Other people. No danger of meeting someone else floating in your tank, so no need to worry about social roles, what you look like, or who might interrupt you.While various forms of sensory deprivation have been used for thousands of years by children, artists, mystics, yogis, monks, mothers, and others, for purposes of peace, pleasure, propagation, meditation, relief from stress, relaxation, enlightenment, and just plain fun, it was—appropriately enough for our scientific, brain-obsessed age—a scientist of the brain who developed the floatation tank. When he first set about creating a simple floatation tank, Dr. John C. Lilly, an M.D. with training as a psychoanalyst and a specialty in experimental neurophysiology, was not thinking about meditative states of consciousness, peace, or pleasure, but was trying to create what he calls “a research instrument” with which he could study some puzzling areas of neuropsychology.
For more than twenty years Lilly had been pursuing his studies of the brain, particularly its electrical activity. Fascinated by the seemingly unknowable connection between the physical brain and what is commonly known as mind, Lilly was determined to record objectively the electrical activity of the brain and the simultaneous, corresponding (and somehow related) activity and changes of thoughts, feelings, ideas. For over two decades, Lilly approached the mind-brain problem in a number of ways. He implanted electrodes in the brains of monkeys and began to map various areas in which electrical stimulation would prompt the monkey to various reactions. “I was seeking methods of objective fast recordings of the activities of the brain,” says Lilly, “and, simultaneously, objective fast recordings of the activities of the mind in that brain.”
After years of exploring the electrical activity of the brain, however, Lilly reluctantly concluded that there was no way of picking up and recording its activities without damaging and changing the brain, and thereby altering the mind that was contained in (or contained) the brain. While searching for a way to study the processes of brain/mind without changing or damaging it, Lilly also became intrigued by the related question of the origins of conscious activity within the brain. There were at that time (the early 1950s) two schools of thought on this question. In Lilly’s words:
The first school hypothesized that the brain needed stimulation from external reality to keep its conscious states going. This school maintained that sleep resulted as soon as the brain was freed of external stimulation…. The second school maintained that the activities of the brain were inherently autorhythmic; in other words, within the brain substance itself were cells that tended to continue their oscillations without the necessity of any external stimuli. According to this interpretation, the origins of consciousness were in the natural rhythms of the brain’s cell circuitry itself.140
In 1954, while working at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), Lilly perceived that the way to approach both the problem of studying the brain/mind and the question of the origins of consciousness was to isolate the mind from external stimulation. Why isolation? As Lilly writes in his book The Deep Self:
My reasoning was founded on a basic tenet of certain experimental sciences (physics, biology, et cetera): in order to adequately study a system, all known influences to and from that system must either be attenuated below threshold for excitation, reliably accounted for, or eliminated to avoid unplanned disturbances of that system. Disturbances from unknown sources may then be found and dealt with more adequately.139
Serendipitously, Lilly found that an ideal facility was available at the National Institutes of Health—a soundproof chamber containing a tank constructed during World War II for experiments by the navy on the metabolism of underwater swimmers. Lilly and his associate Jay Shurley, M.D., a researcher in neuropsychiatry with particular interest in sensory deprivation, set to work trying to devise a system that would restrict environmental stimulation as much as was practical and feasible.
Lilly’s first tank was one in which the floater was suspended upright, entirely underwater, head completely covered by a vividly ugly molded-rubber underwater breathing apparatus and mask, and dangling like the Creature from the Black Lagoon on the end of an air hose. Lilly found that the tank effectively eliminated virtually all major external stimuli. Among these, the most important were:
Other people. No danger of meeting someone else floating in your tank, so no need to worry about social roles, what you look like, or who might interrupt you.
Light. By covering the entire head with an opaque helmet, Lilly sealed out all external light—total blackout, a condition rarely if ever experienced in normal life.
Sound. Noise does not pass well from air into water, so the floater was in a state of almost total silence.
Gravity. A large proportion of our energy (some physiologists estimate as much as 85 percent) and much of our brain is devoted to dealing with and counteracting gravity. Eliminating the body’s specific gravity by suspending it in water also eliminated an inexorable, powerful, and constant external stimulation, liberating large regions of the mind and great quantities of energy for novel purposes.
Temperature. Temperature has a great effect on us: If it is too cold, the body responds with tension and shivering; heat causes us to sweat. The body constantly reacts to temperature, and we deal with it in part by wearing clothes that enhance comfort in the prevailing climate. With experimentation, Lilly and Shurley found that heating the water in the tank to a steady 93.5 degrees Fahrenheit caused it to be experienced as neither warm nor cold but neutral, and after a few minutes the consciousness of relative temperature disappeared completely.
