Start Your Own Religion, by Timothy Leary, Ph.D.
Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2019 11:09 pm
Start Your Own Religion
by Timothy Leary, Ph.D.
© League for Spiritual Discovery, 1967
Published by the KRIYA PRESS of the SRI RAM ASHRAMA Millbrook, New York
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
Table of Contents:
• League
• The Purpose of Life is Religious Discovery
• Drop-out. Turn-on. Tune-in
• How to Turn-on
• How to Tune-in
• How to Drop-out
• To Drop-out You Must Form Your Own Religion
• How to Start Your Own Religion
• The Legal Question
• Dr. Leary. What Will Happen to Society After Everyone Turns-on, Tunes-in, and Drops-out?
• Illustrative Procedure for Formalizing a Psychedelic
Religion
• MINUTES OF THE FIRST MEMBERSHIP MEETING OF THE
LEAGUE FOR SPIRITUAL DISCOVERY
• By-Laws Of LEAGUE FOR SPIRITUAL DISCOVERY
o Article One. Organization.
o Article Two. Purposes.
o Article Three. Membership.
o Article Four. Meetings.
o Article Five. Voting.
o Article Six. Order of Business.
o Article Seven. Board of Guides.
o Article Eight. Officers.
o Article Nine. Salaries.
o Article Ten. Committees
o Article Eleven. Dues.
o Article Twelve. Amendments.
• MINUTES OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE BOARD OF GUIDES
• Photographs
by Timothy Leary, Ph.D.
© League for Spiritual Discovery, 1967
Published by the KRIYA PRESS of the SRI RAM ASHRAMA Millbrook, New York
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Table of Contents:
• League
• The Purpose of Life is Religious Discovery
• Drop-out. Turn-on. Tune-in
• How to Turn-on
• How to Tune-in
• How to Drop-out
• To Drop-out You Must Form Your Own Religion
• How to Start Your Own Religion
• The Legal Question
• Dr. Leary. What Will Happen to Society After Everyone Turns-on, Tunes-in, and Drops-out?
• Illustrative Procedure for Formalizing a Psychedelic
Religion
• MINUTES OF THE FIRST MEMBERSHIP MEETING OF THE
LEAGUE FOR SPIRITUAL DISCOVERY
• By-Laws Of LEAGUE FOR SPIRITUAL DISCOVERY
o Article One. Organization.
o Article Two. Purposes.
o Article Three. Membership.
o Article Four. Meetings.
o Article Five. Voting.
o Article Six. Order of Business.
o Article Seven. Board of Guides.
o Article Eight. Officers.
o Article Nine. Salaries.
o Article Ten. Committees
o Article Eleven. Dues.
o Article Twelve. Amendments.
• MINUTES OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE BOARD OF GUIDES
• Photographs
DROP-OUT - detach yourself from the external social drama which is as dehydrated and ersatz as TV.
TURN-ON - find a sacrament which returns you to the Temple of God, your own body. Go out of your mind. Get high.
TUNE-IN - be reborn. Drop-back-in to express it. Start a new sequence of behavior that reflects your vision....
Our aim is to help recreate every man as God and every woman as Goddess....
A dancing joyous harmony of energy transactions is rooted in the 12 inches of top-soil which covers the rock, metal, fire, core of this planet....
The wise person devotes his life exclusively to the religious search - for therein is found the only ecstasy, the only meaning....
refocus on the natural energies within the body....
focus on sensory energies....
focus on somatic energies....
focus on cellular energies....
Decode the genetic code....
1. As sensory (e.g. the room is alive, out of control, exploding with light and sound.)
2. As somatic (e.g. the room is alive, undulating with digestive rhythm.)
3. As cellular (e.g. all props and actors take on a stylized, mythic, re-incarnate hue.)
4. As molecular (e.g. all props and actors shimmer impersonally as vibratory mosaics.)....
To Turn-on you must learn how to pray. Prayer is the compass; the gyroscope for centering and stillness.
Turning-on is a complex, demanding, frightening, confusing process. It requires diligent Yoga.
Turning-on requires a guide who can center you at the TV-stage-prop level and at the sensory, somatic, cellular, and molecular levels....
You are a spiritual voyager furthering the most ancient, noble quest of man.... the holy dance of the visionaries....
To Turn-on you need a sacrament. A sacrament is a visible external thing which turns the key to the inner doors. A sacrament must bring about bodily changes. A sacrament flips you out of the TV-studio game and harnesses you to the two-billion year old flow inside....
