Original subtitles

♪

[Timothy Leary]

It's the taboo.

It's the taboo,

basically, of all time.

- Yeah, of all time.

- Right now,

there are a few more taboos.

We knocked off

the, uh, the taboo

against sex of all kinds-

-You did personally.

♪

[Timothy Leary]

Drugs, of course.

Remember how upset

society got about drugs?

- It still is. War on Drugs.

We certainly know

about that taboo.

♪

[Ram Dass]

The next thing was death.

[Timothy Leary]

Everybody has deep thoughts

about death,

the ultimate taboo.

♪

[Lama Tsultrim Allione]

They blew open this world,

this psychedelic world.

I mean, it ended the 1950s.

It was all up for grabs.

It's hard to describe

what that felt like.

[Andrew Weir]

Leary and Alpert are what will

be remembered as cultural icons

of the '60s, especially,

and very influential people

in not only American culture

but world culture.

[Joan Halifax, Roshi]

You know, they are

iconic figures

who stepped off the map.

They really paid heavily.

[Timothy Leary]

The use of psychedelic drugs

such as marijuana,

mescaline, LSD,

is out of control

in the United States today.

I knew he was an outlaw.

[Zach Leary]

You have to be quite a badass

to get locked up

for your ideas.

[Ram Dass]

We had a deep, deep friendship

but we also had

a deep enmity.

[Timothy Leary]

We're all gonna die.

Why not learn how to do it

with class

and style and friendship

as the climactic expression

of a life?

[Joan Halifax, Roshi]

What Ram Dass did

for our culture

was to open up

a door of spirituality

by having surrendered

so completely to love.

♪

[Timothy Leary]

When you walk in,

there was a flash

of total joy.

- Yeah, yeah, me too.

- And love.

I don't know what

the words are but, uh--

[Ram Dass]

See, in my mythology now,

I'd say you and I

are connected

at a place

where we've both danced through

this incarnation together.

but that we have

a connection

that is timeless

in another sense of that.

And like we're old beings

that know each other well

through many forms.

♪

I think one incarnation

is wonderful.

I mean, I started out

a Jewish boy

from Boston.

From psychology

to psychedelics

to...Eastern mysticism.

And then ended up Ram Dass,

uh...

just getting straight

on 'til it was gone.

♪

[Timothy Leary]

Who are you? Who am I?

It's a very difficult question.

Throughout my life,

I've always been fascinated

by where the action was.

I'd never want to have power,

but I wanted to, uh--

I ran for governor once

against Ronald Reagan.

Uh, I wanted to experience

the different, uh,

theaters or stages

or viewpoints of life.

I think I've lived one of

the most interesting lives

of anyone in the 20th century.

♪

[Robert Redford]

In the summer of 1995,

Timothy Leary announced

to the world media

that he had been diagnosed with

inoperable prostate cancer.

He was dying.

[Timothy Leary]

It's shocking

that people are not expected

to talk about their dying

or to plan it.

Certainly the greatest

adventure,

celebration of your life,

should be the process

of moving on.

♪

[Ram Dass]

He turned it into

a theater piece,

he turned it into a poem,

he turned it into a dance,

which is just what he did

with all the rest of his life.

It was a celebratory moment.

♪

[Timothy Leary]

The thing's a team sport.

Dying's a team sport.

Be open to new ideas.

Remember when people

used to say

that LSD is an escapist drug?

- Yeah, I just think--

- You know, one thing LSD

is native because

you can't escape--

You got a hundred billion

neurons--yeah.

My thing about death

is not escaping it.

I'm running towards Miss Death.

You can't turn this over

to the doctors.

You can't turn it over

to the priests.

You can't turn it over

to the medical profession.

Think for yourselves.

No government agency

or no profession

can solve these

problems for you.

I've got to do it

for myself,

you've got to do it

for yourself,

and all the viewers have

got to do it for themselves.

Take charge of it!

Plan it,

talk to your friends about it.

♪

[Robert Redford]

Timothy Leary,

born October 22, 1920,

in Springfield, Massachusetts.

An only child.

[Ram Dass]

He took birth into such

an interesting tension

in terms of,

on his mother's side,

very conservative

Irish Catholic,

very tight, held in tight,

very judgmental.

His father was a dentist

but from the Learys

who were kind of a wild,

Irish, drinking, divorcing,

going off and running away

type family.

[Timothy Leary]

I was a heavy reader as a child

and, uh, I spent hours

and hours as a kid

studying the heroic

and the interesting

and the adventures

of people who were thinking.

[Ram Dass]

Timothy had an

extraordinarily complex mind,

subtle mind.

He liked the kind of multilevel

nature of consciousness a lot.

I mean, the fact

that James Joyce

was one of his favorite writers

is certainly a key, a clue.

And he was--he was

the romantic Irish bard,

also the kind of, um,

itinerant scholar,

the kind of rascally person

at the bar.

♪

And he seemed to

play the role of a bad guy.

[John Perry Barlow]

As Aldous Huxley said of him,

"The good Dr. Leary

would serve our cause

and his own better if

he could resist his impulse

to cock snooks at authority."

There was a thing in Tim that

just liked to piss people off.

What he was, at heart,

was an Irish rebel.

[Joan Halifax, Roshi]

But like a good Irishman,

um, he could just

pull tricks out of the bag.

And he did it continually.

He had a twinkle in his eye

and seemed leprechaunish

and mischievous.

[Robert Redford]

Timothy's paternal grandfather

advised him to "find your own

way, be one of a kind."

He acted on that guidance,

questioning authority

every chance he got.

Following in

his father's footsteps,

Leary was a genial hell raiser

as a young man.

At West Point,

he was court-martialed

for supplying liquor

to other cadets.

Eventually, he was cleared

of the charge

and left the academy.

Caught between the Catholic

desire to please

and a rebellious nature

that ran deep,

Tim spent his life

walking the edge

between conformity...

♪

...and chaos.

[Ram Dass]

It's interesting,

the things that happen.

He gets thrown out of college

for being found

in a girls' dormitory,

he gets given jail sentence

for originally 40 years

and it was then reduced to ten

for, um, what,

a half an ounce of grass?

And there was a thing

about Timothy,

about right and wrong,

that he was busy

being a bad boy

but in the rascally sense,

the playful sense.

Timothy was not mean-spirited.

He--he was absolutely

quite the opposite.

♪

[Robert Redford]

Richard Alpert,

born April 6th, 1931,

in Boston, Massachusetts.

His father, George Alpert,

was president

of the New York, New Haven

and Hartford Railroad,

cofounder of

Brandeis University,

and a trustee of the synagogue

the family attended.

Studying psychology,

Dick earned his Master's

from Wesleyan

and a PhD at Stanford.

He taught on the faculties of

both Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Then, in 1958,

he was appointed

assistant professor

at Harvard.

A hometown success

at the age of 27.

[Ram Dass]

I kept up a front

because I'd be scorned.

You just didn't talk

about homosexuality.

I mean, my prep school...

Oh boy.

I went through hell...

internally.

[Joan Halifax, Roshi]

A part of it is the privilege

that he was brought into.

♪

A part of it is the era.

It might be a key variant

in his life

that made him really

move into the position

of an outlier.

My homosexuality

set a stage

for feeling like an outcast.

♪

Who am I to you?

In projections?

Well, you are s...

We're not the words for it,

but if I said

something like "soulmate"

or "good friend,"

and "long-term friend,"

and, uh...

I want to expose this, man.

When we met, it's true that

I had read more of the books

but you were ten times

more streetwise

than I was when we met.

Really?

Really?

I always think of myself

as kind of a nebbish,

you know...

lost soul, very square,

and you picked me up.

I mean, you helped me.

But you were also

a very scared Jewish boy

- that wanted to--

- Yes, I was also that.

♪

[Timothy Leary]

When people ask me

what's the major discovery

about myself and my life,

it's the confidence

to think for myself

and to, uh, explore.

[Robert Redford]

During the war,

Leary completed

his Bachelor's in psychology

and was posted at

the Army Medical Corps Hospital

in Pennsylvania.

There, Tim met his first wife,

Marianne.

They were married in 1945.

He then got his Master's

in psychology

at Washington State.

In 1946, they moved

to San Francisco

and started a family.

Leary earned his PhD

and began clinical research

at UC Berkeley.

There he developed

a definitive test

for personality assessment

and was published widely

in respected journals.

♪

The American Psychological

Association

named his first book,

The Interpersonal Diagnosis

of Personality,

its book of the year.

♪

Both Leary and Marianne

were heavy drinkers

and Marianne suffered

from severe depression.

♪

She committed suicide in 1955

on the morning

of Tim's 35th birthday

after hearing that he had

been having an affair.

♪

Marianne's death haunted Tim

for the rest of his life.

♪

In 1958, dissatisfied

with psychology,

which had a success rate,

he thought,

no better than chance,

Leary moved with his

two children, Susan and Jack,

to Florence, Italy.

♪

There he met David McClelland,

the director

of the Harvard Center

for Personality Research.

Leary explained that

he wanted to throw out

the old doctor-patient model

for psychological study

and get involved

with his subjects

in real-life situations.

♪

McClelland was impressed.

[Huston Smith]

Leary was the brightest

psychologist

but Harvard lured him away

by offering him

a three-year research project.

[Robert Redford]

That summer, Timothy Leary

ate psychoactive mushrooms

for the first time

in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

♪

They were offered to him by

a visiting East German

anthropologist

who had heard of their use

among the Aztecs.

[Huston Smith]

And said, uh, "Here, take

these, they're interesting."

[Robert Redford]

Over the next four hours,

he journeyed through

these inner landscapes

and came back

a changed man.

♪

Leary later told Alpert

that he had learned

more about the mind

in four hours

than he had in his 15 years

as a psychologist.

♪

It was 1960

and he was 40 years old.

[Huston Smith]

Having an open book

on research,

anything he wanted to do,

he, of course, wanted

to research these substances.

♪

[Timothy Leary]

When I went to Harvard,

there was another

young professor

who, uh, was a very loveable,

charismatic person

and we joined up as a team.

Richard Alpert,

who is now Ram Dass,

had been more conservative.

[Ram Dass]

When I was at Harvard

with Timothy,

I was so gung-ho.

I had appointments in four

departments simultaneously

and also research contracts

at Stanford.

[Ralph Metzner]

Fantastically successful.

I mean, he had appointments

at Stanford and at Harvard

and then he had a plane

and he had a car

and he had--you know,

he was like a shining star.

He had tremendous charisma.

♪

I was an undergraduate

at Harvard

between 1960 and 1964.

I had met Dick Alpert

at a party.

Um, I found him

uncomfortable to be around.

He was--he, seemed to me, not

comfortable in his own being.

[Ram Dass]

I was like Mr. Power Player

in academia.

Timothy was

way outside of that.

Of all the colleagues

around me,

he frightened me

because he was so free.

He was the only consciousness

on the faculty

that hadn't been co-opted

by Harvard,

that wasn't impressed

with being at Harvard.

I saw you were laughing

at the system, you know,

and I had no sense of humor

whatsoever.

You're not supposed

to laugh at Harvard and--

[Ram Dass]

I know. There was nobody

else at Harvard

laughing at it but you.

I began to sense

what a visionary was,

that Timothy had the ability

to see outside of systems

and therefore he could

open things to where you'd go

but it would take you

a while to get there, maybe.

And he was doing that for me.

I didn't do that.

- You did.

- It was the drugs.

You freed me--

but you gave me the drug.

You enticed--

you not enticed me,

you told me what

the possibility was

and I trusted you.

♪

[Robert Redford]

In the fall of 1960,

Leary discovered

that Sandoz Limited,

the pharmaceutical company,

would send synthesized

psilocybin

to qualified researchers.

♪

He had access

to the active ingredient

of magic mushrooms.

♪

Leary then set up

a research program

to investigate the effects

of psilocybin.

♪

Staff members trained as guides

and took the drug

alongside volunteer subjects

in specially prepared

supportive settings.

♪

This approach became

known as "set and setting."

♪

Careful evaluations were made

of each session.

♪

Alpert was away

at UC Berkeley

but that winter he took

psilocybin for the first time

at Leary's house

in Newton Centre.

♪

It stripped him of

the various identities

he had built up in himself

over 30 years.

♪

He wrote, "I realized

that although everything

by which I knew myself,

even my body and this life

itself, was gone,

still, I was fully aware."

[Ram Dass]

As professor went

and middle class boy went

and pilot went

and all of my games

were, like,

going off into the distance,

I got this terrible panic

because, indeed,

I was gonna cease to exist.

And I got the panic

which is the panic

that perceives

the psychological death

because, indeed, Richard Alpert

was dying at that point.

And the panic was,

"No, stop, stop,

I've got to hold on

to something

so I'll know who I am."

And Timothy,

the wise old Timothy,

always says things like,

"Trust your nervous system."

And you, at dawn,

went home

and you were shoveling snow

in front of your

mother and father's house

and your mother said,

"What are you doing out there?"

"You idiot, come in,

it's four in the morning.

Nobody shovels snow."

[Timothy Leary]

You said, "I love you, Mom,"

or something.

[Ram Dass]

And I said, "I love you"

and I went back

to shoveling snow.

You freed me at that moment

from my mother.

That's what you did.

♪

[Robert Redford]

The Psilocybin Project

was widely supported

and above reproach.

The drug was legally obtained

from Sandoz;

the project authorized

by Harvard.

♪

[Peggy Mellon Hitchcock]

I heard about these

two professors at Harvard

who were offering

to give people psilocybin

in return for having them

write about their experiences.

I arranged to have a session

with Richard.

I felt very comfortable

with him, you know,

so I thought this could

only be a positive experience.

And it really confirmed

a lot of things

that I had...

hoped were true

that I had sort of glimpsed

at various times in my life.

So, in other words,

that there was

kind of a larger reality

than what my everyday

humdrum experiences were.

[Andrew Weil]

I read about the mescaline,

I think, after I

graduated from high school

and was fascinated by it

and read everything

I could on it

and wanted to try it.

When I got to Harvard,

Aldous Huxley had come to MIT

to give a series of lectures

on visionary experience.

I found out that, uh,

Leary and Alpert

were teaching at Harvard

and were interested in this,

so I went over--

I made an appointment

and I met Leary.

I had a good conversation

with him,

he told me

that he thought these drugs

were the most interesting things

he'd ever found

and the potential was enormous.

He didn't see

any downside to them.

I asked him if I could be

a subject in his research

and he told me that

they had made an agreement

with the university

that they couldn't use

undergraduates.

So I got a supply

of mescaline

independent of anything

to do with them.

Um, I took it a number of times

with a group of friends of mine

who were undergraduates.

Um, had variable experiences

with it,

um, one quite powerful

but I didn't know

what to do with that.

You know, it seems to me

if I followed

the implications of that,

I would drop out of college

and I didn't want to do that.

So, I think I boxed

all that up

and set it aside.

♪

[Robert Redford]

Branching out,

the professors organized

a prisoner rehabilitation

project.

♪

Psilocybin was given

to selected inmates

at Concord State Prison.

Their hope was to help them

break through the habits

that kept getting

them re-arrested.

♪

Another famous study

had 30 seminary students

taking psilocybin

at Boston University Chapel

during one of the year's

main services.

♪

It became known as

the "Good Friday Experiment."

[Huston Smith]

There were 16 of us

in this small chapel

who had ingested.

I very soon felt

the awe coming over me.

♪

It was probably

the greatest Good Friday

in 2,000 years.

[applause, laughter]

♪

[Robert Redford]

In the spring of 1962,

just as the Psilocybin Project

was becoming almost manageable,

a British researcher

arrived from England

with a more powerful

psychoactive drug:

LSD.

Lysergic acid diethylamide

was first synthesized

by Albert Hofmann

from a derivative

of ryegrass fungus

at the Swiss headquarters

of Sandoz in 1938.

Five years later,

he accidentally got some

on his skin...

and discovered

its mind-bending properties

during an epic bike ride home.

♪

[thunder rumbling]

♪

[leaves scraping]

♪

[garbled chirping]

♪

[tires skidding]

♪

Hofmann not only survived

the ride

but continued as a chemist

at Sandoz for many years.

He lived to be 102.

At first, Leary resisted

the idea of including LSD

in the Harvard project.

Researching psilocybin

was pushing administrators

far enough.

♪

Another issue was

the reputation LSD had

of being a mind control drug

researched by the military.

♪

But his own experience

convinced Leary

that LSD held potential

for scientific discovery

far beyond that

of psilocybin.

[Ram Dass]

The LSD was interesting

because when he took the LSD,

he didn't talk

for about five days.

And I got afraid

we'd lost Timothy.

[John Perry Barlow]

It's hard to describe

what it was like taking LSD

under the set and setting

of the early '60s.

The rending away

from all of these very intense

paradigms of authority

and monotheism and culture.

As a good lieutenant

on the ship,

I sort of battened down

the hatches

and told everybody

not to touch the stuff

and not to - you know,

just to, you know, wait.

And then Timothy, finally

when he was able to speak,

it was more like, "Wow,"

or "Phew" or "Yes!"

and then we all started.

[thunder rumbling]

[Robert Redford]

Leary and Alpert

saw their research

as connected to the

centuries-long use

of psychotropic plants

by indigenous people

throughout the world.

[thunder rumbling]

♪

Psychedelic,

from the Greek words "psyche,"

and "delos,"

literally means

"mind manifesting."

♪

After their sessions,

subjects reported

many common perceptions:

barriers dissolved,

everything seemed alive,

even inanimate objects.

They felt a oneness

with everything.

Colors and solid patterns

were transfixing...

♪

...mesmerizing.

The experience seemed

to come in waves.

♪

[Timothy Leary]

The psychotropic drugs,

which are not really

recognized as, uh, existing

or valid tools,

were demonized and glorified for

the wrong reasons in the '60s.

That's natural.

The thing is,

know what you're doing.

♪

[Andrew Weir]

It is normal and natural

to seek altered states

of consciousness, high states,

we do it all the time

in various ways.

Drugs are one way

of getting into them.

♪

Well, there's two classes

of psychedelics.

One are the ones that are

mescaline and its relatives,

more stimulants

than the other ones.

The other one is called

the indoles

which is LSD

and psilocybin and DMT,

um, really are remarkably

light in their effects

on the physical body.

Um, I think, as a group,

these drugs are

very non-toxic.

Um, the main dangers

are psychological ones

of people becoming panicked,

terrified,

um, but I think the positive

potentials are terrific.

LSD is not a drug

like alcohol or a barbiturate.

LSD is, um, a chemical

which contains

several hundred

Encyclopedia Britannicas.

So when you talk to someone

who's taken LSD,

or if you have a seating

with--who's taken LSD,

his conscience is being spun

through many, many different

levels of language

which are not the language

of English

or of French or of Latin,

but chemical languages

of cell and nervous system,

sense organ,

which are many millions

of years old.

Uh, what's the reaction

to taking LSD?

If the person is unprepared

and he swallows

this local library

of chemical messages,

he's confused.

He can be entranced

and delighted

or he can be very frightened.

[Lama Tsultrim Allione]

The experiences, personally,

that I had

with psychedelics,

was all about

opening my mind

and it was always, for me,

about the spiritual journey.

It affected a whole generation

of people that way.

It--I mean, it ended the 1950s.

[Joan Halifax, Roshi]

It was as though

the splitting of the atom

was going to be followed

by another kind of splitting

but it was a breaking open

of the heart

and the opening of the mind.

You know, the reason

that I took LSD

and I think many of us did,

is a hunger to be an explorer.

I think they made me

aware of...

the magic in the world,

of seeing things not just

from a scientific perspective.

They really connected

me with nature

in a way that I wasn't before.

They really showed me

the potential

of how changing things in here

changes things out there

and that's been a major theme

of my work.

♪

[Lama Tsultrim Allione]

It's important to understand

that certain drugs

really are sacred substances.

If you are going to use

some of the sacred drugs,

to use them

in the right context

with the right people.

Timothy Leary and

Richard Alpert recognized this.

I think the early work

that they did with psychedelics

was very important.

Uh, they showed that

set and setting

really influenced

the experience greatly.

That the mindset

of the experimenters

greatly influence the outcomes.

And they really demonstrated

positive potentials

of the use of psychedelics

which I think just now,

you know, is becoming a focus

of attention again.

[Robert Redford]

Doctors Joan Halifax

and Stan Grof

were among the first

to research the use

of psychedelics

with the dying.

In their case,

terminal cancer patients

in 1967.

[Andrew Weil]

In the dying process,

there's often a lot of fear

and I think psychedelics

make it possible

to step aside from that

and observe what's happening

dispassionately.

A guided psychedelic experience

in a dying person

often enabled that person

to drastically cut doses

of opiates for pain relief,

which kept consciousness clear.

It often greatly facilitated

communication

with family and friends,

where before there was

no honest communication

of what was going on,

and it made

the dying process easier

and this was strongly positive

results of these studies.

♪

So I think surrounding

the use of drugs with ritual,

making the occasions

of taking them special,

paying great attention

to set and setting...

is all part of minimizing

their potential for harm.

♪

[Peggy Mellon Hitchcock]

We used to use

the Tibetan Book of the Dead

as a manual

for psychedelic trips

and that really is a manual

of leaving your body

and going into it with

what they call a bardo state

and, you know,

so a manual for death really.

Well, the drug literature

going back to William James

and Harvard people

a hundred years ago,

they always said

it's a dying experience,

it's a death experience.

There's a classic mystic thing

of joy and wonder

which, uh...

But I'm not advocating,

boys and girls.

It's--like anything else,

it's complicated.

I'm very cautious.

I've taken

almost every drug there is

but the reason I can survive

as well as I do

is I'm prudent

and I'm careful

and I try to find out

what's involved.

Twenty years ago,

we knew almost nothing

about the brain.

Now we know

120 billion neurons,

every neuron in your brain

has 10,000 connections.

It's gonna take us decades

to begin to understand

the magnificence,

the complexity of this brain

which creates the realities

we inhabit.

[Robert Redford]

According to Leary,

we use but a small percentage

of our nervous system's

capacity;

that we've learned

over thousands of years

to restrict the use

of our brains

so we can function in society.

Psychedelics open the full

landscape of our minds.

[Ram Dass]

It was if all these did

was accentuate the direction

his life was always going in.

Freeing himself

from systems.

Freeing himself

from all of the ways

that our mind creates

our reality.

♪

[Robert Redford]

Mythic heroes

traveled unknown oceans

in search of adventure

and new lands.

♪

American astronauts

were about to launch themselves

into outer space.

♪

In the 1960s, Leary and Alpert

dedicated themselves

to exploring the nature

of inner space.

[Ram Dass]

That's the word

Timothy and I always used,

that's the mythic level

that Timothy and I lived at,

was we were adventurers.

[Robert Redford]

They averaged

one LSD session per week

and took heroic doses.

♪

They saw themselves

as psychedelic adventurers,

exploring the nature

of reality,

encountering both heaven...

and hell.

♪

They openly shared

the results of their work,

encouraging others

to join them.

LSD was, at that time,

still fully legal.

It was an innocent time

and...a wild ride.

[Ram Dass]

Driving up to Sandoz

in New Jersey

in the huge black

railroad limousine

that I had from my

father's railroad

with railroad wheels

on the end of it,

and Timothy and I

are driving up

to buy this

huge amount of LSD

as Harvard professors,

and, you know, there

were so many of those.

Just one after another

after another.

♪

[Robert Redford]

Ever the scientists,

Leary and Alpert

published articles in journals

and delivered papers

at conferences.

The word was out

and their program

was becoming popular.

Maybe too popular.

[Ralph Metzner]

It ended up so many

graduate students

wanted to work with Leary

and all the other professors

lost students, assistants,

you see,

which pissed them off,

of course.

Independently

about that same time,

I had joined the editorial board

of The Harvard Crimson,

the newspaper,

and, uh, there were stories

beginning to go around

about the drug experiments

at Harvard

and Leary and Alpert.

And I was really

the only person

that had knowledge of that,

so it was logical that

I became the reporter

who dealt with that.

Psilocybin was to be given

only to graduate students,

but there was one slip.

That guy that I turned on,

one person,

was somebody to whom

I was attracted.

I was in a very difficult

role in that

for one thing

I had taken these drugs,

I had positive feelings

for them,

but I had a kind of dual life.

You know, I was this

straight undergraduate

who was doing

this investigative reporting.

[Peggy Mellon Hitchcock]

I think he wrote an article

in The Harvard Crimson

talking about this

and the parents of this one boy

found out about it

and they went to

the officials at Harvard

and said,

"What's going on here?"

[Ram Dass]

The dean of Harvard said

if he didn't squeal on me,

they're not gonna

give him the diploma.

I played a key role

in getting information,

uh, which eventually

led to Alpert's being fired

in 1963.

Um, Leary was never fired,

he quit voluntarily.

Um, that story was front-page

news on The New York Times.

And, uh, I think that was

probably the first time

that most Americans

had ever heard

of psychedelic drugs

or LSD or mushrooms.

So, I do think that

that whole episode

is what exploded this

out of Harvard

into the nation

and the culture.

Of course, this was

a bit of a shock,

to put it mildly,

to Richard,

who had been the one

who was on the tenure track

and he had his career all

sort of mapped out, he thought.

[Timothy Leary]

You were on the tenure track.

[Ram Dass]

I know I was.

And you laugh,

and you laugh!

If it weren't for me,

you would be a...

- I'd be somebody today.

- Retired Harvard--

You blew my cover,

you blew me apart.

I would have been

somebody today.

Yeah, I ruined

your academic career.

You did, you

absolutely did.

