Yukihiko Yoshida on Sun, 7 Oct 2001 09:26:19 +0200 (CEST)


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

[Nettime-bold] John Lilly - a true pioneer


Hi ---
This is sad news.
John C. Lilly passwd way.
R.I.P

Best Wishes from TOKYO
Yukihiko YOSHIDA

------- Forwarded Message

<x-flowed>[this message courtesy of Brian Wallace]


In Loving Memory of John Cunningham Lilly, M.D

January 6, 1915-September 30, 2001


Dr. John C. Lilly died on September 30th, 2001, in Los
Angeles, of heart failure. Dr. Lilly was best known
for his work with dolphins and interspecies
communication, his development of the isolation tank,
and his research into altered states of consciousness.
The main characters in two popular films, The Day of
the Dolphin and Altered States, were based on Dr.
Lilly.

Born January 6, l915, 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 l959, 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
l992, 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.


An unparalleled scientific visionary and explorer, Dr.
Lilly has made significant contributions to
psychology, brain research, computer theory, medicine,
ethics, and interspecies communication. His concepts,
inventions, publications, and articulated explorations
have dramatically enhanced the quality of contemporary
global culture. 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"

Dr. Lilly's last physician remarked with awe that John
Lilly is the only person he knows of whose least
accomplishment was becoming a Medical Doctor.

He has sown the seeds of several future scientific
revolutions. Dr. Lilly leaves us with the possibility
of a theory of internal realities. He developed the
hardware/software model of the human brain/mind
decades before the computer became a popular metaphor
for the human brain. He worked towards a recognition
of possibilities for solid state intelligence and
planetary consciousness. He explored and theorized
about the potential importance of Einstein, Podalski,
Rosen, (PDR) and Bell's Theorem in quantum computers
and teleportation. He initiated worldwide efforts at
interspecies communications with large-brained
dolphins, advocating United Nations protection and
representation for the "Cetacean Nation."

Devoted to a philosophical quest for the nature of
reality and mind, Dr. Lilly pursued a brilliant
academic career among the scientific leaders of the
day. He has lived in the company of associates and
intimates including Nobel physicists Richard Feynman
and Robert Milliken, philosophers Buckminster Fuller,
Aldous Huxley, and Alan Watts, psychotherapy pioneers
R.D. Laing, Fritz Perls, and Oscar Janiger, eclectic
spiritual and psychological interpreters Oscar Ichazo,
Baba Ram Dass, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and
a host of luminaries, inventors, political figures,
writers, and Hollywood celebrities.

One of the twentieth century's foremost scientific
pioneers John Lilly has been a relentless adventurer
whose persona as "student of the unexpected" has
resulted in astonishing insights into what it means to
be a human being in an ever more mysterious universe.

He is survived by his first wife, Mary Lilly, of
Haiku, Hawaii; a brother, David Lilly, of St. Paul,
Minn.; two sons, John Jr., of Zacatecas, Mexico, and
Charles of Haiku, HI; a daughter Cynthia Cantwell of
Paradise, Calif.; and adopted children, Pamela
Christine, daughter of his second wife, Elisabeth C.
(Bjerg) MacRobbie; Nina Carnesi, daughter of his third
wife, Antoinetta L. (Ficarotta) Oshman; Lisa Lilly of
Malibu, CA; Barbara Clarke-Lilly of Kihei, HI, and
Philip H. Bailey of Kula, HI.


John C. Lilly Memorial Celebration will be taking
place Friday, October 5, at Will Geer's Theatricum
Botanicum, 1419 North Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga,
CA 90290 2:30pm arrival. Memorial in Amphitheater
followed by reception in the surrounding garden.
Seating for 300 only - leaving the grounds at 6pm.


In lieu of flowers please make your tax-deductible
donation to the Association for Cultural Evolution,
POB 2382, Mill Valley, CA 94942. This organization was
established in 1990 as a not-for-profit Educational
501 c3 - for the purpose of archiving, preserving and
making available primary source material of timeless
cultural importance by Founding member of the Board of
Directors, John C. Lilly, M.D, along with four other
notable directors


John C. Lilly Obituary and photograph for media use:
http:ace.to


John C. Lilly inspired media resource:
http: //sound.photosynthesis.com


Lilly HomeSite:
http://www.eccosys.co.jp/lilly>http://www.eccosys.co.jp/lilly



Samadhi Tank Company
http://samadhitank.com


Interview w/David Jay Brown:
http://www.levity.com/mavericks/lilly-int.htm


Fusion Anomaly Lilly Links Page:
<http://www.dromo.com/fusionanomaly/johnlilly.html>http://www.dromo.com/fusionanomaly/johnlilly.html



------- End of Forwarded Message


_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold