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Born January 6th, 1915, in
Saint Paul, Minnesota to Rachel and Richard Lilly, Lilly was educated
at St. Paul Academy, California Institute of Technology, Dartmouth
College Medical School, and the University of Pennsylvania Medical
School. During WWII, he conducted high altitude research at the
Johnson Foundation for Medical Physics. After the war, he trained as
a psychoanalyst.
While a Commander in the U.S.
Public Health Service, Lilly worked at the National Institutes of
Health, where he developed the isolation tank, which came to be known
as the "Lilly tank". In 1959, he established the Communication
Research Institute in the U.S. Virgin Islands to study the
vocalizations of Bottlenose dolphins. The work later continued in San
Francisco under the aegis of the JANUS Project. He also established
the Human Dolphin Foundation, and worked with Samadhi Tank company to
help popularize the isolation tank experience.
From the late sixties until
he retired to Hawaii in 1992, Dr. Lilly worked from his home lab in
Malibu, California. He traveled extensively, teaching and lecturing
at academic institutions, international conferences, and growth
centers like Esalen, where he was a long-standing artist in
residence.
Dr. Lilly published over one
hundred and twenty-five scientific papers, relating to his work in
various fields, including Respiratory Physiology, Neurophysics,
Neurophysiology, Psychiatry, interspecies communication, and the
nature of consciousness and the self. He also published nineteen
popular books, including the influential Man and Dolphin, 1961; The
Dolphin in History (with Ashley Montagu), 1963; The Mind of the
Dolphin, 1967; Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human
Biocomputer: Theory and Experiments, 1972, 1987; The Center of the
Cyclone, 1972, 1987; The Dyadic Cyclone (with Toni Lilly), 1976;
Lilly on Dolphins, Humans of the Sea, 1975, a revised edition of two
previously published books, Man and Dolphin, The Mind of the Dolphin,
and The Dolphin in History, a lecture; Simulations of God: The
Science of Belief, 1974; The Deep Selp: Isolation Tank Relaxation,
1976; The Scientist, a Novel Autobiography, 1978, 2nd. ed. 1988;
Communication Between Man and Dolphin: The Possibilty of Talking with
Other Species, 1978, 1988; In the Province of the Mind (with Francis
Jeffrey); John Lilly So Far, by Francis Jeffrey (with John C. Lilly,
M.D., Ph.D.) 1990; and Tanks for the Memories, Floatation Tank Talks,
by Dr. John C. Lilly and E.J. Gold, 1995.
Dr. Lilly has made significant contributions
to psychology, brain research, computer theory, medicine, ethics, and
interspecies communication. His work with dolphins and whales
created a global awareness that lead to the enactment of the Marine
Mammal Protection Act in 1972. Today, Dr. Lilly is considered the
father of dolphin researchers.
In the 1940s, Dr. Lilly
invented new types of capacitance manometers to aid in researches of
human metabolism, and invented gas concentration and flow meters to
study respiration, gas mixing, and pressure and altitude. In the '40s
and '50s, Dr. Lilly was on the cutting edge of Neuroscience. He was
the first to map the brain of chimpanzees, in the process inventing
the "Lilly Wave": an electrical pulse that could be used to stimulate
the chimp's brain without any damage. He also developed the
twenty-five channel EEG moving relief maps of the electrical activity
in the brain and dynamic iconic displays for researching pulse shapes
and electrodes. His brain mapping with acoustic, motor, and
travelling waves predated today's state of the art by fifty years.
His research in electronic brain stimulation, dreams, schizophrenia,
and the neurophysiology of motivation - involving the identification
of punishment and reward systems -- were published in a number of
psychiatric journals.
In conducting his brain
research, Dr. Lilly developed an interest in large brain systems.
This led him to work with dolphin communication. In the process he
invented various spectral analyzers and hydro-phones, and pioneered
the use of minicomputers with real time programming and original
software.
While working at the National
Institutes of Health on isolation, solitude and confinement, he
invented the floatation tank, a tool to maximally isolate sensory
stimulation to better understand what the mind does without exterior
influence. NASA and other important organization have used his
research into sensory isolation. After ten years of tank research,
and while still in the employ of NIMH, he was given the
responsibility to experiment with LSD in the tank. The results of
that study were reported and published by that institute in his
classic treatise, Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human
Biocomputer. Like all his research, this was eventually made
available to the public. Dr. Lilly considered this documentation his
most original work. This is where he first published his famous
statement,
"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or
becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and
experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.
In the mind, there are no limits"
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