"The scientific observer/operator exists within two sets of realities, those of the human consensus reality, the external reality (e.r.), and the internal reality (i.r.). The e.r. and the i.r. exist simultaneously. The observer/operator exists in the i.r. sometimes interlocked with the e.r. and sometimes in isolation, not so interlocked. At high levels of concentration of K in the blood, the observer/operator is cut off from his interlock with the e.r., including the human consensus reality. The only physically safe and socially safe location to investigate this cutoff is floating in the isolation tank in a controlled environment, isolated from the necessity of interactions and transactions within the human consensus reality. One of the dangers in this exploration is allowing this cutoff of interlock to occur outside the isolation facility. If in his exploration the observer/operator loses his perspective, he will inevitably be testing the limits of acceptance by the current human consensus reality, as an individual in the grips of a belief system counter to the current accepted belief systems."
During the first part of this year, John did experiments with single does of K and arrived at a quantitative relation between the dose given and the resulting states of being induced in himself. Later he took multiple doses more frequently and found new effects not accountable simply by the induced phenomena of single doses at widely spaced intervals.
At the beginning of the year he did not realize the long-term effects of repeated doses. During that year he found that he entered into the overvaluation domain induced by repetitive doses of K. Toni called this "being seduced by K."
The first few months were taken up with the determination of the effects of single doses separated by several days. John worked in collaboration with Craig and several other young researchers. No one yet knew of the long-term repeated-use trap.
After the first dozen or so experiments designed to find the various thresholds for phenomena, John began to think in the following terms: "The time course of the effects of K after the time t0, the time of the injection into the muscles: There is a very rapid movement through various phenomena for the first few minutes. The effects seem to be related to the changes in concentration of K within the bloodstream. If we think in terms of a time-concentration-in-the-blood curve (Figure 1K), we may be able to account for the results and the changes in the observer/operator and his belief system during the half our to forty-five minutes of each experiment.
"After the time of the injection, there is a period of about three minutes when no effects are felt. Rather abruptly, the effects begin and move rapidly through a series of phenomena too fast to be grasped. After this rapid rise of effects, there is a stabilized plateau where one experiences phenomena which are dependent on how much K one has injected. This phase lasts from ten to thirty minutes. By controlling the initial dose one can control the period of time over which changes in the self and in the i.r. are experienced. One can vary the phenomena experienced on this plateau by the amount of K injected.
"As the amount of K in the blood decreases because of its destruction by the body, one can then see and analyze the phenomena that occur over a period of twenty to forty minutes.
"There are apparently no aftereffects that are detectable by the inside observer after the falling phase of K concentration in the blood." (Later John was to find that there was a small residual effect that lasted several hours. The falling curve did not go completely to zero. The overvaluation trap would be found much later to be caused by this small residual effect unnoticed in the first set of experiments.)
John did a series of experiments relating to the amount injected to the phenomena experience on the plateau.
He tried 10 milligrams at one injection. The effects were almost undetectable. There was a slight change in body sensation but no detectable change in himself.
He then tried 20 milligrams and found an enhanced body energy and tingling in the skin. There was no change in the visual field or in his perception of himself.
He tried 30 milligrams. After the initial rise of sensation, he began to sense changes in his perception (on the plateau). If he closed his eyes he could induce visual images: at first flat, two-dimensional, uncolored; and, a few minutes later, three-dimensional, colored, and moving. In this phase he became enthusiastic about the images, but not as enthusiastic as he had been under psychedelic agents.
He decided to test the difference between the various doses and the effects inside versus outside the tank. He started the tank work with a dose of 30 milligrams.
Freed from the effects of gravity, light, and sound in the tank, he was able to study the visual images in a more relaxed state. In the tank he saw continuous motion-picture-like sequences, highly colored, three dimensional, and consisting of, at first, inanimate scenes which later became populated with various strange and unusual creatures as well as human beings. He found that he could change the content of these internal movies by the self-metaprogramming methods he had learned in the tank and, in 1964, had used in the tank under LSD.
At this point he realized that if he stayed in the external reality outside the tank, these images became interlocked with that reality . They were modulated and modified by what was happening in the external world, whereas they were not in the tank because the e.r. was missing. There was some spontaneous source of these images in the tank as well as the modifications introduced by him as the observer/operator in the system. Early in the series he conceived of these spontaneous sources, i.e., something within his own brain was generating the images in addition to his intentions for those images. At the beginning of this series of experiments, he assumed the existence of a contained mind, with the observer contained within that mind within the brain. Later he was to believe otherwise--that the source of the images was coming from somewhere else, not his own brain, by means which he did not yet understand.
He then went on and experimented with higher doses. He called the 30-milligram-dose threshold for visual projections the internal reality threshold, best seen in the isolation tank. The next amount injected was 75 milligrams. In the tank he found the plateau involved whole sets of phenomena which he had not seen at the lower doses.
For the first time he began to sense changes in himself other than the changes in perception of visual images. His relationship to his physical body became weakened and attenuated. He found that he began to participate in the scenes which were previously merely visual images, as if out there, outside of his body. His observer/operator was becoming disconnected from the physical body. Information from his bodily processes was becoming so weakened that there were times when he was not aware of his body at all. On this plateau he began to experience interaction with the strange presences, strange beings, and began to communicate with them.
"I have left my body floating in a tank on the planet Earth. This is a very strange and alien environment. It must be extraterrestrial, I have not been here before. I must be on some other planet in some civilization other than the one in which I was evolved. I am in a peculiar state of high indifference. I am not involved in either fear or love. I am a highly neutral being, watching and waiting.