Today the sacrament is LSD. New sacraments are coming along....
After the revelation it is necessary to drop-back-in, return to the fake-prop TV-studio and initiate small changes which reflect the glory and the meaning of the "turn-on". You change the way you move, the way you dress, and you change your corner of the TV-studio society! You begin to look like a happy saint! Your home slowly becomes a shrine. Slowly, gently, you start seed transformations around you. Psychedelic art. Psychedelic style. Psychedelic music. Psychedelic dance....
Quit school. Quit your job. Don't vote. Avoid all politics. Do not waste conscious thinking on TV-studio games. Political choices are meaningless....
Dismiss the Judaic-Christian-Marxist-puritan-literary-existentialist suggestion that the drop-out is escape and that the conformist cop-out is reality. Dropping-out is the hardest yoga of all.
Make your drop-out invisible. No rebellion - please! ...
For both psychedelic and legal reasons you must form your own cult....
You must form that most ancient and sacred of human structures - the clan. A clan or cult is a small group of human beings organized around a religious goal.
Remember, you are basically a primate. You are designed by the two-billion year blueprint to live in a small band....
Your clan must be centered around a shrine and a totem spiritual energy source. To the clan you dedicate your highest loyalty, and to you the clan offers its complete protection....
Avoid conflict with the establishment. Avoid recruiting and rapid growth. Preserve clan harmony.
Your clan must be limited to essence friends.
You must guard against the TV power tendency towards expansion....
The activities of your religion must be limited to the turn-on, tune-in, drop-out sequence....
You must start your own religion. You are GOD - but only you can discover and nurture your divinity. No one can start your religion for you....
A$ $oon a$ your clan member$ detach them$elve$ emotionally from money, you will discover how easy it is to survive economically. There must be a complete and collaborative pooling of money and work-energy....
The sexual proclivity of the clan must be explicit and inflexible. Do not attempt to establish clan-relationships with persons of a different sexual persuasion. There is no value judgement here. Sex is sacred. People of like sexual temperament must form their own spiritual cults....
Some spiritual people are not compatible with the monogamous union and prefer a freer sexual regime, the group marriage. Good! Many tribes and clans throughout the planet have flourished in complete and holy promiscuity. But be explicit. Painful confusions occur if sexual orientations and sexual taboos (cellular and physical, not psychological or cultural) are disregarded in forming clans....
The aim of clan living is to subordinate the ego-game to the family game - the clan game.
You will do well to have an explicit connection to a mythic figure. You must select an historical psychedelic guide. You must know your mythic origins. Facts and news are reports from the current TV drama. They have no relevance to your 2-billion year old divinity....
Your mythic guide must be one who has solved the death-rebirth riddle....Christ, Lao Tse, Hermes Trismegistus, Socrates are recurrent turn-on figures....
Leave the city. Urban living is spiritually suicidal. The cities of America are about to crumble as did Rome and Babylon. Go to the land. Go to the sea....
Obey Caesar's TV studio rules when you are in his studios. Avoid any participation in his dramas....
In summary: be prepared for a complete change of American urban technology. Grass will grow in Times Square within ten years. The great soil-murdering lethal skyscrapers will come down....
There is nothing for you to do in a collective political sense....
The League for Spiritual Discovery has three purposes - (a) individual worship of the Supreme Energy - God; (b) communal worship of the Supreme Energy - God; and (c) public worship of the Supreme Energy - God. These three forms of worship based on revelation and empirically validated methods for spiritual discovery.
(a) Individual Worship - We league together to help each member discover the divinity within by means of sacred teachings, self-analysis, psychedelic sacraments, and spiritual methods and then to express this revelation in an external life of harmony and beauty. We pledge ourselves to help each member to devote his entire consciousness and all his behavior to the glorification of God. Complete dedication to the life of worship is our aim, as exemplified in the motto "Turn-on, Tune-in. Drop-out".
(b) Communal Worship - We league together to maintain League Centers (Ashrams; monastic centers) where renunciates (i.e. "drop-outs" - those who take a vow to abandon secular activities for a specified length of time) will live a communal life of worship and glorification. The community serves to facilitate individual illumination and to liberate and channel spiritual energies to accomplish the evangelic and public mission of the League.
