Your Brain Is God

To understand "Your Brain is God" it is helpful to know a little about the author. Timothy Leary was a controversial figure of his time. He was a part of the Harvard Psychedelic Drug Research Project to study the effects and uses of powerful brain-change chemicals on humans. LSD was the tool. He was expelled from Harvard. He later was convicted of possession of marijuana and facing 20 years for less than an ounce of marijuana. It seems a stiff penalty for the crime, but then he was once labeled the most dangerous man in America. He was "dangerous" not for anything he did but for his "spreading his ideas" that may have had some influence on the counterculture movement of the 1960's and 1970's. His most famous phrase was " turn on, tune in, drop out". "Your Brain is God" is his summa theology. Prior to 1966, LSD was legal for scientific research. But it was generally not widely accepted in the scientific community to embrace with such mind changing chemicals. Brain-activating drugs expose people to powerful mind-blowing experiences that shatter conventional ideas about reality. Leary stated that "the brain has replaced the genitals as the forbidden organ that must not be touch or turned on by the owners." After decided that the scientific approach was not the prudent way due to the strong taboo against brain-change, his group decided to turn back to the East, turn to religion as the basis for continuing the experimentation. After all, there is freedom of Religion in the 1st Amendment. LSD is his protected sacrament. LSD was later declared illegal even in religious settings. "Your Brain Is God", is a do it yourself, style of theology. But this new religion "was to be no kneeling down, no dogmas, no holy men, no followers no church, no public worship and no financial offering." Scientific Paganism is the concept his new religion named The League for Spiritual Discovery. God is defined in terms of the technologies involved in creating the universe and the eight stages of evolution-called the Eight Crafts of God. This self determining theology was rooted in the premise that: "Control your own brain, be your own Divinity, make your own world, live out your own highest vision." So why was mind expanding chemicals considered so dangerous, while mind numbing medications like Prozac and Valium prescribed on a daily basis? Starting in kindergarten, whenever a kid is deemed curious or energetic, Ritalin is prescribed to fix that. Society, in general, and government has always impose conformity to status quo. From the moment you are born, you are expected to follow a preset of pattern considered acceptable to social norms. You go to schools for a number of years, you get and hold a job, you collect Social Security and then you die. Leary was very astute when he said "many a Newton and Einstein has lived and died in dumb cultures that could not provide the vulnerable brain with the levels of symbol complexity required(p.30). Our current education system succeeded in creating a class of unthinking automatons capable of holding a job and be good obedient government subjects but nothing more. This book makes me wonder since LSD is nontoxic and non addictive, why was so much negative propaganda surround the chemical. Does it really fry your brain or does it, according to Leary, activate brain illumination? What have I missed? The book really got me thinking about human consciousness, the amazing capabilities of the brain, what are the truths. Not too long ago, the truth is that the Earth is the center of the universe. What are the truths now? How are they going to change in the future? The book is an amazing read, I had to read it twice to really get the finer points. A must read for anyone who like to stop and smell the roses once in a while. The actual book, however, is poorly made. Ronin Publishing, Inc. did a poor job editing this book. There are many misspelled words. The pages started to come apart the moment you open the book. I now have to have a rubber band to hold all the pages together. If you are one of those fortunate one with a Kindle, get the Kindle version.