"This is very strange. This planet is similar to Earth but the colors are different. There is vegetation but it's a peculiar purple color. There is a sun but it has a violet hue to it, not the familiar orange of the Earth's sun. I am in a beautiful meadow with distant, extremely high mountains. Across the meadow I see creatures approaching. They stand on their hind legs as if human. They are a brilliant white and seem to be emitting light. Two of them come near. I cannot make out their features. They are too brilliant for my present vision. They seem to be transmitting thoughts and ideas directly to me. There is no sound. Automatically, what they think is translated into words that I can understand."
First Being "We welcome you once again in a form which you have created. Your choice to come here we applaud."
Second Being: "You have come alone. Why are you alone?"
I answer: "I do not know. There seems to be something strange about this; the others are reluctant to join me here."
First Being: "What is it that you want from us?"
I say: "I want to know if you are real or merely a product of my own wishes."
Second Being: "We are what you wish us to be, it is true. You construct our form and the place in which we meet. These constructions are the result of your present limitations. As to our substance, whether 'real' in the accepted sense upon your planet or 'illusion' in the accepted sense on your planet, is for you to find out. You have written a book on human simulations of reality and of God. Your problem is whether or not you are traveling in one of your own simulations or whether you have contacted real Beings existing in other dimensions."
The scene begins to fade. John moves out of his extraterrestrial reality (e.t.r.), resumes his consciousness of his body, and see the old familiar movies of Earthside scenes and his own memories. Slowly these projected images fade and John is floating in the tank, remembering them in full detail. He climbs out of the tank and dictates the experience into a tape recorder.
Thus did he find another threshold under the influence of K. He began to call this the extraterrestrial reality threshold on which his observer/operator became involved as a participant. The critical value of K at a single dose for exploring this realm was 75 milligrams.
The next threshold was found at 150 milligrams of K. In order to see this threshold clearly, he found that he also had to be in the isolation tank free of the interlock with the external world.
"I rapidly pass the i.r. threshold and the e.t.r. threshold, and suddenly 'I' as an individual disappears.
"We are creating all that which happens everywhere. We have become bored with the void. We know we have been eternally, are eternally, and will be eternally. We have created several universes, have dissolved them, and have created new ones. Each universe we have created has become more complex, more amusing to us. Our control of the current universe is on the upswing; it is becoming more complex as we regulate its regulation of itself. As we experience each universe, our awareness of ourselves increases. Each universe is a teaching machine for our awareness. To create a universe we first create light. We contain the light within the universe, within the space that we create to contain the light. We curve the space to contain the light.
"In the early universes we watched the light contained traveling through its empty spaces, bouncing off the periphery in the curvature of the space. We played with the size of those universes, expanding and contracting them, and watched the light. Large universes finally bored us, the light merely traveled around and around.
"One universe what we created, we decreased in size until the light was chasing its own tail. We found a new phenomenon, a new effect. When we decreased the universe sufficiently, the light, in chasing its own tail at very small sizes, became stabilized. The universe became a single particle of incredibly small dimensions. The light, in chasing its own tail, had generated this particle which had mass, inertia.
"In the universe after that one, we created many small particles encapsulating light chasing its own tail in the small dimensions. We found that some of these particles attracted one another, forming larger assemblages. We played with these assemblages. We found that light within these particles, rotating in certain directions, caused the attraction of other particles in which light was rotating in the opposite sense.
"In a later universe we allowed the creation of huge numbers of these encapsulated light particles. We controlled their creation at one point and packed that small region with more and more particles. We found that there was a critical point at which they exploded outward.
"In a later universe we re-created the exploding point, and as the particles spread outward we arranged tor them to condense on new centers. These new centers continued outward until we closed that universe and its space.
"In a later universe we began to reassemble particles in various parts of that universe, set up creative centers within the space of that universe. We set up points at which new particles were created and other points at which they were destroyed, reconverted into light.
"In a still later universe we allowed certain areas to become imbued with portions of our consciousness. We watched their evolution and found that each of these areas as it evolved became conscious of itself.
"In the current universe we have many assemblages of particles which have self-awareness. Some of them are huge, some of them are very small, a few have begun to question their own origins; a very, very few are becoming conscious of us. We are beginning games with these very, very few, manipulating their awareness. Most of these seem to be developing a sense of humor similar to ours. This universe is more amusing than the past ones."
John's consciousness and self-awareness condensed back into a single individual. He began to experience himself as a self, separate. He came back through the e.t.r., into the i.r., and finally into his body in the e.r., which was the tank. He labeled the domain of losing self and becoming "We" the Network of Creation (N).
He then tried the 300-milligram threshold dose. He found that this plateau was beyond anything he could describe. It was as if he had entered a void, had become the void beyond any human specification. In returning from the void, he went through the creative network, the extraterrestrial reality, the internal reality, back into his body in the tank. He realized that, as a human being, he would be unable to use these larger-dose regions. He would be unable to describe what happened, so he labeled this high-dose threshold U, the Unknown. At this point he abandoned study of the higher doses leading to the Unknown (U).
He now began to see the dimension of the exploration and the parameters he had to explore. He divided the experiments into those to be done in the tank and those to be done in the human consensus reality, with single or other individuals and with unprotected situations, not in his home. New dangers were to appear, one of which would terminate this exploration and render him incapacitated in a bed at home for a period of twelve weeks. (pp. 167-175)
From John C. Lilly's "The Scientist: A Novel Autobiography"
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