LSD : Lettvin vs Leary (reel 1)

[Music] this is NE the national educational television network [Music] [Applause] [Applause] one evening this spring as part of a student run lecture series two men vied for The Souls of students who packed mit's kresy Auditorium they were Dr Timothy liry founder of the league for Spiritual discovery which Advocates LSD as a religious sacrament and MIT Professor Jerome lein who thinks of Dr liry as an agent of the devil Timothy liry began experiments with LSD as a lecturer in Psychology at Harvard Harvard dismissed him in 1963 he is now out on a $30,000 bond for possession of marijuana Dr lirry spoke first mainly in darkness while psychedelic effects were projected on a screen behind him we have recreated these effects in color I am beginning tonight's U ceremony by offering this chalice which I'm drinking to all of us the Chalice contains a powerful and dangerous chemical given to me by the Boston Water Supply it's odorless colorless tasteless it's um addictive as a matter of [Applause] fact as a matter of fact uh if you get hooked on it and they take it away from you uh you crawl on your hands and knees and your tongue gets black and your eyes blow it's um it's also a dangerous chemical you have to know how to use it too much of it in the wrong place like in your lungs and it'll kill you um 10 ft of it coming over your rowboat maybe we should pass a law against it because it's so dangerous and so addictive maybe only scientists should be allowed to play with it or maybe we can learn how to teach our kids how to use it in which case they'll discover that it water has many uses and indeed has been used for thousands of years for millions of years for billions of years as a way of life that's also been used for thousands of years as a Sacrament now you know what a Sacrament is a Sacrament is a psychedelic technique it's something that you used to Get High Get High yes sa is something that gets you high gets you off the television stage set pretty solid here amazing how solidly they make these sets these days gets you off the fake prop television stage set of MIT Cambridge Massachusetts United States of America and reminds you that you're not just a college student you're not just 22 or 23 or 24 years old you're two billion years old had you forgotten that matter of fact water can you remind you um where you came from remember you spent nine months in a watery medium first nine months this trip on this planet remember all that sashing now could we have the lights out now please I opened our ceremony can I have all the lights on [Applause] please you're going to see on the screen um home movies and slide projections of little travels and trips that we take the slides give you the lesd experienced from the inside and the movies present The Observers view of an LSD trip from the outside the movies are unedited film that's been shot minute after minute hour after hour during LSD sessions I lit a candle to open our ceremony tonight again to remind us that um who we are and where we came from and what it's all about because that's what you hear how much to learn isn't it uh fire has been used as a Sacrament for thousands of years it reminds us that uh we're all creatures of the Sun that uh we all have little fires burning inside of us from solar energy now fire is dangerous fire can kill fire can burn destroy as a matter of fact the first fell an invented fire Prometheus got in a lot of trouble down in Washington remember uh they said wait a minute we're going too fast maybe we're not ready for fire as a matter of fact that's a question that often occurs to many of us these days maybe man isn't ready for powerful chemicals like LSD and the many new ones that are coming maybe man's little mind isn't ready at this moment in evolution to deal with too much too fast in the way of reality fire is U dangerous maybe we should pass a law against it maybe we should Peck out the livers of everybody that uses it certainly can't let high school and college children have it what are we going to do about it how we going to keep people from burning themselves up and hurting themselves and killing themselves with fire well we got to start training our kids from the time they can listen to us that fire is here that water's here here there a lot of energies around that are here that aren't going to go away and they better learn how to use them from the very earliest moments and know what they can do and what they can't do and how they destroy because sometimes when I see what fire is doing to the thin layer of top soil on this planet I wonder maybe they were right about Prometheus and maybe the human race isn't ready even now to deal with powers like fire now it may seem eccentric to you that I come to an Institute of engineering and Technology and start talking about sacraments and Earth and air and fire and water and ceremonies uh but I don't really think it should be that U odd the uniform I'm wearing may be out of date in this particular brief show you have going here but uh people have been sitting Barefoot as I'm sitting now in front of you for thousands of years in front of candelight talking about what I'm talking about where are we going what's it all about what can we do about it how can we figure it out how can we tune it back in don't you know that the real real goal of a scientist is to flip out don't you know that had you forgotten oh you thought that the role of a scientist was to build bigger and bigger stage sets for the television show we got going here yeah uh we have there a big road running from the cops and robbers game here to the Calo Indian show over there and your engineers are supposed to build them so that we can go faster and faster and farther and farther from television show to television show but um if you take science seriously and if you take the history of science seriously you'll realize that every great scientist wasn't in it for the TV show commercial payoff he was in it to find out