I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life.
Timothy LearyRead
If you are serious about your religion, if you really wish to commit yourself to the spiritual quest, you must learn how to use psychochemicals. Drugs are the religion of the twenty-first_x000D_ century. Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelic drugs is like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in the first century A.D., and besides_x000D_ telescopes are unnatural.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that engaging deeply with spirituality today requires exploration of psychedelics, akin to using advanced tools for deeper understanding.
Timothy Leary asserts that modern spirituality and the quest for deeper religious understanding can benefit significantly from the use of psychochemicals, particularly psychedelics. He compares the use of these substances to the advancement of astronomy from naked-eye observation to the use of telescopes, arguing that to pursue a true understanding of the spiritual experience in the contemporary world, one should not shy away from exploring these 'modern' tools. Essentially, Leary positions psychedelics as essential for a richer spiritual journey in the complexities of the twenty-first century.
Themes
SpiritualityPsychedelicsConsciousnessExplorationModernity
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about modern spirituality at a philosophy conference.
More from Timothy Leary
All quotes →Think for yourself and question authority.
Timothy LearyRead
There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third.
Timothy LearyRead
The brain is not a blind, reactive machine, but a complex, sensitive biocomputer that we can program. And if we don't take the responsibility for programming it, then it will be programmed unwittingly by accident or by the social environnement.
Timothy LearyRead
My advice to myself and to everyone else, particularly young people, is to turn on, tune in and drop out. By drop out, I mean to detach yourself from involvement in secular, external social games. But the dropping out has to occur internally before it can occur externally. I'm not telling kids just to quit school; I'm not telling people to quit their jobs. That is an inevitable development of the process of turning on and tuning in.
Timothy LearyRead
The danger of psychedelic drugs, the danger of mind-opening, the danger of consciousness expansion, the danger of inner discovery is a danger to the establishment.
Timothy LearyRead
Similar quotes
The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.
John D. MacdonaldRead
I think I'm learning how to release every day. Recognizing that everything you encounter, touch, or love can become part of you, and in essence never disappears, as long as you can recall it to memory or heart. It's all so connected that we lose everything, but also, we never lose anything.
Adrianne LenkerRead
What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.
Leonard CohenRead
I would say that normally it is the creative minorities that determine the future, and in this sense, the Catholic Church must understand itself as a creative minority that has a heritage of values that are not things of the past, but a very living and relevant reality.
Pope Benedict XviRead
This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.
William S. BurroughsRead
The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead