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The Scientist: A Novel Autobiography
Readers with the courage to explore the uncharted expanses of the human mind will share Lilly's cosmic vision. The films "Day of the Dolphin" and "Altered States" were based on his research.
210 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
13 people are currently reading
624 people want to read
About the author
John C. Lilly
27 books211 followersJohn Cunningham Lilly was an American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer and inventor.
He was a researcher of the nature of consciousness using mainly isolation tanks, dolphin communication, and psychedelic drugs, sometimes in combination.
He was a researcher of the nature of consciousness using mainly isolation tanks, dolphin communication, and psychedelic drugs, sometimes in combination.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 24, 2011
[Review contains spoilers. I haven't read this book for a couple of years, and write this review based on my impressions after this time.]
This book is fascinating not least because Lilly lived a very unusual life, but also because it is an expression of a self-confessed ketamine addict, and of a schizophrenic (Lilly was, at least, schizotypal).
Lilly went to med school, and thereafter pursued research in electrical stimulation of the brain. He describes a particular line of work in which electrodes were implanted into the brain of a mule (I think?), and could be used to control the direction of movement of the animal. The CIA took interest in this work, and planned to use this technology to remote-control mules so that they would traverse remote mountain ranges.
Lilly went on to work at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Bethesda. It was there that he began to experiment with lysergic acid diethylamide, and began to develop the floatation tank to achieve heightened psychedelic experiences through sensory deprivation. Eventually, he would be introduced to ketamine, a novel anaesthetic that exhibits psychedelic properties. Combining this dissociative drug with sensory deprivation, he began to explore the internal structure of his mind, and the scope of the use of these tools in "metaprogramming". He would eventually become an addict, dosing himself every 45 minutes for weeks at a time, losing his grasp of reality. This addiction would cause him to be briefly institutionalised, and to nearly drown. One anecdote describes him trying to bicycle down a hill in the midst of one of his ketamine binges, only to fall from the bike and break several bones. In an interview in the early 1990s, he admitted that this fall had not occurred during a ketamine binge, but rather after taking phencyclidine (PCP), a related, but much more long-lasting and neurotoxic, dissociative anaesthetic. His medic friends who had supplied him with ketamine had attempted to cut him off, after seeing the state of his health, and Lilly began taking PCP instead.
Later in life, he set up a lab in Maui, Hawaii, where he carried out work in dolphin communication. He continued to work with sensory deprivation and ketamine during this time. In his beach-side lab complex, he built a floatation tank above the dolphin tank in an attempt to gain a sense of dolphin language.
The book isn't a procedural biography, his "eccentric" ideas about the nature of reality colour his anecdotes and experiences. He describes encountering entities--angel-like beings--in a church during his childhood. As his ketamine addiction developed, he believed that the drug allowed him to communicate with alien entities. He had the impression of increasing "synchronicity", believing that he was experiencing more coincidental events, and perceiving various unrelated events to be causally related. To explain this, he developed a narrative connecting synchronicity to the entities he encountered during his ketamine experiences: they belonged to an agency which controls the occurrence of coincident events in the universe. The three entities with which he was familiar were posted at the "Earth Coincidence Control Office" (ECCO), a subdivision of the "Solar System Control Unit" (SSCU), and were contacting him as a kind-of human agent (purportedly because those entities believed him to have a certain type of open mind that they could communicate with).
Karl Jansen, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on ketamine, thinks that Lilly was schizotypal, a personality disorder in which schizophrenia-like personality features are expressed (prone-ness to delusion, seeing patterns where there aren't patterns, noticing coincidence where there is none). Ketamine addiction tends to produce a schizophrenia-like syndrome in some people, although it is unclear whether the drug is causing this to occur, or whether people who are disposed to schizophrenia or are schizotypal are more likely to be attracted to the drug, and it brings out these personality features in them. As Jansen suggests, Lilly may have been schizotypal before he ever tried ketamine, something to which his description of encountering entities as a child attests (unless these memories were confabulated).
I don't wish to medicalise Lilly, and I don't think that the possibility that he was somewhat delusional invalidates his work and his experience. However, it is interesting to consider the nature of schizophrenia when reading this book, and to try to understand the fantastical experiences he describes in the context of that neurological style.
The book is well-written and should appeal to people interested in ketamine, psychedelia, dolphin communication, neuroscience, as well as those who enjoy a well-written biography. My main criticism is that he goes a bit far with his fantastical ideation at times, such as in the first chapter where he describes his conception in a phantasmagorical mode.