♪

What happened was,

you were the one

that showed me that

it was possible

to escape from the system.

You know,

you really did.

I mean, it's been

hard for me

to really

understand how--

how I was ready to hear

that even, you know?

♪

[Robert Redford]

Timothy's contract at Harvard

ended soon after

Dick was fired

in the spring of '63.

They desperately

wanted to continue their work

which was becoming

highly controversial

but still legal.

Where could they go?

[Peggy Mellon Hitchcock]

Just by chance,

my brothers inherited

quite a bit of money

and they had decided

to--with this money,

as a good investment--

to buy this huge property

in Millbrook, New York.

♪

On the property

was an old house there

that was the original house

that had belonged to the person

who developed the property

back in the late 19th,

early 20th century.

♪

Kind of wanted

to be haunted, you know.

It was huge and lots

of turrets and curved glass.

It was really beautiful.

And so I talked

to my brothers,

they weren't going to use it,

and they said, "Sure,

we'll rent you the house

for a dollar a year."

[Robert Redford]

With Tim's children,

Susan and Jack,

and a potpourri of friends

and acquaintances,

the two men launched

into a life

of communal living.

♪

That fall, President John

F. Kennedy was assassinated.

[gunshot, screaming]

The decade had taken

a very nasty turn.

♪

At Millbrook,

the scientists

continued their research

into 1964,

adapting the old house

to its hipper inhabitants.

It soon became a second home

to artists and academics,

musicians and scientists.

♪

Meanwhile, on the West Coast,

the '60s were heating up.

♪

The Free Speech Movement

in Berkeley

began a reinvigoration

of democracy

that would lead to

the Summer of Love in 1967.

LSD, acid, was often

shared freely.

♪

Years later, it became

known that the CIA

ran secret experiments

with LSD in the 1950s and '60s,

hoping to find a way

to use the drug in warfare.

Inevitably,

some of their subjects

began using the chemicals

on their own.

♪

Ken Kesey had first taken LSD

as part of a CIA-funded

research project

while working in

a mental hospital.

♪

Later, he and

the Merry Pranksters

held Acid Tests,

giving LSD to hundreds,

much to the dismay

of the scientists at Millbrook.

[Timothy Leary]

I have never urged

indiscriminate use of LSD

and I've never propagandized

for LSD.

Strangely enough,

my position on LSD

is exactly that of the present

Johnson Administration.

I believe that the present laws,

which penalize sale and

manufacture of LSD, are right.

[John Perry Barlow]

Meanwhile, I'd been hearing

out on the West Coast

that they were filling up

bathtubs full of LSD

and feeding it to anybody

that wanted to come and drink,

you know, as much

as they wanted

and playing crazy music for them

and I thought this was

fucking drug abuse.

[Timothy Leary]

The use of psychedelic drugs

such as marijuana,

mescaline, LSD,

is out of control

in the United States today.

♪

[Robert Redford]

Over four years

of communal living at Millbrook

and scores of shared

psilocybin and LSD sessions,

Leary and Alpert developed

a close and trusting

relationship.

Richard took on

a domestic motherly role,

becoming closer

to Timothy's children

than Tim was himself.

[Ram Dass]

And I got into

the really conscious thing

in my mind that I could

justify my life

being a support system

for Timothy's vision

to find expression.

So it meant raising money,

it meant raising children,

it meant cooking,

it meant, uh, keeping--

getting housing,

it meant moving Jeeps

and stuff

to islands we were

being thrown off of.

You know, I mean,

it was incredible.

It meant setting up

foundations,

it meant, uh--

I mean, it was all

the public relations stuff

to try to keep the game

from getting out of hand.

Richard, do you

know how to operate this?

[Robert Redford]

In December 1964,

Leary married again.

[Ram Dass]

The two studs

comes in the front,

so this goes

in the back.

It goes like that.

You need a stud.

Gunther, you got

the studs?

[Gunther]

Yeah, uh, they're over there.

[Robert Redford]

Peggy Hitchcock

had introduced him

to the beautiful

fashion model Nena

and they fell in love.

Remember as much of the vows

as you can.

- Yes, sir.

- And I will.

[Robert Redford]

They were married

at a chapel

in the nearby town.

Dick was best man.

[church bells ringing]

Timothy and Nena

set off on a world tour,

visiting Japan and India

in a quest for

spiritual understanding.

But by the time

they returned to Millbrook,

the marriage was over.

♪

Leary would eventually

marry five times.

His best efforts never went

into sustaining relationships.

[Peggy Mellon Hitchcock]

In his life there was

a big disconnect

between his heart

and his mind

and his mind was

completely in charge always

and the heart kind of

got left behind.

[Ram Dass]

Intimacy.

They wanted

psychological intimacy.

He was offering

a different kind of intimacy

which is the kind of intimacy

he and I had,

which is the intimacy

of shared awareness

like, you know, in the--

that kind of thing.

He didn't get as deep

into psychodynamic stuff.

I mean, here he was

a psychologist

who had created

a very, very highly regarded

diagnostic

psychological inventory

for assessing personality.

The reason he was

so good at that

is 'cause he was

outside of that.

That domain

or that plane of consciousness

didn't engage him

so that most of the women

around him

were always disappointed.

Now you do the tie and then

you fold that thing over.

[Robert Redford]

Tim's friendship with Dick

also grew rocky.

Theirs had been

like a marriage

at least in some ways.

[Ram Dass]

My capacity to be in

that relationship to Timothy,

part of it, I'm sure,

arises from the fact

that I'm basically gay

and my relationship

with Timothy

was never physical love,

but, um, there was

a love affair going on.

I mean, we loved each other,

we really loved each other

and I became very trustworthy

for Tim to push against,

to lean on in a way,

to get further out.

And Timothy was taking me

out with him.

Going out with him

wasn't all fun and games.

I mean, it was

extremely scary

because I had grown up

in a family

that treasured antiques,

for example,

so that my apartment

in Cambridge

when I was a Harvard professor

was full of absolutely

beautiful antiques,

highboys and--

And then I moved

to Millbrook

where it was monkeys

and aardvarks

and cats and six dogs

and many children

and, I mean, we were

in a 63-room house, you know?

And I watched my antiques

one by--

I didn't have the intelligence

to just sell them, you know?

I watched them all

just be destroyed

before my eyes.

♪

It was undercutting

something very deep in me.

♪

Then, as the years went on,

something very profound

happened

because I started

to distinguish

between visionary

and revolutionary

and that Timothy was both.

And I loved the visionary part

and what I saw was that

the revolutionary part of it

was costing so much

psychically and financially

and socially

and everything.

We were $50,000 in debt

and no matter how hard I tried

I couldn't pay it off

and we were getting further

and further out all the time.

As we got thrown out

of more and more countries,

I thought, um,

as much fun as it was,

now it was no longer

so much fun.

And the other part

of it was,

being in a relationship

with somebody that way,

ultimately, that other part

of you never develops.

And I realized that

I was a more creative person

than this situation

was allowing me to be.

And at that point,

I think that's when

we started to pull apart.

[Robert Redford]

In the fall of 1965,

Richard Alpert left Millbrook

for good.

♪

The awakenings that

psychedelics provided him

never lasted long.

Alpert, and others,

hungered for a way

to maintain and integrate

expanded states

of consciousness.

[Joan Halifax, Roshi]

You know, eventually the world

of mind manifesting substances

became more like decoration.

In this era of

the civil rights

and the anti-war movement,

I realized that, um,

to be engaged politically

I had also to be engaged

with my own mind.

And I just wanted to, uh,

really train my mind

to be very, very stable

and to be able to perceive

my own mental continuum clearly

and not have it so decorated.

♪

[Robert Redford]

As Alpert was leaving,

Leary began a new relationship

with Rosemary Woodruff.

They closed up the house

at Millbrook

and began a trip to Mexico

with Tim's children,

Susan and Jack.

♪

But at the border crossing

in Laredo, Texas,

they were arrested

for the possession

of less than half an ounce

of marijuana,

for which Leary received

a jail sentence

of 30 years.

♪

They returned to Millbrook

and began fighting

the conviction.

♪

Ultimately, the Supreme Court

overturned the sentence,

but Nixon was not

satisfied with that outcome.

Leary was indeed

later jailed,

but for interstate

transportation, not possession.

[Timothy Leary]

Not gonna solve these problems

by putting leading scientists,

like myself, in jail

for 30 or 40 year prison terms

for doing nothing more

than attempting

to use and understand

these new forms of energy

for which yet

there's no evidence

that we've done

any damage to society

or to ourselves

or to other people.

♪

[Robert Redford]

In 1966, drug use of all kinds

was on the rise in America.