what it's all about what's the nature of energy what are the many levels of energy what the levels of consciousness how can we map them out how can we use them and as he got to know more and more and to penetrate deeper and deeper into the mysteries of energy around us he began to flip out he began to flip out look at Einstein eal mc² come on you mean that it's that's all energy wow Einstein did it without LSD you have been led to believe most of you that religion is something that's uh serious and something that's mildly hypocritical and has really little to do with the basic questions in life we turn all the science well uh the facts of matter are that religion is supposed to be fun and ecstasy because um you know it's all a play that we're involved in of energy and uh you think that a religious person is one who goes around the long Faith uh reciting the boy scout oath uh religion starts as science has always started in the pursuit the Quest for the ultimate questions and it's fun science should be fun science should be pleasure science should be flipping out uh going out of your mind uh really uh stunned by the joy of this incredible energy situation now the message I have is an old one it's the simplest and most classic message that ever been passed on in world history it's uh those six words drop out turn on then come back and tune it in and then uh drop out again and turn on and tune it back in it's a rhythm now most of us are brain damaged by What marshall MCL would call the um Gutenberg Galaxy and most of us think that God and the D code made this universe in the nature of subject object predicat sentences there's no level of energy and no process in biology or physics that operates with subject predicate sentences turn tune in drop out period end the paragraph Turn the Page it's all a rhythm it's all a beat Jackie give us the beat you turn on you find it inside then you have to come back you can't stay high all the time and you have to start building a better model building a better building building better temple building a better poem building a better language building a better music it's always been done that way but don't get caught don't get hooked don't get attracted by the thing you're building because you got to drop out and it's a cycle turn on tune in drop out keep it going keep it going because the nervous system operates that way 100,000 million signals a second right I'm sorry a th million signals a second coming into your nervous system it's that same beat you got to keep it flowing got to keep it flowing I want to talk for a minute about the term turn on to turn on you have to have a key to get in touch with the neurological sensory and cellular information that you've got stored in that two billion year old receptacle you call your body now how do you turn on well I'll tell you this you can't turn on with words you can't turn on with thinking you can't think your way off the sticky black molasses chest board of American Education I'm sorry and good works won't do it for you either you can uh as virtuous and as good as you want to but you're not going to turn on and get the key to the mystery that way in order to turn on you've got to have what the religious metaphor calls a Sacrament what's a Sacrament a Sacrament is something that changes your body that changes your nervous system and if a Sacrament that you use doesn't affect your body doesn't bring about this internal change then uh it's not a Sac it's a television show prop that they' given you keep you nice and quiet in the corner of the studio it staggers the imagination to think of the means and the methods that men have used in the past to turn on to bring about a change in the sensory neural equipment that we carry around with us there's hardly any activity physical sensory or even television perap Studio activity that men haven't used at one time or another to get high to go out of their minds to come to their senses to take the trip flagellation Solitude cing together in large temples silence music the Tom Kura the Indian beat drums in Africa sexual abstinence carefully worked out in systematic routines of tantric sexuality in which you find the Divine with a member of the opposite sex fasting or the ingestion of sacred Foods now today the sacrament is a chemical or it's a series of chemicals now let's not get upset about LSD in the first place uh there are longer and stronger more powerful chemicals that have the same effect as LSD that are in circulation right now in the United States uh there'll be many more coming along I make this flat prediction this fast that the government passed the law against one of these molecules a new one will come along because for thousands of years Caesar's been trying to stop people from wandering off the stage set of the studio game and getting outside under the stars getting back inside to uh figure out what it's all about so let's not get too upset about LSD because even the era of biochemistry for bringing about the Cy experience is almost over within your lifetime you will see the new Sacrament or the new key to the internal process developed as a matter of fact most of you are going to have a terrible time with your kids in about 25 years because you'll be sitting around home smoking marijuana and preparing for your next weekly LSD session like good tidy conventional people should and your kids are going to go and say Hey Dad and Mom down in greenish Village there's a new technique called electronic grain simulation and you're going to say no implanting electrodes in my children's heads and your kids will be growing pigtails and you're going to get upset and say why don't you use the old tried and trud methods of finding out where it's at like LSD now there's much confusion about the scient status and the scientific uh evidence about LSD and I'll say this quite flatly there's no evidence that I know of and I read the literature pretty carefully they can tell us very much about what LSD does to Consciousness