TITLE
Theory Leary: A Fifty-Year Retrospective on the Ideas of Dr Timothy Leary.

ABSTRACT
In 1973, Timothy Leary was in prison in the USA. On scraps of paper, which were smuggled out of the jail, were sketches of the ideas that would be published that year as Neurologic, a short book detailing Leary's theory about different circuits of the brain. This theory was subsequently elaborated into a theory of eight circuits of the brain, which featured in several other publications that Leary wrote while incarcerated. In this talk, we explore Leary's extraordinary life, his earlier theories about personality, developed when he was a professional psychologist, and his later ideas about circuits of the brain, the role of psychedelic drugs in personal evolution, the origins of life on earth, and the destiny of humanity.

BIOGRAPHY
Since 2004, Matthew Clark has been a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London), where he taught courses on Hinduism between 1999 and 2003. Since 2002, he has been employed by over thirty different organisations, lecturing worldwide on the history, practices and philosophy of yoga. Between 1977 and 1996 Matthew travelled extensively in India, visiting several hundred holy places. He began experimenting with yoga practices in the mid-1970s and since 1990 has been daily practising Ashtanga yoga. In 2017–18, he was employed by SOAS as a consultant to set up the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies, which now (2022) has around 6,000 members. Since January 2021, he has been the managing editor of the Journal of Yoga Studies, the only peer-reviewed journal of yoga studies.