John C.Lilly died twenty years ago on this day. American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher, writer and inventor, he was a member of a generation of counterculture scientists and thinkers that included Ram Dass, Werner Erhard, and Timothy Leary, all frequent visitors to the Lilly home. His best-known book, and his first mainstream work, setting the tone for his dual career as scientist and explorer of human consciousness is The Center of The Cyclone(1972). It tells the story of how he left mainstream science to become an explorer of the “far out places” of the human mind. Lilly is (perhaps best remembered for his pioneering work in interspecies (human-dolphin) communication. And the film Altered States is in part based on his sensory deprivation research conducted in isolation tanks. Photo: John C Lilly, Santa Monica, CA April 1991, by Allen Ginsberg. #johnclilly #psychonaut #insterspeciescommunication #EarthCoincidenceControlOffice #lsd #ketamine #thecenterofthecyclone (at Santa Monica, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUdeh7Br-Uc/?utm_medium=tumblr
