redundancies  and  mentalisms   were  pruned.     Each  poem  in  this  volume  has  been  exposed  to  several  dozen       FOREWORD  *  TIMOTHY  LEARY  39       appraisals  by  lysergicized  nervous  systems.  Each  psychedelic  "try-out"  is   different.  People  s  reactions  vary.  What  is  essence-simplicity  to  one,  is   truism  to  another.  The  "right"  metaphor  for  one  is  contrived  to  another.     Most  readers  have  found  five  or  so  poems  in  this  collection  which   vibrate  in  tune  to  their  deepest  resonances. The  rest  do  not  pass  the   inspection  of  their  psychedelic  enlargers.     The  fifty-six  hymns  have  been  divided  into  six  groups:     Part  I.  Preparatory  prayers  to  be  read  before  the  session.  These   hymns  apply  the  creative  quietude  of  Lao  Tse  to  the  technique  of  run-   ning a  psychedelic  session.     Part  II.  Prayers  invoking  pure  energy  flow,  molecular  or  atomic   energy  beyond  symbol,  sense-organ  or  cellular  energy.  These  prayers  are   to  be  read  slowly  and  ethereally  during  the  "high"  points  which  usually   come  during  the  first  three  hours  of  an  LSD  session.     Part  III.  Prayers  invoking  cellular  consciousness,  seed  energy.  Odes   glorifying  the  DNA  code  to  be  read  from  the  third  to  sixth  hour  of  the   LSD  session.     Part  IV.  Prayers  invoking  sensory  experiences  registered  by  the   external  sense  organs.  Hymns  glorifying  the  direct  awareness  of  vision,   hearing,  touch,  smell,  taste  to  be  read  from  the  sixth  to  ninth  hours  of   the  LSD  session  or  during  sessions  involving  neural  ecstatagenic  agents   such  as  marijuana,  low  doses  of  LSD,  hatha  yoga,  meditation.     Part  V.  Prayers  invoking  sensory  experiences  registered  by  internal   sense  organs,  visceral  awareness  from  the  nerve  plexes  mediating  elimi-   nation, sex,  heart,  lungs,  and  the  frontal  cortex.  These  hymns  can  be  read   during  the  sixth  to  ninth  hours  of  an  LSD  session  when  the  subject  has   cut  himself  off  from  external  stimulation.     Part  VI.  Re-imprinting  prayers  designed  to  guide  the  subject  dur-   ing the  period  of  re-entry  (nine  to  24  hours),  while  the  subject  is   returning  to  the  symbolic  world  and  the  post-session  imprint  is  being   formed.       40  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       These  divisions  are  based  on  the  theory  of  levels  of  consciousness   developed  during  six  years  of  psychedelic  research  and  included  in  Static   and  Ecstatic  Consciousness  [this  book  remains  unpublished— editor] .     This  mapping  of  consciousness  is  based  on  the  neurological  and  bio-   chemical anatomy  of  the  human  body.     The  theory  is  simple.     Consciousness  is  energy  received  by  structure.     There  are  as  many  dimensions  of  consciousness  as  there  are  struc-   tures in  the  body  to  receive  and  decode  energy.     Any  high  school  text  in  biology  can  be  used  to  define  the  dimen-   sions of  consciousness.     1.  There  is  the  symbolic  mind — that  fraction  of  the  nervous  system   which  perceives,  discriminates,  interprets,  remembers  learned  (i.e.,  con-   ditioned) cues  selectively  imposed  on  the  kaleidoscope  of  sensation.  This   is  the  imprinted  mind.  The  prayers  in  Part  VI  of  this  volume  are  to  be   used  during  the  latter  stages  of  the  psychedelic  experience  when  the  re-   imprinting  process  begins  to  impose  stasis  on  the  ecstatic  flow.     2.  The  nervous  system  defines  the  level  of  neural  consciousness —   direct,  symbol-free  registration  of  energies  by  nerve  endings.  The  prayers   in  Part  IV  of  this  volume  are  hymns  to  the  five  exterior  senses.  Odes  of   gratitude  and  reverent  readiness  to  attend  to  the  tattoo  of  energies  hit-   ting the  visual,  auditory,  tactile,  olfactory  and  gustatory  sense  bulbs.     3.  Interoceptive  sensations  are  messages  from  internal  organs.  Most   of  these  sensations  are  excluded  from  symbolic  consciousness.  Tibetan   Buddhists  and  Tantric  Hindus  have  worked  for  centuries  with  methods   of  contacting  interior  sensations  and  maps  for  symbolizing  them.  These   levels  of  internal  consciousness  are  called  chakras.  PartV  of  this  volume   includes  hymns  to  five  classes  of  internal  sensations — messages  from  the   eliminative,  sexual,  cardiac,  respiratory  and  fore-brain  centers.     4.  The  unit  of  life,  the  building  block  of  the  tissues  and  organs  medi-   ated by  the  nervous  system,  is  the  cell.  The  cell  is  a  highly  complicated   structure  for  registering  and  transforming  energy.  Every  cell  in  your   body  is  an  organization  network  more  complicated  than  the  city  of       FOREWORD  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY  41       New  York.  The  cell  registers  and  decodes  energy  and  remembers.  The   cell  is  in  communicative  contact  with  the  grosser  level  of  consciousness   of  the  nervous  system.  The  brain  of  the  cell  is  DNA.The  afferent-effer-   ent nervous  system  of  the  cell  is  RNA.  Part  III  of  this  volume  is  made   up  of  hymns  praising  the  power  and  ancient  wisdom  of  the  cell,  the   seed  consciousness  of  DNA.     5.  Cells  are  composed  of  smaller  structures — amino  acid  molecules   and  atomic  elements.  These  structures  receive  and  decode  energy. They   are  older,  wiser,  more  powerful  than  cells.  The  atom  uses  molecules  and   cells  the  way  the  DNA  code  uses  tissues,  organs  and  nervous  systems   and  the  way  the  symbolic  mind  uses  cars  and  tractors.  Part  II  of  this   volume  praises  the  wisdom  of  molecular  and  atomic  process,  prepares   you  for  this  awesome  level  of  consciousness  and  guides  you  through  it.     6.  Part  I  of  this  volume  collects  those  Tao  prayers  which  are  relevant   to  guiding  a  psychedelic  session.  These  prayers  are  not  specific  to  any   particular  level  of  consciousness.  They  present  the  philosophy  of  creative   quietude  passed  on  by  Lao  Tse.       The  Tao  manual,  like  all  other  psychedelic  texts,  must  be  studied   intensively,  the  detailed  theory  of  energy  transformations  thoroughly   learned,  and  the  commentary  notes  for  those  prayers  selected  for  the   session  reread  several  times.     Psychedelic  poetry  should  be  read  aloud  (or  taped)  at  a  slow  tempo,   in  a  low  natural  voice.  The  prayers  are  best  read  or  taped  by  one  who  is   "high"  at  the  time.  Any  tension,  artificiality  or  game-playing  on  the  part   of  the  reader  stands  out  in  embarrassing  relief.     Read  by  the  static  intellect  imprinted  to  symbols,  and  inundated  by   the  verbosity  of  our  culture,  these  sutras  are  simply  another  sequence  of   lifeless  words.  But  to  the  consciousness  released  from  imprinted  statics   these  prayers  can  become  precise  bursts  of  trembling  energy  and  breath-   less meaning.     You  will  wonder,  perhaps,  at  the  use  of  the  term  "prayer"  to  label   these  sutras.     Prayer  is  ecstatic  poetry.  Psychedelic  communication.       42  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Ordinary,  static  communication  in  terms  of  prose  symbols,  is  game.   Mind  addressing  mind.     You  cannot  describe  the  ecstatic  moment  in  static  terms.     You  cannot  (without  regret)  communicate  during  the  ecstatic   moment  in  static  prose.     You  cannot  produce  ecstasy  with  static  symbol  sequences.     When  you  are  in  a  psychedelic  state — out  beyond  symbols — game   communication  seems  pointless.  Irrelevant.  Inappropriate.  Inadequate.     There  is  no  need  to  communicate — because  everything  is  already  in   communication.  You  are  plugged  into  the  multiplex  network  of  energy   exchanges.     