John C. Lilly

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“Yoko Ono Began To Float”

October 18, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

For every action, a reaction, so it makes sense that John C. Lilly’s sensory-deprivation tanks, his next radical step into self-enlightenment after LSD wore off, are making comeback in a time of endless buzzing, pinging and vibrating. Those seeking a calm state if not an altered one are flocking to the chambers. A fad is reawakened, but is it something more lasting this time?

From Julie Turkewitz of the New York Times:

The practice was once billed as a path to enlightenment and even hallucination for those on the creative frontier. Developed in 1954 by a neuroscientist named John C. Lilly, float tanks took off in the 1970s, bolstered by claims that they could stretch artistic, spiritual and even athletic boundaries.

Dr. Lilly had used the tanks for research, but Mr. and Ms. Perry began building and selling them for commercial use. Mr. Perry described his first float as “scintillating.”

“We thought of it sort of as a spiritual project,” he said of the business. “We considered it our assignment.”

Early accounts of floating took on a poetic quality. “Blinking is an audio event,” one floater wrote in 1977 in a magazine called Coast. “Shifting my ‘vision’ in the darkness to my dominant left eye produces a rumble like a distant thunderstorm.”

Yoko Ono began to float. So did Robin Williams and many of the Dallas Cowboys. Then the AIDS crisis hit, and centers shut down amid public health fears.•

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“The Tank Method Has Rarely Led To Panic, Fear Or Intense Pain”

February 16, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Like a lot of pioneers, John C. Lilly was controversial. whether working with hallucinogenics, dolphins or isolation tanks. On the latter topic, John Bryson of People magazine interviewed Lilly in 1976 about his experimentations with sensory deprivation. The opening:

Question:

What, precisely, is your so-called “isolation tank method”?

John C. Lilly:

The idea is to separate yourself from society through the solitude and confinement of a scientifically controlled tank. There should be only 10 inches of water, heated to 93° F—just right for maintaining the proper brain temperature—with enough Epsom salts so that your hands, feet and head all float. Lying on your back, you can breathe quite comfortably and safely, freed from sight, sound, people and the universe outside. That way you can enter the universe within you.

Question:

What is the origin of the technique?

John C. Lilly:

In 1954 there was an argument going on among neurophysiologists over whether or not the brain would sleep if all outside stimulation was removed. I was an eager young scientist pushing forward into regions of the unknown: the nervous system and the mind. The first year I used the tank, I proved that the notion the brain shuts off when removed from stimulation is sheer nonsense.

Question:

How many of these tanks are there in this country?

John C. Lilly:

I’d say more than 200, some at universities and research institutes but mostly in private hands.

Question:

Do you recommend the tank for everyone as a method of self-discovery?

John C. Lilly:

For most people, I think it would provide unique insights. Of course, there are exceptions. People with certain types of mental disorders should not use the method unless under professional supervision.

Question:

Isn’t it true that some people have had severe mental problems as a result of this experience?

John C. Lilly:

That is bull. In spite of the bad reputation of coerced sensory deprivation experiments, the tank method has rarely led to panic, fear or intense pain. We’ve had a few cases of spontaneous, reversible claustrophobia develop temporarily in a few people. We have had only good results with the tank.

Question:

Wasn’t one of those people your wife?

John C. Lilly:

Yes, she went into the tank one day and suddenly she had to get out. She scrambled up and pushed the lid of the tank so hard that the hinge broke. While lying there in the shallow water she had begun to recall her birth—the feeling of suffocation, the bright lights, the gasp of the first breath. It was too much for her. But there have been only one or two such incidents out of 450 people who have tried out the tank here.

Question:

Could the tank be used destructively for brainwashing?

