The Harvard Psychedelic Club Read online

  Everything was quivering with life, even inanimate objects. Leary saw Nile palaces, Hindu temples, Babylonian boudoirs, Bedouin pleasure tents. Then came silk gowns breathing color and mosaics of flaming emeralds, followed by jeweled Moorish serpents.

  Three hours passed in an instant.

  At one point, Leary realized that some other friends had shown up from Acapulco. He slid back into the old reality, not wanting to return, but knowing he had to play host and that he was almost sober enough to pull it off. “We took some mushrooms,” he explained to his startled guests. “Absolutely amazing! Why don’t you guys go into the kitchen and make yourselves a drink. We’ll get some supper in a bit.”

  Another hour passed, and Leary was back from his visionary voyage. Seven psilocybin mushrooms and an ice-cold bottle of Carta Blanca. That’s all it took. Leary was forced to confront the fragile nature of his beliefs. The mushroom ride shattered the foundation of his philosophy of life and his view of himself. What we call “reality” was just a social fabrication. He would later call his trip “the deepest religious experience of my life.”

  Timothy Leary returned from Mexico and immediately set up the Harvard Psilocybin Project. The idea was to recruit graduate students and faculty members from the many colleges, seminaries, and universities in the Boston area. They would take a controlled dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in the magic mushroom, and then write up reports about their experiences. Leary was thoroughly convinced that psychedelic drugs would revolutionize the practice of psychology.

  His project was officially part of the university, but its most important activities occurred within the walls of Leary’s rented home at 64 Homer Street, just across the Charles River from Harvard, in the leafy Boston suburb of Newton. The spacious, three-story home sits atop a hill overlooking a neighborhood park and baseball diamond. A wealthy French bicycle manufacturer built it in 1893. Three large fireplaces radiate from its central chimney, warming wood-paneled rooms on the ground floor. The fireplaces were all ablaze during the psychedelic drug experiments Leary conducted over the long winter nights of late 1960 and early 1961. Today, you can still find burn marks that the absentminded professor left in the hardwood floor—physical evidence of the fire that burned in Leary’s soul for the psychedelic revolution he was about to declare.

  By the summer of 1960, Leary had completed the first year of his three-year Harvard contract. He was just getting used to the idea that he was now a single father. Some semblance of normalcy was returning to his life, but the mushroom visions were still dancing in his head when Leary returned to Harvard and the Center for Personality Research. Suddenly, he was more interested in metaphysics than clinical psychology.

  Leary knew about Harvard’s extraordinary history as a center for mainline psychological inquiry. After all, the father of American psychology, the great William James, spent his entire academic career at Harvard, teaching physiology, anatomy, psychology, and philosophy between the years 1873 and 1907. William was the son of Henry James Sr., the American theologian whose Cambridge home stood in the heart of the old Harvard College campus—where the Harvard Faculty Club stands today.

  But there’s another psychological tradition here, and it’s a legacy Leary would later claim as his own—a tradition of “wondrous internal paganism,” a rebel history of transcendentalism, mysticism, and self-reliance.

  Every day on his way to work, Leary would walk by the Cambridge Swedenborg Chapel, a stately Gothic-revival sanctuary built by the founder of the university’s school of architecture. It stands, in part, as a monument to Henry James Sr., who is best remembered for rejecting his father’s stern Presbyterianism and finding a spiritual home in Swedenborgianism, a religious tradition founded by Emanuel Swedenborg, an eighteenth-century Swedish mystic and scientist. The other major influence in the life of the elder James would come through his association with former members of Brook Farm, who ran a utopian socialist commune in nearby Roxbury, Massachusetts, between 1841 and 1847. Those same years saw the births of two of Henry’s sons, the famous ones: William, the psychologist-philosopher; and Henry James Jr., the American writer known for his 1881 novel The Portrait of a Lady and other works.

  William James laid the foundation for American psychology in 1890 with the publication of his classic text, The Principles of Psychology. But the book that would establish the mystical tradition later claimed by Leary and Alpert—James’s philosophical masterpiece, The Varieties of Religious Experience— appeared twelve years later, in 1902. Those writings reveal that Leary and Alpert were not the first Harvard psychologists to be transformed by mind-altering drugs. The Varieties of Religious Experience praises the mystical qualities produced by two drugs popular in that era—alcohol and nitrous oxide. “Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites and says yes. It is, in fact, the great exciter of the Yes function in man,” James wrote of the alcoholic high. “To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and of literature. . . . The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.”

  Leary, a heavy drinker who blamed alcoholism for three generations of misery in his Irish clan, was more taken by the book’s ode to nitrous oxide, which James used to “stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree.

  “Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler,” James wrote. “I know of more than one person who is persuaded that in the nitrous oxide trance we have a genuine metaphysical transformation. . . . Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”

  In a rare show of modesty, Leary would later say that his own descriptions of the wonders of LSD intoxication pale when compared with the revelations of William James. The father of American psychology, Leary quipped, “corrupted many a mind by describing the glories of nitrous oxide in far more colorful prose than the most intoxicated Irishman.”

  Leary came back to Harvard as a man transformed. There was no way he was going back to his old life, to his old ways of doing things. His new boss, David McClelland, was just finishing up his book The Achieving Society, a psychological investigation into why some societies prosper and others fall apart. Surely David McClelland would understand the importance of these insights. He would certainly agree that these psychedelic experiences could be used to further the goal they both shared—to humanize the profession of psychology and foster an enlightened, compassionate society.

  He didn’t.

  Leary saw unlimited possibilities.

  McClelland saw administrative hurdles and political problems. Leary suddenly realized that there was no way to convey the power of the mushroom vision. It was something you had to experience firsthand. It was something every man would have to try for himself.

  Teacher: Newton, Massachusetts New Year’s Day, 1961

  For Huston Smith, there were many things to celebrate at the close of the year, many blessings for which to give thanks. Aldous Huxley had just finished his series of lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the latest and most prestigious university to include Smith on its faculty. America had just elected a young and vibrant Democrat—a Massachusetts senator and a Harvard man—to begin the decade as the new president of the United States. Smith’s new book, The Religions of Man, was starting to sell and find its niche as an introductory textbook in religious-studies courses at colleges around the country.

  But there was something missing from Huston’s life. He’d been teaching and writing about the mystical experience—the root of all religion—for more than a decade. He had his yoga and meditation practice, the spiritual regime suggested by the good swamis of the Vedanta Society. There had been little flashes of insight, tempting tastes of the state of consciousness achi
eved by great masters of mysticism, but Smith had never had the full-blown mystical experience Huxley described in The Doors of Perception.

  Timothy Leary still had the buttoned-down look in this photo taken at a Boston club in early 1966. (Photo by John Landers, Boston Globe.)

  Huxley first crossed paths with Leary during his fall sojourn in Cambridge. At first, the novelist-turned-mystic had great hopes for the psychedelic research Leary had just begun. They met over dinner at a Boston restaurant on Election Day—the very night John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States. Joining Leary and Huxley at the table was Humphrey Osmond, a British scientist who had already done extensive psychedelic drug research. Osmond had run into Leary at a conference in Boston and had offered to arrange the meeting with the famous British writer. Leary jumped at the chance. He arrived at the restaurant wearing a gray flannel suit. He knew that his dinner partners were the real experts in psychedelic drugs. After all, Osmond was the man who had first introduced Huxley to mescaline, the trip that inspired Aldous to write The Doors of Perception. All through dinner, Leary tried as hard as he could not to come across as too much of an eager beaver. He may have overdone it. After Tim left the restaurant, Huxley and Osmond started talking about whether Leary was the right man to carry the psychedelic torch.

  “Seems like a solid chap,” Huxley said. “What do you think?” “I don’t know,” Osmond replied. “Seems a bit stuffy, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Aldous said. “Perhaps.”

  It wouldn’t take long for the two Brits to see that their first impression was an extraordinarily inaccurate assessment of Timothy Leary. Stuffy? When it came to his attitude toward psychedelic drugs, messianic was closer to the mark. A couple of years later, Huxley and Osmond would have another conversation about the man who was fast becoming the world’s most infamous spokesman for the psychedelic cause. “I’m very fond of Timothy,” Huxley would say, “but why, oh why, does he have to be such an ass!”

  Huxley and Osmond would part ways with Leary over disagreements as to the best way to change the world through psychedelic drugs. Leary wanted to turn on the whole world. Huxley was more cautious. He thought elite opinion makers and trendsetters should have the experience, which might be too much of a revelation for the common man.

  Huston Smith would eventually fall into the Huxley camp, but in the fall of 1960, the enthusiastic religion scholar was ready to join the Leary crusade. After all, none other than Aldous Huxley had recommended Timothy Leary as the perfect person to guide Huston Smith into these mysterious realms of higher consciousness. Smith made the phone call, and the two men arranged to meet for lunch at the Harvard Faculty Club.

  On the appointed day, Huston walked into the dining room. Leary greeted him with a warm handshake and a wide grin. What a charmer, Huston thought. Leary was wearing fine English tweeds atop gleaming white tennis shoes. Now there’s a man with flair.

  It didn’t take long for Leary and Smith to start talking about the drug research.

  “Well, you know, Tim,” Huston said, “I’ve never tried these substances.”

  “Then you are perfectly qualified,” Leary replied. “All you have to do is to write up a two- or three-page account about your experience the day after our session. We’re really looking for someone who knows something about mysticism to look over all these reports we’ve collected. I’m a psychologist, not a religion scholar. I was hoping to get Aldous to do it, but he didn’t have time. He said, ‘Talk to Huston. He knows all about that.’”

  Smith was more than happy to help out.

  “I don’t know what you are doing,” he told Leary. “I do know about the mystical experience, but not about it being engendered this way. So I guess I’d better find out before I start pontificating about it.”

  “I can certainly arrange that,” Leary replied.

  So the two professors pulled out their date books and tried to find a completely open day they could devote to the experience. Leary had already learned how important it was for his research subjects to have at least a full day and night set aside with no distractions to fully appreciate and absorb the effects of the drug. Leary and Smith both had busy schedules in October and November. Then the holidays were coming up.

  Finally, with a twinkle in his eye, Leary said, “How about New Year’s Day?”

  They had a date.

  Smith thought it might be a good idea for his wife, Kendra, to come along for the ride. “The more the merrier,” Leary said. On the appointed day, they arrived at the Leary home in Newton. They got there just after noon. Joining them were Frank Barron, the codirector of the Harvard Psilocybin Project, and Dr. George Alexander, a psychiatrist who was present to handle any psychological emergencies that might arise. After a little small talk, Leary pulled out some capsules and explained that one was a mild dose, two were average, and three were recommended for those who wanted a fuller experience of what the drug could offer. Kendra took three. Huston was more cautious at first, taking one capsule, but then downing another in half an hour, when nothing seemed to be happening.

  After about an hour, Smith started feeling some tension in his legs, which then started to twitch. He decided that he had better lie down on the couch in Leary’s large, comfortable living room. Aware that he would have to write a report on his experience, Huston tried desperately to pay attention to the exact moment when he passed into the visionary stage. That would prove to be impossible. His whole sense of time started to shift. Something was radically different about his thoughts and feelings. Everything that popped into his mind seemed strange, weird, uncanny, significant, and terrifying beyond belief. The drug was like a psychological prism. Suddenly he could see the infinitely complex and layered psychological ingredients that make up normal consciousness. These sensation-impressions were refracted, spread out as if by a spectroscope, into layers. How would he be able to describe these layers upon layers, these worlds within worlds? This was all beyond words. There was no way he could look back in the morning and describe all this. That would be impossible once he lost this new power of perception.

  Huston’s trip was awe inspiring, but it was not pleasurable. Everything in his mind seemed to be infinitely significant, but also strangely terrifying. At one point, he remembered that he had a body. Or did he? It felt like his body was laid out, half dead, on a slab, cool and slightly moist. But what was the connection between his body, mind, and spirit? His body would function only if his spirit chose to return to it, infuse it, and animate it. What if it didn’t return? And why should it?

  Leary walked into his living room to check on his subject. He could tell Huston was not having a good time. He had lain here for hours in a comatose terror. At one point, he cried out to Leary.

  “Tim,” Huston yelled. “I hope you know what you are playing around with because if I mount one step higher the terror is just going to explode my body and you’ll be left with a corpse on your divan.”

  Leary walked over to the couch to reassure him that everything was OK.

  “You’ll be fine, Huston,” Leary said. “I can guarantee you that I won’t find a corpse on my couch.”

  “I know,” Smith replied. “I have a family and I do not want to leave this life at this point. But I know with every conviction that I could if I wanted and you would have a corpse here on your divan.”

  Huston went back into a kind of trance, lying on the couch in silent, dazed contemplation. Leary offered tea. Huston didn’t drink it. Fruit. It went uneaten. Words of encouragement and support. Huston failed to respond. Leary was afraid that he’d blown it. He knew Aldous Huxley and Huston Smith would be key allies in his psychedelic revolution, and now he’d sent the influential religion professor off on a bad trip.

  Huston knew from reading Huxley that these were “heaven and hell” drugs. They can produce joy and terror—often in the same trip. That realization helped settle him down. At one point, he sat up on the couch and began to gaze into a blazing fire Leary
had built to warm the room. Huston could hear soft voices in the next room, where Tim was talking to Barron. Huston was coming back to the old world. He’d made it back. His mind was reconnecting with his body.

  Later that night, after Huston and Kendra had left, Leary was depressed. He was convinced that the night had been a failure, and blamed himself for his lack of experience in running these visionary sessions. He had lost his one chance to get the noted religion expert on board.

  Leary was wrong. Kendra knew that Huston was mostly just kidding when he started talking about turning into a corpse on the sofa. Kendra did have to drive her husband home as he still seemed a bit stoned. “Such a sense of awe,” he said in the car. “It was exactly what I was looking for.”

  Kendra was equally blown away by the experience. “I had this whole other sense of time,” she said. “It was like I suddenly sensed eons and eons of time. It was like you’re cleansing the doors of perception.”

  Huston’s first trip inspired him to join the Leary team and take a leadership role in the research project for the next three years. It was more than a team, really. It felt like family. Sharing psychedelic drugs can forge a strong bond. Psychedelic partners often share a vision of another reality, and are never quite the same again. They join the club. Smith began to feel more connected to the twenty or so professors and graduate students on the psilocybin project than to anyone else in the academic community or in his church. They felt like the early explorers of Africa. They were discovering a whole new world that was spiritual, ephemeral, but at the same time felt more solid, more real, than everyday reality.