The HARVARD PSYCHEDELIC CLUB How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America Don Lattin To Paul and Cheryl Contents Cover Title Page List of Illustrations Author’s Note Introduction Chapter One – Four Roads to Cambridge Chapter Two – Turn On Chapter Three – Sinners and Saints Chapter Four – Crimson Tide Chapter Five – Trouble in Paradise Chapter Six – If You Come to San Francisco . . . Chapter Seven – Pilgrimage and Exile Chapter Eight – After the Ecstasy . . . Four Lives Conclusion – Healer, Teacher, Trickster, Seeker Afterword Bibliography Notes on Source Material Index Acknowledgments About the Author Praise for The Harvard Psychedelic Club Also by Don Lattin Copyright About the Publisher ILLUSTRATIONS Andrew Weil when he graduated from Harvard, 1964 Huston Smith and family, 1920s Huston Smith on TV, 1958 Timothy Leary at a Boston Club in early 1966 Susan Leary and Richard Alpert in May 1963 Huston Smith in the 1960s Ram Dass in the garden of David McClelland, 1975 Andrew Weil, in the early 1970s, on his pilgrimage to South America Timothy Leary announcing his candidacy for governor of California, May 23, 1969 Andrew Weil at his Arizona ranch Timothy Leary and others at a reunion in 1996 Huston Smith AUTHOR’S NOTE T his is a work of narrative nonfiction. The dialogue in this book is the author’s rendition of what was actually said in these conversations. It is based on interviews with the speakers, written accounts from those involved, and other research into the various characters’ state of mind. When possible, the re-created dialogue was reviewed by at least one of the participants in a conversation. For more information on the sources used to re-create various scenes, please refer to “Notes on Source Material” at the end of the book. Introduction T his book is the story of three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman who crossed paths at Harvard University in the winter of 1960–61, and how their experiences in a psychedelic drug research project transformed their lives and much of American culture in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s about the intersecting life stories of Timothy Leary, a research psychologist and proponent of enlightenment through LSD; Huston Smith, an MIT philosophy professor and widely read expert on the world’s religions; Richard Alpert, a Harvard psychology professor who traveled to India and returned as Ram Dass; and Dr. Andrew Weil, a Harvard Medical School graduate who became the nation’s best-known proponent of holistic health and natural foods. They came together at an extraordinary time and place in American history. It was the end of the 1950s—a decade defined by conformity, consumerism, political paranoia, and the just-discovered nightmare of global nuclear annihilation. It was the beginning of the 1960s, which would see its own horrors and divisive politics but was somehow redeemed by a new spirit of optimism, innovation, and hope. Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy, a Harvard graduate, had just been elected president of the United States, making him the youngest man to ever hold that office. Kennedy put together a cabinet by cherry- picking Harvard’s best and brightest. Was there a reason these four men came together at this time and place? Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but some extraordinary spirit rose out of Harvard in the fall of 1960. Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. Timothy Leary discovers the wondrous world of magic mushrooms during his summer break in Mexico, just as seventeen-year-old Andrew Weil is getting ready to come to Harvard to study botany. Aldous Huxley, the great British novelist and student of human consciousness, just happens to be lecturing that fall at nearby MIT. Huxley hears about Leary, then introduces Leary to his old friend Huston Smith. Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet who seems to pop up everywhere in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, is crashing at Leary’s house that fall. One of Leary’s colleagues in the Harvard psychology department, Richard Alpert, is, when the merriment begins, on loan to the University of California at Berkeley, but he lays the groundwork for a psychedelic drug culture that is about to burst forth in Boston, San Francisco, and, from there, around the world. They came together at a time of upheaval and experimentation, and they set the stage for the social, spiritual, sexual, and psychological revolution of the 1960s. Smith would be The Teacher, educating three generations to adopt a more tolerant, inclusive attitude toward other people’s religions. Alpert would be The Seeker, inspiring a restless army of spiritual pilgrims. Weil would be The Healer, devoting his life to the holistic reformation of the American health-care system. And Leary would play The Trickster, advising a generation to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” They would help define the decade, so much so that John Lennon would write two Beatles songs for their story’s soundtrack—“Tomorrow Never Knows,” about his Leary-inspired acid trip, and “Come Together,” originally conceived as a campaign song for The Trickster’s whimsical race against Ronald Reagan for governor of California. One thing I can tell you is you got to be free. Other tunes would be cut by the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and the Moody Blues, whose song “The Legend of a Mind” would let us know whether Timothy Leary was dead, or just on the outside, looking in. They came together, then drifted apart, but the cultural changes they wrought are still very much with us today. There would be a time of joy, a time of peace, and a time of love. There would also be times of backstabbing, jealousy, and outright betrayal. A time to dance. A time to mourn. And it would take Richard Alpert more than one lifetime to forgive Andrew Weil for what he did to him and his career back at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Leary would go on to become one of the most revered and reviled symbols of the 1960s. Huston Smith would enthusiastically join Leary’s psychedelic crusade, only to go his own way when the party got a little wild for an ordained, and happily married, Methodist minister. Richard Alpert, as Ram Dass, would continue to struggle with a voracious omni-sexual appetite. Andy Weil would play hardball in his campaign to get Alpert and Leary kicked out of Harvard, only to replace them in the 1970s as the new ringmaster of the drug culture. Smith, Leary, Alpert, and Weil were all career-driven, linear-thinking intellectuals before their consciousness-expanding encounters with psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, and other psychedelic drugs. After the ecstasy, they all turned from intellect to intuition, from mechanistic thinking to mysticism, from the scholarly to the spiritual, from the scientific to the shamanic. The men of the Harvard Psychedelic Club, each in his own way, changed the way Americans Harvard Psychedelic Club, each in his own way, changed the way Americans think, practice medicine, and view religion; that is, they changed nothing less than the way we look at mind, body, and spirit. Chapter One Four Roads to Cambridge Seeker: Cambridge, Massachusetts Spring 1961 Richard Alpert, an assistant professor in clinical psychology at Harvard University, was on track. Tenure track. Alpert was still in his twenties, but he already had the big corner office in the Department of Social Relations. He had twin appointments in psychology and education. His private life seemed just as sweet. His Cambridge apartment was filled with exquisite antiques. He had a Mercedes sedan, an MG sports car, a Triumph motorcycle, and his own Cessna airplane. It was the dawn of the swinging sixties, and Alpert was all set for life in the fast lane. What made it even sweeter was that none of this was supposed to happen. He’d shown those bastards. Here he was, teaching at Harvard—a place that wouldn’t even accept him as a student, even with all of his father’s New England connections. Just nine years ago, he’d nearly flunked out of college and seemed destined to fail at the profession his father had chosen for him—medical doctor. But that time, Richard was the one thumbing his nose at daddy’s connections. That was back in the spring of 1952, just before he got his undergraduate degree from Tufts University. One day in his senior year, Tufts president Leonard Carmichael called Alpert to his office. “So, Richard,” he said. “I understand you want to be a psychologist.” Alpert thought Carmichael, himself an eminent psychologist, was about to congratulate him on his career choice. “Yes, sir,” Richard replied. “I want to be a social psychologist.” “You’d make a terrible psychologist. How about going to medical school?” “I don’t want to go to medical school.” “You know, Richard, your father really wants you to go to medical school. Tufts has a fine medical school.” “I know it does, and I know my father wants me to go to medical school. We’re Jewish. He’s a lawyer. I’m supposed to be a doctor or a lawyer. But I