♪

Even though his views

were controversial,

Leary was invited

to testify before Congress.

[Timothy Leary]

We've been told today

and we read in the papers

reports from sociologists

that from between

15 to 50 percent,

and in some cases up to

65 and 70 percent,

of our college students

are experimenting with

these mind-opening chemicals.

And I recommend, respectfully,

to this committee

that you consider legislation

which will license

responsible adults

to use these drugs

for serious purposes

such as spiritual growth,

the pursuit of knowledge,

or in their own

personal development.

To obtain such a license,

the applicant, I think,

should have to meet

physical, intellectual,

and emotional criterion.

Your testimony,

I understand extremely clearly--

and it's coming more clear now--

that you feel that there

shouldn't be an indiscrim--

indiscriminate possession

is something

that you do not support.

[Timothy Leary]

For six years, sir,

I have been against

indiscriminate use.

- Indiscriminate use, all right.

- Yeah.

And he felt very strongly

that he would be able

to convince Congress

that psychotropic drugs

be given over

to the medical profession

for healing purposes.

Police officer.

Open the door.

[commotion]

[Joanna Harcourt-Smith]

And he knew

that the minute they decided

to make this

a law enforcement issue,

it would be everywhere.

There would be no stopping it.

Everybody would be able

to get hold of it.

That was terrible for him.

That's where he developed

a very strong rebel side

towards the government.

[Robert Redford]

As Leary continued

fighting the government

and the Texas courts,

the direction of

Richard Alpert's life

changed forever.

♪

He had left the country

in 1967

on a trip through Asia.

♪

One day in Nepal,

he met a young Westerner

who had adopted the ways

of the Indian ascetics

known as sadhus.

Bhagavan Das

seemed to embody

what Richard was looking for.

So he abandoned

his first-class junket

and together,

they descended barefoot

into India.

♪

Before long,

Richard was introduced

to the Indian saint

who would become his guru,

Neem Karoli Baba,

known to his followers

as Maharaj-ji.

[soft singing]

Maharaj-ji gave Richard

his spiritual name,

Ram Dass,

which means "servant of god."

[Ram Dass]

My guru is about

a 70-year-old, um, man.

I don't know

anything about him, really.

You know, I don't even

know that he exists

to tell you the truth,

but it seemed to me

that there was a little old man

in a blanket

and when I looked at him,

the first time I looked at him,

I thought I wasn't

gonna be hustled

and the second time

I looked at him,

all I wanted to do

was touch his feet.

I looked up

and he was looking at me

with unconditional love

and I had never been

looked at

with unconditional love

by anybody.

I felt loved.

I felt loved,

and I felt something

happening in my heart.

[soft singing]

[Robert Redford]

Ram Dass studied yoga

and meditation

before returning to America

a changed man.

[Ram Dass]

Timothy trained me

in the beginning on my escape

and Maharaj-ji

then took over, really.

I see them as my two

powerful teachers in escape.

♪

[John Perry Barlow]

And he comes back

and, you know,

he's maybe 80 pounds lighter

and is putting on

a lot of holy man airs

that are particularly grating,

having seen him in

his previous manifestation,

you know, and I'm thinking,

you know,

"Same guy, new shtick."

♪

[Robert Redford]

Encouraged by Maharaj-ji,

Ram Dass explored

his Indian awakenings

in the book Be Here Now,

which became a manual

for spiritual seekers

throughout the world.

♪

It was first published

in 1971,

hand-stamped and inked

at the Lama Foundation

in New Mexico.

♪

Originally a limited edition

with hand-stitched pages,

it is now in

its 43rd printing.

♪

[Lama Tsultrim Allione]

Be Here Now was seminal.

It's still seminal,

it's still opening up

young people's minds.

They get that book

and it does what it did to us

so long ago, it's amazing.

♪

Ram Dass was a bridge

between East and West

and was a major person

to open this gateway

to Eastern wisdom

to Western culture.

You can tell me, uh,

where'd the Be Here Now

come from?

That was you.

- Be Here Now?

- Yeah.

You've heard of that

haven't you?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, the--

You invented that.

But it was really

actually Bhagavan Das

who, every time

my mind would go off

into my Jewish neuroticism,

he'd say, "Look,

just come back here

and be here now."

So I took it

as a title

but, uh, he used

to say it to me.

[Robert Redford]

Since then, Ram Dass

has traveled and taught widely,

written numerous books,

and, putting

spirit into action,

cofounded service

organizations.

♪

I'm going to run

for the governorship

of the state of California.

[Robert Redford]

In 1968, Leary was

again busted for pot,

this time by the

California State Police

during his aborted run

for governor

against the incumbent,

Ronald Reagan.

He had the support

of people like John Lennon,

who wrote the Beatles' tune

"Come Together"

for the campaign.

["Come Together" plays]

♪

Named the most dangerous

man in America

by President Richard Nixon,

Leary insisted the marijuana

found in his car

had been planted.

One evening I was

in a parked car

and a policeman

came up to the car

and opened the door

against my wishes

and made a pass

at the ashtray

and said, "You're under arrest

for, uh--"

I said, "For what?"

He said, "For marijuana."

"What marijuana?"

He reached in his pocket,

he pulled out two joints

I had never seen before,

half joints,

and, uh, said,

"You're under arrest."

[Robert Redford]

He was finally jailed

in 1970,

one of the first casualties

of the War on Drugs.

But when he was given

the very personality assessment

he had himself devised

at Berkeley in the 1950s,

he got himself assigned

to a minimum security prison.

Then, he escaped

with the aid

of the Weather Underground

and the Black Panthers.

Comment on

your plans now.

My plans are to work

with the Black Panther Party

for the overthrow

of the American government.

When we crossed paths,

uh, in Algeria,

he didn't look like

he was having that much fun.

Eldridge Cleaver looked

definitely distressed

and it didn't look like

they were enjoying each other.

But I think Tim played

with every edge.

He spoke about his life

in terms of being imprisoned

and escaping.

So he said that

he was in prison

and he escaped

and he went to Algeria

with his wife, Rosemary,

and once again,

he was imprisoned

and he needed to escape.

And then he went

to Switzerland

and once again,

instead of being imprisoned

by Eldridge Cleaver

and his politics,

then he was imprisoned

by a gangster

and his machinations.

Rosemary left him

while they were in Switzerland.

I think he was very sad

about that

and I think he

absolutely adored her.

You know, who Timothy Leary

was for me

in the beginning,

he was just a song

of the Moody Blues.

♪ Timothy Leary's dead ♪

♪

Little by little, I sort

of got this romantic image

that this Timothy Leary

might be, you know,

like the king of outlaws.

Through a series

of extraordinary coincidences,

I met Timothy Leary

in Switzerland

and found out that

he was a fugitive from prison.

I was 26 years old

and I found that very exciting.

It felt like it was

my destiny to meet him

and, uh, I was ready

for anything with him.

We flew to Afghanistan

from, um, Vienna.

When we got to the airport

in Afghanistan,

an attaché of

the American Embassy

stole our passports

out of Timothy's hands

and this incredible ordeal

started.

♪

I was taken with him

back to California

where I'd never been.

♪

It was a perfect PR coup

for Nixon.

Two days before

the inauguration

we got brought back in front

of hundreds of journalists.

So Nixon had

the front page,

"Timothy Leary

Brought into Custody."

[gavel banging]

He was in Folsom Prison

for a year.

For those of you

who know him,

he's relaxed and he looks well,

but behind the camera

sits the warden,

the assistant warden,

and probably the captain

of the guard.

I am Joanna Leary

and I'd like to see him out

of here as quick as possible.

[interviewer]

What do you think

of your future?

Do you think you're

gonna walk out of Folsom Prison

a free man one day?

I think my future is

very interconnected

with the future

of this country.

You just can't keep

your philosophers in prison.

If I am kept in prison,

uh, it's going to be

a very bad symptom

for freedom and for hope

and for union.

[chatter]

[Joanna Harcourt-Smith]

I began to see this man

come out of his, um,

solitary confinement cell

somewhat confused,

very red eyes.

He told me that, uh,

they probably fed him drugs

in the food

they were giving him.

They let me visit him

when he was in a padded cell.

He was in a straitjacket,

his head was shaved,

and he began to change

in the sense that

there was less and less

and less of Timothy Leary

on the outside.

Isolation is not only

to keep somebody in a box,

but it's so they unlearn

to communicate

with the outside world.

Criminalizing use, possession

of drugs doesn't work

and it makes everything worse.

Um, I don't think we can

suddenly legalize

things overnight.

I believe in education

as the--

as the key to

rational drug policy

and that means being honest

about their positive effects

as well as negative effects,

being honest about

the drugs whose use

we not only tolerate

but promote,

like alcohol and tobacco,

and that we make money from,

our government

makes money from.