or to the nervous system or to the genetic material anytime you hear anyone talking to you about LSD and pretending to give you scientific facts whether they're Pro or con LSD I suggest that you be very skeptical I don't know whether LSD is good or bad I don't know the effects of LSD on the nervous system on the brain or on the genetic material it's a gamble it's a risk the sacrament is always a risk the new technique for expanding Consciousness is always a risk did you really think that it could be guaranteed for you hey wake up forgotten who you are and where you came from that the whole thing is an adventure and that you're from a long line of adventurers who got into leaky boats and leaky crafts and put strange things in their mouths and put strange things in the ground not quite knowing what they're doing yeah taking a psychedelic chemical is a risk taking LSD is a risk it's a gamble it's Russian Roulette but what is it can you name anything that you breathe or put in your body or let filter uh through the atmosphere into your uh nervous system like television waves that aren't an unknown Gamble and of all the Russian Roulette games I see around me including Vietnam and uh polluted air I would say that the Russian Roulette of LSD is uh about the uh best gamble in the house to show you the difficult nature of the scientific study of LSD uh I want to tell you a story of what happened uh with the scientific study of marijuana in the United States you know marijuana's been around a long time everyone has their mind made up about marijuana H how many of you have ever read a scientific paper in a scientific journal following the customary uh checks and controls and language of science how many of you have evidence uh about marijuana as sound as the evidence that you would expect uh that you'd have to have to base your opinions on any other aspect of the Energy System around us uh as a matter of fact you know impost United States for the last 15 or 20 years to do scientific research on marijuana uh there was a man named an singer back in the 30s who got Congress to uh pass a law saying that marijuana was bad now as judeo-christians we just have to have something that's bad has to be Communists resty witches resty Devils resty possession or the Infidel of the Pagan we have something that's bad and then we pass a law against it now the facts of the matter are that there were some studies done on marijuana M mainly in England uh suggesting that marijuana could be useful as a psychiatric cure for depression has a sure makes you feel good uh uh but uh for the last 15 years it's been almost impossibility to do research in marijuana if a full-fledged kosher bonaa scientist at an Institute like this wanted to research on marijuana he had to apply for a government license you know what happens if you apply for a government license government inspectors come around and say what do you want to do research uh marijuana for you say well I want to find out what marijuana is about and they say what do you mean we know it's all about it's written the L it's all about marijuana is a narcotic addictive drug and it causes rape violence aggression uh you're not certainly to give MIT students in your laboratory marijuana uh because all the massachusett state legislature think about that huh it's been impossible to do research on marijuana now I'd like to tell you a little research that I've done on marijuana and I want to tell you play my cards right on the table and I came into the research biased I was very much against LSD I happen to be an Irish American and I like to drink um as a middle class teacher at Harvard or new of California uh I'd heard about marijuana but uh I had no occasion to use it because beatnick used it and uh I didn't know any beatniks and uh they were people like Alan Ginsburg and Jack Carrick having a lot of fun best more fun than I was having but uh there was no way I could get Mar I want to be interested in it um then we got involved up at har uh doing research in LSD and I found out to my surprise that enormous numbers of young people were using marijuana even har students and graduate students well I have to laugh when I read about the problems of the dean at Harvard now uh when the Crimson announces that 70% of the Freshman Class smoke marijuana and the dean has to announce that they'll um throw people out of harb if they use marijuana because seven years ago I was saying exactly the same things to the people in our research project because I didn't think we should study marijuana because uh my contract with Harvard we were going to study LSD which was legal in those days amazing just ride away and get it um I didn't think it would be fair to mix marijuana up with LSD in our research so I would go around just like the Deans at Harvard around our research projects in Newton or in Mexico and I'd say Daddy don't allow no pot smoking in here it wasn't a matter of fact until I left Harvard and uh left institutional commitments that I decid I would do some research on marijuana but I actually didn't get around to doing it seriously until I went to India and about the first week I was in India I went to a uh place called a ganja shop license in the city of Kolkata and I bought about 4 ounces of marijuana for a dime or so and I was with a holy man Guru named asok fakir and he took me down to the Ganges River and we sat there with a group of Shiites sitting around the burning gats and uh I really began to learn something about marijuana and I was in India for five months and I smoke marijuana uh every day uh trying it out uh in um different context and different activities now the inter thing about marijuana you see marijuana I'm sorry to say my beloved robots of menopausal Institute of Technology there's no good and evil in this world marijuana is neither good nor bad LSD Nei good or bad as a matter of fact there's probably no activity that you engage in from day to day week to week that wouldn't be helped or hindered by the