And so began a strange regime of ‘deconditioning’ behaviour patterns. It owed a lot to the Armenian mystic and writer Georges I. Gurdjieff, who attempted to bring his followers to enlightenment through tactics such as shock, or mind-numbing physical exertion, such as cutting a lawn with a pair of scissors. At Millbrook, a bell would ring four times a day and everyone in the house would have to stop and write in a diary the behavioural ‘game’ they were currently involved in. Food would be dyed strange colours to confuse the senses, and visitors could find themselves presented with, for example, a plate of green eggs and a glass of black milk. Communal parenting was introduced, much to the dismay of the non-parents, who suddenly found themselves with the responsibilities of unpaid nannies.16 The aim of all this was to conquer the routine, unconscious patterns that leave us sleepwalking through life. Even 10 years later it was noticed that Tim studiously avoided routine,17sleeping in different rooms, brushing his teeth with different hands, and ordering different drinks in bars.
Sexual hang-ups and jealousy are a big part of our conditioning, so they clearly had to go. The third floor was designated as an ‘anything goes’ area, and all beds were open to all-comers. Initial enthusiasm for the idea gradually declined, however, and it was grudgingly accepted that the plan was causing more tension than it relieved. Nevertheless, there was still plenty of sexual exploration in the house, especially for Tim. As the group’s alpha male, he was the focus of attention for the many female visitors who passed through the house. Art Kleps remembered being in the kitchen one morning discussing the similarities between Leary and Jesus with a Christian IF-IF member, when Tim arrived ‘tousled and haggard, drew a coffee and turned to the assembled breakfasters to inquire rhetorically: ‘Jesus Christ, do I have to fuck every girl who comes to this place?’18
All this was extremely difficult for his children, who were now in their early-to-mid teens. After attempts at communal parenting had broken down, Susan and Jack were more or less left to their own devices. Tim claimed that his unorthodox, hands-off parenting was in the children’s best interests, but it seems more likely that he was just too preoccupied with his work to give enough of his time to them. His parenting method, certainly, was the polar opposite of what is currently considered good parenting, since nowadays establishing a routine and clearly defined limits is recommended as the best way to allow children to flourish. His children were soon taking acid and other drugs. Leary stated on stage in 1967: ‘I know no child over the age of seven who hasn’t been given drugs, and I know many of them.’19 There was certainly no effort to provide set and setting and an experienced guide for the first trips of Jack and Susan.
The children reacted in opposite ways. Jack became increasingly aware of his father’s faults, and the disillusionment that began to set in slowly evolved into anger, and eventually outright hatred. Susan, on the other hand, became devoted to her father, and jealous and vindictive towards anyone else who wanted to take up too much of his time.
An attempt to gain a little normality was made at the end of 1964, when Tim entered into a short-lived marriage with Nena von Schlebrugge. Nena, the daughter of a Swedish baron, was one of the many exotic people who passed through Millbrook that year. She was, as Tim wrote to his mother informing her of the wedding, ‘a most remarkable person of unusual intelligence, character and wisdom. She is deeply committed to spiritual goals and is an ideal companion for the metaphysical explorations in which I have been involved. For the last six years, she has been one of the top fashion models in the world.’20
Nena was indeed incredibly beautiful. Tall, blonde and graceful, she had inherited the looks of her Swedish mother, and in time she would come to pass them on to the children of her next marriage, most famously to her daughter, the actress Uma Thurman.
Following their wedding on 19 December 1964, Tim and the third Mrs Leary embarked on an extended honeymoon around the globe. They said goodbye to their friends and family and they headed off, via Japan, to India. Tim had been planning to visit India for a couple of years, a journey he would undertake with a very specific aim. What he was looking for was nothing less than spiritual enlightenment. It was time to undertake what he called his ‘obligatory pilgrimage’.
CHAPTER 6 Thou Shalt Not Alter the Consciousness of Thy Fellow Man
The newly-wed Learys spent four months living in a small cottage in the Kumaon Hills near Almora. It had no gas, electricity or running water, and was situated on a ridge that looked out over the Himalayas. They met up with Ralph Metzner, with whom they took LSD at the TajMahal, but generally they lived quietly and simply. This basic lifestyle did not appeal to Nena, however, and she quickly became bored. She came to the conclusion that the marriage had been a mistake, and by spring it was over.
The Indian trip may have been a failure as a honeymoon, but did it also fail as a religious pilgrimage? Tim had been planning this trip for a couple of years, ever since he’d realised that Eastern religious philosophy offered a better system for understanding the psychedelic experience than Western science. Once in India, he dedicated himself to religious practice, becoming a disciple of the tibetan Buddhist Lama Govinda and studying with the Hindu theologian Sri Krishna Penn. Ultimately, though, Tim’s flirtations with Hinduism and Buddhism would not lead to a genuine commitment to those religions. He was never able to totally conquer his ego and his intellect as those practices called on him to do. Tim was extremely fond of his ego and his intellect, and understandably so, for they were both remarkable. What he wanted was a system that contained the necessary understanding of inner space but that allowed him to keep all the fun, personal stuff at the same time. In this he was one of the first to evaluate spiritual practices through Western consumerist principals, a practice that would spread rapidly from the 1970s onwards.
Tim’s ambiguous relationship with existing religions is best highlighted by comparison with that of Richard Alpert, who took his own ‘Journey to the East’ in 1967. In many ways Alpert, the rich and ambitious young man who had been preoccupied with material values, seemed a far less likely candidate for spiritual transformation than Tim.
Yet it was Richard who returned from India a genuinely changed man, having renamed himself Baba Ram Dass, and having realised that the temporary illumination induced by LSD could hardly compare to the permanent awareness of a genuinely enlightened soul. He went on to write the bestseller Be Here Now and to become one of America’s leading Hindu theologians.
Ram Dass would later tell an intriguing story about the Hindu guru who transformed his life. He was exactly the same guru who appeared to Tim outside a temple, Ram Dass claims,1 during Tim’s Indian honeymoon two years earlier. Tim felt incredibly drawn to the man and started to approach him, but became strangely afraid. Fearing that he would miss his bus, he turned and walked away. In so doing he lost the chance to undergo the profound transformation that later occurred in Ram Dass. The incident left a sufficient mark on Tim, however, for him to include it in his autobiography many years later, albeit in a heavily embellished form. In Tim’s more archetypal version, the tourist bus was replaced by a ferryman who took Leary across the Ganges at night to a haunted and forbidden land. There emerged from the dark ‘an old man with long white hair, 20 feet away. He was naked save for a dhoti around his waist. His eyes were luminous. I was terrified. Suddenly I understood: he was some special ancient teacher who had been waiting for me all my life. I wanted to run forward and throw myself at his feet. But I was paralysed with fright.’2Leary turned away from the man and later, he says, wept uncontrollably, convinced he had run away from the Buddha. He added as a footnote, ‘If this little story about meeting the wild-eyed time-traveller on the other side of the Ganges seems inconclusive and unfinished, it is because the event was exactly that—inconclusive