Lilly is a fascinating character because his personality combines a very structured, scientific style of thinking (at least, earlier in his life), with magical, shamanic style of thinking. These personality features rarely coexist in a single person, and it is possible that they only came to coexist in Lilly because of his affair with ketamine. He is a fascinating, complicated figure, and this book provides some insight into his world.
This book is fascinating not least because Lilly lived a very unusual life, but also because it is an expression of a self-confessed ketamine addict, and of a schizophrenic (Lilly was, at least, schizotypal).
Lilly went to med school, and thereafter pursued research in electrical stimulation of the brain. He describes a particular line of work in which electrodes were implanted into the brain of a mule (I think?), and could be used to control the direction of movement of the animal. The CIA took interest in this work, and planned to use this technology to remote-control mules so that they would traverse remote mountain ranges.
Lilly went on to work at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Bethesda. It was there that he began to experiment with lysergic acid diethylamide, and began to develop the floatation tank to achieve heightened psychedelic experiences through sensory deprivation. Eventually, he would be introduced to ketamine, a novel anaesthetic that exhibits psychedelic properties. Combining this dissociative drug with sensory deprivation, he began to explore the internal structure of his mind, and the scope of the use of these tools in "metaprogramming". He would eventually become an addict, dosing himself every 45 minutes for weeks at a time, losing his grasp of reality. This addiction would cause him to be briefly institutionalised, and to nearly drown. One anecdote describes him trying to bicycle down a hill in the midst of one of his ketamine binges, only to fall from the bike and break several bones. In an interview in the early 1990s, he admitted that this fall had not occurred during a ketamine binge, but rather after taking phencyclidine (PCP), a related, but much more long-lasting and neurotoxic, dissociative anaesthetic. His medic friends who had supplied him with ketamine had attempted to cut him off, after seeing the state of his health, and Lilly began taking PCP instead.
Later in life, he set up a lab in Maui, Hawaii, where he carried out work in dolphin communication. He continued to work with sensory deprivation and ketamine during this time. In his beach-side lab complex, he built a floatation tank above the dolphin tank in an attempt to gain a sense of dolphin language.
The book isn't a procedural biography, his "eccentric" ideas about the nature of reality colour his anecdotes and experiences. He describes encountering entities--angel-like beings--in a church during his childhood. As his ketamine addiction developed, he believed that the drug allowed him to communicate with alien entities. He had the impression of increasing "synchronicity", believing that he was experiencing more coincidental events, and perceiving various unrelated events to be causally related. To explain this, he developed a narrative connecting synchronicity to the entities he encountered during his ketamine experiences: they belonged to an agency which controls the occurrence of coincident events in the universe. The three entities with which he was familiar were posted at the "Earth Coincidence Control Office" (ECCO), a subdivision of the "Solar System Control Unit" (SSCU), and were contacting him as a kind-of human agent (purportedly because those entities believed him to have a certain type of open mind that they could communicate with).
Karl Jansen, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on ketamine, thinks that Lilly was schizotypal, a personality disorder in which schizophrenia-like personality features are expressed (prone-ness to delusion, seeing patterns where there aren't patterns, noticing coincidence where there is none). Ketamine addiction tends to produce a schizophrenia-like syndrome in some people, although it is unclear whether the drug is causing this to occur, or whether people who are disposed to schizophrenia or are schizotypal are more likely to be attracted to the drug, and it brings out these personality features in them. As Jansen suggests, Lilly may have been schizotypal before he ever tried ketamine, something to which his description of encountering entities as a child attests (unless these memories were confabulated).
I don't wish to medicalise Lilly, and I don't think that the possibility that he was somewhat delusional invalidates his work and his experience. However, it is interesting to consider the nature of schizophrenia when reading this book, and to try to understand the fantastical experiences he describes in the context of that neurological style.
The book is well-written and should appeal to people interested in ketamine, psychedelia, dolphin communication, neuroscience, as well as those who enjoy a well-written biography. My main criticism is that he goes a bit far with his fantastical ideation at times, such as in the first chapter where he describes his conception in a phantasmagorical mode.
Lilly is a fascinating character because his personality combines a very structured, scientific style of thinking (at least, earlier in his life), with magical, shamanic style of thinking. These personality features rarely coexist in a single person, and it is possible that they only came to coexist in Lilly because of his affair with ketamine. He is a fascinating, complicated figure, and this book provides some insight into his world.
February 20, 2021
Quite a curious book, both personal but extremely objective and impersonal, Full of content but weirdly vacuous.