But  there  are  those  transition  moments  of  terror,  of  isolation,  of  rev-   erence, of  gratitude... when  there  comes  that  need  to  communicate.     The  need  to  communicate  with  the  non-game  energy  source  that   you  sense  in  yourself  and  around  you.     And  there  is  the  need,  at  exactly  that  moment,  for  a  language  which   is  not  mental  or  cliche.  A  straight,  pure,  "right"  non-game  language.     This  is  prayer.     Mantra.     Ejaculation.     There  are  moments  in  every  psychedelic  session  when  there  comes   that  need  to  communicate — at  the  highest  and  best  level  you  are  capable   of.     This  need  has  been  known  and  sensed  for  thousands  of  years.  All   prayers  are  originally  psychedelic  communications  with  higher  freer   energies — tuning  yourself  in  to  the  billion-year-old  energy  dance.     Conventional  prayers,  for  the  most  part,  have  degenerated  into  game   rituals.  Slogans.  Meaningless  verbalizations.  Appeals  for  game  help.     But  that  crucial  non-game  terror-reverence  awe-full  moment   comes...     There  comes  that  time  when  the  ecstatic  cry  is  called  for.       FOREWORD  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       43       At  that  time,  you  must  be  ready  to  pray.     To  go  beyond  yourself.  To  contact  energy  beyond  your  game.     At  that  time  you  must  be  ready  to  pray.     When  you  have  lost  the  need  to  pray. . .     You  are  a  dead  man  in  a  world  of  dead  symbols.     Pray  for  life.     Pray  for  life.       Timothy  Leary     Kumaon  Hills,  Almora,  India,  1965     Millbrook,  New  York,  1966       PRBYER5  FORPREPARAtlOn     HOMAGE  TO   LAO  TSE     I  -  1  The  Guide     1-2  When  the  Harmony  Is  Lost     1-3  Life  Seed  Death     1-4  Let  There  Be  Simple  Natural  Things     1-5  All  Things  Pass     1-6  The  Message  of  Posture       PART  I  ♦  PRAYERS  FOR  PREPARATION  41       €&5     The  Guide       In  the  greatest  sessions     One  does  not  know  that  there  is  a  guide     In  the  next  best  sessions   One  praises  the  guide     It  is  worse  when   One  fears  the  guide   Or  when  one  pays  him     If  the  guide  lacks  trust  in  the  people   The  trust  of  the  people  will  be  lacking     The  wise  guide  guards  his  words   And  sits  serenely     When  the  greatest  session  is  over     The  people  will  say:     "It  all  happened  naturally"     "It  was  so  simple,  we  did  it  all  ourselves."       48  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       When  The  Harmony  Is  Lost     When  the  harmony  is  lost     Then  come  clever  discussions  and     "Wise  men"  appear       When  the  unity  is  lost   Then  come  "friends"     When  the  session  is  plunged     Into  disorder     Then  there  are  "doctors"       PART  I  ♦  PRAYERS  FOR  PREPARATION  49     Life,  light,  love   Seed,  sun,  son   Death,  daughter,  dna     Hold  in  reverence     This  Great  Symbol  of  Transformation     And  the  whole  world  comes  to  you     Comes  to  you  without  harm     Dwells  in  common  wealth     Dwells  in  the  union  of  Heaven  and  Earth     Offer  music  . . .  food  . . .  wine  . . .   And  the  passing  guest  will  stay  a  while     But  the  molecular  message     In  its  passage  through  the  mouth     Is  without  flavor     It  cannot  be  seen     It  cannot  be  heard     It  cannot  be  exhausted  by  use     It  remains       50  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY     Let  There  Be  Simple  Natural  Things   During  The  Session     Let  there  be  simple,  natural  things   to  contact  during  the  session-   hand  woven  cloth     uncarved  wood     ancient  music     flowers-growing  things     burning  fire     a  touch  of  earth     a  splash  of  water     fruit  . . .  good  bread  . . .  cheese     wine     sacred  smoke     candles     temple  incense     a  warm  hand     anything  more  than  five  hundred  years  old     Of  course  it  is  always  best  to  be   Secluded  with  nature       PART  I  ♦  PRAYERS  FOR  PREPARATION  51       All  Things  Pass     All  things  pass     A  sunrise  does  not  last  all  morning   All  things  pass     A  cloudburst  does  not  last  all  day   All  things  pass     Nor  a  sunset  all  night     But  Earth  . . .  sky  . . .  thunder  . . .     wind  . . .  fire  .  . .  lake  . . .     mountain  . . .  water  . . .   These  always  change     And  if  these  do  not  last   Do  man's  visions  last?   Do  man's  illusions?     During  the  session   Take  things  as  they  come     All  things  pass       52  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY     CLr  O     The  Message  Of  Posture     During  the  session   Observe  your  body   Mandala  of  the  universe     Observe  your  body     Of  ancient  design     Holy  temple  of  consciousness     Central  stage  of  the  oldest  drama     Observe  its  structured  wonders   Skin  . . .  hair  . . .  tissue   Bone  . . .  vein  . . .  muscle   Net  of  nerve     Observe  its  message   Does  it  merge  or  does  it  strain?   Does  it  rest  serene  on  sacred  ground   Or  tilt,  propped  up  by  wire  and  sticks?     On  tiptoe  one  cannot  stand  for  long   Tension  retards  the  flow     Superfluous  noise  and  redundant  action   Stand  out-square,  proud,  cramped   Against  the  harmony     Observe  the  mandala  of  your  body       ART       The  EXPERiEncE  of     ELEIIIEnTAL  EF[ER£Y       HOMAGE  TO  THE  ATOM       II- 1     That  Which  Is  Called  the  Tao     II -2     Ethereal  Pool     II-  3     Jewelled  Indifference     II -4     Falling  Free     II-  5     Sheathing  the  Self     II-  6     Manifestation  of  the  Mystery     II-  7     Please  Do  Not  Clutch  at  the  Gossamer  Web     II-  8     Hold  Fast  to  the  Void     II -9     Take  In-Let  Go     ?%  #8       PART  II  *  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ELEMENTAL  ENERGY  55       That  Which  Is  Called  The  Tao   Is  Not  The  Tao     The  flow  of  energy  . . .   Here  ...  It  ...  Is  .. .     Nameless     Timeless     Speed  of  light     Float  . . .  beyond  fear  . . .     Float  . . .  beyond  desire  . . .     Into  this  Mystery  of  Mysteries     Through  this  Gate  of  All  Wonder       56  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Ethereal  Pool  Without  Source     Empty  bowl  of  radiance   Full  of  starry  universe   Silent  void   Shimmering   Ancestor  of  all  things     Here     All  sharpness  rounded   All  wheels  glide  along   Soft  tracks  of  light     Ethereal  pool  without  source     Preface  to  life       PART  II  *  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ELEMENTAL  ENERGY  51       Jewelled  Indifference     Galactic  play   Belted  radiance   Lethal  spectrum   Restless  diamond  eye     Solar   So  long   So  long?     Jewelled  indifference     Where's  home?   Jewelled  indifference     Where  am  I?   Jewelled  indifference     I  want  to  go  back!   Jewelled  indifference     Help!  I  don't  understand!   Jewelled  indifference     Is  it  all  a  dream?     WARNING!     SOLAR  SHUTTERS  OPENING   LETHAL  LOVE  RADIATION  BEWARE   FATAL  UNITY  BLISS  FUSION       58  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       All  right.  Who's  next?     "The  sound  man  faces  the  passing  of  human     generations   immune  as  to  a  sacrifice  of  straw  dogs"       Good  bye  now     Glide  into  fusion     Relentless  diamond     eye     There     We     Go     Good     Bye     PART  II  ♦  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ELEMENTAL  ENERGY  59       Falling  Free     Law  of  gravity  . . .  falling  free   Falling  free  . .  .  the  root  of  lightness     Repose  . . .  the  seed  of  movement   Stillness  . . .  the  master  of  agitation     Gravity  . . .  