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Programming & Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer: Theory & Experiments
by
In this pioneering study, renowned scientist Dr. John C. Lilly explodes our sense of the boundaries of the human brain, as he details his controversial experiments with exploring the mind's vast potential.
Starting from the position that man is essentially a biological computer, Lilly explains we are all born with some "programs"--such as eating, sleeping, and feeling pain
...morePaperback, 196 pages
Published
May 27th 1987
by Three Rivers Press
(first published 1968)
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The first third of this book is intended to screen out the people who shouldn't read the rest.
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I had a copy of this book as well as two others by Lilly that I greatly treasured. After moving house more times than I care to count, I confess to having lost those volumes somewhere along the way. A pity because Lilly's work has always been an inspiration to me. He was a controversial and scholarly researcher who was not afraid to undertake research on a particular issue simply because it made his colleagues uneasy. LSD's potentially useful mental health applications and the value of complete
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If you're looking for a mad scientist who turned his back on the scientific establishment to pursue the wonders of inner space and altered states of consciousness, you couldn't do better (at least in the 20th century) than John Lilly. If you're looking for a book that isn't just another series of head-trips but rather a how-to manual, this is a great one. Lilly embodied both the iconoclast and the scientific observer. Perhaps he came closer than any other to the development of a model of study t
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Reads like a COBOL program. If you liked "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge", maybe you'll like this.
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The subject is the exploration of human behaviours in solitude with the effect of LSD25 (a recreational drug ) and interpreting the results from a software/programming point of view.It took me a lot of time to just digest the facts, almost 40 hours! It helped me to understand an organizational view of our brain with software and hardware parts and a methodical instruction for self analysis. I read this book as a preface to J C LILLY's "the centre of the cyclone". Since that book is about his per
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This is an important, influential and historic text. A landmark in research on the scientific and therapeutic uses of LSD. That doesn't make it fun to read. I don't doubt it's significance but beyond its opening remarks on the nature of human consciousness I got very little from it. It's just too dense — or I am. I got much more from listening to Robert Anton Wilson wax lyrical about this book than I did from the book itself.
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Not the easiest book to read, but still great. "The Center of the Cyclone: An Autobiography of Inner Space" is a better place to start reading Lilly.
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Feb 28, 2007
Matthew Gilboy
marked it as to-read
VERY MUCH to-read

Aug 17, 2012
Dave
is currently reading it
Interesting so far. Mildly dry, but very clear. Not sure if I fully agree with all his hypotheses, but he certainly makes the point that that's exactly what they are "hypotheses"...
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Seminal systems approach to consciously altering mental patterns.
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