Don Lattin

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

Talking Points

Don Lattin is an experienced and well respected journalist. He can reach to the sizable number of Americans who attend yoga classes, go to health-food stores, employ alternative herbal medicines or acupuncture, identify as Buddhists, practice some form of meditation, identify as “spiritual but not religious,” follow Oprah, etc., are unimaginable without the influence of Andrew Weil, Ram Dass, and Huston Smith profiled here at the turning point in American open mindedness.

The Sixties Generation and its advances are unthinkable without accounting for experimenting with drugs, the influence of Eastern mysticism, vegetarianism and exploring non-western medicines. The four pioneers who paved the way for those explorations are profiled here in this “tell-all” multiple-biography.

Description

This book is the story of how three brilliant scholars and one ambitious freshman crossed paths in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 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.

They came together in a time of upheaval and experimentation, and they set the stage for the social, spiritual, sexual, and psychological revolution of the 1960s. Huston Smith would be the teacher, practicing every world religion and educating three generations of Americans to adopt a more tolerant, inclusive attitude toward other culture’s religions. Richard Alpert would be the seeker, traveling to India, returning to America as “Ram Dass” and reborn as a spiritual leader with his “Be Here Now” mantra, inspiring a restless army of spiritual pilgrims. Andrew Weil would be the healer, becoming the undisputed leader of alternative medicine, devoting his life to the holistic reformation of the American health care system. And Timothy Leary would play the rebellious trickster, the premier proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD, advising a generation to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.”