falling  free       60  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Sheathing  The  Self     The  play  of  energy  endures   Beyond  striving     The  play  of  energy  endures   Beyond  body     The  play  of  energy  endures   Beyond  life     Out  here     Float  timeless     Beyond  striving       PART  II  ♦  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ELEMENTAL  ENERGY  61       Manifestation  Of  The  Mystery     Gazing,  we  do  no  see  it   We  call  it  empty  space     Listening,  we  do  not  hear  it   We  call  it  silence     Reaching,  we  do  not  grasp  it   We  call  it  intangible     But  here  ...  we  spin  through  it   Electric,  silent,  subtle       62  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       I  -       Please  Do  Not  Clutch  At  The  Gossamer  Web     All  in  Heaven     On  Earth  below     A  crystal  fabric     Sacred  gossamer  web     Grabbing  hands  shatter  it     Watch  closely  this  shimmering  mosaic     Silent  . . .   Glide  in   Harmony       PART  II  +  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ELEMENTAL  ENERGY  63       I  -       Hold  Fast  To  The  Void     Notice  how  this  space   Between  Heaven  and  Earth   Is  like  a  bellows     Always  full,  always  empty     Come  in  here,  go  out  there     Breathing  . . .   Silence     This  is  no  time  for  talk   Better  to  hold  fast  to  the  void       64       PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Take  In-Let  Go     To  breathe  in     You  must  first  breathe  out     Let  go     To  hold     You  must  first  open  your  hand     Let  go       To  be  warm     You  must  first  be  naked     Let  go       The  EXPERiEncE  of     SEED-CELL  EE[ER£Y     HOMAGE  TO    DNA     III-l  The  Serpent  Coil  of  DNA     III-2  Prehistoric  Origins  of  DNA     III-3  Clear  Water     III-4  Returning  to  the  Source     III-5  Lao  Tse's  Mind     III-6  Transfiguration  Exercises     III-7  Tree  Above-Tree  Below     III-8  Fourfold  Representation     III-9  The  Seed  Light     111-10  This  Is  It     III-ll  Gate  of  the  Soft  Mystery     111-12  The  Lesson  of  Seed       PART  III  ♦  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  SEED-CELL  ENERGY  61       The  Serpent  Coil  Of  DNA     We  meet  it  everywhere   But  do  not  see  its  front     We  follow  it  everywhere   But  do  not  see  its  back     When  we  embrace  this  ancient  serpent  coil   We  are  masters  of  the  moment   And  feel  no  break  in  the  curling   Back  to  primeval  beginnings     This  may  be  called     Unravelling  the  clue  of  the  life  process       68  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Prehistoric  Origins  Of  DNA     Its  rising  is  not  bright   Nor  its  setting  dark     Unceasing,  continuous     Branching  out  in  roots  innumerable     Forever  sending  forth  the  serpent  coil     Of  living  things     Mysterious  as  the  formless  existence     To  which  it  returns     Coiling  back   Beyond  mind     We  say  only  it  is   Formed  from  the  formless   Life  from  spiral  void       PART  III  ♦  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  SEED-CELL  ENERGY  69       Clear  Water     The  seed  of  mystery   Lies  in  muddy  water     How  can  we  fathom  this  muddiness?   Water  becomes  clear  through  stillness     How  can  we  become  still?   By  moving  with  the  stream       70  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Returning  To  The  Source-Repose     Be  empty     Watch  quietly  while  the  ten  thousand  forms     Swim  into  life  and  return  to  the  source     Do  nothing   Return  to  the  source     Deep  repose  is  the  sign     That  you  have  reached  the  appointed  goal     To  return  to  the  source  is  to  discover   The  eternal  law  of  seed     He  who  returns  to  this  eternal  law  is  enlightened     Being  enlightened  he  is  serene     Serene  he  is  open-hearted     Open-hearted  he  is  beyond  social  games     Being  beyond  social  games  he  is  in  tune  with  seed     In  tune  with  seed  he  endures     Until  the  end  of  his  life  he  is  not  in  peril       PART  III  +  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  SEED-CELL  ENERGY  11       Lao  Tse's  Mind  Becomes  Pre-occupied     With  A  Very  Difficult  Subject:     To  Describe  The  Production     Of  Material  Forms     By  The  Tao     Is  it  a  dream?   Shadowy   Elusive   Invisible     All  things,  all  images  move  slowly   Within  shimmering  nets     Here  essence  endures   From  here  all  forms  emerge   Back  from  this  moment   To  the  ancient  beginning       12  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Transfiguration  Exercises     What  was  inert  . . .  moves   What  was  dead  ....  lives   What  was  drab  . . .  radiates     Galactic  time  has  labored  to  produce     This  moment     Exquisite     The  ancient  saying  that  the  isolated  part   Becomes  whole   Was  spoken  wisely     Seed  flows   All  forms  glow     Remain  quiet  . . .     Pulsate     In  harmony       PART  III  ♦  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  SEED-CELL  ENERGY  73       The  Tree  Above-The  Tree  Below     What  is  above  is  below     What  is  without  is  within     What  is  to  come  is  in  the  past     Tall . . .  deep  . . .  tree  . . .  green  . . .  branching  . . .  leaf     Root . . .  above  . . .  below  . . .  thrusting  . . .  coiling     Sky  . . .  earth  . . .  stem  . . .  root     Leaf. . .  green  . . .  sap     Soil ...  air     Seed     Soil . . .  visible     Hidden  . . .  breathing  . . .  sucking     Bud  . . .  ooze  . . .  sun  . . .  damp     Light . . .  dark  . . .  bright . . .  decay  . . .  laugh     Tear  . . .  vein  . . .  rain  . . .  mud  . . .  branch  . . .  root     The  wood  carvings  await     Within  each  uncut  branch     The  carver  s  knife       74  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  «■  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Fourfold  Representation  Of  The  Mystery     Before  Heaven  and  Earth   There  was  something  nebulous   Tranquil  . .  .  effortless   Permeating  universally   Revolving  soundlessly   Fusing     It  may  be  regarded  as  the  Mother   Of  all  organic  forms     Its  name  is  not  known  nor  its  language   But  it  is  called  Tao     The  ancient  sages  called  it  "great"   The  Great  Tao     Great  means  in  harmony   In  harmony  means  tuned  in   Tuned  in  means  going  far   Going  far  means  returning   To  the  harmony     The  Tao  is  great     The  coil  of  life  is  great       PART  III  ♦  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  SEED-CELL  ENERGY  15       The  body  is  great     The  human  is  designed  to  be  great     There  are  in  existence  four  great  notes   The  human  is  made  to  be  one  thereof     When  you  place  yourself  in  harmony  with  your  body   The  body  tunes  itself  to  the  slow  unfolding  of  life   Life  flows  in  harmony  with  the  Tao     All  proceeds   Naturally   In  tune       16  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       The  Seed  Light     The  seed  light  shines  everywhere   All  forms  derive  life  from  it     When  bodies  are  created   It  does  not  take  possession     It  clothes  and  feeds  the  ten  thousand  things   And  does  not  disturb  their  illusions     Magical  helix  . . .  smallest  form   Mother  of  all  forms     The  living  are  born,  flourish  and  disappear   Without  knowing  their  seed  creator   Helix  of  light     In  all  nature  it  is  true  that  the  wiser   The  older  and  the  greater   Reside  in  the  smaller       PART  III  ♦  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  SEED-CELL  ENERGY  77       This  Is  It     The  seed  moves  so  slowly  and  serenely   Moment  to  moment   That  it  appears  inactive     The  garden  at  sunrise  breathing   The  quiet  breath  of  twilight   Moment  to  moment  to  moment     When  we  are  in  tune  with  this  blissful  rhythm   The  ten  thousand  forms  flourish   Without  effort     It  is  all  so  simple   Each  next  moment  . . .   This  is  it!       78  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Gate  Of  The  Soft  Mystery     Valley  of  life     Gate  of  the  Soft  Mystery     Beginnings  in  the  lowest  place     Gate  of  the  Soft  Mystery     Gate  of  the  Dark  Woman     Gate  of  the  Soft  Mystery     Seed  of  all  living     Gate  of  the  Soft  Mystery     Constantly  enduring     Gate  of  the  Soft  Mystery     Enter     Gently  . . .       PART  III  ♦  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  SEED-CELL  ENERGY  19       The  Lesson  Of  Seed     The  soft  overcomes  the  hard   The  small  overcomes  the  large   The  gentle  survives  the  strong   The  invisible  survives  the  visible     Fish  should  be  left  in  deep  water   Fire  and  iron  kept  under  ground   Seed  should  be  left  free   To  grow  in  the  rhythm  of  life       fHE  EXPERIEnCE  OF  IlEVR^L  EriER£Y     HOMAGE  TO  THE   EXTERNAL   SENSES     IV  -  1  Seeing     IV  -  2  Hearing     IV  -  3  Touching     IV  -  4  Smelling     IV  -  5  Tasting       PART  IV  +  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  NEURAL  ENERGY  83       Seeing     Open  naked  eye     Light  . . .  radiant  . . .  pulsating  . .  .     "I've  been  blind  all  my  life  to  this  radiance"     Retinal  mandala     Swamp  mosaic  of  rods  and  cones     Light  rays  hurtle  into  retina  186,000  miles  per  second     Cross  scope     Retinal  scripture     The  Blind  I     Recoils  at  glittering  energy     Impersonal,  mocking     Illusions  of  control     "Too  bright!  Turn  it  offl     Bring  back  the  shadow  world"     The  Seer  Eye     Vibrates  to  the  trembling  web  of  light     Merges  with  the  seen     Merges  with  the  scene     Slides  down  optical  whirlpool     Through  central  needle  point       84  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Hearing     Sound  waves,  sound  waves   Uncover  lotus  membrane   Trembling  tattoo  of   Sympathetic  vibrations   Float  along  liquid  canals     Single  piano  note   Meteor  of  delight   Collides  with  quivering  membrane     Eternal  note   Spins  slowly   On  vibrating  thread     Ear  you  are   Sound  waves       PART  IV  +  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  NEURAL  ENERGY  85       Touching     Extend  your  free   Nerve  endings   Fine  woven  tendrils     Feel  my  fingers'     Soft  landing  on  your  creviced  surface     Send  sense  balloon  drifting  up     Through  miles  of  skin  web     Tissue  atmosphere  of     Electric  thrill  contact     Soar  free  through  epidermal  space  on   Shuddering  fibres  of  breathless  pleasure       86  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Smelling     In  the  sensory  landscape   Of  tangled  odors   Streaming  belts  of  perfume   Ecstatic  breath   Musk  of  glands   Sexual  allure   Heaven  scent   Elixir  of  life       PART  IV  ♦  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  NEURAL  ENERGY  87       Tasting     The  thin  sheath   Covering  the  tongue   Melts  . . .     Exploding  taste  buds   Quivering  tissue  . . .   Mouth  flowers       The  EXPERlEncE  of  The  chakms     HOMAGE  TO  THE   INTERNAL   SENSES     V  -  1  The  Root  Chakra     V  -  2  The  Sex  Chakra     V  -  3  The  Heart  Chakra     V  -  4  The  Throat  Chakra     V  -  5  The  Crown  Chakra     V  -  6  Ascending  Ladder  of  Chakras       PARTY  +  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  CHAKRAS  91       The  Root  Chakra     Can  you  float  through  the  universe  of  your  body     and  not  lose  your  way?   Can  you  dissolve  softly?     Decompose?   Can  you  rest     dormant  seed-light     buried  in  moist  earth?   Can  you  drift     single-celled     in  soft  tissue  swamp?   Can  you  sink     into  your  dark     fertile  marsh?   Can  you  spiral  slowly     down  the  great  central  river?       92  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Can  you  float  through  the  universe  of  your  body     and  not  lose  your  way?   Can  you  lie  quietly     engulfed     in  the  slippery  union     of  male  and  female?     Warm  wet  dance  of  generation     Endless  ecstacies  of  lovers?   Can  you  offer  your  stamen  trembling  in  the  meadow     for  the  electric  penetration  of  pollen     writhe  together  on  the  river  bank     coil  serpentine     while  birds  sing?   Become  two  cells  merging?   Slide  together  in  molecular  embrace?   Can  you,  murmuring   Lose  all  . . .   Fusing       PART  V  +  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  CHAKRAS  93       Can  you  float  through  the  universe  of  your  body     and  not  lose  your  way?   Flow  with  fire-blood   Through  each  tissued  corridor?     Can  you  let  your  heart   pump  down  red  tunnels   stream  into  cell  chambers?     Can  you  center  on  this   Heart-fire  of  love?     Can  you  let  your  heart   pulse  for  all  love   beat  for  all  sorrow   throb  for  all  pain   thud  for  all  joy   swell  for  all  mankind?     Can  you  let  it  flow   With  compassion   For  all  life?       94  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEAKY       The  Throat  Chakra     Can  you  float  through  the  universe  of  your  body     and  not  lose  your  way?   Breathing     Can  you  drift  into  free  air?   Rise  on  the  trembling  vibration     of  inhale  and  exhale?     Can  you  ascend  the  fragile  thread  of  breath     into  cloud-blue  bliss?   Can  you  spiral  up  through  soft  atmosphere   Breathing     Catch  the  moment  between  in-breath  and  out-breath   Just  there  . . .     Can  you  float  beyond  life  and  death   Breathing       PART  V  ♦  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  CHAKRAS  95       The  Crown  Chakra     Can  you  float  through  the  universe  of  your  body     and  not  lose  your  way  ?   Can  you  focus  on  the  billion-celled  diamond  network   Pull  the  sensory  streams  into  your  brain   Create  an  incandescent  solar  flare   A  thousand-petalled   Lotus  of  light?       96  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Ascending  Ladder  Of  Chakras     Drift  along  your  body's  soft  swampland   where  warm  mud  sucks  lazily     Feel  each  cell  in  your  body  communicating   in  serpent-coiled  rainbow  orgasm     Feel  the  sensuous  rhythm  of  time   pulsing  life  along  the  arterial  network     Bring  the  ethereal  breath  of  life  into   the  white  rooms  of  your  brain     Radiate  golden  light  out  to   the  four  corners  of  creation       RE-EntRY:  THE  EXPERIEnCE  OF     The  imPRinTED  world     HOMAGE  TO  THE    SYMBOLIC   MIND     VI  -  1  The  Moment  of  Fullness     VI  -  2  How  to  Escape  the  Trap  of  Beauty  &  Goodness     VI  -  3  For  God's  Sake-Feel  Good     VI  -  4  Re-Imprinting  with  Water  As  Element     VI  -  5  The  Lesson  of  Water     VI  -  6  The  Utility  of  Nothing     VI  -  7  The  Innosense  of  the  Sensual     VI  -  8  What  the  Brain  Said  to  the  Mind     VI  -  9  How  to  Recognize  the  Tao  Imprint     VI  -  10  Illustration  of  a  Tao  Imprint     VI  -  11  Keep  In  Touch     VI  -  12  Use  Your  Knowledge  of  Nature's  Law     VI  -  13  The  Conscious  Application  of  Strength     VI  -  14  Victory  Celebration     VI  -  15  Along  the  Grain     VI  -  16  He  Who  Knows  the  Center  Endures     VI  -  17  Walk  Carefully  When  You  Are  Among  .  .  .       im*w^m^wm^w^tW&w&       PART  VI  +  RE-ENTRY:  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  IMPRINTED  WORLD       99       The  Moment  Of  Fullness     Grab  hold  tightly   Let  go  lightly     The  full  cup  can  take  no  more   The  candle  burns  down   The  taut  bow  must  be  loosed   The  razor  edge  cannot  long  endure     Nor  this  moment  re-lived     So  now  . . .   Grab  hold  tightly   Now  . . .   