So, you know, it's--

it's real education,

truthful education

and I think it has to be

at all levels of society.

[Joanna Harcourt-Smith]

Timothy decided to turn

state and federal evidence

so he would get out of prison.

The next morning,

the feds came and said,

"We've received news

that people want to kill you,

both of you,

and so you have to go into

the Witness Protection Program."

♪

Timothy insisted

that they bring us

to Santa Fe.

Our names were changed

to James and Nora Joyce.

♪

We were two drunks

lost in the wilderness,

trying to encounter each other.

♪

The loneliness,

the separation,

the isolation,

um, had driven my alcoholism

and my drug addiction

to a, um...

to an excruciating place.

♪

And so we fought a lot.

We had both

suffered so much.

And from where I look at it

right now,

I think that, um,

the right move for him

was to blame me.

♪

[Robert Redford]

In the end, Leary spent

almost four years in jail,

of which two and a half

were in solitary confinement.

But no matter how dark

the circumstances,

he always remembered

that Marshall McLuhan

had advised him to

"wave reassuringly,

radiate courage,

and you must be known

for your smile."

[Timothy Leary]

I've been in 40 jails

in four continents.

[laughter]

I haven't even been

busted yet.

[laughter, applause]

The proliferation

of LSD and psychedelics

and marijuana, even,

within popular culture,

it was a Pandora's Box.

You know, the second

youth culture got a hold of it,

um, it exploded, you know,

much greater than

anybody knew it would,

much greater

than he knew it would.

Tim really was naive, innocent;

he did not anticipate

the kind of reaction.

[Robert Redford]

Nevertheless, Leary

is often solely blamed

for their popularization

and misuse.

As that poisonous, evil man,

Dr. Timothy Leary, has said,

it is a way to turn on,

tune in, and drop out.

People would say,

"You ruined

an entire generation."

Like, that's

72 million people.

I said, "Yeah." They said,

"Don't you feel regret?"

And I said, "Well,

at one thing I feel it.

Only 100,000 of them

had the decency

to thank me for

ruining their lives."

[laughing]

♪

Turn on to the internal

neurological energy.

♪

Tune in means to harness up

the new revelation and energy

in your life.

And drop out.

Now this may sound

reckless advice today

but it's the oldest advice

that philosophers

and religious leaders

have passed on.

Detach, drop out,

find what's within.

"Turn on, tune in,

and drop out"

and I stand by that statement.

♪

[rhythmic chanting]

[Robert Redford]

Over time, Leary was dismissive

of Dick Alpert's

spiritual journey

which he saw as his

merely playing lieutenant

to yet another

prophetic master.

Leary did not like gurus,

period.

[Ram Dass]

Timothy seemed

quite comfortable

with the metaphors

of the religious traditions,

but later those became grist

for the mill

of his revolution also

and he treated me like sort

of an old-fashioned type person.

[Robert Redford]

Once Leary's long struggle

with the FBI

and the Justice Department

was concluded,

he settled in Los Angeles

with his fifth wife,

Barbara Chase,

and her son Zachary.

[Zach Leary]

Timothy Leary, uh,

married my mother

when I was four years old

and he was the father

who raised me

for, um--from ages 4 until 22,

until he died

when I was 22 years old.

Um, so I lived with him

for 17 years

and I think there's--

somebody pointed out to me once

that I have

the great distinction

of living with him longer

than anybody else did ever.

You know, so he was just,

I mean, a great,

very kind of standard white

picket fence father with me

and most people

don't know that

and when I tell people that

it's really a surprise.

I mean, you know, he took

me to little league practice,

he played baseball with me

in the yard,

we went to Dodger games

all the time.

He made sure I did

my homework.

I mean, it was, you know,

shockingly normal.

♪

[Robert Redford]

After some years

of estrangement,

Leary and Ram Dass' love

for each other

as mythic explorers

guided their reconnection.

[Timothy Leary]

The last 20 years

have been remarkable.

They have put us

through the changes

and we've put them

through some changes.

[Ram Dass]

He didn't ask me

for legitimacy of his life

and I didn't ask him

for legitimacy of mine.

That allowed a new kind

of respect to emerge

between us

which was interesting.

It was a respect

that honored our differences

rather than the adventure

of sharing an idea.

And I really felt

that Timothy

really respected me at the end

and I certainly

respected him.

♪

[Joan Halifax, Roshi]

The question of

"Am I afraid to die?"

is something I actually

live with every day.

I think everybody's

afraid to die.

The question is

how do you deal with the fear?

[Zach Leary]

I like being alive.

I like this incarnation.

You know, I'm attached to it.

If I weren't afraid to die,

I would not be

taking it seriously.

I mean, in some ways

I think death

is the most important

experience

that you're preparing for

all your life.

[Ram Dass]

Why is it so important

to talk about death?

It's the unspoken...

phobia of the culture.

You can see it.

If you look at the major issues

like abortion, death penalty,

euthanasia,

terrorism,

it all concerns

this issue of death.

♪

[Timothy Leary]

When I discovered

I was dying,

and I knew I was going

to die, uh, actively

and creatively,

I called Ram Dass

'cause I knew

he would understand.

- Liked it all.

- See that? That's a gallery

of some book

I wrote years ago.

He's a wise friend

and a loving,

protective friend

over many years

and many experiences.

Tim and I, in 1963

with Ralph,

were doing

The Psychedelic Experience,

which was a manual based on

the Tibetan

Book of the Dead.

And that led to a pretty

deep study of psychedelics

and since we were both dealing

with what we considered

was psychological

death and rebirth,

and we had been through those

death-rebirth experiences

many times together,

it's reasonable for him

to think of me

as somebody

who would understand

what this death experience

was going to be like for him.

♪

[Robert Redford]

The Psychedelic Experience

was the first modern book

to provide a map for

mind-expanding drug sessions.

Much as the

Tibetan Book of the Dead

provided advice

for traveling

through after-death states

known to Tibetan Buddhists

as bardos.

♪

[Lama Tsultrim Allione]

Bardo actually means

"in between."

This is a bardo to--

we are in the bardo of life.

They were talking about

the bardo connected

to the Tibetan

Book of the Dead,

the bardo between

death and rebirth.

And they identified LSD

as a vehicle

to pre-experience

what that would be like.

[Timothy Leary]

Long before I knew

I was dying,

we were using

this metaphor

of leaving your body,

leaving your mind,

and contacting

a different, uh,

level of altered states,

expanded consciousness.

So, uh, my life

has prepared me for this.

[film projector clicking]

[Ram Dass]

I've seen so many people die

clinging to the past...

and also worried

about the future.

I think this is the moment.

That's what I got

is this moment.

And one of these moments,

I'll be dead.

That'll be the moment.

♪

[Robert Redford]

In 1977,

Ram Dass founded

the Dying Project

with Stephen and Ondrea Levine

and Dale Borglum.

♪

He's been a kind of

midwife to the dying

since 1963,

offering wisdom, compassion,

and his knowledge of

other planes of consciousness.

[Joan Halifax, Roshi]

Ram Dass was the pioneer.

He's the person

who really opened up that field

for me personally.

[Ram Dass]

The amount of cost

in keeping people alive--

forget quality of life now,

just physically alive,

the intensive care unit

strategy--

was finally prohibitive,

it was getting prohibitive.

It was just eating up

all the resources.

[heart monitor beeping]

Then comes the hospice movement

which says, "Oh, well,

what we've missed

is that the psychological

part of dying

is also important."

And hospice is much cheaper

than intensive care unit.

Well, all it requires

is that we accept the fact

that death exists.

And that's a big shift

to accept death existing

versus it's a failure

and an enemy.

What Ram Dass did

was really, uh,

inspire people

to, uh, bring, um,

spirituality

and existential questions

into their awareness

so that they could

not only die well

but also live well.

[Ram Dass]

I do a lot of grief work

with people

and what I often am

finding myself saying to people

who have lost

their child or their spouse

after many years

is something like,

you will grieve

and grieve and grieve

and you'll come up for air

and think it's all over

and "I'll be strong"

and then you'll go back under

and you'll go through

depressions and--

Let it all run its course.

Don't push it.

Your mind will recite all

the ways you've lost the person.

That you'll never have

the smell of their body,

or you'll--you know,

all these things--

Milk it all, don't push it away.

But there will come a time

when your mind'll quiet down

a little bit

and in the quietness

of that moment,

the love that you've

ever tasted with that person

will be living in present

and then you'll realize

that what the essence was

that made you connect

with this person

has nothing to do with death.

That love transcends death,

basically.

But you're gonna have to

find it out for yourself.