John C. Lilly:

You can alter someone’s beliefs in any number of ways—hanging them up by their thumbs, putting them in isolation, feeding them various drugs. Yes, I suppose it could be used in that way. But the idea of using the tank to scare the hell out of somebody and coerce them is mostly just romantic nonsense.•

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“He’s A Noted Pioneer Of Mystical States, Of States Of Consciousness”

November 13, 2014 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

John C. Lilly, neuroscientist, psychonaut and dolphin procurer, is remembered for the isolation tank, LSD experimentation and computerized interspecies communication attempts. In 1998, three years before his death, Lilly and his coonskin cap were interviewed by Jeffrey Mishlove about the “human biocomputer,” sensory isolation, altered states, ketamine usage, the multiverse and hallucinations focused on penis removal. The sound from the guest’s microphone isn’t great.

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“Injecting The Dolphins With LSD Was Not Something Lovatt Was In Favor Of”

June 9, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Even for the 1960s, neuroscientist and LSD experimenter John Lilly was far out there (see here and here and here). His interspecies communication research with dolphins for NASA gradually came to include providing the creatures with interspecies sex and psychedelic drugs. From Christopher Riley’s eye-popping Guardian article about Margaret Howe Lovatt, a young woman who lived with the dolphin named Peter until the project capsized:

“In the 1960s a small selection of neuroscientists like John Lilly were licensed to research LSD by the American government, convinced that the drug had medicinal qualities that could be used to treat mental-health patients. As part of this research, the drug was sometimes injected into animals and Lilly had been using it on his dolphins since 1964, curious about the effect it would have on them.

Much to Lilly’s annoyance, nothing happened. Despite his various attempts to get the dolphins to respond to the drug, it didn’t seem to have any effect on them, remembers Lovatt. ‘Different species react to different pharmaceuticals in different ways,’ explains the vet, Andy Williamson. ‘A tranquilliser made for horses might induce a state of excitement in a dog. Playing with pharmaceuticals is a tricky business to say the least.’

Injecting the dolphins with LSD was not something Lovatt was in favour of and she insisted that the drug was not given to Peter, which Lilly agreed to. But it was his lab, and they were his animals, she recalls. And as a young woman in her 20s she felt powerless to stop him giving LSD to the other two dolphins.

While Lilly’s experimentation with the drug continued, Lovatt persevered with Peter’s vocalisation lessons and grew steadily closer to him. ‘That relationship of having to be together sort of turned into really enjoying being together, and wanting to be together, and missing him when he wasn’t there,’ she reflects. ‘I did have a very close encounter with – I can’t even say a dolphin again – with Peter.’

By autumn 1966, Lilly’s interest in the speaking-dolphin experiment was dwindling. ‘It didn’t have the zing to it that LSD did at that time,’ recalls Lovatt of Lilly’s attitude towards her progress with Peter. ‘And in the end the zing won.'”

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“An Apple II Transmits Sounds To The Dolphins”

February 9, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

More than 20 years after John C. Lilly wrote in LIfe about interspecies communications with dolphins, there were two Omni articles about his work in this area. By the 1980s, computers had entered the discussion. 

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From Owen Davies’ 1983 article “Talking Computer for Dolphins“:

Want to talk to dolphins? The best way may be to talk to a computer first, according to the Human/Dolphin Foundation, in Redwood City, California.

Dr. John Lilly first tried to teach a few dolphins English in the mid-1970s. But Lilly soon found that while the animals were smart, they had trouble under- standing human speech, which uses only a fraction of the enormously wide range of frequencies that dolphins hear. And, although the dolphins tried to speak English, they were physiologically capable of producing only high-pitched, incomprehensible squawks.

Lilly’s answer was to get a computer to translate each species’ speech into sound patterns the other could deal with. In 1977, after three years of work, the foundation developed a computer system capable of translating human words typed on a keyboard into high-frequency sound patterns that dolphins seem to understand; it also analyzed the dolphin sounds and displayed a rough interpretation of them on a computer screen for people to read.

