* ASK THE MASTER *
What questions would you ask John Lilly if you could?
Here are some...
Well it all depends on what level you want me to talk about...we can learn about how to erect our penises voluntarily, and we can learn what it is to talk to an alien species, non-terrestrial, that lives in the ocean. We can follow their very kindly and compassionate way of life and their non-pollution of the planet and their life all over what we call the Cetacean Nation, which is the oceans that cover seventy-one percent of the planet. We want a representative to go to the United Nations, and Maui, being in the middle of the Pacific, and the Pacific being fifty percent of the planet, we want to call that the Secretariat of the Cetacean Nation.Can you explain what you have tried to do with dolphins?
First thing we do is examine their brains. We sacrificed three dolphins and cut their brains into three major dimensions and eleven thousand sections. Those were examined very carefully by three different neuro-anatomists and was found that their brain structure, microscopically, is the same as ours and, microscopically, they were forty percent larger than ours. Most of their brain is given over to three dimensional acoustic imaging and that's about ten times the size of ours and the visual part is about one tenth the size of ours.Do you think that we can say they are more intelligent than us?
Yes, but in a very different way than us. After all, we don't live under water...they do.What is your definition of intelligence?
Well, I don't think that term has any meaning at all. You can't even describe intelligence behaviorally. You know gorillas can do signing of the American sign language, and that's how we know they are more intelligent than monkeys. I examined the brains of monkeys versus that of dolphins. We found that the monkey will press a lever to get positive reinforcement in his brain, and he would do it with any part of his body, but he wouldn't do it with his voice. If you made sounds he wouldn't connect it. The dolphin immediately connected the sounds with the positive reinforcement. Humans do the same thing of course. Language as we know it, depends on that.Can you tell us about your projects to teach English to dolphins?
That was done in two places; in Coconut grove in Florida and in the Virgin Islands. Margaret Howe was teaching "Peter the dolphin" whole sentences and within six weeks he learned them and could reproduce them. In Coconut Grove, Stewart McVay said nonsense syllables; combinations of consonant/vowels, consonant/vowels, consonant/vowels in lists of one hundred or more in groups up to ten. Elvar would reproduce those. If Scott made a mistake and said for example, "hees-oos-rrs,....ahh....correction" and then he gave ten more, then Elvar would only give the ten after the word "correction." One day a man from Bell Labs was working with phonetically balanced words and he dropped the list. Elvar sounded, "let's go, come on let's go!!."If you succeed to speak to the dolphins, what will you ask them?
I would ask them "How long an oral tradition do you have?" History can be produced vocally, with no change at all, if the brain is large enough. So I would ask them about the history of the planet and their relations with us and their relations with whales. The sperm whale has the largest brain on the planet...six times the size of ours, and they communicate in very short pulses. So I would like to talk to a sperm whale.Have you ever swam with whales?
No, just dolphins. One time, I went out to sea in the Virgin Islands and took some LSD. We went alongside a female whale with a calf. She turned up and looked at me with her one eye and zapped me for twenty minutes. There was so much information that I can't possibly remember. I learned earlier that what you do is store it, and if it's pertinent then you will remember it.Communication is a strange word. What does communication mean to you?
It means that one mind is influencing another mind and then that mind influences the first mind and there is an exchange going on very fast, much faster than writing or anything else. But there is a faster way of communicating and that's with exchanging visual images. There was a dolphin trainer in New Zealand who use to stand beside the tank and visualize what he wanted the dolphin to do and the dolphin would do it. He had a good relationship with them. So you have to be careful what you are thinking around dolphins.So you believe in telepathy?
I wouldn't call it that, it's exchanges of information without known physical means.Do you believe in the future of this planet? Humans have destroyed alot so how do you think human beings will save themselves? Are you a pessimist or an optimist for the future of human beings?
I am not a prophet. I am an optimist but not a prophet.What do you think is the message of the dolphins to the humans?
At times I took Ketamine in an isolation tank beside dolphins and they would start this internal communication with me. First it would be one dolphin and then it was the group mind of the dolphins and then it was the group mind of the whales. I said, "HEY, I can satisfy one dolphin, but I couldn't possibly do that!" So we have on the planet, the group mind of the humans, the group mind of the dolphins and the group mind of the whales and hoping all three of those will get together. As Olaf Stapleton said in The Starmaker, "eventually you will get a consciousness of the whole planet and then of the stars and finally the universe. When you get the consciousness of the universe then and then only will they face the Starmaker and then the Starmaker will face the universal mind and wonder whether it should start over and allow it to grow or abolish it completely."You have been to all the I.C.E.R.C. conferences for the last nine years. What is I.C.E.R.C.?
Ha, you tell me! Nobody seems to know. I think it's just a large group of people that are interested in dolphins and whales and communicating with them who gets together once a year in Japan or Australia.What do you think is the problem of human beings? Why is it not working?
When I first took LSD in the isolation tank in the U.S. Virgin Islands, I was precipitated out way beyond human dimensions and met Super Human Beings. It was so marvelous being expanded that way that I wanted to stay there. They said no, you must go back and learn what it is to be a human being, so that's what I'm doing.When you took LSD in the isolation tank, what did you discover?
Well, ABC TV photographed me the year before I took LSD and I was stiff, precise and scientific. I looked at those motion pictures later and I thought, "that can't be me!." I have changed so much from my experience in the isolation tank with LSD that I am no longer the same person. I was too stiff too limited and well, there it is.So you think LSD is good for human beings?
Some of them. The more terrified they are when they take it, the more out-there they go. Fear is good rocket fuel for LSD trips.We spoke of mushrooms previously and you said that you don't like them. Why? You think they are really something different? They are another energy?
I don't know, I haven't taken enough of them to know. I overdosed on psyllicibin at one point, I didn't like it.How do you think we can save this planet?
From what?From humans...
Ha ha! I don't think it has to be saved from humans, I think humans have to save themselves. The planet doesn't recognize that. Gaia, the Mother Earth, is so much larger than we are. Gaia is taking care of dolphins and whales and giant squid and humans and all that. So I think it is rather arrogant of us to think that we can do very much to save the planet, mother Earth saves herself.