But it's true.

I had this tragic loss,

the great love of my life

dropped dead on me.

I was getting

this huge overflowing of love

from other people

and it was absolutely useless.

I mean, I felt like

a black hole for love.

I mean, it didn't make any

difference what anybody said,

they didn't understand

what it felt like.

And I felt like they were

wasting their love on me.

Which is a terrible feeling.

And, uh...

...I mentioned this

to Ram Dass...

...and then he said--

I said, "I feel like

a bottomless well of--

you know, I mean,

just love goes in

and you never hear

anything hit bottom,"

and he said, "Well,

consider the possibility

that it's not bottomless,

just that it's very deep..."

Sorry.

"...and that one day

it will fill with love."

I don't know, that still--

[clears throat]

--still kinda gets me.

♪

[Lama Tsultrim Allione]

Death and someone dying

is an initiation

that we as human beings

go through

and it enriches us,

it deepens us,

it opens our hearts.

It's a terrible thing

but it's--I think

it makes us bigger

and deeper

and more compassionate

as people.

♪

I found out I had cancer

about a year ago.

But the real pressure of it,

the symptomatic pressure

of it

just the last

two or three months.

I've had moments

of deep pain.

I've had moments

of when the pain pills

almost knock me out

and I was a source

of worry to my friends

because I was

suffering so much.

And it's been a shock to me

to discover

that, uh, pain exists

and it can really dominate

your consciousness.

So I've had to work

that through.

♪

There we go, mm-mm.

[Ram Dass]

See, the issue is pain

and consciousness,

the relation of pain

to consciousness,

because when

you're looking at it

from just the physical body,

the goal is to get rid

of as much pain as possible

even if you have to

put the person to sleep,

keep them asleep 'til they die.

That's the most humane

thing to do.

Here we are, six years later

and I've had a stroke

five years ago.

♪

I don't remember time

but this is now '03.

♪

[Robert Redford]

In February 1997,

Ram Dass suffered

a severe stroke

and a massive

cerebral hemorrhage.

Doctors gave him only a

ten percent chance of survival.

♪

Hundreds of hours

of rehabilitation later,

he was still

partially paralyzed,

though able to get around

in a wheelchair.

♪

After years of service,

he had to learn

to accept the help of others.

I am more now

identified with my soul

and more...

♪

...compassionate to my body.

♪

See, I don't know

how I'll be

if I'm in

your situation.

At this moment,

I don't feel anxious at all,

I mean, about my life

or anything.

The stroke was so painful

that I pushed out and away

by going to the witness

in the soul.

Just witnessing the stroke

rather than experiencing

the stroke.

What a psychologist would label

"dissociation."

I--sure.

Yeah!

My pains I treat lovingly.

Pain...

a worthy adversary.

We're gonna have to

fight it out.

♪

[Joan Halifax, Roshi]

He has been through a lot.

It's interesting

to be with him

because there's

an absence of self-pity there

and the fact he's been

in that chair for 15 years,

I mean, that is no joke.

And he's over 80 now.

I mean, that's

really remarkable

that he's lived so long.

It's a testimony to his

delightful determination

that I think is

a kind of model

for all of us.

There's something

about his essence

which has not changed at all.

I really feel it's love.

[children giggling, shrieking]

[Robert Redford]

Ram Dass now lives in Hawaii,

cared for by a community

of loving friends and students.

[exclaiming]

[cheering]

He's more active than ever,

teaching, writing,

counseling,

and appearing virtually.

My body is 80 years old,

I am a soul.

[Robert Redford]

Although still

physically restricted,

he continues his work,

furthering the vision he

pioneered with Timothy Leary

more than 40 years ago.

Adding to his personal legacy

is a son, Peter Reichard.

Ram Dass was introduced to him

in 2009.

It was a shock

to both of them.

Wow! In a million years.

Of all the crazy things.

And what a great guy,

Peter, his son.

[chatter]

[Robert Redford]

Peter had never

heard of Ram Dass,

let alone that he was

his biological father.

Long ago, Richard Alpert

had a brief affair

with Peter's mother

while teaching at Stanford,

before his Harvard years

with Timothy Leary.

Peter was the result.

But his mother

had moved back east

and never told Richard.

Now, more than 50 years later,

Ram Dass finds himself

connected

to a new and growing family

in the final years

of his current incarnation.

[John Perry Barlow]

The amazing thing,

the great singular

accomplishment

of Ram Dass' life, I think,

is that...

setting out from, you know,

not very promising beginnings,

he has become

a truly wise person.

Deeply.

[Ram Dass]

If you see that

the moment of death

is the moment

when you engage

the deepest mystery

of the universe--

and that's what the whole

Eastern traditions are about,

preparing you

for that moment

so that you will be

equanimous,

you will be, uh, curious,

you will be present,

you'll be not-clinging

to the past

and not grabbing,

just be with each moment

moment by moment.

[soft chanting]

Some people do some of their

most profound spiritual work

in the last few minutes

before they die.

♪

[Robert Redford]

Wanting to get a head start--

why leave it to

the last minute?--

Timothy Leary at 75

approached his final days

with characteristic enthusiasm.

He promised to "give death

a better name

or die trying."

[Timothy Leary]

We're all gonna die.

Why not learn how to do it

with class

and style and friendship

as the climactic expression

of a life?

The last week I have not

been using any pills

and, uh, it's been a fascinating

and wonderful experience.

So far.

I've become very friendly

with my cancer

and I--also,

I say in public, you know,

my cancer I see now

as my teacher

and I try to talk to her

and I say,

"Miss Cancer," I say,

"get it together," you know?

- If you go, it goes.

- "We're both stuck

in the same body, see?

So let's make a deal, hey?

Let's keep the body alive

a little while

and we can have more fun."

[laughing]

[heart monitor beeping]

When the heart waves flatline,

the brain goes on.

They call it

the "sliver of opportunity."

- Yeah.

- Your life flashes

in front of you--

And you go

into ecstasy.

The light at

the end of the tunnel.

- Sure, sure.

- Yeah, that all comes

from the near-death

experiences.

The brain is happy

'cause then the brain

is in states that

the Buddhists talk about.

- It's pure consciousness.

- Sure.

It's extricated itself

from all the senses.

[Timothy Leary]

Yeah. But see, that

15 minutes is timeless

like an LSD session.

- Mm-hm.

- You go through

95 lifetimes and death.

Well, every minute

is timeless.

There you go, yeah.

Like everybody else, I'm

speculating and I may change,

I'm trying to learn.

[Lama Tsultrim Allione]

This period that

Timothy Leary speaks about,

this 15 to 20 minute period,

what that would be called

in the Tibetan teachings,

is still the process

of dying.

So you're not dead yet

but--the gross body is dead

but the subtle body is still

remaining in the body.

So that's what

he's identifying.

♪

[Timothy Leary]

At this period

in human history,

we're lucky enough

to be here

when, for the first time,

scientists are developing ways

to keep you alive

or to bring you back.

The churches say, "No,

you have no right

to take--your body

belongs to God."

Well, uh, show me

the paperwork.

[lightning crashes]

[Robert Redford]

By 1993, Timothy and Barbara

had divorced,

although Tim remained

close to her son Zach.

[Zach Leary]

He had a lot of personal

heartache in his life.

You know, his wife,

Marianne, killed herself

and every marriage

ended in divorce.

His daughter, Susan,

also committed suicide.

Jack didn't speak to him.

So there was a lot

of heavy stuff going on there,

a lot of heavy karmas

and a lot of interpersonal

relationships

that he just really

couldn't work out.

And I think, uh,

you know, that really--

it really broke his heart.

And there was no question

that, you know,

him getting to raise me again

was a chance for him

to do it over again.

♪

He had an uncanny knack

to reinvent himself.

Especially in the late '80s

and into the '90s,

you know, he was much

more of a cyber culture icon

than he was, you know,

a '60s hippie icon.

You know, and that's why

he kept young people around

because he was so fascinated

with youth culture

and with computer culture

and, you know,

early internet culture

and cyberpunk culture

and music culture and art.

[Timothy Leary]

Every technique

that science has now

for bringing you back,

I'm signed up with.

[lightning crashing]

Uh, I'm going to have

my blood cells

available for cloning.

[Ram Dass]

It's inconceivable to me

that Timothy could have taken

as much acid as he's taken

and been through as much

as he's been through

and end up a philosophical

materialist

in which when the body's dead,

you're dead.

Yet that's what

he professed.

Why did it end up

that you're interested

in things here and now

and I'm interested in

la-la land all the time?

- Why is that?

- You're not really.

[Ram Dass]

I am. I am.

What do you mean--

what's la-la land?

[Ram Dass]

Well, I'm interested

in the awareness

that happens after

the brain gets eaten.

When I think about

the moment of death,

I usually think of

a great acid trip.

I think of the dissolution

of conceptual structures.

[birds chirping]

♪

[Timothy Leary]

I have, uh, under

my personal supervision,

witnessed over 3,000

ingestions of LSD.

[Senator Dodd]

Over 3,000?

Well, can you briefly

describe the effect of it?

Well...no, sir.

Um...you might say

I was sitting there

and suddenly I began

to dissolve.

Every cell in my body

began to break down

and I was afraid I would

become a puddle on the floor.

Then, uh, I saw a

huge serpent coming up.

The serpent swallowed me,

I went into

the serpent's stomach.

Later, I was excreted

and I exploded. Then, um...

[Joan Halifax, Roshi]

And you see Teddy Kennedy there

and it's like,

oh my gosh, this--

these guys must

have been having

their own little mental

breakdown listening to him.

Now by this time,

even the most experienced

and hard-bitten psychiatrist

is likely to be

crouching under the table,

saying, "In 30 years

of my practice,

I have never listened

to anything

so frightening

and so far out."

Now actually, if you

told this story

to, um, a Hindu,

he'd say, "Oh yes.

The third dream of Vishnu.

Oh yes, that's like

the 11th chapter

of the Bhagavad Gita."

We also have

neurological and, uh,

anatomical explanations

for the so-called hallucinations

of LSD.

Hallucinations are not

mysterious or supernatural.

Hallucinations are

the nervous system

having experiences

for which we don't have words.

It's the dying process

of the psychological realm.

It's the kind of dissolving

of the perspective

from which you're standing.

That, to me, is one

of the things

that's happening

while people are dying.

And then I feel

you're catapulted

out into non-conceptual space.

Is that the way you're

imagining it?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So is my sense

of the continuity of awareness

beyond the brain

is just my wanting to

keep something going?

- Is that--

- I don't have that.

[Ram Dass]

I know you don't have it and--

- I'm curious.

- What becomes--

You're curious? I'm curious too.

I'm very curious.

♪

Do you use

the word "soul"?

"Soul"?

All the time.

What do you mean

by it?

- It's consciousness.

- Super consciousness.

And it--she hangs around

the brain,

not the sole of your foot.

She's gonna hang

around the brain.

Well, Ramana Maharshi

says it's right here.

The heart. Oh, the heart.

I've had to tell

a thousand Hindu gurus

that the heart is a wonderful

organ to pump blood

and they haven't discovered

Harvey's theory of circulation.

They're using the heart

as a metaphor.

[Ram Dass]

Yes, they're using

the heart as a metaphor.

It's a very bad metaphor,

I think.

They're using the lower

right-hand corner,

the size of a thumb...

- Are you kidding me?

- No.

- Wow.

- It's the size of a thumb.

- Yeah.

- It's called the rhodiom,

and it's right here--

- It grows there?

- It's right there.

- Naturally?

- It's there.

It's there, it's not

in a physical manifestation,

it's in a subtle form.

- Well, how do you contact it?

- Well, you gotta get

better technology.

Well, see, I'm--yeah.

Better than LSD

and better than, uh...

Well, in LSD,

you saw all that

but it went by so fast

and you didn't

have a model,

a conceptual model,

to save it.

It just went through.

'Cause so much

went through

every time I took acid.

It must be for you too.

That what we have

conceptualized

is the tiniest trivia of

the edge of the whole thing

and that's why dying

seems to fascinating to me.

- Exactly, yeah.

- Because you're going, like--

Like this.

- You hope.

- Huh?

It may not be that way.

I hope it is.

Gotta be that way.

♪

Can you have dinner

with us afterwards?

[Ram Dass]

I can't, I gotta fly

back to San Francisco.

Oh, darn.

I'm working against

a deadline for a book.

You're working

against a deadline too.

How 'bout that deadline? Yeah.

Speaking of deadlines...

[laughing]

[Robert Redford]

Towards the end of May 1996,

Leary began to show signs

of kidney and liver failure.

[Zach Leary]

I think some of his fears

of letting go

and not knowing

what was next,

sure, I think that scared him.

And I think he was, you know,

absolutely normal

and understandably human

in those moments.

But the process of dying

and actually, you know,

slipping into that unknown

was incredibly beautiful

for him.

You know, it was

everybody else around

that was freaking out.

Ram Dass was really

mostly there for us.

It was the counseling

he was sort of giving to us

that was so precious

and meaningful.

You know, it kind of

got out of control,

we probably had

too many people around

and a lot of us

didn't really know

what we were going to do

once he died.

[Ram Dass]

And so, I was talking to them

about not talking to him,

not trying to engage him,

not trying to pull him back,

but to let him be

wherever he is,

but they could talk

among themselves in the room

about all the beautiful

things he'd done in life

which is like an old

Tibetan practice.

Uh...and I talked to them

about, um,

working on themselves

to not demand linearity,

so that if he comes up

with things

from different places,

to let their minds soar

so they could be with him

as his mind floated

through planes

of consciousness.

♪

And I told them to love death

as much as they love life;

to allow the mystery

of the universe

to be something awesome

and beautiful.

♪

[Zach Leary]

He was letting go willingly.

You know, he wasn't

trying to just hang on,

hang on, even if

the quality of life suffered.

You know, he was really going

with the organic nature

of things.

[Ram Dass]

We haven't really created

the right space

for people not to be

afraid during this moment

that can be very frightening.

But as Tim Leary said,

"I die so hard each time."

♪

[chatter and violin music]

[Robert Redford]

Timothy Leary's last trip

began early

on May 31st, 1996.

He was surrounded

by friends to the end.

♪

Sometime in the last

seven hours of his life,

he said, "Compadre,"

and then he said,

"Esperando," "I'm waiting,"

and then he said,

"Follow, follow,"

and then he said,

"Beautiful, beautiful"

and then he said,

"Flash, flash."

Then he said the word "Why?"

in a deeply moving way.

"Why? Why?"

and followed by an

almost mantra-like repetition

of the words

"Why not? Why not?"

♪

Here in Southern California,

the Harvard professor

who became

the outlaw acid king

of the 1960s is dead.

Dr. Timothy Leary

advocated the use

of mind-bending drugs.

In recent years--

[Ram Dass]

And there were 25

or 26 messages

from CBS and CNN

and ABC and da-da-da-da,

and so I called

The Washington Post

and I said, "Yes?"

"Oh, how do you feel about

your friend Timothy's death?"

So I looked inside

to see how I felt

and I said, "Fine."

And there was this long silence

on the other end of the phone.

It was clear that I had--

they had written

the material already

and I wasn't playing

by the script.

♪

He and I have met

in ideas and experiences

and intuitive being together

that is so deep

that I can't imagine that

I will ever think of Timothy

as not being present.

♪

Timothy and I

are explorers,

we're beloveds,

we're deeply connected

to each other

and I can't imagine

that that'll change a flicker.

Flicker.

♪

[Robert Redford]

Timothy Leary made history

one more time.

Fulfilling his dreams

as a futurist,

his ashes,

along with those

of Star Trek's creator

Gene Roddenberry,

were sent into orbit.

It was the world's

first funeral in space.

♪

[Ram Dass]

There's no doubt at all

that I will be around...

after I die.

♪

[Timothy Leary]

Think for yourselves.

Discover, explore, and

treasure your own uniqueness.

The proper study

of a human being is yourself.

[Ram Dass]

Tim's right, go into yourself

and then, if you go

in deep enough,

there is truth

and that truth leads you

to pick the people,

the beings,

with whom you're going

to spend your life...

♪

...and your death.

♪

If you have identified

with your soul

when you're alive,

death, it's just

another moment.

♪

In ourselves

it's all there.

It's all there.

God is awareness,

so when we tune

into our awareness,

we close the space

between the individual and God.

You delve deep

into the moment,

you come to all

and everything.

One becomes the moment.

One becomes love.

Life and death are one.

♪

It's ecstatic.

It's like becoming God.

It's--it's--it's...

[sighs peacefully]

♪

Richard, you have

enriched my life.

I'm sorry. Ram Dass,

you have enriched my life.

No, I can be Richard,

come on.

You've enriched

my life, Richard,

and, uh, I'm so proud

of both of us

and I thank, uh, you

for making this opportunity

for us to make love

in public.

Yes, exactly.

Thirty-five years

we've been dancing like this.

It's been a hell

of a dance, hasn't it?

And we're

totally different--

[Ram Dass]

So different, so different.

- Great.

- But at this moment,

we so appreciate

each other.

Isn't that nice?

Big hug.

Here, here we go.

Okay, cut.

♪