The Centre Of The Cyclone - John C Lilly

THE CENTRE OF THE CYCLONE - JOHN C LILLY

John C Lilly was an original psychonaut, an explorer of inner space and mind states hitherto never before explored with a scientific eye. He was the Captain James T Kirk of the neurophysiology generation boldly going where no man had gone before, and his book The Centre Of The Cyclone is almost his captain's log, star date 1972, coming with the sub-title An Autobiography Of Inner Space.

'In the province of the mind,' Lilly writes 'there are no limits', and in a way this is irrefutable. It's a given. It should be a common sense. Sartori is the state that mankind needs to attain and any sub-state on the way to that can only be of benefit, he goes on to say. Once mankind is on this path then problems such as pollution, slaughter of other species, overproduction, famine, disease and war will be solved.

Sartori is what they called it in India, of course, but in the West the hippies called it 'far out'. So, with the aid of lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate (otherwise known as 'pure Sandoz') and sensory deprivation flotation tanks - and then the two combined - Lilly sets off to explore the outer limits of his brain, his mind, his consciousness and what a non-scientifically trained person might call his soul.

Lilly's descriptions of his first trips reads like a combination of every LSD trip ever captured on paper and in film; like Roger Corman's film The Trip colliding with Fantastic Voyage starring Raquel Welch where a mini-sub containing a crew of scientists is miniaturised and injected into a human body where blood cells then hurtle past them as they travel along capillary systems. It's a kaleidoscopic, multi-dimensional, psychedelic helter skelter that Lilly experiences throwing up countless questions regarding self, ethics, meaning and understanding.

'In the awe, reverence, and wonder of exploring the many spaces present inside myself and in the universe,' Lilly writes 'I found that I was developing a very powerful ethic. This ethic was beginning to regulate my life, my attitude, my relations with others, and my professional career'. That ethic being 'Do unto others and not do unto others what you would have the others do unto you and not do unto you. The others are to include other species, other entities, other beings in this universe'.

This same ethic leads to him never conducting an experiment on another living entity unless he was willing or actually had conducted that same experiment upon himself, whether that be inserting electrodes into his brain or the ingestion of psychotropic drugs.

Lilly's exploration of human consciousness also leads him to consider whether dolphins, porpoises and whales - the majority of which have similar brains to humans and with an equivalent level of neuronal complexity - might also possess similar consciousness and subsequently a similar sense of self? Might they even possess language and logic capacities and if so, the capacity also for thought?

As with any imbiber of LSD, the use of the drug doesn't actually provide Lilly with any concrete answers to his questions but instead serves to raise further ones. It does, however, serve to cast doubt upon the idea that the consensus reality we ordinarily perceive is the only reality and that there might also be other alternative realities of which we are typically oblivious to. 

The use of the flotation tank proves to Lilly that the function of the brain isn't dependent upon outside stimuli and in fact the complete opposite. That without any external stimulation the brain will continue to function in ways hardly imaginable, somersaulting through multi-universes impossible to experience whilst 'captured' by everyday senses.

Come 1969, Lilly ups sticks from his job at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Centre and heads off to Big Sur, California to hang out with the hippies whereupon he experiences various encounter groups and sometimes accompanying group nudity. It's what the hippies there did, by all accounts. In one such session describing how sixty people together in a small room would all take their clothes off and then walk around and look at and touch one another 'in order to realise a greater human freedom'. And why not?

He also partakes in Gestalt therapy, Rolfing, meets Baba Ram Dass, and experiences himself as a microbe on a mud ball rotating around a Type-G star two-thirds of the way from galactic centre to the indefinite edge in a small galaxy in a universe of galaxies whilst simultaneously realising his true self and Atman, seeing his soul, joining Universal Mind, becoming one with God, tuning in on the Infinite and transforming from clay to the Divine. 

It's easy to mock John C Lilly and his book The Centre Of The Cyclone is even easier to deride but it should be remembered that his work promoted worldwide interest in dolphins and whales as intelligent life-forms and was fundamental to the establishment of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the first legislation to mandate an ecosystem-based approach to wildlife management. And for that in itself I would say, we should be very grateful to him and award him our utmost respect. John C Lilly was born in 1915 and passed away in September 2001.

John Serpico