(c) Illumination of the Human Race - We league together to inform, teach, guide, liberate, and illuminate other human beings so that they can be initiated into a life of glorification and worship. We are concerned that modern civilization (as exemplified in American culture) is becoming insane, destructive, warlike, materialistic, atheistic - a meaningless set of repetitious robot responses. We seek to return man to a life of harmony with his own divinity - with his mate and family, with his fellow human beings, and with the other natural energies - organic and inorganic - of this planet. A complete and rapid evolution of society is intended. Public celebrations will be held, and League offices will be established in cities in this country and throughout the world. The League will assist in every way other groups of seekers to form their own religious cults and their own ashrams....
A motion was made by Boreas and seconded by Narayana that the League for Spiritual Discovery engage the services of Hitchcock-Balding Productions Ltd. to handle public business of the League for a fee of 15% of all monies accrued from radio, television, movies, and recording activities (excepting literary publications.).
A motion was made by Boreas and seconded by Amitabha that the Board of Guides authorize the League to run weekly Celebrations in New York City for evangelic and educational purposes.
Timothy Leary made a motion, seconded by Amitabha, that the League be authorized to print and circulate "God Cards" for racial harmony and East-West re-union.
A motion was made by Gita and seconded by Beorn that the League be authorized to hire lawyers to handle the affairs of the League.
A motion was made by Rose and seconded by Bhavani that the League be authorized to conduct a penitential crusade to the East in 1967-68.
A motion was made by Bhavani and seconded by Tambimuttu that the League be authorized to enter into negotiations for the planning and conducting of psychedelic Religious Celebrations in various cities of Europe during the spring and summer of 1967.
A motion was made by Tambimuttu and seconded by Beorn that the League publish a magazine under the auspices of the Publications Committee.
A motion was made by Gita and seconded by Narayana the the Ashram Committee be authorized to purchase supplies for the seed center....
A motion was made by Boreas and seconded by Amitabha that the League accept from the Castalia Foundation ownership and all royalties from the following books: (1) Psychedelic Experience, (2) Psychedelic Reader, (3) Psychedelic Prayers, and an untitled history of the Psychedelic Religion, by Timothy Leary.
A motion was made by Beorn and seconded by Bhavani that the League accept from the Castalia Foundation ownership and royalties of all phonograph records by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner published by Folkways, Capitol Records, ESP, and Pixie.
A motion was made by Narayana and seconded by Gita that the League authorize Timothy Leary to sign contracts with Mr. Hank Saperstein to make a movie of the psychedelic Religious Celebration "Death of the Mind".
A motion was made by Narayana and seconded by Rose that the League authorize its attorney to file for tax exempt status with the U.S. Internal Revenue Department.
A motion was made by Gita and seconded by Narayana that the League establish an experimental agricultural station, under the direction of Beorn, to develop methods of natural and harmonic relationship with the biosphere and that funds be allocated to this ancient and noble end.
A motion was made by Boreas and seconded by Narayana that the League authorize its lawyer to take steps to have the land of the Hitchcock Cattle Farm declared a wild-life sanctuary.
A motion was made by Beorn and seconded by Bhavani that the Hitchcock farm, in the Town of Washington, Village of Millbrook is, and shall be until further notice, a sanctuary for all living things; and that all this land be considered a spiritual shrine of the League for Spiritual Discovery; that it be understood that this property is sanctified for League Guides and Associates; and that the League does not claim responsibility for non-League persons on this property.
A motion was made by Rose and seconded by Beorn that the League request from the Hitchcock Cattle Corporation that the western one-half of the farm be deeded to the League for Spiritual Discovery as a spiritual retreat.
A motion was made by Gita and seconded by Narayana that the League's attorney be authorized to file suit for a declaratory judgement authorizing Guides (priests) to import and distribute psychedelic sacraments, including marijuana, LSD, peyote, mescaline, and psilocybin, to initiated members only and for use only in their shrines.
A motion was made by Gita and seconded by Rose that bank accounts be opened by the Treasurer in the Bank of Millbrook.
A motion was made by Bhavani and seconded by Amitabha that the League open a New York Center to be located at 551 Hudson Street, New York, N.Y. for educational work....
The goal of the Millbrook community is to return to a tribal way of life and to develop a model or pilot study of that ancient spiritual political form, the cult, which is more "in tune" with man's evolutionary history.
-- Start Your Own Religion, by Timothy Leary, Ph.D.