Contact - John Lilly and Beyond

The Transmission

Over the last several weeks I have attempted to write about the experience of my meeting with Dr. John Lilly having been asked by several people including family members. I have rarely told people of that meeting, what we talked about or why he wanted to meet. And I've never really told them about the eccentric billionaire Oilman he wanted me to talk with  that same day.  As I understood it, this man was a principal source of funds for the research Lilly was doing with interspecies dolphin communications. He ran some Foundation and was the private funding Lilly needed to continue his work.

This man was living at the castle like Hollywood Chateau Marmont,  famous for it's lowprofile and thus popular with those in 'The Biz'.  He was renting two  bungalows at $500 a piece per night. One for him, the other for his daughter.

It was a conversation and series of topics that seemed very Kabbala in nature to me. At least the majority of the topics discussed leaned in that direction  more then any other conceptual framework I can think of. Some of what we talked about was mine and John's earlier conversations that were so cool.  He was such an interesting man and I've wanted to introduce some of who he was  that made him such an extrordinary man to those here at Zaadz.

So I thought maybe I would first take a few posts and let John tell you about himself. But first here is a short bio I found that attempts to descibe John;

How does one briefly describe a man as complex as John Lilly? Whole books barely provide an overview of this man's extraordinary existence, amazing accomplishments, and contributions to the world. His list of scientific achievements covers a full page In Who's Who in America. John C. Lilly, M.D. is perhaps best known as the man behind the fictional scientists dramatized in the films Altered states and The Day of the Dolphin. He pioneered the original neuroscientific work In electrical brain stimulation, mapping out the pleasure and pain pathways in the brain. He frontiered work in inter-species communication research with dolphins and whales. He invented the isolation tank and did significant research in the area of sensory deprivation.

Educated at CalTech, Dartmouth Medical School, and the University of Pennsylvania, he did a large part of his scientific research at the National Institute of Mental Health and built his own dolphin-communication research lab in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. After experimenting with LSD in the sensory deprivation flotation tank, he left the academic world
in pursuit of ever higher states of consciousness. From the Esalen Institute to Chile to ketamine-induced extraterrestrial contacts in other realities, this man's life is more far-out than any science fiction. Always following the scientific tradition that carved his name into history, John Lilly systematically and courageously explored the states of consciousness produced by LSD and ketamine while in the isolation tank. His autobiographies The Center of the Cyclone, The Dyadic Cyclone (with Toni Lilly), and The Scientist, provide mind-boggling overviews of his amazing adventure of a life. His philosophy on how to reprogram one's own brain is best summarized in Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer, and Simulations of God.

GOD AS CONSCIOUSNESS-WITHOUT-AN-OBJECT
by John C. Lilly

Within the last two years I have come to know a man and his work who run counter to my own simulations and by whom I am influenced beyond previous influences. In 1936, Franklin Merrell-Wolff wrote a journal that was later published as Pathways Through to Space. In 1970 he wrote another book called The Philosophy of Consciousness-Without-an-Object. In studying his works, and the chronicle of his personal experience I arrived at some places new for me.

      Wolff had been through the Vedanta training, through the philosophy of Shankara; he knew the philosophy of Kant and others of the Western world; and he spent twenty-five years working to achieve a state of Nirvana, Enlightenment, Samadhi, and so forth. In 1936 he succeeded in this transformation and with varying success maintained it over the subsequent years. He is an amazingly peac ful man now in his eighties. Meeting him, I felt the influence of his transformation, of his recognitions, of some sort of current flowing through me. I felt a peace which I have not felt in my own searchings; a certain peculiar kind of highly indifferent contentment took place, and yet the state was beyond contentment, beyond the usual human happiness, beyond bliss, beyond pleasure. This is the state that he calls the state of "High Indifference." He experienced this at his third level of recognition, beyond Nirvana, beyond Bliss. His perceptions in this state are recounted in The Philosophy of Consciousness-Without-an-Object.

      In his chapter "Aphorisms on Consciousness-With- out-an-Object" Merrell-Wolff expresses his discoveries in a series of sutra-like sentences, The first one is:

"Consciousness-without-an-object is."

The culmination of the series is that Consciousness-without-an-object is SPACE. This is probably the most abstract and yet the most satisfying way of looking at the universe which I have come across anywhere. If one pursues this type of thinking and feeling and gets into the introspective spaces, the un verse originates on a ground, a substrate of Consciousness-Without-an-Object: the basic fabric of the universe beyond space, beyond time, beyond topology, beyond matter, beyond energy, is Consciousness. Consciousness without any form, without any reification, without any realization. 

  In a sense, Merrell-Wolff is saying that the Star Maker is Consciousness-Without-an-Object. He does not give hints to how objects are created out of Consciousness-Without-an-Object. He does not give hints to how an individual consciousness is formed out of Consciousness-Without-an-Object. The details of these processes were not his primary interest. His primary interest apparently was in arriving at a basic set of assumptions upon which all else can be built. In this sense he is like Einstein, bringing the relativity factor into the universe out of Newton's absolutes.

      If we are a manifestation of Consciousness-Without-an-Object, and if, as Wolff says, we can go back into Consciousness-Without-an-Object, then my rather pessimistic view that we are merely noisy animals is wrong. If there is some way that we can work our origins out of the basic ground of the universe, bypassin  our ideas that the evolutionary process generates us by generating our brains--if there is some contact, some connection between us and Consciousness-Without-an-Object and the Void, and if we can make that contact, that connection known to ourselves individually, as Wolff claims, then there is possible far more hope and optimism than I ever believed in the past. If what he says is true, we have potential far beyond that I have imagined we could possibly have. If what he says is true, we can be and realize our being as part of the Star Maker.

      It may be that Wolff, like all the rest of us, is doing an over-valuation of his own abstractions. It may be that he is generating, i.e., seif-metaprogramming, states of his own mind and those of others in which the ideals of the race are reified as thought objects, as programs, as realities, as states of consciousness. It may be that this is all we can do. If this is all we can do, maybe we had better do it and see if there is anything beyond this by doing it.

      If by getting into a state of High Indifference, of Nirvana, Samadhi, or Satori, then one can function as a teaching example to others and it may be that if a sufficiently large number of us share this particular set of metaprograms we may be able to survive our own alternative dichotomous spaces of righteous wrath. If righteous wrath must go as a non-surviving program for the human species, then it may be that High Indifference is a reasonable alternative.

      Setting up a hierarchy of states of consciousness with High Indifference at the top, Nirvana next, Satori next, Samadhi next, and Ananda at the bottom is an interesting game, especially when one becomes capable of moving through all these spaces and staying a sufficient time in each to know it.

      This may be a better game than killing our neighbors because they do not believe in our simulations of God. At least those who espouse these states claim that these states are above any other human aspiration; that once one has experienced them, he is almost unfit for wrath, for pride, for arrogance, for power over others, for group pressure exerted either upon oneself or upon others. One becomes fit only for teaching these states to those who are ready to learn them. The bodhisattva vow is no longer necessary for those who have had direct experience. One becomes the bodhisattva without the vow. One becomes Buddha without being Buddha.

      One becomes content with the minimum necessities for survival on the planetside trip; one cuts back on his use of unnecessary articles-machines, gadgets, and devices. He no longer needs motion pictures, television, dishwashers, or other luxuries. One no longer needs much of what most people value above all else. One no longer needs the excitement of war. One no longer needs to be a slave todestructive thoughts or deeds. One no longer needs to organize.

      Krishnamurti's story of the Devil is pertinent here. Laura Huxley furnished me with a copy of it. The Devil was walking down the street with a friend, and they saw a man pick something up, look at it carefully and put it in his pocket. The friend said to the Devil, "What's that?" The Devil said, "He has found a bit of the truth." The friend said, "Isn't that bad for your
business?" The Devil said, "No, I am going to arrange to have him organize it."

      So it behooves us not to organize either the methods or the states which Wolff describes so well. It is better not to try to devise groups, techniques, churches, places, or other forms of human organization to encourage, foster, or force upon others these states. If these states are going to do anything with humanity, they must"creep by contagion," as it were, from one individual to the next.

      God as Consciousness-Without-an-Object, if real, will be apperceived and introcepted by more and more of us as we turn toward the inner realities within each of us. If God as Consciousness-Without-an-Object inhabits each of us, we eventually will see this. We will become universally aware. We will realize consciousness as being everywhere and eternal. We will realize that Consciousness-Without-an-Object in each of us is prejudiced and biased becauseit has linked up with a human brain.

 REFERENCE

1. Merrell-Wolif, Franklin, Pathways Through to Space, and The Philosophy of
Consciousness- Without-an-Object, both New
York: Julian-Press, 1973.