[PDF]The Deep Self John C. Lilly

WARNER BOOKS 33 023 $2-95


JOHN C. LILLV, M.D.






DEEP SELF


.Profound Relaxation-
and the

Tank isolation Technique

The boon
that launched
the theory ot

ALTERED STATES






JOHNC. LILLY, M.D.


Profound Relaxation and the Tank Isolation Technique


About the Author


John C. Lilly, M.D., is a distinguished and un-
usual scientist. His credentials include training at
CalTech (B.Sc. in Biology) and at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine (M.D.); re-
search in medical physics and biophysics as an
Associate Professor at the University of Pennsyl-
vania in the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Foundation;
work in psychoanalysis at the Institute of the
Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis and
at the Washington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic In-
stitute; and work at the National Institute of Men-
tal Health and at the National Institute of Neurolog-
ical Diseases and Blindness.

Dr. Lilly founded and directed the Communica-
tions Research Institute. For thirteen years he
researched dolphin-human communications,
dolphin anatomy, physiology, neuroanatomy and
psychological behavior. In 1954 he invented the
Isolation Tank Method for research into the Deep
Self (including his own).


0 671 22552-9


THE

DEEP SELF

JOHNC.UUXM.Di


Dr. John Lilly, author of The Center of the
Cyclone and Man and Dolphin, draws
upon twenty-two years of groundbreak-
ing scientific research to present his re-
markable theory and techniques of “iso-
lation therapy,” showing readers how to
unfold and experience new degrees of
self-awareness and personal harmony.
Dr. Lilly has been studying isolation
therapy ever since he developed this
method in 1954 at the National Institute
for Mental Health. Since 1973, he has
been working in California with scores of
men and women volunteers who have
recorded their extraordinary experi-
ences. These personal "tank logs” on
the feelings and fantasies experienced by
Burgess Meredith, Robert Wilson,

(continued on back flap)


$ 9.95


(continued from front flap)

Gregory Bateson, Werner Erhard and
others while in the isolation tank are pre-
sented together with the author’s hy-
potheses and observations on peace in
isolation versus “sensory deprivation.”
The book also gives standards and spec-
ifications for isolation-tank manufac-
ture and clear step-by-step instructions
on how to build and maintain your own
tank. As Dr. Craig Enright says in his
foreword: “The tank is a tool for process,
like meditation ... the inner theater
. . . that allows us to expand our aware-
ness of our internal state of being — and
enriches not only that realm but the
course of the everyday world in which
we live." The Deep Self is the long-
awaited book by one of the great creative
scientists of the twentieth century.


Jacket design by Tom Wilkes


BOOKS BY JOHN C. LILLY, M.D.


Man and Dolphin

The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence

Programming and Metaprogramming
in the Human Biocomputer

The Center of the Cyclone
Simulations of God: The Science of Belief
Lilly on Dolphins: Humans of the Sea
The Dyadic Cyclone (with Antonietta Lilly)

The Deep Self: Profound Relaxation
and the Tank Isolation Technique



THE DEEP SELF

PROFOUND RELAXATION AND THE
TANK ISOLATION TECHNIQUE


JOHN C. LILLY, M.D.



Simon and Schuster
New York



Copyright © 1977 by Human Software, Inc.

All rights reserved

including the right of reproduction

in whole or in part in any form

Published by Simon and Schuster

A Division of Gulf & Western Corporation

Simon & Schuster Building

Rockefeller Center

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, New York 10020

Designed by Irving Perkins

Manufactured in the United States of America

123456789 10


Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lilly, John Cunningham, date.

The deep self.

Bibliography: p.

1. Sensory deprivation — Therapeutic use.

2. Consciousness. 3. Relaxation. I. Title.
RC489.S44L54 155.9 r 3 76-57951

ISBN 0-671-22552-9


The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint from
the following :

Crown Publishers, Inc., for material from Programming and
Metaprogramming by John C. Lilly, © 1972 by John C. Lilly
and from The Center of the Cyclone by John C. Lilly, © 1972
by John C. Lilly, published by The Julian Press, a division of
Crown Publishers, Inc.

Human Behavior, a division of Manson Western Corporation
for material from "Down Under in the Isolation Tank,"
by Eleanor Links Hoover, from Human Behavior Magazine,
copyright © 1974 Human Behavior.



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


In order to establish a place where books can be created and
written, tanks can be built and used easily, gracefully and produc-
tively, someone must organize the house, the grounds, the traffic
flow, the diplomacy among unique individuals. For the resulting
beautiful and stable facility, Antonietta Lilly is the prime mover.
Her taste, articulate mediation/negotiation, and designs have al-
lowed Deep Selves to communicate and generate this book. We
tender our grateful appreciation to her who made it all work
smoothly and creatively.

We appreciate the help and care of our editor, Jonathan Dolger
at Simon and Schuster, his aide. Dee Ratterree, and the meticulous,
expert copy editor, Elaine Waters.

Our agent, John Brockman, has carried many a point with fine
wit and ruthless cosmic love.

We wish to express our thanks to the something over five hun-
dred persons who participated in their self-teaching, -learning in
our tanks over the last five years. We are sorry that each one could
not have his/her say in this book. The length of a book is limited
by many factors beyond the control of the desires of authors. We
hope our rather arbitrary choices of accounts of experiences ex-
press the immense variety adequately enough to spur the curiosity
and future experiences of many other persons.



DEDICATION


To Craig Enright, M.D., for his courage,
understanding, compassion and his personal
explorations of the Deep Self.


Craig Enright died in 1975 from damage sustained in an
automobile accident in Big Sur, California, at age thirty-three
years. He was a medical doctor of a new sort : one fully
aware of the vast range of the states of being of the human
mind. He had many personal experiences of the far-reaching
range of his own mind, and deeply appreciated such experi-
ences in his friends and in his patients. He was an explorer of
the inner domains ; he used any available means of explora-
tion. He was a scuba diver, guitar player, motorcyclist, a
raconteur, an enthusiast for a full life in many inner/ outer
domains. He was an excellent therapist of the body, of the
mind and of the spirit. We miss him.




CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE


Introduction

Foreword Craig S. Enright, MLD.

Physical Isolation Experience in the Tank
The Application of the Sciences to Flota-
tion and Physical Isolation
Peace in Physical Isolation vs "Sensory
Deprivation"

The Search for Reality

The Self as the Isolated Observer-Agent—

Operator

The Domains of Reality: The Metabelief
Operator

The Mind Contained in the Brain : A Cy-
bernetic Belief System
The Mind Unlimited: The Deep Self
Uncontained

Mental Effects of Reduction of Ordinary
Levels of Physical Stimuli on Intact ,
Healthy Persons (1956)

Experiments in Solitude, in Maximum
Achievable Physical Isolation with Water
Suspension, of Intact Healthy Persons
(1961)

Standards for Isolation Tank Manufacture
and Use

Isolation Tank Construction and Mainte-
nance, by Steven Conger


15

19

27

33

65

67

81

89

99

111

119

129

137

149


11



171


12 The Deep Self

chapter thirteen Tank Logs : Experiences
chapter fourteen Excerpts of Published Personal Observa-
tions of the Author 257

APPENDIXES

i. The Development of the "Contained


Mind" Hypothesis 277

n. The Contained Mind Metabelief:

Definitions of Elements 285

hi. C.N.S. Energy Sources for Simulations

and Observer/ Operator with e.r. Present 297

iv. Hyperstability and Physical Isolation 299

v. Forcible Indoctrination (Coercive Per-
suasion) and Physical Isolation 303

vx. A Useful Metabelief about the Internal

Reality (i.r.) Program and Simulation
Domain and Its Uses: P 0 305

References for Chapter Nine 315

References for Chapter Ten 317

Bibliography 319



Laws as such do not make people better, they must
practise certain things, in order to become attuned to
inner truth. This form of truth resembles apparent truth
only slightly.

The Tales of Nasrudin
Indries Shah


To become impartial, dispassionate, and general
purpose , objective, and open-ended, one must test and
adjust the level of credence in each of his sets of beliefs.

If ever Man is to be faced with real organisms with
greater wisdom, greater intellect, greater minds than any
single man has, then we must be open, unbiased,
sensitive, general purpose, and dispassionate. Our needs
for phantasies must have been analyzed and seen for
what they are and are not or we will be in even graver
troubles than we are today.

Our search for mentally healthy paths to human
progress in the innermost realities depends upon progress in
this area. Many men have floundered in this area of belief :

I hope this work can help to find a way through one of
our stickiest intellectual-emotional regions.

Programming and Metaprogramming
in the Human Biocomputer



It is a rare event when an author-researcher has the clear oppor-
tunity to present to a new generation of researchers and searchers
an original contribution based on twenty-three years of research.
This book and the technique and the theory expressed here have
slowly developed over that interval of time. There has been ade-
quate time to carry out several hundreds of personal observations
and experiences, and to allow several hundred other persons to
make their own observations and have their experiences under
adequately controlled conditions (Chapter Thirteen). There has
been enough time to integrate these data sufficiently to furnish a
current theoretical position with which this researcher is relatively
satisfied (Chapters Seven, Eight, and Appendixes). This book sum-
marizes the method developed (Chapter Two); some personal ob-
servations and experiments (Chapter Fourteen) ; the work of others
(Chapter Three); and the current development of the theory.

Over the years, since its first development in 1954 (see Chapters
Nine and Ten), the original method of tank isolation and solitude
has been simplified and made safer. A clear and necessary set of
standards for safety for tank manufacture and use has been de-
veloped (Chapter Eleven). Some simplified methods of manufacture
and maintenance have been worked out (Chapter Twelve). The re-
sulting technique is now made available in a relatively perfected
form for the use of others not directly under the supervision of this
researcher.

Other researchers with other bases of knowledge, other aims and
goals, can now utilize this method in pursuit of their own research.
Those with interests in research on the physiological/ psychological
effects of isolation, on meditative methods and processes, on educa-
tional and therapeutic applications, on medical amelioration of
physical traumatic damage, on psychopharmacologic applications.



16 The Deep Self

will now have a tested, developed method to apply to their own
domains of research.

Over the years, this method to this author has been a research
tool, applied to the philosophical as well as scientific questions of
the nature of reality, in its inner as well as outer aspects (Chapter
Four). For the first ten years (1954-1964), the tank method was
used primarily for self-analysis, continuing the author's psycho-
analysis under Dr. Robert Waelder (1949-1953). During these
years a self-discipline was developed in the tank: the author
learned to be tolerant of his own inner realities. He learned to ex-
pect the unexpected in the inner domains. He learned to allow that
which would occur spontaneously to develop to his current limit
pf tolerance. He also learned not to carry these inner realities into
his outer consensus reality beyond what he conceived to be the
tolerance of his professional colleagues and his professional milieu.
His first scientific paper (on the isolation tank) of 1956 (reproduced
here as Chapter Nine) reflected the care with which he edited his
reports of his experiences and placed them in an acceptable context
for his colleagues of that time. With a psychiatrically orientated
colleague Jay T. Shurley, he published a second cautiously worded
article on the tank method in 1961 (see Chapter Ten).

In 1964, multiple opportunities arose to extend his researches
with the tank isolation to include the aid of psychopharmaco-
logically active substances. Through the help of several profes-
sional colleagues (Dr. Sydney Cohen, Dr. Charles Savage, Mrs.
Constance D. Tors, Mr. Ivan Tors), the National Institute of
Mental Health, and the Sandoz Company of Basel, Switzerland,
he was able to pursue his researches into the deeper recesses of the
internal realities. These research results (1964-1966) were reported
in a carefully edited book: Programming and Metaprogramming in
the Human Biocomputer * (republished in 1972 under the same
title). Further results were published in The Center of the Cyclone ,+
1972. Excerpts pertinent to this book from both these titles are
given in Chapter Fourteen.

In 1973, an opportunity arose to expand the tank isolation work
in Malibu, California. A home with outlying facilities housing five

* John C. Lilly, M.D., Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human
Biocomputer.

t John C. Lilly, M.D., The Center of the Cyclone.



Introduction 17


tanks was established. From 1973 to the present in addition to per-
sonal research, additional persons used the tanks and reported their
experiences in personal logs (Chapter Thirteen, this book). In 1974
the number of tanks was reduced to two, in a small isolation build-
ing. Only a few carefully chosen persons currently use this facility;
the personal work is once again dominant for this researcher.

Currently, the method of tank isolation is being researched for
applications to everyday problems for rest and problem-solving for
nonresearch purposes. The safety is now such that relatively un-
trained persons can use the tank for these purposes. The flotation
in a solution of Epsom salts and water in a density of 1.30 gms./cc.
allows all of the body to float supine, with head, arms, legs and
trunk at the surface (Chapters Eleven and Twelve).



foreword

CRAIG S. ENRIGHT, M.D.


Solitude. To me the word has always brought forth images of
hiking alone through forested mountains that were filled with
clear, bubbling streams and grassy meadows; a sense of detaching
from my usual daily involvements with people and things, immers-
ing and refreshing myself in the untainted world of nature; how-
ever, during the summer of 1973, these associations suddenly
began to shift as the logical extension of the idea of solitude mani-
fested itself in the form of a sensory isolation tank, inside of which
there was, in effect, nothingness; over 99 percent attenuation of all
external stimulus input; a black hole in psychophysical space;
psychological free-fall.

Naturally I jumped right in and promptly left my body, owing
perhaps to having just read Robert A. Monroe's book. Journeys
Out of the Body. Little unexpected things like this separation from
my body, which I experienced, kept happening to me during my
tank sessions, and I came to admire the instant-karmalike ability of
a session to bring forth items lying around in the recesses of mind
and body.

Entering an isolation tank is much easier than getting into most
other spaceships. I would simply climb in, stretch out and float off
on a buoyant solution of MgSC >4 (7H2O) (Epsom salts) and water,
kept at neutral temperature, neither warm nor cool. Inside the tank
there is absolutely no light and virtually no sound (low-frequency
vibrations from airplanes do come through and that can really flash
you out — there you are suspended in embryonic silence one hun-
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