John C. Lilly - Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human.pdf - John C. Lilly_Book Collection - roksana_84

JOHN C. LILLY, M. D.

Programming and Metaprogramming in THE HUMAN BIOCOMPUTER

All human beings, all persons who reach adulthood in the world today are programmed biocomputers. None of us can

escape our own nature as programmable entities. Literally, each of us may be our programs, nothing more, nothing less.

Despite the great varieties of programs available, most of us have a limited set of programs. Some of these are built in.

In the simpler forms of life the programs were mostly built in from genetic codes to fully formed adultly reproducing

organisms. The patterns of function, of actionreaction were determined by necessities of survival, of adaptation to slow

environmental changes and of passing on the code to descendants.

Eventually the cerebral cortex appeared as an expanding new highlevel computer controlling the structurally lower

levels of the nervous system, the lower builtin programs. For the first time learning and its faster adaptation to a rapidly

changing environment began to appear. Further, as this new cortex expanded over several millions of years, a critical

size cortex was reached. At this level of structure, a new capability emerged: learning to learn.

-John C. Lilly. M.D.

Also by John C. Lilly, M.D.

THE MIND OF THE DOLPHIN

MAN AND THE DOLPHIN

THE CENTER OF THE CYCLONE

JOHN C. LILLY M . D. is a graduate of the California I Institute of Technology and received his Doctorate in Medicine

from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942. He has worked extensively in various research fields of science, including

biophysics, neurophysiology, electronics, and neuroanatomy. Dr. Lilly has done many years of study and research on

solitude, isolation, and confinement and is a qualified psychoanalyst. He spent twelve years working on research on

dolphinhuman relationships including communications and two years at Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California, as a group

leader, resident, and associate in residence. Recently he spent eight months in Arica, Chile, investigating and

participating in the Arica Training Group of Oscar Ichazo, the Master of a modern esoteric school in the mystical

tradition.

PROGRAMMING AND

METAPROGAMMING

IN THE HUMAN

BIOCOMPUTER

THEORY AND EXPERIMENTS

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JOHN C . LILLY, M.D.

THE JULIAN PRESS, INC., PUBLISHERS

New York

A11 rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 7379777

Reissued in revised format, 1972, by

The Julian Press, Inc., Publishers

150 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10011

Based on a series of Seminars given at the Department of Psychiatry, Schools of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University,

University of California at Los Angeles, University of Minnesota; at the Medical Seminar, Edgewood Arsenal; and at

the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, in 1966.

Manufactured in the United States of America Design & Composition by Freda Browne, New York

Foreword to Second Edition

This work has a curious history. It was written as a final summary report to a government agency (National Institute of

Mental Health) concerning five years of my life work. (The agency paid my salary for the five years.)

It was conceived from a space rarer these days than it was then: the laws suspending scientific interest, research,

involvement and decisions about dlysergic acid diethyl amide tartate were passed just as this particular work was

completed; the researchers were inadequately consulted (put down, in fact). The legislators composed laws in an

atmosphere of desperation. The national negative program on LSD was launched; LSD was the big scare, on a par with

War, Pestilence, and Famine as the destroyer of young brains, minds and fetuses.

In this atmosphere (19661967) Programming and Metaprogramming in The Human Biocomputer was written. The

work and its notes are dated from 1964 to 1966. The conception was formed in 1949, when I was first exposed to

computer design ideas by Britton Chance. I coupled these ideas back to my own software through the atmosphere of my

neurophysiological research on cerebral cortex. It was more fully elaborated in the tank isolation solitude and

confinement work at NIMH from 1953 to 1958, run in parallel with the neurophysiological research on the rewarding

and punishing systems in the brain. The dolphin research was similarly born in the tank, with brain electrode results as

parents in the further conceptions.

While I was writing this work, l was a bit too fearful to express candidly in writing the direct experience, uninterpreted. I

felt that a group of thirty persons' salaries, a large research budget, a whole Institute's life depended on me and what I

wrote. If I wrote the data up straight, I would have rocked the boats of several lives (colleagues and family) beyond my

own stabilizer effectiveness threshold, I hypothesized.

Despite my precautionary attitude, the circulation in 1967 of this work contributed to the withdrawal of research funds

in 1968 from the research program on dolphins by one government agency. I heard several negative stories regarding

my brain and mind, altered by LSD. At this point I closed the Institute and went to the Maryland Psychiatric Research

Center to resume LSD research under government auspices. I introduced the ideas in work to the MPRC researchers and

l left for the Esalen Institute in 1969.

At Esalen my involvement in direct human guttogut communication and lack of involvement in administrative

responsibility brought my courage to the sticking place. Meanwhile, Stewart Brand of the Whole Earth Truck Catalog

(Menlo Park, Calif.) reviewed the work in the Whole Earth Catalog from a mimeographed copy I had given W. W.

Harmon of Stanford for his Sufic purposes. Stewart wrote me asking for copies to sell. l had 300 printed photooffset

from the typed copy. He sold them in a few weeks and asked permission to reprint on newsprint an enlarged version at a

lower price. Skeptical about salability, I agreed. Book People, Berkeley, arranged the reprinting. Several thousand

copies were sold.

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I had written the report in such a way that its basic messages were hidden behind a heavy long introduction designed to

stop the usual reader. Apparently once word got out, this device no longer stalled the interested readers. Somehow the

basic messages were important enough to enough readers so that the work acquired an unexpected viability. Thus it

seems appropriate to reprint it in full.

On several different occasions, I have been asked to rewrite this work. One such start at rewrite ended up as another

book. (The Center of the Cyclone, The Julian Press, Inc., New York, 1972.) Another start is evolving into my book

number five (Simulations of God: A Science of Belief). It seems as if this older work is a seminating source for other

works and solidly resists revision. To me it is a thing separate from me, a record from a past space, a doorway into new

spaces through which I passed and cannot return.

J. C. L.

February 7, 1972

Los Angeles, California

n Preface to Second Edition

All human beings, all persons who reach adulthood in the world today are programmed biocomputers. No one of us can

escape our own nature as programmable entities. Literally, each of us may be our programs, nothing more, nothing less.

Despite the great varieties of programs available, most of us have a limited set of programs. Some of these are builtin.

The structure of our nervous system reflects its origins in simpler forms of organisms from sessile protozoans, sponges,

corals through sea worms, reptiles and protomammals to primates to apes to early anthropoids to humanoids to man. In

the simpler basic forms, the programs were mostly builtin: from genetic codes to fullyformed organisms adultly

reproducing, the patterns of function of actionreaction were determined by necessities of survival, of adaptation to slow

environmental changes, of passing on the code to descendants.

As the size and complexity of the nervous system and its bodily carrier increased, new levels of programmability

appeared, not tied to immediate survival and eventual reproduction. The builtin programs survived as a basic underlying

context for the new levels, excitable and inhibitable, by the overlying control systems. Eventually, the cerebral cortex

appeared as an expand-

*Quoted in entirety from John C. Lilly, Simulations of God: A Science of

Belief, in preparation, 1972.ing new highlevel computer controlling the structurally lower levels of the nervous system,

the lower builtin programs. For the first time learning and its faster adaptation to a rapidly changing environment began

to appear. Further, as this new cortex expanded over several millions of years, a critical size of cortex was reached. At

this new level of structure, a new capability emerged: learning to learn.

When one learns to learn, one is making models, using symbols, analogizing, making metaphors, in short, inventing and

using language, mathematics, art, politics, business, etc. At the critical brain (cortex) size, languages and its

consequences appear.

To avoid the necessity of repeating learning to learn, symbols, metaphors, models each time, I symbolize the underlying

idea in these operations as metaprogramming. Metaprogramming appears at a critical cortical size-the cerebral

computer must have a large enough number of interconnected circuits of sufficient quality for the operations of

metaprogramming to exist in that biocomputer.

