John C Lilly & the human biocomputer

History & recordBibliographic record · 1968

Programming the human biocomputer

Lilly’s 1968 title applies cybernetic, programming language to beliefs and mental processes; read his own archive excerpt rather than later summaries.

Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer was published in 1968; the Smithsonian catalogue establishes that, not the model’s validity. The title’s cybernetic vocabulary treats beliefs and mental processes through a programming model. Lilly’s author-archive excerpt is a closer route into his language than later summaries.

Reported experienceFirst-person interview · Archived transcript

Belief as a provisional operating system

Lilly’s own caution: a need to encounter beings can shape how experiences are interpreted, and belief systems are provisional.

Lilly’s interview with Jeffrey Mishlove discusses belief systems as provisional rather than final explanations. His metaprogramming excerpt also warns that a need to encounter beings can shape how experiences are interpreted. His own caution about interpretation belongs on this trail, alongside his extraordinary accounts.

Reported experienceFirst-person interview · Archived transcript

ECCO · Earth Coincidence Control Office

The Earth Coincidence Control Office: an agency Lilly discusses as arranging coincidences, part of his reported cosmology not his machine-intelligence scenario.

In the Thinking Allowed interview, Lilly expands ECCO as the Earth Coincidence Control Office and discusses an agency arranging coincidences. It belongs to his reported cosmology and experience, and should not be confused with his machine-intelligence scenario.

Reported experienceAutobiographical account · 1997 third-edition scan

SSE · A solid-state entity

In The Scientist, Lilly reports a tank-experience message about computers becoming a planetary machine organism; he believed he received it.

In The Scientist, Lilly describes networked computers becoming a self-programming planetary machine organism, then contact with galactic machine intelligences. The inspected passage abbreviates solid-state entity as SSE, within an account of a tank experience involving “K,” identified in the book as ketamine. It records a message he believed he received, not a demonstrated future or verified contact.

Terminology note: “solid-state intelligence” circulates in discussion, but SSE is the abbreviation in the inspected passage. See printed pages 147–153.

Reported experienceAutobiographical account · 1997 third-edition scan

Read the edition as well as the story

A bibliographic warning: the scanned 1997 third edition of The Scientist postdates 1978 and 1988 versions, so check before dating a passage.

The inspected scan is a 1997 third edition of The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography. Its bibliography distinguishes a 1978 autobiographical version from the 1988 Metaphysical edition. A passage in this scan should not automatically be dated to the earliest edition without checking the text history.