According to physicist John Kert, now working as the foundation’s director, the system is being used to teach dolphins Joe and Rosie simple tasks like jumping, bowing, and recognizing objects on command. The animals have also followed more complex instructions, Kert reports: They can, for instance, swim through a channel to touch a ball with a flipper.

The researchers work with a vocabulary of 30 words, but they soon plan to go up to 128.•

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From “John Lilly: Altered States,” a 1983 interview by Judith Hooper:

John C. Lilly:

We’re using a computer system to transmit sounds underwater to the dolphins. A computer is electrical energy oscillating at particular frequencies, which can vary. and we use a transducer to convert the electrical waveforms into acoustical energy. You could translate the waveforms into any kind of sound you like: human speech, dolphin-like clicks, whatever.

OMNI::

Do you type something out on the computer keyboard and have it transmitted to the dolphins as sound in their frequency range? And do they communicate back to the computer?

John C. Lilly:

Yes, but we actually use two computers. An Apple II transmits sounds to the dolphins, via a transducer, from a keyboard operated by humans. Then there is another computer, made by Digital Equipment Corporation, that listens to the dolphins. A hydrophone, or underwater microphone, picks up any sounds the dolphins make, feeds them into a frequency analyzer, a sonic spectrum analyzer, and then into the computer. So the computer has an ear and a voice, and the dolphin has an ear and a voice. The system also displays visual information to the dolphins.

On the human side it’s rather ponderous, because we have to punch keys and see letters on a screen. People have tried to make dolphins punch keys, but I don’t think dolphins should have to punch keys. They don’t have these little fingers that we have. So we’d prefer to develop a sonic code as the basis of a dolphin computer language. If a group of dolphins can work with a computer that feeds back to them what they just said — names of objects and so forth — and if we can be the intercessors between them and the computer, I think we can eventually communicate.

OMNI:

How long will it take to break through the interspecies communication barrier?

John C. Lilly:

About five years. I think it may take about a year for the dolphins to learn the code, and then, in about five years we’ll have a human/dolphin dictionary. However, we need some very expensive equipment to deal with dolphins’ underwater sonar. Since dolphins ‘see’ with sound in three dimensions — in stereo — you have to make your words ‘stereophonic words.’

OMNI:

You’ve said that dolphins also use ‘sonar beams’ to look at the internal state of one another’s body, or that of a human being, and that they can even gauge another’s emotional state that way. How does that work?

John C. Lilly:

They have a very high-frequency sonar that they can use to inspect something and look at its internal structure. Say you’re immersed in water and a sound wave hits your body. If there’s any gas in your body, it reflects back an incredible amount of sound. To the dolphin it would appear as a bright spot in the acoustic picture.

OMNI:

Can we ever really tune in to the dolphin’s “stereophonic” world view, or is it perhaps too alien to ours?

John C. Lilly:

I want to. I just did a very primitive experiment — -a Saturday afternoon-type experiment — at Marine World I was floating in an isolation tank and had an underwater loudspeaker close to my head and an air microphone just above me. Both were connected through an amplifier to the dolphin tank so that they could hear me and I could hear them. I started playing with sound — whistling and clicking and making other noises that dolphins like. Suddenly I felt as if a lightning bolt had hit me on the head. We have all this on tape, and it’s just incredible. It was a dolphin whistle that went ssssshhheeeeeooooo in a falling frequency from about nine thousand to three thousand hertz in my hearing range. It started at the top of my head, expanding as the frequency dropped, and showing me the inside of my skull, and went right down through my body. The dolphin gave me a three-dimensional feeling of the inside of my skull, describing my body by a single sound!

