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Timothy Leary was born on October 22, 1920 in Springfield Massachusetts. He earned his Ph.D in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1950, and taught there as an assistant professor from 1950 - 1955. On October 22, 1955, his wife Marianne, whom he had married in 1944 and had two children by, committed suicide.

In 1959 Leary became interested in the experimental use of psychedelics in psychology. The same year he accepted a position at Harvard University in the Center for Personality Research. There he met Richard Alpert, an assistant professor who became his colleague in experimental drug research.

In 1960 he went to Mexico, where he had his first psychedelic experience after ingesting magic mushrooms. It took him on a trip through evolution, he said. He proposed systematic drug experiments with psilocybin bin at Harvard, using graduate students and other volunteers.

From the beginning the drug program was controversial among the faculty and popular among the students.

In 1962 Leary took LSD for the first time and described it as "the most shattering experience of my life," and one which permanently changed him. The controversy at Harvard escalated, and when reports began to surface of bad trips and parental objections. Leary and Alpert attempted to find outside funding to carry on their work. They formed the International Foundation for Internal Freedom and planned to move the research to Mexico, but were soon expelled from there as well as from the Island of Dominica.

Leary and Alpert were dismissed form Harvard in 1963. They established the Castalia Foundation and carried on a communal life-style and research effort in a house in Millbrook, New York. In 1964 Leary married his second wife, Nanette, but the marriage came apart on the honeymoon to Japan and India.

Back at Millbrook Leary married his third wife, Rosemary Woodruff, in 1965. The Millbrook house was closed down and Leary and Alpert parted ways. Alpert pursued spiritual studies in India, and eventually changed his name to Ram Dass

In 1970 Leary was sentenced to a total of 20 years in prison by judges of Houston Texas and Santa Ana California on separate charges of marijuana possession. He was incarcerated in the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo California. Leary managed to escape with help from several friends in the Weathermen and Black Panthers. He fled to Europe where he hid in Switzerland and experimented with heroin. He as captured in 1973 and extradited to the United States where he was incarcerated for 32 months on drug and escape charges During his jail time he was aided by a friend Joanna Harcourt-Smith who legally changed her name to Leary to help his publicity cause. They parted was as soon as Leary was released.

In 1978 he married his fourth wife, Barbara. He lectured widely on the college and New Age conference circuits.died May 31, 1996, in Beverly Hills, California, United States Timothy died peacefully from natural causes on May 31, 1996, in Beverly Hills, California.

A powerful occult symbol that looks like a figure eight lying on its side. The lemniscate signifies eternity, infinity, regeneration, the Holy Spirit, infinite wisdom, and higher consciousness. Its serpentine shape has no beginning and no end and represents the endless spiraling and balancing of opposing forces in the universe.

The lemniscate appears in various interpretations of the Tarot, and is used in meditation as a symbol for focusing concentration.

Born on May 28th 1882, in Lytham Lancashire England, she began to exhibit psychic gifts at an early age, following trauma caused by the unexpected death of a family friend. He began to have frequent visions of "happy valleys" beautiful places populated by radiantly happy people dressed in flowing clothing. Her family attempted to discourage her and succeeded superficially, she learned to stop talking about them, but her interest in the spirit world continued.

Although her childhood visions disappeared, in her twenties she became interested in Spiritualism. At the ate of twenty-four, when her mother was extremely ill, Leonard awoke to see a shining vision of her in good health, at the apparent moment she had died.

Leonard pursued her psychic ability experimenting with table-tipping at seances. At one seance she went into a trance and a spirit control named Feda emerged. Feda claimed to be her great-great-grandmother, a Hindu girl raised by a Scottish family. At age 13, around 1800, Feda married Leonard's great-great-grandfather, William Hamilton and died a year later in childbirth. There was/is no proof of Feda's existence, although stories of such a girl have been passed down through generations. Feda remained Leonard's control for more than 40 years.

During World War I Leonard turned professional. She became famous with her communications with the spirits of the war dead. Sir Oliver Lodge of the British Society for Psychical Research investigated her and catapulted her into an international spotlight with Raymond or Life and Death 1916 and account of her alleged communications with his deceased son, who was killed in WWI in 1915.

Psychical investigators attempted to uncover fraud by having Leonard followed by private detectives, no trickery was ever found. Nor could investigators find conclusive evidence that Leonard used telepathy to obtain personal information from her sitters.

In her later years, Leonard's sittings were often characterized by direct voices. Feda, the control, obtained information from other spirits and related them through Leonard, using Leonard's vocal cords. Sitters began to hear the direct voices of the other spirits themselves, whispering from a point in empty space in front of Leonard as Feda spoke through her.

A phenomenon of psychokinesis in which objects, people, animals, and so on lift up into the air and float without known physical means. Levitations are said to occur in mediumship, shamanistic trance, mystical rapture and trance, magic, bewitchment, haunting's, and possession.

Christianity and Islam record numerous cases of levitation. In the first century, Simon Magus is said to have levitated himself from the top of the Roman Forum in a challenge to St. Peter, as proof of his magical powers. According to legend Peter prayed to God that Simon's deception be stopped, and Simon fell to earth and was killed. Roman Catholic hagiography includes many cases of levitations among saints, the most famous of which is Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663), who reportedly levitated often and flew through the air, according to eyewitness accounts.

St. Teresa of Avila said she levitated spontaneously during states of rapture. According to one eyewitness account by sister Anne of the Incarnation, Teresa levitated a foot and a half off the ground for about half an hour.

Levitation is also recorded in Hinduism and Buddhism. Milarepa, the great yogi of Tibet of the thirteenth century, is said to have possessed numerous occult powers, including the ability to walk, rest, and sleep while levitation, a feat said to be duplicated by Brahmins and fakirs in India. The Ninja of Japan also reportedly have this ability. In Eastern traditions levitation is said to be accomplished through use of secret breathing and visualization techniques involving the universal life force of energy, called by various names, including prana, chi's, ki. Louis Jacolliot a nineteenth-century French judge who traveled about the East and wrote of his occult experiences, describes the levitation of fakir in Occult Science in India and Among the Ancients

Levitation is also said to occur in rituals and ceremonies i shamanism and other tribal or non-Western traditions. African witch doctors have been filmed apparently levitation off the ground.

In the Western secular world, levitations sometimes has been viewed as a manifestation of evil. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was common to blame any unusual phenomena upon witchcraft, fairies, ghosts, or demons. Levitation was, and still is, commonly reported in demonic possession cases. Beds, objects, and the possessed are witnessed floating up into the air. In 1906 Clara Germana Cele, a sixteen year old school girl from South Africa, suffered demonic possession and was said to rise up to five feet into the air, sometimes vertically and sometimes horizontally. She fell if sprinkled with holy water, which witnesses took as proof of demonic possession. Similarly, poltergeist cases and haunting's are sometimes characterized by levitation objects.

According to skeptics levitations may be explained by hallucination, hypnosis, or fraud. Not all cases may be so dismissed however. The most likely explanation is the one known by Eastern adepts for thousands of years, of the existence of a force which belongs to another, nonmaterial reality, and which manifests in the material world.

Advanced practitioners of Transcendental Meditation have received world-wide publicity for achieving "yogic flying" a levitation that consists of low hops while seated in a lotus meditation position It is said to be accomplished by maximizing coherence (orderliness) in brain wave activity, which enables the brain to tap into the "unified field" of cosmic energy. Skeptics say yogic flying is accomplished through muscular action.

Levitation at will seems to require intense concentration or a trance state; physical mediums who were disturbed during levitation by touch or light suddenly fell back. Saintly levitations often are accompanied by luminosities around the body.