Let  go  lightly       100  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  *  TIMOTHY  LEARY       How  To  Escape  The  Trap   Of  Beauty  And  Goodness     As  you  return   Remember     Choose  beauty,  so  you  define  ugly     Select  good,  so  you  create  evil     As  you  choose  your  joy,  so  you  design  your  sorrow     The  coin  you  are  now  imprinting  has  two  sides     Better  to  return  in  the  flow  of  theTao     For  indeed     The  opposites  exist  for  you  alone   Beyond  your  heads  and  tails   Dances  the  unity     All  sounds  harmonize   All  games  end  in  a  tie     Your  God  stands  on  the  pitcher  s  mound   nods  to  his  catcher   winds  up  and  throws   a  shoulder-high  fast  ball     Right  into  your  Devil's  glove       PART  VI  ♦  RE-ENTRY:  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  IMPRINTED  WORLD     101       For  God's  Sake-Feel  Good     As  you  return     Remember  to  choose  consciously     Power  is  the  heavy  stone  wrenched   from  your  garden  of  tenderness     Virtue  is  the  heavy  stone   crushing  your  innocence     What  can  be  learned   From  nature  is   Harmony     Therefore     Shun  the  social     Cuddle  the  elemental     Avoid  angles,  lie  with  the  round     Shun  plastic,  conspire  with  seed     Do  no  good     But  for  God's  sake     Feel  good     And  Nature  s  order  will  prevail       102  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  *  TIMOTHY  LEARY     Re-Imprinting  With  Water  As  Element     Remember   The  flow  of  water     Live  at  the  natural  level   fluid     Live  close  to  earth   fluid     Live  giving  life   fluid     Live  falling  free   fluid     Live  in  the  stream   fluid       PART  VI  ♦  RE-ENTRY:  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  IMPRINTED  WORLD     1 03       The  Lesson  Of  Water     What  one  values  in  the  game   is  the  play     What  one  values  in  the  form   is  the  moment  of  forming     What  one  values  in  the  house   is  the  moment  of  dwelling     What  one  values  in  the  heart   is  the  beating     What  one  values  in  the  action   is  the  timing     Indeed     Because  you  flow  like  water     You  can  neither  win  nor  lose       104  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY     The  Utility  Of  Nothing     The  Nothing  at  the  center  of  the  thirty-spoke   wheel  . . .     The  Nothing  of  the  clay  vase  . . .     The  Nothing  within  the  four  walls  . . .     The  goal  of  the  game  is  to  go  beyond  the  game     You  lose  your  mind   To  use  your  head     You  lose  your  mind   To  use  your  head       PART  VI  ♦  RE-ENTRY:  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  IMPRINTED  WORLD     105       The  Innosense  Of  The  Sensual     Name  the  five  colors-   shadow  the  eye     Name  the  eight  notes-   muffle  the  ear     Name  the  five  tastes-   coat  the  tongue     Naming  stops  the  flow     Win  the  game,  lose  the  play     Let  innosense   Direct  your  desire       106  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEAKY       What  The  Brain  Said  To  The  Mind     One  to  me  is  fame  and  shame   One  to  me  is  loss  and  gain   One  to  me  is  pleasure  and  pain   Murmured  the  brain     Looking  down  with  compassionate  curiosity   As  a  beautiful  woman  idly   Inspects  a  tiny  blemish   On  her  long  smooth  flank     Looking  down  with  compassionate  curiosity     At  the  small  imprinted     Chess  board     Of  the  mind's  external  game     One  to  me  is  shame  and  fame  . . .       PART  VI  «■  RE-ENTRY: THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  IMPRINTED  WORLD     107       How  To  Recognize  The  Tao  Imprint     One  who  returns  in  the  flow  of  Tao   Brings  back  a  mysterious  penetration   So  subtle   That  it  is  misunderstood     Hesitant  like  one  who  wades  in     a  stream  at  winter   Wary  as  a  man  in  ambush   Considerate  as  a  welcome  guest   Fluid  like  a  mountain  stream   Natural  as  uncarved  wood   Floating  high  like  a  gull   Unfathomable  like  muddy  water     How  can  we  fathom  this  muddiness?   Water  becomes  clear  through  stillness     How  can  we  become  still?   By  moving  with  the  stream       108  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY     Illustration  Of  A  Tao  Imprint     He  stands  apart   serene   curiously  observing     He  stands  quietly   looking  forlorn   like  an  infant  who  has  not  yet   learned  to  know  what  to  smile  at     He  is  a  little  sad  for  what  he  sees     While  others  enjoy  their  possessions   he  lazily  drifts,  a  homeless   do-nothing,  owning  nothing     Or  he  moves  slowly  close  to  the  land     While  others  are  crisp  and  definite   he  seems  indecisive     He  does  not  appear  to  be  making  his  way   in  the  world     He  is  different     A  wise  infant  nursing  at  the  breast   Of  all  life     Inside       PART  VI  «■  P^E-ENTRY:  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  IMPRINTED  WORLD     109       The  Tao  flows  everywhere     Keep  in  touch   Be  at  home   Everywhere     He  who  loses  the  contact     Is  alone     Everywhere     Keeping  in  touch  with  the  Tao     Is  called     Harmony       110  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY     fQtf     Use  Your  Knowledge  Of  Nature's  Law     Nature's  way  is  to  leave  no  residue   All  is  absorbed     Therefore  we  treasure  the  "least  of  men"     All  belongs   All  is  salvaged   Nothing  is  rejected     This  is  called  Stealing  the  Light  . . .   Nature's  subtle  secret       PART  VI  ♦  RE-ENTRY:  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  IMPRINTED  WORLD     1 1 1       The  Conscious  Application  Of  Strength     Force  recoils     But     The  time  comes     When  there  is  nothing  to  do     Except  act  consciously     With  courage       U2  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  *  TIMOTHY  LEARY     Victory  Celebration     Celebrate  your  victory   with  funeral  rites   for  your  slain  illusions     Wear  some  black  at  your  wedding       PART  VI  ♦  RE-ENTRY:  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  IMPRINTED  WORLD     i  13       Along  The  Grain     The  Tao  is  nameless   Like  uncarved  wood     As  soon  as  it  is  carved   There  are  names     Carve  carefully   Along  the  grain       114  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       He  Who  Knows  The  Center  Endures     Who  knows  the  outside  is  clever     Who  knows  the  center  endures     Who  masters  others  gains  robot  power     Who  comes  to  the  center  has  flowering  strength     Faith  of  consciousness  is  freedom   Hope  of  consciousness  is  strength   Love  of  consciousness  evokes  the  same  in  return     Faith  of  seed  frees   Hope  of  seed  flowers   Love  of  seed  grows       PART  VI  «•  RE-ENTRY:  THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  THE  IMPRINTED  WORLD     1 1 5       Walk  Carefully  When  You  Are  Among  .  .     "Holy  men"  and   "Righteous  deeds"   Distract  from  the  internal     "Learned  men"     Distract  from  natural  wisdom     "Professional  know-how"     Addicts  people  to  the  contrived  and  external     Be  respectful  and  compassionate     But  walk  carefully  when  you  are  among —     learned  men     holy  men     doctors     government  officials     reporters     publishers     professors     religious  leaders     psychologists     rich  people     social  scientists     women  with  beautiful  faces     artists  and  writers     people  who  charge  fees     city  men       116  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY     movie  makers     people  who  want  to  help  you   people  who  want  you  to  help  them   Christians  and  Jews     For  such  as  these,  however  well  meaning   Place  you  on  their  chessboard   Addict  you  to  their  externals   Distract  you  from   The  Tao  within     The  lesson  of  the  Tao  is  more  likely   to  be  found  among —     gardeners     hermits     eccentrics     people  who  build  their  own  homes     children     parents  who  learn  from  their  children     amateur  musicians     serene  psychotics     animals     those  who  look  at  sunsets     those  who  walk  in  the  woods     beautiful  women     cooks     people  who  sit  by  the  fire     wanderers     bakers  of  bread     couples  who  have  been  in  love  for  years     smiling  men  with  bad  reputations       poeius  on  The  conDi/cT  of  lIfe     WITH  ROSEMARY  WOODRUFF  LEARY   (1969)     1  Concerning  Dosage  and  Capacity     2  The  Perfect  Paradox     3  Terra  Story     4  This  Design  Has  No  Plan     5  What  Now?       ?s^0##0§^^k^^^k#^^s#mhk®:       POEMS  ON  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE  119       Concerning  Dosage  And  Capacity     When     I  am     Of  highest  capacity     It  flows  through  me     When     I  am     Of  middling  capacity     I  write  poems  about  the  flowing     When     I  am     Of  low  capacity     The  flow  irritates  me       120  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       The  Perfect  Paradox       The  perfect   Contains   The  imperfect     The  great  design   Contains   Deliberate  flaw     Error     Is  the  architect     Of  evolution     The  complete  life   An  infinite  series   Of  timely  accidents     Each  blundering  moment     A  perfect  part     Of  the  perfected  hole       [Attention  Readers:  if  you  can  detect  the  three  mistakes  in   this  poem  you  will  win  a  black  and  white  pony]       POEMS  ON  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE  121       Terra  Story     From  ancient  times   It  has  been  known  that   A  man  and  woman   Are  as  rich   As  the  broad  land   Through  which   They  wander  freely     Sitting  here     In  front  of  our  flimsy     Mountain  cottage     We  see     No  wall     No  buildings     No  neighbors       122  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       This  Design  Has  No  Plan     There  is  no  pure  white     The  Tao  forever  blending   There  is  no  perfect  human     The  Tao  forever  bending   Great  space  has  no  corners     The  Tao  never  ending   Great  music  is  faintly  heard     The  Tao  forever  sending   This  design  has  no  plan     It's  forever  mending     mending  patching  up  giraffes  making  do  mutants   false  starts  bulging-eyed  frogs  goofs  some   catastrophic  misfits  smog  The  Timing's  Off]   Emergency  Stopgap  Measures  Adapt  Survive  For   God's  Sake  Don't  Ask  Me  Why!  Malthusian  fuckups   Darwinian  losers  not  another  Ice  Age  humus  top   soil  shit  There  Goes  My  Paleolithic  Garden!     Listen  sisters  and  brothers     There's  no  shortage  of  anything  . . .     The  Tao  forever  mending     The  Tao  profusely  lending     Blending  . . .  bending  . . .  sending     Forever  ending     Never  ending       POEMS  ON  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE  123       What  Now?     Out  of  Tao   The  One   Is  born     Out  of  the  One   The  Two   Divide     Out  of  the  Two  mated   We  created   The  Three     It's  fun  to  blend   But  where  will  it  end   And  what  will  become   Of  our  coming?     Consider  the  mathematics   Clicked  the  DNA  computer   Softly     One  =  done     Two  =  nothing  new     Three  =  variety     When  multiplied     10,000  forms  are  supplied     With  fins,  feathers     and  all  sorts  of  furry  coverings       124  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       What  is  the  name     Of  this  inexhaustibly  inventive  game?     We  inquired  as  we     Lay  in  each  others'  arms.     Will  it  grow  tired   Will  it  grow  tame   As  we  excel   In  playing  this  game   Always  cooped  up   In  a  permeable  cell?     Is  it  time  to  re-enter   The  center?     What  now   Great  Tao?       tSmL.  ,    „   JSg*       HomAGE  to  The  awe-fvll  seer.     (1967)       In**       vs       Wjzfoifiiy*       '^S*^^^^**^^^^^*^*^^^^^,       Leary  in  Millbrook,  1966.       mm*       HOMAGE  TO  THE  AWE-FULL  SEER  121       Homage  to  the  Awe-full  Seer     At  each  beat     in  the  Earth's  rotating  dance     there  is  born  "     a  momentary  cluster  of  molecules     possessing  the  transient  ability  to  know-see-experience     its  own  place  in  the  evolutionary  spiral.     Such  an  organism,  such  an  event   senses  exactly  where  he  or  she  is   in  the  billion-year-old  ballet.     They  are  able  to  trace  back     the  history  of  the  deoxyribonucleic  thread     of  which  they  are  both  conductive  element  and     current.   They  can  experience  the  next  moment   in  its  million  to  the  millionth  meaning.   Exactly  that.     Some  divine  seers  are  recognized  for  this  unique     capacity.   Those  that  are  recognized   are  called  and  killed  by  various  names.   Most  of  them  are  not  recognized —   they  float  through  life   like  a  snowflake   kissing  the  earth.       128  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  *  TIMOTHY  LEARY     No  one  ever  hears  them  murmur     "Ah  there"     At  the  moment  of  impact.     Seers  are  aware  of  each  other's  existence     the  way  each  particle  in  the  hurtling  nuclear  trapeze     is  aware  of  other  particles.     They  move  too  fast  to  give  names     to  themselves  or  each  other.     Such  people  can  be  described  in  terms     no  more  precise  or  less  foolish     than  the  descriptive  equations  of  nuclear  physics.     They  have  no  more  or  less  meaning     in  the  cultural  games  of  life     than  electrons  have  in  the  game  of  chess.     They  are  present  but  cannot  be  perceived  or     categorized.   They  exist  at  a  level  beyond   the  black  and  white  squares  of  the  game  board.   The  function  of  "  "  is  to  teach.     Take  an  apple  and  slice  it  down  the  middle.   A  thin  red  circle  surrounds     the  gleaming  white  meat.   In  the  center  is  a  dark  seed   whose  function  is  beyond  any  of  your  games.   If  you  knew  how  to  listen   the  seed  would  hum  you  a  seed-song.       HOMAGE  TO  THE  AWE-FULL  SEER  129     The  divine  incarnates  teach     like  a  snowflake  caught  in  the  hand  teaches.     Once  you  speak  the  message  you  haye  lost  it.     Once  you  know  the  message  you  no  longer  have  it.     The  seed  becomes  a  dried  pit,  the  snowflake     a  film  of  water  on  your  hand.     Wise  seers  are  continually     exploding  in  beautiful  dance.     Like  a  speckled  fish     dying  in  your  hand     as  its  eye  looks  at  you  unblinking.     Like  the  virus  fragmenting     divine  beauty  in  the  grasp  of  tissue.     Now  and  then  the  "  "  sings     words  beyond  rational  comprehension.   The  message  is  always  the  same   though  the  sounds,  the  scratched  rhumba   of  inkmarks  is  always  different.     It's  like  Einstein's  equation  felt  as  orgasm.   The  serpent  unwinds  up  the  spine,   mushrooms  like  a  lotus  sunflare  in  the  skull.   If  I  tell  you  that  the  apple  seed  message   hums  the  drone  of  a  Hindu  flute   will  that  stop  the  drone?       130  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY     The  secret  of  "  "  must  always  be  secret.     Divine  sage  recognized,  message  lost.   Snowflake  caught,  pattern  changed.   They  dance  out  the  pattern  without  being     recognized.   Caught  in  the  act,  they  melt  in  your  hand.     The  message  then  contained  in  a  drop  of  water     involves  another  chase  for  the  infinite.     The  sign  of  "  "is  change  and  anonymity.     As  soon  as  you  try  to  glorify     sanctify,  worship,  deify  the  seer     you  have  killed  him.     Thus  the  Pharisees     performed  a  merry,  holy  ballet.     All  praise  to  them!     It  is  the  Christians  who  kill  Christ.     As  soon  as  you  invent  a  symbol     give  "  "a  name     you  assassinate  the  process     to  serve  your  own  ends.     To  speak  the  name  of  Buddha     Christ       HOMAGE  TO  THE  AWE-FULL  SEER  13 1     Lao  Tse —     except  as  a  sudden  ecstatic  breath —     is  to  murder  the  living  God     fix  him  with  your  preservative     razor  him  onto  a  microscope  slide     sell  him  for  profit  in  your  biological  supply  house.     