Mysterious Float Tanks

Lilly—after the entitities.

Maybe the single wildest tale I heard during my extended break from blogging was this bit from Mysterious Universe, a terrific website and podcast that interviewed me for Fringe-ology.

In this podcast, they addressed, among other things, the story of John C. Lilly a neuroscientist whose work with isolation tanks and hallucinogens convinced him we could very well be manifestations of some other, non-physical entity. For those who don't know, a "float tank" is also known as a "sensory deprivation" tank. Users float inside a specially constructed chamber, which holds a bath of Epsom salts and completely blocks out all sound and light.

Upon his death of heart failure in 2001, Lilly was often portrayed as an eccentric old scientist.

I especially enjoy this old chestnut from the San Francisco Weekly:

"'In the province of the mind, there are no limits,'" Lilly uttered in one taped 1993 interview. "'However, in the province of the body, there are many things that one should not transcend.'" And then, as if he didn't want to be bothered with further explanations, he leaned back in his chair and said, "'Sayonara.'"

Good stuff, right?

The question, however, is whether Lilly was merely an eccentric or if he actually had something to teach us. Float tanks remain largely marginalized here in the U.S. but an annual "float summit" promotes their use for a variety of stress-related ailments.

I highly recommend the Mysterious Universe podcast. The hosts are wildly entertaining. And they get into a typically funny and insightful discussion of the most controversial claim Lilly ever made: That we are vehicles through which some non-physical or purely conscious entity learns. Here is an excerpt with a link to the full Mysterious monty at bottom:

*

One day in 1958 John entered the tank room, put on the mask, and immersed himself in the water for the last time at the National Institutes of Health. He had finally realized that within the government it was impossible to do the research that he wished to do. Inevitably, subtly, those in charge of research for the National Institute of Mental Health were asking to control the isolation-tank work. And those in charge of brain research in the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness were beginning to exert controls on the work on the brain. In this session in the tank, he planned to review what he had learned over the last five years in regard to research on the brain and the mind and the support of this research.

John went through his now more-or-less standard procedure of relaxing every muscle in his body while floating in the water. He then relaxed his mind and let go of the residues of the day's activities. Quite suddenly he was in a new space, a new domain.

He left his human body behind. He left his human mind behind. He became a point of consciousness, of awareness, in an empty, infinite space filled with light.

Slowly two presences, two Beings, began to approach him from a distance. There was a three-way exchange of direct thought, of direct meaning, of direct feeling with no words.

*

Enjoy the rest at Mysterious Universe

.