Timothy Leary said his famous 60's quote 'turn on, tune in, drop out' was mostly misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity' contrary to his explanations of it as a sequence of personal development. “ 'Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. 'Drop Out' meant an elective, selective, graceful process self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change." - Timothy LearyTimothy Leary's sage advice, delivered in the psychedelic 60's, is still good advice today. Psychedelic drugs weren't the only way Leary and his merry band experimented with their neural equipment but, unfortunately, the media clamped onto the quote's catchy-ness, spun it and shrunk it down to popular culture digestability losing its real depth of meaning.
Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass) were my spiritual mentors in the 60's. They led a generation of flower children on the many interwoven developmental pathways to inner clarity, to 'turn on'. Their experiments helped my fellow searchers see that our worldview is relative, that we experience all sensation through our 'doors of perception'. Sometimes, using these insights, we fellow travelers were able to 'tune in' to our intimate connection with all of creation. i'll be attempting to expand on these visionaries' insights in the coming days.
The Flower Children 'dropped out', they went back to the land, formed communes, roused enviromental awareness, grew and distributed organic food, smoked a buncha homegrown,... Things have changed in the last 50 years, including my mind many times. But as Leary also said, "You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind."
