THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA...
… as Richard Nixon once called Timothy Leary. TL was an american writer and former Harvard psychology professor who continually challenged the laws advocating for a controlled use of psychedelic drugs to free your mind. In & out of prison in more than thirty occasions, he inspired a whole generation of artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians…
One of his most popular catchphrases was Turn on, Tune in, Drop out which tried to summarize his path to self reconciliation with the environment we live in.
Leary later explained in his 1983 autobiography Flashbacks:
“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” suggested an active, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. “Drop Out” meant self-reliance, a discovery of one’s singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean “Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity”.
Dead in 1996, he had his final moments videotaped for posterity and his ashes were sent to space in a Pegasus Rocket launched on April 21, 1997, which remained in orbit for six years until it burnt up in the atmosphere.