"I had awakened from a long ontological sleep...[E]very subsequent brain-opening has awed me with philosophic-scientific revelations as convincing as the first experience" (Page 8). This is Leary's reference to his first trial of a psychoactive substance which he described as "brain-activation-illumination" (Page 8). I do not think I could have explained it better myself. I will not say that these substances are the empiricism of ontology/spirituality, but they should be included in your repertoire. The first time I experienced an entheogen I quite literally was "awakened from a long ontological sleep". These substances allow one to vet the contents of its own mind and experience this essence through the personal datum that is stored in its brain from a very unique perspective that cannot be experienced any other way, there is nothing that one can do in life to replicate this. For anyone who may contend with this idea I simply give the caveat that Terrence McKenna ardently expressed as directions for the use of these substances, "Turn off the radio. Turn off the television. Sit in a dark room. Sit down. Shut up. Pay attention." Do not defile these experiences by taking them for social recreation. Through this admonition you will find a revelatory experience, not just about life in general, but even more so about you, the entity that is harnessed in that vessel that you call a body. There are thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of plants/mushrooms that can kill us, there are millions of plants that revitalize and nourish the body, but there are only a very infinitesimal fraction of plant and mushroom life that we can ingest that induces these ecstatic states; in the words of Terrence McKenna, "What do you make of this?" If nothing, so be it, if something, bring back your perspective of your sojourn in these realms. It seems to me, and is self evident, especially with the nature of endogenous DMT, that our somatic cells tailored our chemistry and parts of our physiology to the chemicals in these plants/mushrooms, or, on the hand of contention, one could be reserved to say that it is a "fluke" of nature-the mystic in me just will not ascribe that these are inadvertent syntheses of accord. (***I realize that Leary is an advocate for the use of LSD, but I am weary of anything that man synthesizes for ingestion, even if it is considered relatively benign. I would rather stay the course that our indigenous tribes have bequeathed to us through hundreds/thousands of years of use with all natural substances; this definitely deserves a seal of organic approval, but that is just me.) The only aversion I have to the book is the title itself. Your brain is not God, the Mind is God, and the brain is just an instrument that taps into that source. As Jiddu Krishnamurti conveys so passionately, there is One Mind, no individual. Now, my personal perception of the Mind, is that it is the totality of all the energy that is exerted in the Universe and the cells have tapped into it utilizing the most advanced technology in the Universe, the human body and its brain, and in harmony with this essence it does not exist without human thought to convey that idea into Physical Reality, in other words we create the essence, so we are the essence, and it does not exist without us. The Universe is Anthropocentric; call this hubris or egoism, but none of this matters if we are all dead and there remain not even vestiges of man, unless there are other sentient beings out there to learn from, divulge our own understanding of ontology and/or to hand the baton of vetting the Universe to ensure the continuity of this endeavor. In summary, the 50 trillion cells that we are invented a way to tap into this essence and calibrate that energy into six and half billion specific subjective points on Earth, and in consummation with the datum that the brain stores there is the illusion of individuality. With the reference to this essence that most call God/Gods, we are the creatures that have the most graphic relationship with it and also culture it during our life time; therefore, we sculpt it and mold it until our death, and, by my interpretation at the moment, upon the death of our body our energy/spirit is transferred into that essence to sway it even more vividly. Unfortunately, the Masses of the population are just drones of the Institutionalization that we had had to erect to maintain Progress, which is a necessary evil, and really never achieve anything worth value to Society and the Universe except labor. They go to and fro mechanically adhering to the Program that has been constructed and never truly realize their individual Divinity and their potential to sculpt human culture and in turn the essence that we tap into. Aside from the essence and harmony of the Mind and the Brain, I do concur with Leary that we are the Gods, each human being occupies a very specific and unique void in the space-time continuum that will never be experienced again; this is the ONLY thing that is impossible in this Universe. The power of conglomerating our efforts through civilization is that we have the time to create advanced technology, and this technology is that which renders to us our OBVIOUS divinity. One individual is capable of creating the most novel invention of advanced technology, they just need the time, and time is given to them by the Social Machine. Also, the only competition we have for gods, are our ancient myths, these challenge us and we feel subordinated by them, so externally we feel that we are inferior to something that our mind projects, this is why we continue to endeavor to Create even more; essentially, there really is no competition for the human race, we are divine intelligence, the culmination of the Imagination of the Universe, we just make stupid and atrocious decisions at times. The "God vs. Devil" perennial myth is evident in our actions, and that equates to "Good vs. Evil", with the omission of one letter (the "o" in God) and the addition of another (the "d" in Devil). In the words of Leary himself, "Geneticist [are to accomplish] the routine tasks of divinity - create life, improve life, attain immortality (Page 41). Organisms equipped with nervous systems capable of attaining higher altitudes, velocities, and communication systems, eventually allow lifepods to blow off the planet, like seed blossoms, and thus disseminate Gaia around the galaxy (Page 44). [H]uman intelligence is [obviously] designed to shape the Universe, to navigate the process of evolution, and fabricate the structure of personal reality (Page 48). Recombinant engineering allows humans to create new life forms, to correct malfunctioning genes, to clone, to effect DNA repair, to understand and manage the genetic signals which cause aging and death (Page 46)." Thank God Totalitarian Christian Fundamentalism did not poison the minds of our Founding Fathers, had they been, they would have never realized and granted us the freedom of Religion, Speech and Press. This book, along with Leary's audio, video and other literature is a testament to the power and importance of free speech, while the subject of utilizing "drugs", I prefer entheogens (at least for the naturally occurring substances), is a very taboo subject, even more emphatically when it is coming from an individual who has a level of reverence for the possibilities and potentialities through utilizing these substances with interlaced espousal of reTHINKING/reEVALUATING the whole establishment and "order" of the Social Machine along with all of its facets, Political-Economic-Religious-Education. The depth of this book, at least as I experienced it, and the execution of reading is a test to sobriety without a substance, intoxication will ensue! While some may satire this as a metaphor as Mindless Beguile of intoxication, my intentions are to say that the book definitely caused me to think beyond the current measure of my inferior conception of reality. Out of this very short 106 page book I have recorded twenty five pages of notes, quotes and subsequent thoughts. Had I not been born prior to the death of Leary I would have to indeed identify the belief that I was a reincarnation of him, just simply due to how parallel and abundant our thoughts are identical from my intuitive feelings prior to coming into knowledge of Leary and his work. Out of the mentors (Timothy Leary, Terrence McKenna, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ron Paul and Aubrey de Grey...at current) I have decided to take highest level of resonance with from various facets our Societies, both present and past, Leary is at the top of the list.

It is so interesting to revisit a book from your youth, and these days, thanks to the Kindle collection, I greedily gorge myself on these often out of print, hard to find, no-one-has-ever-heard-of classics... and Timothy Leary is one of them. He writes to well, you can be excused for not taking in the facts, but he does challenge the excepted version of the Global Elite's view of ethnogens, or LSD type drugs. Many people, of course, find this challenging, but in the end you have to ask yourself... "why listen to what other people say about Leary... why not read it for yourself, and keep your own counsel!" Read it, for heaven's sake, who knows, it might blow your mind baby!!

Pretty good and thought provoking book. I respect Timothy a ton, howeverI still read this with a cynical mind, which is why I can't really give it 5 stars. I think that is kind of the whole theme of the book though. So who knows. If you are looking for an objective view on things, this may not be the book for you, as it is entirely leaning on certain theories without much representation for opposing theories. It is however a wonderful book to supplement an understanding of various other theories on life and our capabilities as humans.

Not so much useful information in this book. overly technical terms. Hard to figure out what the point is to many chapters. Other Leary books are much better.

really interesting

Un libro muy esperado por mi. Llegó en muy buenas condiciones. Gracias..!!

Timothy Leary was a genius. Very helpful for anyone struggling to understand what it is that they believe and the extent of truth behind it. Would recommend going in with a open mind and not trying to break everything down just because you can.

An exciting look inside the world of the use of LSD. McLeary takes it too far and as we now know, the abuse or so 'religious' or 'scientific' use of LSD can be highly damaging. Fun to read, very curious suggestions ... Open mind needed.