A 1964 book called The Psychedelic Experience pulls him even deeper. Lines jump out at John and seize his mind and soul:

Do not struggle.

Trust your divinity, trust your brain, trust your companions.

Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.

Coauthored by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert—former Harvard clinical psychologists ousted from the university not only for taking the psychotropics LSD and psilocybin alongside their research subjects but also for forcing their students to take them—The Psychedelic Experience is about the therapeutic uses of mild-altering drugs. John interprets the book’s message as “I should destroy my ego and I did.”

So he wants no part of the extensive tour UK Brian is proposing for December of 1965. The band agrees to only nine UK dates. Then they’ll make three international stops before they reprise their American summer tour in 1966.

On April 6, 1966, the Beatles return to the studio to record what John dubs “the acid album.”

John wishes Stu Sutcliffe were still alive to design the cover for the album they’ll call Revolver. Between 1963 and 1965, photographer Robert Freeman had created covers for four British Beatles albums, including a “stretched” look for Rubber Soul, but John wants to push it further. So he calls up Klaus Voormann, their German artist friend from Hamburg, and tasks him to work with Robert Whitaker, who’d been the Beatles’ official photographer since they’d met during the 1964 Australian tour, to create a distinctive new look that combines drawings and photographs.

John is “eating acid all the time,” and he writes “a sad song, an acidy song,” which opens “She said / I know what it’s like to be dead”—about the story Peter Fonda told the year before in Los Angeles. And he plays George Martin the song he wants to close out the album. It’s called “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Accompanying himself on the acoustic guitar, he sings lines straight from The Psychedelic Experience: “Turn off your mind relax and float downstream…”

—

December 6, 1980

You gals are waiting for someone, I bet.”

He gives the two women standing in front of the Dakota his best smile to put them at ease.

Now small talk.

Successful manipulation, Mark knows, requires that the prey feel safe at all times. Charm, kindness, and flattery must be used constantly in order to disarm the victim.

When he met Gloria, at the travel agency in Hawaii, he told her he wanted to take a trip around the world. She worked with him for hours, days, planning the fantasy voyage down to the last detail. With every moment in his presence, Gloria was falling deeper in love.

These two young women are eyeing him suspiciously. Which is to be expected. He is a stranger, and this is New York. Bad, awful things happen here every day, every hour—especially to young, attractive women.