Timothy Leary.  He’s famous for many quips and unforgettable lines, but aside from the famous  “Turn on..”  triple threat, Leary’s “Just Say Know” is among my very favorites because basically, knowledge is power as the poet once said. And it’s never more critical and important than today, some 50 years after Leary and his partner in “crime”, Richard Alpert, went on that voyage of consciousness discovery and sent the ’50’s lurching into a brand new and unexplored decade that was a game changer. The Sixties.

 

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Now there’s a documentary, Dying to Know, that tells the many untolds of that story and even love story, it could be said. A conversation with Timothy’s son, Zach Leary, follows.

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TURN ON TUNE IN DROP OUT

We live in a political and spiritual world. And add to that, a digitally technological world. Zach and I talked of the concept of a fusion and intersection of spirituality and technology.  Rather like Steve Jobs. Zach told me, that had his dad still be here today Timothy would be exploring the “intelligent application of personal technology. He would be on the forefront”. And that of course brought him to the the forefront of his own death. And owning it. A final frontier, though it can be argued if that is so. He is now bringing the ownership of dying to our consciousness. To those of us dying and to those of us ushering through our friends and families in that process. .

SEE THE FILM: at Cinema 21 

 

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The basic tenets, says Zach, still apply. Think for yourself. Question authority. Consider that Leary was really something of a political prisoner because of the political time he lived in, and in the way he and Ram Dass explored inner space. Not just through psychotropics but also through spirituality. This documentary explores so many things that will provoke, I would think , a great many of us, into after-viewing conversations even if you didn’t live through the 60’s. You will be reminded (perhaps historically) what a break-through era it was, and that these were the guys who created our beloved counter-culture of the 60’s , and that indeed,  it was  Timothy Leary who was perhaps the first casualty of the “War on Drugs”.

 

 

Dying to Know: Links

 

 

 

More about Dying to Know HERE.

Watch the documentary at Cinema 21. 

Meet Baba Ram Dass HERE.

Find out more about Zach Leary’s work and listen to his fascinating podcasts HERE.

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