One of his most interesting books published was "
The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography", in which he describes a lot from his early
experiments mapping the
brains of
monkeys and communication among
dolphins, and between dolphins and humans, to his late experiments with
LSD,
Ketamine and
floatation tanks, that inspired the movie "
Altered States".
"
Day of the Dolphin" was another movie based on his
researches. His researches on
interspecies communications claim to have taught dolphins to talk.
Lilly was not only a
pioneer in areas such as
electronics,
biophysics,
neurophysiology,
computer theory and
neuroanatomy, but also a pioneer in
realms of
consciousness, pushing the
boundaries to unmapped regions on the
mind. One of his famous self-inflicted "experiments" consisted on
injecting himself at every waking hour with ~40mg of
Ketamine, for a period of 3 months. We're talking about hourly
intramuscular injections for a period of 90 days... This brought him to a middle ground state, where he could either perform his human tasks in this world, or
slip into the
Ketamine quantum consciousness at will.
This deep dive, which as far as I know didn't stop after his 90 days experiment was over (although one would assume it to have been cut down significantly in
frequency), brought him to some
kooky realizations and
theories such as
ECCO (or
Earth Coincidence Control Office; roughly a 'race' of
disembodied alien entities that controls the
synchronicities and
coincidences in human life and the planet).
At one occasion, after a bicycle accident (he was riding it on an extremely high dose of
PCP...), he entered a
coma-like state, where he claims to have been taken by
ECCO on a
interstellar tour, watching stars explode,
supernovas at
birth, etc. On another occasion, after a high dose of
Ketamine, he desperately noticed that the '
aliens' had removed his
penis, in a
cosmic joke, and had to be reassured everything was fine by his wife.
All in all, the guy is intelligent, groundbreaking, a
kook,
crazy (under certain standards), and extremely
entertaining.