Essentially, metaprogramming is an operation in which a central control system controls hundreds of thousands of

programs operating in parallel simultaneously. This operation in 1972 is not yet done in manmade

computers-metaprogramming is done outside the big solidstate computers by the human programmers, or more

properly, the human metaprogrammers. All choices and assignments of what the solidstate computers do, how they

operate, what goes into them are still human biocomputer choices. Eventually, we may construct a metaprogramming

computer, and turn these choices over to it.

When I said we may be our programs, nothing more, nothing less, I meant the substrate, the basic substratum under all

else, of our metaprograms is our programs. All we are as humans is what is builtin and what has been acquired, and

what we make of both of these. So we are one more result of the program substrate-the selfmetaprogrammer.

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As out of several hundreds of thousands of the substrate programs comes an adaptable changing set of thousands of

metaprograms, so out of the metaprograms as substrate comes something else-the controller, the steersman, the

programmer in the biocomputer, the selfmetaprogrammer. In a wellorganized biocomputer, there is at least one such

critical control metaprogram labeled I for acting on other metaprograms and labeled me when acted upon by other

metaprograms. I say at least one advisedly. Most of us have several controllers, selves, selfmetaprograms which divide

control among them, either in time parallel or in time series in sequences of control. As I will give in detail later, one

path for selfdevelopment is to centralize control of one's biocomputer in one selfmetaprogrammer, making the others

into conscious executives subordinate to the single administrator, the single superconscient selfmetaprogrammer. With

appropriate methods, this centralizing of control, the elementary unification operation, is a realizable state for many, if

not all biocomputers.

Beyond and above in the control hierarchy, the position of this single administrative selfmetaprogrammer and his staff,

there may be other controls and controllers, which, for convenience, I call supraself metaprograms. These are many or

one depending on current states of consciousness in the single selfmetaprogrammer. These may be personified as if

entities, treated as if a network for information transfer, or realized as if self traveling in the Universe to strange lands or

dimensions or spaces. If one does a further unification operation on these supraself metaprograms, one may arrive at a

concept labeled God, the Creator, the Starmaker, or whatever. At times we are tempted to pull together apparently

independent supraself sources as if one. I am not sure that we are quite ready to do this supraself unification operation

and have the result correspond fully to an objective reality.

Certain states of consciousness result from and cause operation of this apparent unification phenomenon. We are still

general purpose computers who can program any conceivable model of the universe inside our own structure, reduce the

single selfmetaprogrammer to a micro size, and program him to travel through his own model as if real (level 6, Satori

+6: Lilly, 1972). This property is useful when one steps outside it and sees it for what it is-an immensely satisfying

realization of the programmatic power of one's own biocomputer. To overvalue or to negate such experiences is not a

necessary operation. To realize that one has this property is an important addition to one's selfmetaprogrammatic list of

probables.

Once one has control over modelling the universe inside one's self, and is able to vary the parameters satisfactorily,

one's self may reflect this ability by changing appropriately to match the new property.

The quality of one's model of the universe is measured by how well it matches the real universe. There is no guarantee

that one's current model does match the reality, no matter how certain one feels about the high quality of the match.

Feelings of awe, reverence, sacredness and certainty are also adaptable metaprograms, attachable to any model, not just

the best fitting one.

Modern science knows this: we know that merely because a culture generated a cosmology of a certain kind and

worshipped with it, was no guarantee of goodness of fit with the real universe. Insofar as they are testable, we now

proceed to test (rather than to worship) models of the universe. Feelings such as awe and reverence are recognized as

biocomputer energy sourcesxii

rather than as determinants of truth, i.e., of the goodness of fit of models vs. realities. A pervasive feeling of certainty is

recognized as a property of a state of consciousness, a special space, which may be indicative or suggestive but is no

longer considered as a final judgement of a true fitting. Even as one can travel inside one's models inside one's head, so

can one travel outside or be the outside of one's model of the universe, still inside one's head (see Lilly 1972 level or

state +3, Satori +3). In this metaprogram it is as if one joins the creators, unites with God, etc. Here one can so attenuate

the self that it may disappear.

