John C. Lilly
American physician
Died when: 86 years 267 days (1040 months)Star Sign: Capricorn
John Cunningham Lilly (January 6, 1915 – September 30, 2001) was an American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer and inventor.He was a member of a generation of counterculture scientists and thinkers that included Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, and Werner Erhard, all frequent visitors to the Lilly home.
He often stirred controversy, especially among mainstream scientists.Lilly conducted high-altitude research during World War II and later trained as a psychoanalyst.
He gained renown in the 1950s after developing the isolation tank.He saw the tanks, in which users are isolated from almost all external stimuli, as a means to explore the nature of human consciousness.
He later combined that work with his efforts to communicate with dolphins.He began studying how bottlenose dolphins vocalize, establishing centers in the U.S.
Virgin Islands, and later San Francisco, to study dolphins.A decade later, he began experimenting with psychedelics, including LSD, often while floating in isolation.
His work inspired two Hollywood movies, The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and Altered States (1980), as well as the videogame series Ecco the Dolphin.
Lilly's Maxim In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits.
These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially.When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended.
In the province of the mind there are no limits.John C.Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer
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