The  seers  have  no  function     but  they  produce  in  others  the  ecstatic  gasp     the  uncontrollable  visionary  laugh.     Too  much!     So  what!     Why  not!     The  stark  stare  of  wonder.     Awful!     Awe-full!       nofES       PART  I     I  -  1         Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  17.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Rulers"  in  The     Wisdom  of  Lao  Tse,  edited  by  Lin  Yu tang,  Modern  Library,  New  York,   1948;  "The  Unadulterated  Influence"  in  The  Texts  of  Taoism,  translated   by  James  Legge,  Dover,  New  York,  1962.  (Hereafter,  the  initials  LYT   designate  LinYutang  and  the  initials  JL  designate  James  Legge.)     I  -  2         Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  18.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Decline  of   Tao,"  LYT;  "The  Decay  of  Manners,"  JL.     1-3         Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  35.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Peace  of  Tao,"   LYT;  "The  Attribute  of  Benevolence,"  JL.     I  -  4        Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  19.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Realize  the  Simple   Self,"  LYT;  "Returning  to  the  Unadulerated  Influence,"  JL.     I  -  5         Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  23.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Dregs  and     Tumors  of  Virtue,"  LYT;  "Painful  Graciousness,"  JL.     PART  II     II  -  1       Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  1.  Elsewhere  titled:  "On  the  Absolute     Tao,"  LYT;    "Embodying  the  Tao,"  JL.     II  -  2       Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  4.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Character  of   Tao,"  LYT;    "The  Fountainless,"JL.     II  -  3       Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  5.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Nature,"  LYT;  "The   Use  of  Emptiness,"  JL.     II  -  4       Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  26.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Heaviness  and   Lightness,"  LYT;  "The  Quality  of  Gravity,"  JL.     II  -  5       Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  7.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Living  for  Others,"   LYT;  "Sheathing  the  Light,"  JL.       134  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       II  -  6       Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  14.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Prehistoric   Origins,"  LYT;  "The  Manifestation  of  the  Mystery,"  JL.     II  -  7       Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  29.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Warning  Against     Interference,"  LYT;  "Taking  No  Action,"  JL.     II-8         Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  5.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Nature,"  LYT;  "The   Use  of  Emptiness,"  JL.     II-9         Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  36.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Rhythm  of   Life,"  LYT;    "Minimizing  the  Light,"  JL.     PART  III     III  -  1      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  14.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Prehistoric     Origins,"  LYT;  "The  Manifestation  of  the  Mystery,"  JL.     Ill  -  2      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  14.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Prehistoric   Origins,"  LYT;  "The  Manifestation  of  the  Mystery,"  JL.     Ill  -  3      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  15.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Wise  Ones  of   Old,"  LYT;  "The  Exhibition  of  the  Qualities  of  theTao,"JL.     Ill  -  4      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  16.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Knowing  the   Eternal  Law,"  LYT;  "Returning  to  the  Root,"  JL.     Ill  -  5      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  21.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Manifestations  of   Tao,"  LYT;  "The  Empty  Heart,  or  theTao  In  its  Operation,"  JL.     Ill  -  6      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  22.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Futility  of   Contention,"  LYT;  "Returning  to  Simplicity,"  JL.     Ill  -  7      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  28.  Elsewhere  titled:   "Keeping  to  the   Female,"  LYT;  "Returning  to  Simplicity,"  JL.     Ill  -  8      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  25.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Four  Eternal   Models,"  LYT;  "Representations  of  the  Mystery,"  JL.     Ill  -  9      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  34.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Great  Tao   Flows  Everywhere,"  LYT;  "The  Task  of  Achievement,"  JL.       NOTES  135       111-10      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  37.  Elsewhere  titled:  "World  Peace,"  LYT;   "The  Exercise  of  Government,"  JL.     Ill— 1 1      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  6.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Spirit  of  the   Valley,"  LYT;    "The  Completion  of  Material  Forms,"  JL.     111-12      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  36.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Rhythm  of   Life,"  LYT;    "Minimizing  the  Light,"  JL.     PART  IV     IV  1-5     Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  12.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Senses,"  LYT;     "The  Repression  of  the  Desires,"  JL.     PARTV     V  1-6      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  10.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Embracing  the     One,"  LYT;  "Possibilities  Through  the  Tao,"  JL.     PART  VI     VI  -  1      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  9.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Danger  of     Overweening  Success,"  LYT;  "Fullness  and  Complacency  Contrary   to  the  Tao,"  JL.     VI  -  2      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  2.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Rise  of  Relative   Opposites,"  LYT;  "The  Nourishment  of  the  Person,"  JL.     VI  -  3      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  3.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Action  Without   Deeds,"  LYT;  "Keeping  the  People  at  Rest,"  JL.     VI  -  4      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  8.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Water,"  LYT;  "The   Placid  and  Contented  Nature,"  JL.     VI  -  5      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  8.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Water,"  LYT;  "The   Placid  and  Contented  Nature,"  JL.     VI  -  6      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  1.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Utility  of  Not-   being,"  LYT;  "The  Use  ofWhat  Has  No  Substantive  Existence," JL.       136  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  +  TIMOTHY  LEARY       VI  -  7      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  12.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Senses,"  LYT;   "The  Repression  of  the  Desires,"  JL.     VI  -  8      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  13.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Praise  and  Blame,"   LYT;  "Loathing  Shame,"  JL.     VI  -  9      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  15.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  Wise  Ones  of   Old,"  LYT;  "The  Exhibition  of  the  Qualities  of  theTao,"JL.     VI-10      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  20.  