One can conceive of other supraself metaprograms farther out than these, such as are given in Olaf Stapledon's The

Starmaker (Dover, New York, 1937). Here the self joins other selves, touring the reaches of past and future time and of

space, everywhere. The planetwide consciousness joins into solar systems consciousness into galaxywide consciousness.

Intergalactic sharing of consciousness fused into the mind of the universe finally faces its creator, the Starmaker. The

universe's mind realizes that its creator knows its imperfections and will tear it down to start over, creating a more

perfect universe.

Such uses of one's own biocomputer as the above can teach one profound truths about one's self, one's capabilities. The

resulting states of being, of consciousness, teach one the basic truth about one's own equipment as follows:

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found

experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits.

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(Lilly, 1972).

In the province of the mind is the region of one's models, of the alone self, of memory, of the metaprograms. What of

the region which includes one's body, other's bodies? Here there are definite limits.xiii

In the network of bodies, one's own connected with others for bodily survivalprocreationcreation, there is another kind

of information:

In the province of connected minds, what the network believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain

limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the network's

mind there are no limits

But, once again, the bodies of the network housing the minds, the ground on which they rest, the planet's surface,

impose definite limits. These limits are to be found experientially and experimentally, agreed upon by special minds,

and communicated to the network. The results are called consensus science.

Thus, so far, we have information without limits in one's mind and with agreedupon limits (possibly unnecessary) in a

network of minds. We also have information within definite limits (to be found) with one body and in a network of

bodies on a planet.

With this formulation, our scientific problem can be stated very succinctly as follows:

Given a single body and a single mind physically isolated and confined in a completely physicallycontrolled

environment in true solitude, by our present sciences can we satisfactorily account for all inputs and all outputs to and

from this mind- biocomputer (i.e., can we truly isolate and confine it?)? Given the properties of the softwaremind of this

biocomputer outlined above, is it probable that we can find, discover, or invent inputsoutputs not yet in our consensus

science? Does this center of consciousness receivetransmit information by at present unknown modes of

communication? Does this center of consciousness stay in the isolated confined biocomputer?XIV

In this book I try to show you where I am in this search and research. In previous books I have dealt with personal

experiences. Here I deal with theory and methods, metaprograms and programs.

February, 1972 Los Angeles, Calif.

T. L. C.

Preface to First Edition

This work is the result of several years of personal effort to try to understand the various paradoxes of the mind and the

brain and their relationships. It is felt that the basic premises presented in this work may help resolve some of the

philosophical and theoretical difficulties which arise when one uses other viewpoints and other basic beliefs.

Some of the major philosophical puzzles are concerned with existence of self, with the relation of the self to the brain,

the self to the mind, and self to other minds, the existence or nonexistence of an immortal part of the self, and the

creation of and the belief in various powerful phantasies in these areas of thought.

In Man there is a basic need for imagining wishfulfillments. Man's wishful thinking becomes interwoven among his best

science and even his best philosophy. For the intellectual and the emotional advancement of each of us we need certain

kinds of ideals. We also need ways of thinking which look as straight at the inner realities as at the

physicalchemicalbiological outer realities. We need truly objective philosophical analysis inside ourselves as well as

outside ourselves. This work is a summary of a current position in progress to try to attain objectivity and impartiality

with respect to the innermost realities.

One might well ask where is such theory applicable? Once mastered, it may be directly applied in selfanalysis. If one

remembers that one's self is a feedbackcause with other human beings, one can start at this personal end of the system

and

xvi

achieve beginnings of interhuman analysis by analyzing one's self first. If successful, one may see one's self operating in

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