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COPYRIGHT 2004 Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
He flies so high,
He swoops so low. He knows exactly which way he's gonna go ... --The Moody Blues "Legend of a Mind" In Search of the Lost Chord The charisma of the guru may become as self-serving as the very Establishment against which it arose, as it is routinized by efforts to sustain power. --Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!
TIMOTHY LEARY. A CONTROVERSIAL FIGURE FOR MORE THAN FORTY years--from his groundbreaking work in psychology in the 1950s, through the psychedelic 1960s and into the cybernetic 1990s, Dr. Leary always managed to be at the forefront of the latest cutting edge. For some, he was a pop culture and counterculture hero, for others, a drug-soaked Pied Piper leading the youth of America astray. For Richard Nixon, he was the "Most Dangerous Man in America"--MDMA--an acronym Leary quite liked. MDMA, the "love drug," was one of Timothy's favorites.
He was also a husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather and, for a number of years, a close friend. Timothy Leary was many things to many people. He was a quantum singularity, and those who came within his gravitational pull usually got the "Timothy Leary" they expected. Yet, in all of his personae and all of his varied sets and settings, he was always a "cheerful cricket in a summer garden scraping out one unchanging note" (Horowitz 6). He described himself that way in the preface to Michael Horowitz's 1988 An Annotated Bibliography of Timothy Leary: "Reading this book has taught me a lot about myself. Reviewing this list of published transmissions spanning a period of some forty years I see a clear pattern of thematic repetition that is almost robotic. I am humbled to see that I have been a cheerful cricket in a summer garden scraping out one unchanging note" (6). That note was also one of his taglines: "Think for Yourself and Question Authority," just as long as it wasn't his authority.
"Timmy," as his last wife used to call him, was also always Dr. Leary, the psychologist who published Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality: A Functional Theory and Methodology for Personality Evaluation in 1957. The educational computer programs he conceived in the late 1980s and described in the afterword of the 1990 revision of his autobiography (pp. 384-86) were obvious flashbacks to his earlier work on the cartography of personalities and the topography of their interactions, studies that he continued throughout his life. As any practicing clinical or research psychologist will attest, the "doctor" must remain aloof, dissociated from his patients' lives. The researcher must not become too involved, interpersonally, with his subjects. Ultimately, Tim never did. Being in a social setting with him or being alone together always involved ongoing interpersonal diagnoses of personalities. The axiom among those closest to him was "Don't take anything he says or does personally"--a conundrum tailor-made by and for Dr. Timothy Leary.
After his death, people would ask, "You knew him. What was Timothy Leary really like?" My usual answer was, "I don't really know."
But the years I spent with him--working on various projects, staying in his home (and he in mine), traveling with him throughout the United States and Europe--afforded me some insight, however limited, into this historically and culturally significant figure. Those years included the suicide of his daughter, severe financial difficulties amid soaring popularity, the demise of his fifth marriage, cancer, and death.
What follows are anecdotal glimpses into the mosaic of those insights, beginning at the end ...
May 30, 1996. 03:17 EDT, an email arrived from Vicki Marshall, his archivist and administrative assistant. She was there, with him, in the house at 10106 Sunbrook Drive, Beverly Hills, California 90210. Its subject was "the end is near":
Thought you'd want to know ... the end is near. Last week marked a serious turn for the worse and Timothy is fading fast. Please keep a good thought for him. He's having trouble letting go and can really use all the good energy he can get. Miss you ...
The clock's digital readout read, in red, 3:32 A.M., 31 May 1996. The caller seemed to hang up rather quickly. Short message or wrong number. I hoped for the latter, but knew it was the former. Vicki's voice sounded strong, but assailed: "Timothy died, about twenty minutes ago."
A few hours later, I turned on the Moody Blues's In Search of the Lost Chord CD, tuned in to "Legend of a Mind," and dropped in to Leary.com.
Timothy has passed ... Just after midnight, in his favorite bed among loving friends, Timothy Leary peacefully passed on. His last words were "why not?" and "yeah." Our friend and teacher, guide and inspiration will continue to live within us.
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