By David Rensin
“Life is fairly boring if we’ve got no surprises.” – Dr. John C. Lilly
“Me? I really like tanks.” – Common George Patton
The mouth of the tank lay open earlier than me. Bare and expectant. I stepped into the nice and cozy salty water. I stretched out because the lid was mounted behind me, and started to drift and familiarize myself with the environment. First, there was whole darkness—after which a silence so full that my respiration and heartbeat grew to become deafening. Nonetheless, I couldn’t loosen up. It was scorching and damp, and the salt stung cuts on my palms and in my ears. I imagined suffocating, and, although I fought again my worry, I knew I wished to flee.
All of the sudden I noticed that, for a couple of moments, all consciousness of my physique, my respiration, my atmosphere and even the salty sweat on my eyelids had been momentarily suspended. A wave of exhilaration swept me and shortly turned to curiosity. How a lot time had handed? My restlessness returned, and I longed once more for a cool breeze when there was an insistent pounding on the lid. I emerged. Bodily drained of vitality, barely dizzy, and most of all confused about my experiences, I entered the lavatory and stepped into the bathe.
So went my first expertise inside an isolation tank. I had come to it just about ignorant.
Its historical past had no which means for me in any respect, and the one isolation tank I’d ever seen was within the TV pilot for Hawaii 5-0, the place it was used to crack U.S. brokers—McGarrett, after all, survived the rubber-suit-and-vertical-immersion trial.
My ignorance was handy. Lee Leibner, who along with her associate Glenn Perry owns the Samadhi Tank Firm in Los Angeles, insisted that I log my first hour of tank time instantly upon arrival and with out good thing about hype. This, she defined in tankese, would keep away from a state of affairs of preprograming and creating expectations. She prompt that I’d want not less than 5 separate periods within the tank earlier than making any ultimate evaluations.
Nevertheless, she could be keen to take heed to no matter impressions I’d care to share after every immersion. (Not immersion within the Baptist sense: one’s face is at all times above the water line.)
Because it was, I had sufficient of my very own questions concerning the unknown tank: Would it not induce a religious revelation? A state of cosmic bliss? A miracle? Or would I drown?
None of these items occurred. As I rediscovered later, one can’t be the expertise and chase after it on the identical time. Whereas the tank can facilitate “getting excessive” and/or altering one’s state of consciousness, there isn’t any chemical alteration, as with marijuana or LSD. This journey is self-propelled.
Alone within the bathe, I reviewed my expertise. The “journey” had not been significantly nice. I felt stranded between conflicting emotions and perceptions: apprehension and eagerness, worry and marvel, boredom and intrigue. Had been I given to cynical wit, this piece is perhaps titled, “Thanks, However No Tanks.”
An expertise needn’t be snug to be worthwhile, nevertheless, so I let that thought wash away with the brine that soaked my physique. The episode justified one other strive. In any case, discomfort or adverse reactions may merely be limitations to be transcended. There might be one thing on the opposite facet.
Dr. John C. Lilly created the physicalisolation unit throughout his tenure on the Nationwide Institute of Psychological Well being in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1954. He states my crude ethic extra succinctly in his autobiographical ebook, The Heart of the Cyclone (Bantam, 1973). He provides a generalization primarily based on his personal tank experiences over a ten-year interval: “Inside the province of the thoughts, what I imagine to be true is true or turns into true (within the thoughts), inside limits to be discovered experientially and experimentally. These limits are additional beliefs to be transcended. Within the thoughts, there aren’t any limits.”
Lilly’s message allowed me to proceed into the second immersion with a optimistic perspective. Lee nonetheless declined to program me, however I’d confided to her that I had taken “est” coaching, so she prompt I strive going into my “house” (a type of meditation/focus) whereas within the tank.
The whole lot was totally different. The salt sting got here and went. The warmth was one way or the other tolerable. Inside minutes I moved by means of all my most accessible “areas” and noticed an infinity stretching forward. I used to be not threatened or claustrophobic. I lay completely nonetheless. Virtually directly perceptions and spectral colours flooded my thoughts’s eye. I noticed issues about house, household, work and private relationships that I couldn’t heart on individually with out being distracted. I radiated heat by means of a psychological smile. My remaining time in isolation was spent misplaced in remoted physique sensations and a semiconscious reverie. I really resented the interruption of this tranquility on the hour’s finish. I reentered a world of aching colour, singing birds and sunshine with astonishing calm. I preferred the way in which it had felt.
Glenn Perry was a computer-program author at Xerox in 1972 when he attended certainly one of John Lilly’s workshops. Quickly after that, he began the Samadhi Tank Firm. Samadhi, roughly translated, means “the place the meditator turns into the item of meditation.”
