John Cunningham Lilly (January 6 1915 - September 30 2001) was a pioneer researcher into the nature of consciousness using as his principal tools the isolation tank, dolphin communication and psychedelic drugs, sometimes in combination. He was a prominent member of the Californian counterculture of scientists, mystics and thinkers that arose in the late 1960’s and early 70’s . Ram Dass, Werner Erhard and Timothy Leary were all frequent visitors to his home.
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2 Career History 3 Influence on Hollywood 4 Later Vision 5 References 6 External links |
Career Summary
He was a qualified physician and psychoanalyst.He made contributions in the fields of biophysics, neurophysiology, electronics, computer theory, and neuroanatomy. He invented and promoted the use of the Isolation Tank. He was a pioneer in interspecies communication between humans and dolphins.
His eclectic career began as a conventional scientist doing research for universities and government and progressed as he followed his enquiries increasingly into what mainstream science considered fringe areas. An able publicist he published many books and had two Hollywood movies based loosely on his work. His reputation enabled him to attract private funding for his more unconventional later work.
During his career he progressed ethically from conventional and often invasive research in which the mind under study was seen as a complex object, into increasingly consensual peer to peer interactions with other beings especially dolphins.
Career History
John Lilly was born on Jan. 6, 1915, in St. Paul, Minn and showed an early interest in scientific experiment.
He studied physics and biology at the California Institute of Technology, graduating in 1938. He studied medicine at Dartmouth Medical School and received a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942,
During World War II, researched the physiology of high-altitude flying and invented instruments for measuring gas pressure.
After the war he trained in psychoanalysis and at the University of Pennsylvania he begun researching the physical structures of the brain and of its consciousness. In 1951 he published a paper showing how he could display patterns of brain electrical activity on a cathode ray display screen using electrodes he specially devised for insertion into a living brain.
In 1953, he took a post studying neurophysiology with the US Public Health Service Commissioned Officers Corps. In 1954, following the desire to strip away outside stimuli from the mind/brain, he devised the first isolation tank, a dark soundproof tank of warm salt water in which subjects could float for long periods in sensory isolation. Dr Lilly himself and a research colleague were the first to act as subjects in this research.
His quest next took him to ask questions about the minds of other large brained mammals and in the late 1950's he established a centre devoted to fostering human-dolphin communication; the Communication Research Institute on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. In the early 1960's, Dr. Lilly and co-workers published several papers showing that dolphins could mimic human speech patterns.
In the early sixties he was introduced to LSD and began a series of experiments in which he took the psychedelic in an isolation tank and/or in the company of dolphins. These events are described in his book "The Centre of the Cyclone," published in 1972.
His career then took the turn of becoming something of a mix between scientist, mystic and writer publishing 19 books in all, including notably ``Man and Dolphin and ``The Mind of the Dolphin.
In the 1980s he led a project which attempted to teach dolphins a computer-synthesised language.
Influence on Hollywood
Dr. Lilly's work inspired two movies made without his direct involvement, "Day of the Dolphin," in 1973, in which the US Navy turns the animals into weapons, and "Altered States," in 1980, in which scientists combining drugs and isolation tanks see reality dangerously unravel.
He envisioned a time when all killing of whales and dolphins would cease, "not from a law being passed, but from each human understanding innately that these are ancient, sentient earth residents, with tremendous intelligence and enormous life force. Not someone to kill, but someone to learn from."
Later Vision
Later in life, Dr. Lilly laid out the design for a future " communications laboratory" that would be a floating living room where humans and dolphins could chat as equals and where they would find a common language, References
Key books by J C Lilly
External links
