December 2006 | Tune In
Tuning In To Divinity
By Thomas Goforth, M. DIV.
In 1966 Harvard Professor Timothy Leary made history when he said, “Like every great religion of the past, we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present—turn on, tune in, drop out.”
In his 1983 autobiography, Flashbacks, Leary elaborated on his choice of phrase: “Turn on meant go within and activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the… various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them… Tune in meant interact harmoniously with the world around you… and express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary and unconscious commitments.”
When the forces of history tumbled into the 1960s, the convergence of several powerful movements gave birth to a tidal wave of social change. The tremendous energy streaming from the Civil Rights, Anti-War, Women’s Liberation, Sexual Liberation and Consciousness Expansion Movements unleashed a cultural revolution with palpable results and consequences. One of the icons of that movement, who managed to surf that tidal wave of change and give liturgical structure to what was happening, was the highly controversial Leary.
Like Aldous Huxley, who became one of his research subjects, Leary believed that human beings could gain personal access to the Divine. This revolutionary belief, substantiated, he felt, by his research on the effects of psilocybin and LSD, was in fact a reassertion of what was originally an ancient tribal and then Eastern spiritual practice.
Although Leary and many of his early followers relied mostly on hallucinogens to open the neuronal pathways in the brain, his most important legacy was putting the activation of the mind and the possibility of tuning in to both our inner experiential processes and the nature of the universe on the map of possibility.
In response, a friend writes, “Tuning in didn’t involve drugs for me, but instead was about a new mode of thinking, one of expansion, outside of the realm of differences, removed from the framework of scarcity. Tuning in was about dropping assumptions, ridding oneself of old frameworks, removing the undergirding and allowing oneself to drop into a new place. It meant listening to oneself and the wisdom hidden within. To this day it is a naked state of reflection and beginning, a place of solace and strength.”
Right now, take the opportunity to breathe and experience your body, attune to the inner world of your sensory experience, and allow yourself to relax deeply in a state of open receptivity. Tune in with total acceptance to the felt presence of the moment. In doing so, you will be joining our ancestors and millions of present day seekers in experiencing the mysterious, awe-inspiring realm of the Sacred.
Tom Goforth is a Chicago-based psychotherapist, ordained minister and natural healer.
![[Send]](http://consciouschoice.com/sendlink/send.gif){kind=small}
Recommend this page to a friend
Top Ten pages recommended to friends:
