Dr. John Cunningham Lilly, M.D. (06-01-1915 until 30-09-2001) is a physician, cyberneticist, mathematician and psychoanalyst specializing in biophysics, neurophysiology, electronics, computer theory, and neuro-anatomy, pioneering dolphin researcher (inventor of the Isolation Tank Method and collaborated with Margaret Howe on humane dolphin interspecies communication experiments in 1964) and has made allusions to contact during the early seventies from interstellar entities he terms the Cosmic Coincidence Control Center.

He also authored a dozen books like:

  • Simulations Of God
  • John Lilly, So Far
  • The mind of the dolphin; a nonhuman intelligence (1967)
  • The Center of the Cyclone : An Autobiography of Inner Space (1973)
  • Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer : Theory and Experiments. (1974)
  • The dyadic cyclone : the autobiography of a couple (1976)
  • The Deep Self: Profound Relaxation and the Tank Isolation Technique (1977)
  • Communication Between Man and Dolphin : The Possibilities of Talking With Other Species (1978)
  • The Scientist : A novel Autobiography (1978)
  • Pathways Through to Space: A Personal Record of Transformation in Consciousness
  • The Scientist : A Metaphysical Autobiography (1988)
  • And: Psychedelic Fractal Art Signed by JCL in a Limited Edition of 250.

    Perhaps it's good to note that he loves making funny and weird web pages too. If it's still online, check out http://www.JohnCLilly.com.

    Devoted to a philosophical quest for the nature of reality, John pursued a brilliant academic career among the scientific leaders of the day, mastering one science after another and eventually achieving a perspective that transcends the centuries-old conflict between rationality and mysticism. He has lived in the company of associates and intimates including Nobel physicists Richard Feynman and Robert Milliken, philosophers Buckminster Fuller, Aldous Huxley, and Alan Watts, psychotherapy pioneers R.D. Laing and Fritz Perls, spiritual teachers Oscar Ichazo and Baba Ram Dass, and a host of luminaries, inventors, writers, and Hollywood celebrities.

    In my humble opinion will John C. Lilly be a very important name in our history. His works are not really integrated and widely published yet, but they offer some deep and awesome insights. He is what Win Wenger is to Accelerated Learning and Adult Education.
    Today, John Lilly stands as the twentieth century's foremost scientific pioneer of the inner and outer limits of human experience. He is a relentless adventurer whose Search for Reality has led him repeatedly to risk life and limb, but whose quests have resulted in astonishing insights into what it means to be a human being in an ever more mysterious universe.

    By using cognitive psychology's computational model of the mind, defined consciousness as the human iocomputer's self-metaprogrammer. The biocomputer's programming, according to Lilly, is that set of internally consistent instructions which prepare, send, store, process, and select signal information in and out of the biocomputational activity of the brain, most of which can be adjusted through a self-metaprogramming process initiated by the self-metaprogrammer.

    A real must-know-about !   Try some of his quotes for starters (taken from www.QuoteBase.org):

    In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.
    Or in its more compleet form: In the province of connected minds, what the network believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the network's mind there are no limits.

    All laws are simulations of reality.

    Our only security is our ability to change.

    And some interesting facts:
    One of his most interesting books published was "The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography", in which he describes a lot from his early experiments mapping the brains of monkeys and communication among dolphins, and between dolphins and humans, to his late experiments with LSD, Ketamine and floatation tanks, that inspired the movie "Altered States".

    "Day of the Dolphin" was another movie based on his researches. His researches on interspecies communications claim to have taught dolphins to talk.

    Lilly was not only a pioneer in areas such as electronics, biophysics, neurophysiology, computer theory and neuroanatomy, but also a pioneer in realms of consciousness, pushing the boundaries to unmapped regions on the mind. One of his famous self-inflicted "experiments" consisted on injecting himself at every waking hour with ~40mg of Ketamine, for a period of 3 months. We're talking about hourly intramuscular injections for a period of 90 days... This brought him to a middle ground state, where he could either perform his human tasks in this world, or slip into the Ketamine quantum consciousness at will.

    This deep dive, which as far as I know didn't stop after his 90 days experiment was over (although one would assume it to have been cut down significantly in frequency), brought him to some kooky realizations and theories such as ECCO (or Earth Coincidence Control Office; roughly a 'race' of disembodied alien entities that controls the synchronicities and coincidences in human life and the planet).

    At one occasion, after a bicycle accident (he was riding it on an extremely high dose of PCP...), he entered a coma-like state, where he claims to have been taken by ECCO on a interstellar tour, watching stars explode, supernovas at birth, etc. On another occasion, after a high dose of Ketamine, he desperately noticed that the 'aliens' had removed his penis, in a cosmic joke, and had to be reassured everything was fine by his wife.

    All in all, the guy is intelligent, groundbreaking, a kook, crazy (under certain standards), and extremely entertaining.
    Dr. John Lilly, 86, died Sept. 30, 2001 in Los Angeles.

    He combined training in medicine, psychoanalysis and biophysics, while living an eclectic life that shifted between "official" research published in scientific journals and speculative musings on psychedelic self-experimentation published mostly in books aimed at fellow students of spirituality and the self.

    Along with ground breaking work studying the brain's electrical activity and the behavior of dolphins, he experimented with LSD and isolation tanks, an enclosed body temperature,saline bath he designed in 1954 as a tool for studying sensory deprivation.

    Dr. Lilly's work inspired two movies, "Day of the Dolphin," in 1973, in which the navy turns the animals into weapons, and "Altered States," in 1980, in which scientists combining drugs and isolation tanks enter a world where reality dangerously unravels.

    He wrote 12 books among which were several accounts of his work with dolphins, including "Man and Dolphin" and "The Mind of the Dolphin," which popularized the study of marine mammals and aroused public fascination and curiosity with dolphins, whose brains are 40 percent larger than those of humans.

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