Starseed Rises, Like the Phoenix, From its Ashes, by RAW

[This article, also from the batch of documents sent to me by Mike Gathers, is reprinted from Green Egg, Vol. VII, No. 68 Oimele 2/1/75 -- Tom]

Starseed Rises, Like the Phoenix, From its Ashes

By Robert Anton Wilson

It has been six months since Dr. Timothy Leary was "disappeared" just like a character in Catch-22.

All attempts by myself and other writers and journalists (including internationally-known poet Allen Ginsberg) to receive written communication from Dr. Leary have been frustrated.

The government says that Dr. Leary is cooperating willingly in Grand Jury hearings at which he is the star witness against various and sundry outlaws and insurrectionists. Nobody outside government employ has been allowed to speak to or write to Dr. Leary, however, for six months.

If this were happening in Russia, there would be certain suspicions aroused about the genuineness of Dr. Leary's cooperation with his captors. Since it is happening in the U.S.A. in the wake of Watergate, the same suspicion has been aroused -- but not in the mass media, or among the academic community where support for this embattled scientist might be meaningful.

Under the circumstances -- and admittedly not knowing the real facts about Dr. Leary's current situation -- a group of us in the Bay Area, previously associated with Dr. Leary's scientific-educational work, have decided to revive Starseed, an organization started by Leary in 1973 to agitate and educate on behalf of

1) Immortality research and indefinite life extension;

2) Star-ship propulsion system research;

3) the science of Neurologic, invented by Dr. Leary.

1) In the area of Immortality-seeking, Starseed II will engage in publishing a newsletter, street-theatre, lectures, seminars, etc. to broadcast that the last of the terrestrial mortals are dying off and the first generation of cosmic immortals are probably already born.

On Nov. 22, 1974, Starseed II cooperated with the Coalition of the Bay Area Immortalists in a demonstration at University of California Medical School, thanking the school for its pioneering life-extension research and dramatizing the need for a national crash-program of similar research.

2) In the area of Star-ship propulsion-system research, Starseed II will similarly agitate and educate among engineering and science students, broadcasting the message that a private non-profit corporation can achieve Star-flight in this generation if enough of us care to make it happen, and that escape from the Armed Madhouse of Earth to the freedom of the stars should be the number one survival-program of the few sane humans around.

One reason a private corporation can beat the governments in Star-flight is that the governments are not pursuing this program (the U.S. Project Orion was closed down several years ago) because it has no military applications: exactly why sane citizens should be interested in it.

3) In the area of Neurologic, Starseed II will agitate and educate to broadcast the message that the dispute between those scientists who support Dr. Leary's work and those who oppose it can only be settled by further research, and that there is a distinct overtone of Holy Inquisition about the government's attempts to settle the matter with cops, courts, cages, midnight raids, no-knock laws, spies, informers, wiretaps, illegal Afghanistan kidnappings and convenient "disappearings" of dissident scientists.

Starseed II continues the vision of Starseed I, believing firmly that the search for Immortality, for Higher Cosmic Intelligences and for metaprogramming of the human nervous system to increase intelligence and expand awareness (Neurologic) are the three most hopeful directions for science and for humanity today.

(Those who find these ideas preposterous are asked to read the following books and think further: Prospects of Immortality, by R.C.W. Ettinger; Man Into Superman, same author; The Immortalist, by Alan Harrington; The Immortality Factor by Osborn Segerberg; Upswingers: A Futurist Manifesto, by M.F. Esfandiary; Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer, by John Lilly; Neurologic by Timothy Leary; Terra II, by Leary; Chemical Ecstasy, by Walter Huston Clark.)

A sub-committee of Starseed II will investigate the matter of Dr. Leary's original trial (he claimed he was framed), the abnormal bail set by the judge ($5,000,000 -- the highest in U.S. history), the judge's seemingly reversible error of citing Dr. Leary's scientific writings as proof of his "immoral" character (thus suggesting prima facea that repression of scientific research is involved in this case), the kidnapping of Leary in Afghanistan (which the Melvin Belli Law Office claims violates 148 previous decisions of U.S. courts, ruling such snatch-jobs illegal) and finally the mysterious way Dr. Leary was "disappeared" six months ago. We suspect that some violations of the U.S. Constitution have occurred in this hysterical attempt to destroy Dr. Leary and his influence on young scientists, artists, philosophers and spiritual seekers.

Starseed II plans a public funeral for Dr. Leary in the near future, to dramatize that nobody outside government agencies is absolutely sure that he is still alive, and that if he can be "disappeared" in this way without any violation of U.S. law, then there is urgent need for new legislation, since anybody else can be similarly "disappeared" tomorrow. (See Catch-22 and 1984, or the Watergate transcripts, for gloomy possibilities.)

LIFE TO THE DEATHIST PIG. DON'T BUY THE LIE: YOU DON'T HAVE TO DIE.

STARSEED II BERKELEY OFFICE

2035 Channing Way, Berkeley CA 94704

[phone number]

STARSEED II SAN FRANCISCO OFFICE

443 Jersy St., San Francisco CA 94114

[phone number]