“John launched me to the isolation tank as an integral instrument to additional self exploration,” Glenn defined. “Being naive, I assumed that with just a bit further work I might additionally make them for different folks.” Samadhi is presently the one tank producer on the planet, so Glenn’s “further work” could also be taking part in a big half within the writing of tank historical past—except for Lilly’s personal experiments.
Lilly and Perry spent many hours designing tanks. It was Glenn’s thought to make them “compact for transport, simply assembled and relocatable, secure, merely maintained and economical.” The primary consequence was an oblong wood affair that bought for $900 in equipment kind. Twenty kits had been made. The supplies for a second design—constructed from fiberglass and plastic—grew to become prohibitively costly in the course of the “vitality disaster.” Just one working mannequin exists. Dr. Lilly makes use of it at his Human Software program, Inc., analysis facility within the Santa Monica mountains.
In the summertime of 1974, Glenn and Lee met and determined to make a dwelling collectively. Quickly, design of the inflexible foam mannequin started, and Samadhi required Perry’s full-time consideration. He left Xerox in November 1974. Lee, a trainer of emotionally disturbed youngsters, pitched in when her college time period ended. By September 1975, the primary foam mannequin grew to become accessible for $650, and the corporate will introduce a heavy-duty tank quickly. Samadhi will promote each fashions to psychological development facilities, college psychology departments, analysis amenities and personal customers. Glenn and Lee are compiling all accessible information on tank use and analysis with the intention to maintain themselves and different tankers updated on commerce information, along with creating information for do-it-yourself tank builders.
Virtually fortunately, I sank into the water and shortly felt I had come house once more. I lay nonetheless and started the method of putting my consciousness in varied components of my physique—shoulders, ribs, groin, ankles. I felt relaxed. All of the sudden I sat up, opened the lid and wiped my face on a handy towel. Time had handed, however I didn’t know the way a lot. I guessed at 70 minutes, however I didn’t know what I’d been doing—solely that I hadn’t slept.
I couldn’t focus after changing the lid. Twenty minutes later Lee knocked. My bioclock had been correct. We spoke into the evening. I used to be supercharged.
After my fourth immersion, I used to be getting stressed and my ears had been holding water. One other tank session could be too painful till the state of affairs cleared up. Nevertheless, I used to be satisfied that the tank had certainly enhanced the meditative course of by eliminating some environmental noise, thereby serving to consciousness to focus consideration on internal “realities.”
The unique function of the tank throughout Lilly’s 1954 experiments (he immersed vertically and needed to put on a respiration equipment) was to establish if the mind would sleep when exterior enter was eradicated. Or wouldn’t it present its personal “enter”? It does, however tank experiences—like drug experiences—are totally different for everybody, and prior programing is fascinating. General makes use of for the tank appear to incorporate: removing of psychological rubbish, downside fixing (Glenn designs tanks within the tank), relaxation and leisure, meditation, remedy for physique accidents and exploring perceptual processes. Like intercourse, isolation will be skilled with or with out the advantage of medicine. John Lilly himself usually used LSD-25 together with isolation however warned that one ought to first be snug with the tank earlier than including drug use. Lilly additionally advises that the isolee keep away from seduction by the drug-euphoria, in order to not deviate from the unique function of isolation: self-analysis to Lilly.
Tank experiences change from one session to a different, however the tank seems to be an enchancment over extra classical strategies of meditation, because it removes exterior stimuli extra totally and with observe, extra swiftly. This may occasionally account for sensations in novice customers of claustrophobia, worry of darkness, worry of drowning, worry of suffocation and the like. Finally, your expectations are totally your individual. In-tank discoveries will be an adjunct to on a regular basis consensus actuality, however once more, the reply is determined by the particular person and the invention. One beauty discovery is the necessity for showering earlier than and after tank use. MgSO4 (Epsom salts) makes your hair stiff.
John Lilly, the person who pioneered isolation tank analysis, spent 12 years investigating human-dolphin relationships, was related to Esalen for 2 years; studied with Oscar Ichazo in Arica, Chile; labored extensively in biophysics, neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, electronics, pc idea and drugs; scientifically documented varied religious realities and expanded states of consciousness, and is at present delving into areas for which verbal equivalents are reportedly onerous to seek out. I discover him to be fascinating and enlightening—an explorer of the primary order.
It’s in Lilly’s work that one finds probably the most full documentation of tank improvement in addition to its most important evaluations, arising from the fixed overview of previous and new information over years of constant use. Even in the present day, after 20 years, Lilly takes to his tank for internal expertise of an elevated kind. That is indicative of a extreme psychological dependence, the continued employment of a priceless instrument—or each.
Learn the remainder of the problem right here.