Interview of John Lilly
Extract from: Ketamine: Dreams and Realities by Karl Jansen M.D., Ph.D.
Jansen: Many persons do not encounter Beings when they take ketamine, or coincidence control officers. How do you explain this in terms of your theories?
Lilly: You don’t have to have any concept of Beings. When you take the drug you enter into their consciousness. You don’t have to see anythem or know them as Beings. They engage your mind. Before matter, energy, there was consciousness without an object. Out of that came Beings.
Jansen: Do you think that there are aliens amongst us?
Lilly: No.
Jansen: What do you think will happen when you die?
Lilly: I don’t know. I’m looking forward to finding out. I’d like to reincarnate with 5 other people in the brain of a sperm whale.
Jansen: What are your views about the use of ketamine in clubs?
Lilly: It’s stupid. They are unthinking people.
Jansen: What is the most unpleasant experience you have had on ketamine?
Lilly: I was reading a book that suggested that you should explore your worst fears. So I took 150 mg and was put in a place where they surgically removed my penis. Afterwards I thought: who the hell is running the show up there? Bunch of kids?
Jansen: What was the most positive experience?
Lilly: I couldn’t say. They are all so different.
Jansen: Have you ever had panic attacks on ketamine?
Lilly: I haven’t experienced any panic attacks on ketamine.
Jansen: Do you think it made you paranoid?
Lilly: It never made me paranoid.
Jansen: What about your fears concerning the solid-state plot to take over the world?
Lilly: Well, they were just ideas I was having. I remembered that I am solid state myself! (Squeezing his leg to demonstrate his solidity.)
Jansen: Do you think that you were or are addicted to ketamine?
Lilly: Addiction to me is a lousy concept. People take ketamine because they like the effects. If they don’t like the effects, they stop taking it. I took it for 22 hours a day for 6 weeks once, because I wanted to. When I wanted to stop, I stopped.
Jansen: What are the side-effects that bother you the most?
Lilly: Other people and their judgments. There’s nothing about it that really bothers me.
Jansen: What have the good things been?
Lilly: Encounters with super-human beings who told me to go back and learn what it means to be human.
Jansen: Are you glad or sorry that you became involved with ketamine?
Lilly: It saved my life. It got me off cocaine. I took cocaine to explore Freud’s theories about sexuality. Freud’s sexual theories were based on his cocaine use. Some of his writings about cocaine are in the Library of Congress and they are sealed. The public is not allowed to read them.
Jansen: Do you think that ketamine has affected your cognitive function?
Lilly: No. The mind is not operating with cells alone. It operates with subatomic particles. If I reduce my consciousness to the Planck length [after physicist Max Planck] of 6.624 x 10-27, I can go anywhere in the Universe. [This may sound bizarre to those not familiar with the application of quantum physics to understanding the mind. The ideas he expressed here are quite consistent with those held by an increasingly large number of people who believe that consciousness is based on quantum events. Oxford physics professor Roger Penrose discusses this perspective in his best selling 1994 book Shadows of the Mind. In brief, Lilly expresses the view that ketamine, the tank, and related methods can reduce consciousness to the Planck length, at which anything becomes possible and there is no specification of the present condition. There is only a wide-open potentiality in the future. Alternative realities become possible.]
Jansen: Are you still using the tank?
Lilly: I stopped using the tank. I’ve retired from all that now. I didn’t want to be confined. I read books, watch films. I am writing another book at the moment.
Jansen: What would you like to be remembered for?
Lilly: My work with dolphins. What I like about being 83 is that I can talk to you about all this and remember…There are no discoveries, only revelations. Humans try to find out what God did, how it was done, and to reproduce parts of it.