At the least its the tale of a genius-smart man who legitimises his drug addiction, falling into the trap of believing the illusions he's experienced, and somehow coming out of it alive and (mostly) stable. At its best its an eye-opening tale of journeys inside and outside of a mind, observed with a laser-bright intelligence and filled with a strange unsettling, disassociated ambience and matter-of-fact observances of the unknown.
Whether you buy into his constructed delusions or not, its a unique read and a good debate starter.
At the least its the tale of a genius-smart man who legitimises his drug addiction, falling into the trap of believing the illusions he's experienced, and somehow coming out of it alive and (mostly) stable. At its best its an eye-opening tale of journeys inside and outside of a mind, observed with a laser-bright intelligence and filled with a strange unsettling, disassociated ambience and matter-of-fact observances of the unknown.
Whether you buy into his constructed delusions or not, its a unique read and a good debate starter.
March 17, 2021
John c Lilly chose to write his autobiography in the third-person, a decision that mirrors a ketamine experience where the user is looking down at their body whilst still a part of that body - it's akin to a coma, it's a bizarre experience, hence the term "dissociative". Lilly was also one of the first people to croak during the height of his addiction to ketamine. It's a tragic story, made more so by his experiences working within the government and his isolation from his peers as both a scientist and a person. Are his musings about the mind and brain accurate? How much of his beyond human communication is the reader willing to go along with? And isn't it frightening how precise his descriptions about where technology will lead humans by the end of the 21st century? Let's just hope the oceans remain in his scenario. Nevertheless, people like Lilly, even if they arrive at different conclusions than you have, should be cherished while they're alive, but it's so often the case another accessory to Lilly and others lives are their inability for proper connection in their lifetime.
November 13, 2024
The central concept in Lilly’s work is that of “programming.” And the central question is whether or not we can escape our programming, and, if so, what happens next?
Judging from Lilly’s life—which was saved a number of times by his romantic partners as he descended into ketamine paranoia and addiction—unless you replace your programming with better programming, you may have just hopped from the frying pan into the fire.
It’s a tricky business when the self is both the object of research and the means of research. Does this overlap create a closed epistemic circle, or is there a way out? How could you ever know what exists “outside” programming? What does a non-metaprogrammed belief even look like? A sixteen-year-old John Lilly was asking this question in an essay published in his school magazine: “How can the mind render itself sufficiently objective to study itself?” And John was still asking it at the end of his life.
This book is truly cringey and earnest and far-out. I enjoyed it.
Judging from Lilly’s life—which was saved a number of times by his romantic partners as he descended into ketamine paranoia and addiction—unless you replace your programming with better programming, you may have just hopped from the frying pan into the fire.
It’s a tricky business when the self is both the object of research and the means of research. Does this overlap create a closed epistemic circle, or is there a way out? How could you ever know what exists “outside” programming? What does a non-metaprogrammed belief even look like? A sixteen-year-old John Lilly was asking this question in an essay published in his school magazine: “How can the mind render itself sufficiently objective to study itself?” And John was still asking it at the end of his life.
This book is truly cringey and earnest and far-out. I enjoyed it.
December 22, 2023
The autobiography spoken through a third-person (mostly metaphysical) perspective systematically unravels deep research of the mind and its relationship with the human body/brain in a unique manner. As Lilly mentions; this book can be read either as an autobiography or a science fiction book, and both will make sense to the reader somehow.
December 16, 2008
Lilly wanted to figure out whether the mind is produced by the brain or comes from elsewhere (like outer space), and to open up lines of communication with dolphins and whales. He used electrodes on the brain on monkeys and dolphins and thereafter isolation tanks, LSD, and ketamine on himself, btw the mid-50s and the mid-70s, at first as part of research at NIMH and other major research centers and then independently. With Jessica Rylan, a sound artist and performer, am working on adapting this fantastic book into a performance.
April 19, 2016
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.
June 23, 2010
John Lilly experimented on himself. Inspired as a child to find the source of consciousness, his life never waivered from this quest. A most amazing life story of a true Scientist. I learned about passion from this book.
September 22, 2007
This poor man is out of his mind.
December 9, 2012
I'm not a big autobiography fan but parts of his story, which is an odd one, including his description of the rigours of the Caltech undergrad, stick with me after reading it 23 years ago.
August 17, 2013
nothing interesting here... just lies
November 16, 2015
What a life! It's a wonder how things align for a purpose to present.
August 1, 2015
Way over the top. A great guide for experimenting with LSD and other scary things in life.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews