Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer: Theory and Experiments

John Lilly is a great scientist and philosopher who is grounded in his modesty, curiosity, and love for the universe and its intricacies. Although he pursued fields of study that are considered crazy and outlandish to our capitalist-framed concept of science, he was motivated only by his interests to learn about the self and its relationship to other aspects of existence (other organisms or selves).Really intriguing read. It does have a tendency to jump around pretty quickly making it hard to follow at times, but that's just how the dude's brain worked I guess.

Awesome book. It is a Great thing the people at Coincidence Control Publishing have done by releasing this classic to the public, once again. It has been extremely hard to come by for far too long. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Inner Exploration, understanding and learning to modify ones own behavior, Sensory Deprivation Tanks (flotation tanks), and in general expanding and improving your own mind/self. Another great book by Dr. Lilly is of course "the Center of the Cyclone", which is the first book I read by him, and brought me to my admiration for his genius and understanding of human behavior, and started my interest in these areas and also helped me to understand many things about my own behavior

I have been floating for just over a year and absolutely love it. The tank is a tremendous tool for personal growth and change. This book is about 3 things; the LSD state, the sensory deprivation state, and establishing the human computer metaphor model. The work is very dense and should be read several times with a highlighter and a note pad.I am grateful that this unabridged (uncensored may be more appropriate) version of Lilly's work has been re-released. I would hope that with the growing isolation flotation movement other books by Lilly would follow suit. I would definitely buy them!There does appear to be a missing figure (figure 1). It could be the case that figure 1 is just not grouped in the index with the other figures and is missing the label. The unlabeled figure on pg 82 seems to satisfy the references to figure 1.If you are looking for some light reading on isolation flotation then I would recommend The Book of Floating by Michael Hutchison but if you want to dig deeper into yourself and learn to use the tank as a tool then Programming and Metaprogramming is an invaluable resource.

In this book Lilly describes self-metaprogramming, the idea that your internal software, the way your brain operates, the loops that run all day, the self doubt, self criticism, the echoes of childhood trauma, the habits and patterns we accumulate, are entirely up for refactoring, for rewriting, is possibly the most self-empowering idea I've encountered.Lilly was also a pioneer of Float Tanks, one of the single greatest external tools for achieving effective self-metaprogramming, and this book sheds light on the early days of this effort.Thank you, John C Lilly, and thank you Coincidence Control Publishing for releasing this edition unabridged, straight from John's biocomputer to yours.

I'm only on chapter 2 and I've already noticed 3 typos. I am glad to have gotten the unabridged edition but somebody could at least proof read it...

Very intriguing read with various forms of psychoanalytic work. John C. Lilly was very open minded and mapped out the psyche and quantum neurological components of the human boicomputer. He also developed a metaprogramming technique that suggests the available perception of infinite awareness. His objective view point was very strong in this mystic/scientific workshop.

An important book. Take your time reading this - it can be quite complex, but, it's fascinating and enlightening stuff. Well worth the effort!

John C. Lily invented float tanks which have helped me a lot with backpain. I'd like to see more of a focus on environment and it's effect on cognition in science today.

Metaprogramming is described as 'learning to learn', ie. when one is aware enough to make mental models; it requires self-conscious awareness. This was the state Lilly tried to elicit - believe it not - from delphinic species, in his infamous St Thomas (US Virgin Islands) experiment, funded by NASA.Where the humans species was concerned Lilly's research is a testament to the true power of the nascent digital information age of first-wave cybernetics (like von Foerster) being grasped for consciousness exploration - well before any of the acclaimed psychonauts of the sixties even. He recognised the meta-structure of wetware (the human brain) was analogous to computer systems (the biocomputer). As an isomorphism it puts forward a cogent argument to explain the age-old philosophical chestnut: that our internal and external realities (shorthanded to i.r/ e.r) interact and interrelate at an energetic level; and what's more, it is all so programmable.Then, if this wasn't plenty enough material to illuminate with, Lilly's pioneering research into Lysergic Acid Diethylamide as an e.r. attenuation and mind expansion technique (when administered to isolated solitudinous individuals) adds another slant. Lilly envisions humans in selfmetaprogramming assisted with psychedelic agents through the use of 'projection display techniques' (while preferably in deep self-analysis). Rather akin to latter-day Shamans using ayahuasca, healing consists of: "the use of psychedelic agents in the human subject which shows certain properties of these substances in changing the biocomputer's operations in certain ways." One chapter details fascinating insights into the effects of LSD25; however, much more could have been said about the makeup of such projection display techniques? I, for one, could not fathom whether Lilly was referring to a drug-related phenomenon or an imaginary technique in this respect.All these strands neatly interdigitate in Chapter 13 'Hardware, Software Relationships in the Human Biocoomputer' in which Lilly makes "simplifying assumptions to investigate some of the complex relationships between the metaprograms, programs and the neuronal activity in the central nervous system (CNS). He does this by setting up an experiment modelling speaking and writing a sentence at the same time, and storing all of the neuronal signs of this activity. The hypothesis is that "playing back from storage the patterns which were stored in the same sequence puts them out from the biocomputer into the CNS...[and thus ] the pattern will be very closely identified with the original occurrence of the behaviour."The closest analogy I could find to this hypothesis was that first outlined in the NLP classic 'Structure of Magic' (published almost a decade later in 1976). Does the question therefore remain, could Bandler (one of the authors) have come across Lilly's groundbreaking research as a major (and oft unacknowledged) influence? Highly likely I would surmise.There are a couple of helpful pointers to mention. Lilly's writing style is opaquely dry and highly scientific, as the book is, in effect, a research paper; though his highly logical intellect must count as another factor. To illustrate, an excerpt from Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot' is used to demonstrate a mystical state. Yet, rather than venture into poetic phraseology, the description of the state is matter-of-factly notched up as "an extremely active positive system." Next, a rudimentary explanation of the idea of so-called Programming Levels (contained in tabular form) is missing its label (Table 1). This is very much needed to navigate the text; yet, a fuller explanation than that contained in the table is buried towards the back of the book and would have come in handy, if it had been included near the start.Now with almost 60 years of hindsight to draw on, it is remarkable to pour over Lilly's words and make direct (and tangential) comparisons with modern formulaic incarnations of the working hypotheses that he first realised, for example in established therapeutic practices around today. Rather like the futurist, Arthur Charles Clarke, whose predictions eventually flourished with the advent of the internet; the many inroads into neuroscience made since the 1950/1960s have helped burnish Lilly's reputation as one of the most visionary minds in his field to come out of the last century.

Ho letto il libro "Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer" e devo dire che si tratta di un'opera estremamente interessante e utile per chi vuole esplorare la propria coscienza e la psiche umana in generale. Tuttavia, è anche un libro che sembra essere poco conosciuto e apprezzato da molti.Il libro offre una profonda esplorazione delle teorie e degli esperimenti legati alla psicologia della consapevolezza e della trasformazione personale. L'autore, John Lilly, è stato un pioniere della ricerca sulle modificazioni di coscienza e ha sviluppato una serie di tecniche di programmazione e metaprogrammazione per esplorare la mente umana.Il libro è ben scritto, chiaro e accessibile anche per chi non ha una formazione specifica in psicologia. Offre anche un'ampia gamma di esercizi pratici e tecniche per esplorare la propria mente e sviluppare una maggiore consapevolezza di sé.

Not a review of the text, but the print quality. Cover is bent and the black surface is scuffed, and appears to be scuffed very easily. The text is 1.5 spaced and relatively large. It doesn't feel like a 'book' more like an on demand digital print.