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.Having previously experimented withmescaline, Kleps was astonished to discover that "a group of perfectly respectableintellectuals were taking LSD and psilocybin and apparently functioning with great practicalefficiency at the same time, having a ball, setting out on great adventures and taking overmansions in Dutchess County."10Kleps drops Tim a note expressing his interest in psychedelics and is rewarded with apostcard invitation.He arrives a few days after Christmas, 1963, joining several otherpsychologists and an artist who is about to undergo his first ontological adventure in thetower.Although there is some grumbling over accommodations "Making your own bed andhelping with the dishes?" groused one of the psychologists."I have always been very happyto pay for that kind of service." it is more than compensated for by the air of harmoniouspleasure that fills the Big House.It seems to Kleps that the quality of life at Millbrook is"better, more lively, more meaningful, funnier, happier & Timothy Leary, I thought, was amagician who seemed to change life as it was lived."11Kleps is in the kitchen drinking coffee when the artist appears after his first session in thetower.He drifts in "like a ghost, his big brown eyes shining and dilated," murmuring"beautiful, beautiful & but I seem to have switched sides.My left side is now my right sideand my right side is my left side.As a matter of fact I think I left part of myself up in thetower.I have to go back and get it."12Watching him drift off, it occurs to Kleps that there is a deeply serious side to all the talkabout behavior change.The idea of taking LSD is beginning to "scare the living piss" out ofhim.A common enough reaction.It is Castalia policy that a beginner needs at least fifteencarefully guided trips before even the most modest level of proficiency is attained.As the months pass, occupancy of the Big House becomes increasingly fluid.Maynard andFlo Ferguson arrive with their five kids to occupy a suite of rooms on the second floor.A fewdoors down is a young friend of Alpert's who is reportedly having adjustment problems, anda young woman who was one of their research assistants at Harvard.Michael Hollingsheadmakes a reappearance, as do a number of old friends from the Harvard and IFIF yearsFrank Barron, Walter Houston Clark, Alan Watts.The weekend parties are famous.For a time a weekend at Millbrook with the cosmicCastalians is de rigeur if you are a member of the wealthy New York young adult set andknow any of the Hitchcock kids.The Hitchcocks don't stay at the Big House; they all havetheir own places on the grounds.The most spectacular, in the sense of driving home howthe rich really are different, is Billy's little copper-roofed bungalow, with servants' quarters,swimming pool, tennis courts, billiard room, formal library.Billy Hitchcock is new to the psychedelic movement.He has been working in London forLazard Fréres during the IFIF years.Tall and blonde, with an uncomplicated and rather niceattitude toward the world.Billy reminds Art Kleps of a "Frank Merriwhether type who hadsomehow fallen into a pool of gold and came up smelling of marijuana."13 Before guiding anLSD session, Tim usually asks the person what they hope to accomplish in the Other World.Most reply that they are seeking ego loss or cosmic unity.But not Billy."How can I makemore money on the stock market," was his answer.170Had Aldous Huxley lived to attend a Millbrook weekend, he probably would have beenreminded of those epic houseparties during the First World War at Garsington.Of course inthose days the elixir had been conversation, witty and heretical and always elegantlyphrased.At Millbrook the weekends are powered by an expanding shelf of party favorshashish, DMT, psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, peyote, mushrooms, marijuana (Tim has gottenover his paranoia), and alcohol.Although the media will shortly dub him the high priest ofpsychedelia, Leary still likes his Jameson's.Some weekends Metzner counts over a hundred new faces: "jazz musicians, avant-gardepainters, underground filmmakers, high level procurers, mysterious Orientals, nightcreatures with huge eyes and chromatic chiffon dresses floated softly through the house,carrying large chunks of hashish & sometimes Millbrook felt like a kind of orbiting astralspace station, where beings on different levels of consciousness converged to exchangecommunications."14Once a novice who is undergoing his inaugural session in the tower blunders into the middleof one of these frolics.He stands there transfixed, and then blurts out, "Christ, it's crazyenough up there.But down here it's completely insane."15How to describe the feeling that steals over them that winter? It is like a melody whosevibration is felt rather than heard, a tune that grows stronger as the weeks pass, until itblots out all the theories about imprinting and breaking set.The Buddha, after six years of meditation and fasting, sits down under a Bo tree and afterforty-nine days of mental struggle pierces the final veil, attaining enlightenment.That'swhat the melody says to them: it's time to sit under the Bo tree and push the envelope toits final limit; it's time to storm heaven.Imagine a climbing expedition that is trying to scale Everest.Hundreds of people areinvolved: Sherpa guides and technicians and porters, who drop away as the goal nears,until it is just the one or two climbers who try for the top.Tim is the first climber.On March 21, the Vernal Equinox, they escort him to the meditationhut with a torchlight parade.Alan Watts consecrates the moment with a candlelight readingof the I Ching, then everyone files out, leaving Tim alone for a week of solitary voyaging.Swallowing his first LSD, he wraps himself in a heavy winter coat and walks outside into thelate-winter chill.There is a full moon.He howls at it.The Big House is dark, remote.He liesdown on one of the hills and stares at the stars, listening to the wind in the pines, anantenna tuned into a million channels of information.The days pass.The envelope holds.Leary is granted a vision, though, an intuition, which seems to tell him that mankind mustlink up with womankind; only when these two specialized consciousnesses arepsychedelically entwined can the next stage of evolution occur.The attempt on the envelope also pushes him deeper into the ancient role, which is perhapsto say it burns out a lot more of his old imprints.Talking with Tim becomes an exercise inindirection:"Tim, is anything more important than anything else?""Look at the way the snow shines in the moonlight
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