Thoughts on Lilly
Sometime in the sixties, the term “far out” acquired a positive connotation. It still meant something or someone removed from the mainstream, but in those exploratory, innovative times that had come to be an accolade rather than an insult. In the context, then, I regarded Dr. John Lilly as the most “far out” person on the planet. Seeming to operate with absolute fearlessness, he allowed his massive intellect and consummate erudition to carry him from one frontier, one edge after another, regardless of the psychological and even physical risks involved. And like the god Hermes, who must have been his personal deity, he brought things back from out beyond the boundaries, gave them back to us, and wryly observed the way they changed our lives. If the changes were controversial, so much the better. Every bit as much as he loved the truth, and was willing to go to any lengths to pursue it, he also loved the thrill of dropping those truths like cherry bombs into the tepid punchbowl of polite science. I’d like to think that somewhere, in another dimension perhaps, this great man is astride a dolphin, leaping over paradigm and convention, riding headlong and joyfully into some ultimate Ultimate where he, more than any man I’ve ever known, will feel completely at home.