use of marijuana and the scientific question is which ones would be hindered in which case you don't ban marijuana you just don't um use the energy that way and find out which activities are help by marijuana and go down to the license ganas Shore in Cambridge square and get it now I want to uh conclude my sermon with some comments about dropping out this uh at the moment tends to be the controversial part of the motto uh turn on tun and drop out everyone nowadays accepts the notion of turning on even Madison Avenue is telling you that Salem cigarettes would turn you on everyone wants to be tuned in but drop out fine you can't say drop out you can't tell college students they should drop out of college you can't tell middleaged people who have mortgage pay they should drop out of their jobs I'm sorry I mean I didn't invent this I'm just reading the lines that were given to me you've got to drop out now um there's a lot to said about uh education well you've got to finish your education when I hear that said uh I uh shudder and my cells shrink because I'm sorry to say this and I say this with great love and great affection because I'm part of this whole institution the way I'm going but the educational system at the present time in the United States does neurological damage to the nervous system and functions as a narcotic addictive drug it rather shocks me to think about how we take our children at that our children who were born with 13 billion nerve sales our children who are Buddhas born the final product up to date last version of a two billion year old assembly line back in some DNA Detroit checking the new models consumer research hey how's the weather up there ah yes the ice age is going back all right take a little more hair off the next model yeah what color eyes does she like this Millennium oh glue a little more glue in the next model we were all born perfect right up toate models but what happened at the age of four or five our parents uh with the best intentions turned us over to a bunch of strangers that they didn't know and probably would have even had to dinner at their house to be trained in the only crucial issue of Life control of Consciousness the educational process is a real dangerous drug use it carefully because you're likely to get hooked now you the younger generation in particular have got to drop out and by drop out I mean all the way you can't vote I urge you not to politic don't pick it don't get involved in any of these menopausal mind games because it doesn't make any difference remember 1962 we voted for a peace candidate and you think it makes a difference now you face a problem that never been face in this particular magnitude in human history the speed up the acceleration of technology and knowledge and means of changing things your generation has grown up in a society a thousand or 10,000 years Beyond The Society of your grandfathers and even of your parents and I want to present one scientific hypothesis and there's plenty of evidence to back it up one hypothesis which is so shocking and so frightening to our sense of the way it should be that I suspect that this finding and it implications have been really repressed in the Freudian sense because it's a staggering set of data and it's this after the age of 20 or 25 neurological studies show us that the human nervous system begins to lose cells that means you have less cells at 30 and at 35 and at 40 and at 45 than you had at 20 you're losing brain cells every year of your life after you leave College which means that at my age 45 I'm partly brain damaged it means you like that you knew that anyway Dr s Ken in California made me promise that I'll turn my brain over to neurologist after I die and he's going to do the same for me now what does this means it means that you young people cannot buy the system of a menopausal mentality generation you know the men who were running this world this country this state had their minds made up about 1910 or 1915 you remember ratatatat machine guns in the Old World War trenches and prohibition and booze you just can't buy their system you just can't buy their system uh if you ever get around to uh running for office which I hope none of you will if you ever get around to making laws I suggest the first law you pass is based upon this uh neurological fact about brain damage no one over the age of 50 years old should be allowed to vote or hold power over young seed carrying people should they does that make neurological sense to yourselves doesn't to mine now in the next six months a year two years there's going to be a lot of tension in this country about the control of Consciousness because like it or not or believe it or not we have entered into a new age and I would call it uh the age of Consciousness and the implications of this revolution in conscious are much greater than uh the technological uh or the atomic or the electronic age because this age is focusing inside and for the first time in human history at least in Western history because they knew all this 4,000 years ago in India for the first time in human Western history man has finally caught on that it doesn't make as much difference what goes on out there as it does how much control and freedom you have in here the internal trip can be observed it can be labeled it can be manipulated it can be controlled and it can be replicated just as easily as any experiment in external science and um you've got to uh turn on your parents and I can't turn on LBJ but he's got some young people around and if they've been to good colleges uh the statistics tell us that uh half of them which means either she or a roommate has turned on so that's the way uh we've got to do it we've got to say Daddy bird you've done enough daddy bird it was St years ago you ran for the president of the bank and you've got to steal over the world now daddy bird and you've done enough come on drop out and turn around and learn how to make love all over again and come to your senses