A portion of the book was also entered into testimony as an exhibit in his trial for his original prison escape from CMC facilitated by the Weather Underground on September 13, 1970.

Leary was initially arrested in 1970 for possession of one tenth of a gram of cannabis ("two roaches"), and after escaping CMC he faced a lengthy prison term.

The letter discussed early themes of what Leary called the "seven revolutions" (survival, political, economic, cultural, sexual, spiritual, and neurological).

[3] In June 1972, Leary was in Basel, Switzerland, when he published similar ideas in a brochure for an art exhibit known as Der Reiseweg (The Route) depicting paintings by Walter Wegmüller who was associated with the Krautrock movement.

According to Leary, the prison forced him to ingest high doses of chlorpromazine (Thorazine) and interfered with his sleep by waking him up in the middle of the night.

[7] Joanna distributed the material in the form of photocopies in the first two issues, followed by two additional clandestine editions, then finally a print version in 1973.

"[10] Critic Erik Davis describes the book as an outline of the "social-cybernetic and ultimately mystical model of the human nervous system".