Elsewhere  titled:  "The  World  and  I,"   LYT;  "Being  Different  from  Ordinary  Men,"JL.     VI-11      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  23.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Identification  with   Tao,"LYT;  "Absolute  Vacancy," JL.     VI-12      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  27.  Elsewhere  titled:  "On  Stealing  the   Light,"  LYT;  "Dexterity  in  Using  Tao,"JL.     VI- 13      Adapted  from  Tao  Chapter  30.  Elsewhere  titled  "Warning  Against  the   Use  of  Force,"  LYT;  "A  Caveat  Against  War,"  JL.     VI-14      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  31.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Weapons  of  Evil,"   LYT;  "Stilling War,"JL.     VI-15      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  32.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Tao  Is  Like  the  Sea,"   LYT;  "TheTaoWithNoName,"JL.     VI-16      Adapted  fromTao  chapter  33.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Knowing  Oneself,"   LYT;  "Discriminating  Between  Attributes,"  JL.     VI-17      Adapted  fromTao  Chapter  19.  Elsewhere  titled:  "Realize  the  Simple   Self,"  LYT;  "Returning  to  the  Unadulterated  Influence,"  JL.       NOTES       137       POEMS  ON  THE  CONDUCT  OF  LIFE     1-5  Adapted  fromTao  Chapters  41-45.     HOMAGE  TO  THE  AWE-FULL  SEER     A  tribute  to  Lao  Tse.       mm       #&*&##♦       i       m       Chinese  ideograms   for  Tao  Te  Ching.       IIIDEX  ACCORDiriG  TO  THE  ORDER  OF   THE  TAO  TE  CHiriG       TAO   CHAPTER     PSYCHEDELIC   PRAYER     TITLE     1     II -1     That  Which  Is  Called  theTao  Is  Not  theTao     2     VI -2     How  to  Escape  the  Trap  of  Beauty  and  Goodness     3     VI -3     For  God's  Sake— Feel  Good     4     II -2     Ethereal  Pool  Without  Source     5     II -3     Jewelled  Indifference     II -8     Hold  Fast  to  the  Void     6     III-  11     Gate  of  the  Soft  Mystery     7     II -5     Sheathing  the  Self     8     VI -4     Re-imprinting  with  Water  as  Element     VI -5     The  Lesson  ofWater     9     VI -1     The  Moment  of  Fullness     10     V-l     The  Root  Chakra     V-2     The  Sex  Chakra     V-3     The  Heart  Chakra     V-4     The  Throat  Chakra     V-5     The  Crown  Chakra     V-6     Ascending  Ladder  of  Chakras     11     VI -6     The  Utility  of  Nothing     12     IV -1     Seeing     IV -2     Hearing     IV -3     Touching     IV -4     Smelling     *##«#*     ^^H^NNNNN^N^NI     140  PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  ♦  TIMOTHY  LEARY       IV -5     Tasting     VI -7     The  Innosense  of  the  Sensual     13     VI -8     What  the  Brain  Said  to  the  Mind     14     II -6     Manifestation  of  the  Mystery     III  -  1     The  Serpent  Coil  of  DNA     III -2     Prehistoric  Origins  of  DNA     15     III -3     Clear  Water     VI -9     How  to  Recognize  the  Tao  Imprint     16     III -4     Returning  to  the  Source-Repose     17     1-1     The  Guide     18     1-2     When  the  Harmony  Is  Lost     19     1-4     Let  There  Be  Simple  Natural  Things     VI -17     Walk  Carefully  When  You  Are  Among. . .     20     VI -10     Illustration  of  a  Tao  Imprint     21     III -5     Lao  Tse's  Mind  Becomes  Preoccupied     22     III -6     Transfiguration  Exercises     23     1-5     All  Things  Pass     VI -11     Keep  In  Touch     24     1-6     The  Message  of  Posture     25     III -8     Fourfold  Representation  of  the  Mystery     26     II -4     Falling  Free     27     VI-  12     Use  Your  Knowledge  of  Nature's  Law     28     III -7     The  Tree  Above-The  Tree  Below     29     II -7     Please  Do  Not  Clutch  at  the  Gossamer  Web     30     VI-  13     The  Conscious  Application  of  Strength     31     VI -14     Victory  Celebration     32     VI -15     Along  the  Grain     INDEX  ACCORDING  TO  THE  TAO  TE  CHING       141       33     VI -16     He  Who  Knows  the  Center  Endures     34     III -9     The  Seed  Light     35     1-3     Life  Seed  Death     36     III  -  12     The  Lesson  of  Seed     II -9     Take  In— Let  Go     37     III  -  10     This  Is  It     41-45     1-5     Poems  on  the  Conduct  of  Life     142       PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS  «►  TIMOTHY  LEARY       Ronin  Books  for  Independent  Minds     PSYCHEDELIC  PRAYERS      Timothy  Leary  0-914171-84-4  $12.95     Guide  to  Transcendental  experience  based  on  the  Tao  Te  Ching     HIGH  PRIEST  Timothy  Leary  0-914171-80-1 19.95     Acid  trips  with  Huxley,  Ginsburg,  Burroughs,  Ram  Dass,  Houston  Smith,  etc     CHAOS  AND  CYBER  CULTURE  Leary  0-914171-77-1 19.95     Cyberpunk  manifesto  on  designing  chaos  and  fashioning  personal  disorders     POLITICS  OF  ECSTASY  Timothy  Leary  0-91417 1-33-X  16.95     Leary  classic  psychedelic  writings  that  sparked  the  60's  revolution     PSYCHEDELICS  ENCYCLOPEDIA      Stafford  0-914171-5 1-8  29.95     Fascinating  historical  reference  -  from  LSD  to  designer  mind  enhancers.     HAIGHT  ASHBURY  FLASHBACKS         Gaskin  0-9 1417 1-30-5  9.95     Amazing  dope  tales,  uses  and  dangers  of  psychedelic  substances     RITUAL  IN  THE  DARK  Colin  Wilson  0-914171-63-1 12.95     Murky  world  of  borderline  existence  between  dreams  and  reality     SEX  DIARY  OF  A  METAPHYSICIAN    Wilson  0-914171-59-3  12.95     Existential  tale  of  Gerard  Sorme  and  his  sexual  adventures     RIGHT  WHERE  YOU  ARE  SITTING      Wilson  0-914171-45-3  12.95     Further  tales  of  the  IUuminati,  Robert  Anton  Wilson's  cosmic  conspiracy     ILLUMINATI  PAPERS        Robert  Anton  Wilson  0-91417 1-44-5  14.95     Is  all  of  history  a  vast  conspiracy  or  just  a  cosmic  joke?     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Orders  (800)  858-2665  •  Info  (510)  548-2124  •  Fax  (510)  548-7326   Ronin  Publishing  •  Box  1035  Berkeley  CA  94701     Stores  &  Distributors  —  Call  for  Wholesale  info  and  catalog   Call  for  FREE  catalog  or  go  to  web  site  WWW.RoninPub.com       hese  meditations  on  the  art   and  science  of  consciousness  expansion   are  serene,  sensuous,  funny  and  wise.   They  are  among  the  most  inspired   writings  by  one  of  the  outstanding   visionary  geniuses  of  the  20th  century     —  Ralph   Me tz tier     CO-AUTHOR     OF     The  Psychedelic  Experience       Psychedelic  Prayers,  Timothy  Leary s  only  book  of  meditative     POETRY,  IS  A  PRACTICAL  PSYCHEDELIC  MANUAL  INSPIRED  BY  LAO  Tse's     Tao  Te  Ching  (Way  of  Life).  Written  while  the  author  was  visiting  India     IN  I965,  IT  WAS  FINISHED  AT  THE  CELEBRATED  ESTATE  IN  MlLLBROOK,  NEW     York  the  following  year.  Psychedelic  Prayers  is  the  companion  volume   to  Timothy  Leary's  High  Priest,  the  story  of  16  trips  that  defined  the     PSYCHEDELIC  REVOLUTION.  ^/Jjl.  .'/J21       Timothy  Leary  was  drawn  to  the  "psychedelic  quality"  of  Lao  Tse's     ANCIENT  WORK.  "My  OBJECTIVE"  HE  WROTE,  "WAS  TO  FIND  THE  SEED  IDEA  IN     each  Sutra  and  rewrite  it  in  the  lingua  franca  of  psychedelia."  The  result     WAS  THIS  HANDY  TAKE-ALONG  PRAYER  BOOK.  It  IS  INTENDED  TO  BE  READ  SLOWLY   DURING  A  SESSION  AS  A  GUIDE  TO  TRANSCENDENTAL  EXPERIENCES.       This  edition  of  Psychedelic  Prayers  contains  six  newly  discovered   meditations,  several  illustrations  from  prior  editions,  including  the   cover  by  h.r.  glger,  and  a  never  before  published  photograph  of   Timothy  Leary  in  India.  Also  included  is  a  bibliographical  preface  by   Michael  Horowitz,  and  an  historical   introduction  by  ralph  metzner  who   was  with  Timothy  Leary  in  India   when  the  book  was  written.  i       780914»171843   ISBN    D-cimi71-flM-M     PSYCHEDELIC    Pl^AYERJS     ISBN  0-914171-84-4   Ron  i  n   P  1  bush]  n  G,   Inc.     OX    IO35,    U  E  R  K  I  L  i:  Y,    C  A    9470       <>$mm