Very scarce copy of John C. Lilly's attempt to investigate altered consciousness.

Lilly was a trained neurophysiologist, inventor of the isolation tank, dolphin researcher, psychonaut, and eventually something close to a mystic-technologist of consciousness.  Drawing on sensory-deprivation experiments, LSD, meditation, esoteric traditions and his own increasingly extreme experiences, Lilly develops the idea of the mind as something programmable—and, crucially, capable of learning to alter its own programs.

The book twists when Lilly’s scientific vocabulary begins running directly into experiences he describes as encounters with supra-human intelligences, guides and states in which the boundaries of the individual self disappear. He ignores conscription to form, and instead reflects living inside it. An insane psychedelic document, and a very 1970s attempt to find out what happens when experimental science follows subjective experience past the point where science normally gets nervous. A significant countercultural text, and an excellent companion to the era’s writing on cybernetics, psychedelia, mysticism and the technologies of the self.

Edition / condition: Paladin / Granada Publishing, St Albans, 1977. 1977 reprint of the Paladin edition first published in Great Britain in 1973; originally published in the US in 1972. Paperback. Cover art by Justin Todd. Moderate rubbing and surface wear to wrappers, with light edge and corner wear; pages age-toned but clean, binding firm. Good to very good condition.