I want to know what the dolphin experiences. I want to go back and repeat the experiment in stereo, instead of with a single loudspeaker. Since I’m not equipped like a dolphin, I’ve got to use an isolation tank, electronics, and all this nonsense to pretend I’m a dolphin.•

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“It Is My Firm Conviction That Within The Next Decade Or Two Human Beings Will Establish Vocal Communication With Another Species”

February 9, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Speaking of our relation to the planet’s other creatures: We have a tendency, even the best of us, to judge our fellow species by how much they’re like us, how much we can make them seem like us. That’s because it flatters us, makes us think we’re the form to be imitated. The opening of a 1961 Life essay about interspecies communication by Dr. John C. Lilly, who would later also be known for his experimentation with LSD and isolation tanks:

“It is my firm conviction that within the next decade or two human beings will establish vocal communication with another species. That species might possibly be from another wold; it could also be from this one. Wherever it comes from, it will be highly intelligent, perhaps even intellectual. 

For several years my colleagues and I have been particularly interested in trying to find out whether or not there is a way to conduct such interspecies dialogues with dolphins. Of all the animals on earth, excepting man, only whales (in whose family dolphins are a member) and elephants have brains big enough to offer any possibility of high-level mental activity. And dolphins, even when they are newly captured, show a unique and positive consideration for humans which makes them most desirable subjects for complex experiments. My research with dolphins has left me with the belief that they do, in effect, talk with one another through the use of sounds, that they may have intelligence of a high order and that they might possibly be taught to understand and react to sounds made by man. It would help, of course, to understand what the dolphins are saying to each other. Some of the sounds can be picked up directly by the human ear when the dolphin rises for air. These sounds vary from loud clicks to creakings, whistles, squawks, quacks and blats. But not all dolphin sounds are immediately audible. Many of them are emitted at such a high frequency that we cannot hear them without special acoustical equipment, and it may very well be that the most meaningful patterns of their ‘speech’ occur at these levels. 

By wiring the dolphins’ tanks and taking down their sounds on tape recordings, I have been able to take part in some fascinating eavesdropping. Creaking noises occur most often underwater at nighttime or when the water is murky. Two dolphins in a tank together frequently make buzzing and whistling sounds back and forth at each other. The conversation between a male and female dolphin in physical contact is often very elaborate, an exchange of barks and squawks. 

If two dolphins are separated in nearby tanks, a dialogue takes place that is eerily like two children whispering back and forth between their rooms. First one will whistle. Then the other will whistle back. Once contact is made the conversation settles down to a regular exchange. The exchange can be made up of slow and steady clicks, or of whistles or of both together. 

Even more interesting is the fact that dolphins seem to try to imitate human sounds they hear and sometimes produce primitive and peculiar copies.”

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“So I Decided To Try A Sensory-Isolation Experiment”

September 4, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

John C. Lilly explaining his 1954 invention, the isolation tank, in a 1983 Omni interview:

“Omni:

Tell me the circumstances that led you to invent the first isolation tank.

John C. Lilly:

There was a problem in neurophysiology at the time: Is brain activity self-contained or not? One school of thought said the brain needed external stimulation or it would go to sleep–become unconscious–while the other school said, ‘No, there are automatic oscillators in the brain that keep it awake.’ So I decided to try a sensory-isolation experiment, building a tank to reduce external stimuli–auditory, visual, tactile, temperature–almost to nil. The tank is lightproof and soundproof. The water in the tank is kept at ninety-three to ninety-four degrees. So you can’t tell where the water ends and your body begins, and it’s neither hot nor cold. If the water were exactly body temperature, it couldn’t absorb your body’s heat loss, your body temperature would rise above one hundred six degrees, and you might die.

I discovered that the oscillator school of thought was right, that the brain does not go unconscious in the absence of sensory input. I’d sleep in the tank if I hadn’t had any sleep for a couple of nights, but more interesting things happen if you’re awake. You can have waking dreams, study your dreams, and, with the help of LSD-25 or a chemical agent I call vitamin K, you can experience alternate realities. You’re safe in the tank because you’re not walking around and falling down, or mutating your perception of external ‘reality.'”

••••••••••

“The tank was unusual in that it was vertical and looked like an old boiler”:

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