After designing the tank, the next step was to try it out, and Lilly and Shurley had no hesitation in choosing their experimental subjects: themselves. At that time, 1954, this was something of a step into the unknown. The Korean War had recently ended, and both the American public and the scientific community were being flooded with shocking stories of American prisoners of war who had been subjected to “brainwashing” techniques, among them sensory deprivation. These stories were later shown to be myths, but at the time, many looked on sensory isolation as a particularly horrifying type of Chinese water torture. At the same time, people were quite interested in finding out just how sensory deprivation worked. Because of the new threat of the Cold War, we now had many soldiers staring into radar screens for hours at a time, scanning for the blip that meant missiles were coming at us over the pole. But these radar watchers were experiencing strange symptoms: disorientation, trances, hallucinations. It wouldn’t do to have one of these lads hallucinate a fusillade of Russky nukes across the Distant Early Warning line, since such a delusion could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Similarly, as our military forces experimented with high-altitude jet flights, they were finding that at great heights, where there was nothing really to see, the test pilots were experiencing what they called “break-off” phenomena, suddenly losing all interest in earthly things like controlling the airplane or reporting back to base, but sliding into strange, euphoric states of mind, godlike amusement at the thought of the poor little mortals struggling away so far below. If this happened at just 50,000 feet, what might happen to the first astronaut? Clearly, we needed to do some study of this whole sensory deprivation problem.
The most influential study of isolation that had as yet been carried out was the work of Dr. Donald Hebb’s Department of Psychology at McGill University. The 1953 study had focused on monotonous stimulation rather than reduced stimulation, by placing the subjects immobile on a bed inside an air-conditioned isolation chamber, arms and gloved hands swathed in cardboard sleeve restraints, eyes covered, the chambers filled with diffuse light and white noise. The subjects had been recruited (and were paid) for an experiment in “sensory deprivation,” and had every reason to expect the negative experience promised by the word deprivation. They found it hard to think with organization or to maintain concentration for sustained periods. They became highly suggestible (thus reinforcing the experimenters’ expectations about brainwashing possibilities). They grew nervous and anxious, and developed delusions and bizarre hallucinations. There were some seizures. In general, the McGill experiments fulfilled the negative expectations of the researchers.
So in the mid-fifties it was thought that sensory deprivation was a road to madness. Given such assumptions in the scientific community, Lilly must have felt some trepidation when he first immersed himself in the float tank, entering a state of deprivation that could perhaps drive him crazy, at best frighten and disorient him. We can imagine his surprise as he quickly found that the absence of external stimuli, rather than depriving him, instead projected him into what he calls “richly elaborate states of inner experience.”
As for the classical puzzle about the origins of conscious activity in the brain—i.e., is the brain self-maintaining or in need of external stimulation?—Lilly writes (speaking of himself in the third person):
“Within the first few hours of exposure with satisfactory apparatus, he found out which school of thought was correct: the theory that the brain contained self-sustaining oscillators and did not need external forms of stimulation to stay conscious had been proven.” 140 In fact, Lilly and Shurley concluded in an early article: “When given freedom from external exchanges and transactions, the isolated-constrained ego (or self or personality) has sources of new information from within.” 142
With that first float Lilly made an additional, surprising discovery: Rather than being stressful, the isolation experience was profoundly unstressful. As he writes of himself:
The scientist made his second discovery: this environment furnished the most profound relaxation and rest that he had ever experienced in this life. It was far superior to a bed for purposes of recuperation from the stresses of the day’s work…. He found that there were many, many states of consciousness, of being, between the usual wide-awake consciousness of participating in an external reality and the unconscious state of deep sleep. He found that he could have voluntary control of these states: that he could have, if he wished, waking dreams, hallucinations; total events could take place in the inner realities that were so brilliant and so “real” they could possibly be mistaken for events in the outside world. In this unique environment, freed of the usual sources of stimulation, he discovered that his mind and his central nervous system functioned in ways to which he had not yet accustomed himself.140
The scientific community, however, was not prepared for such a positive, almost evangelical attitude toward what they insisted on seeing as “psychopathological phenomena.” Unable to gain acceptance for his ideas among academic scientists, Lilly continued his experiments with floatation, simplifying and improving the general design of the tank. He found that he could float in a more relaxing supine position, rather than suspended feet downward in fresh water, if the more-buoyant salt water was used. Finally he discovered that the best floatation was provided by a saturated solution of Epsom salts, which allowed even the thinnest of scientists to float with his entire body on or near the surface of the water. Other refinements, such as in-tank water heaters with thermostats sensitive enough to keep the water at perfect temperature, an air pump to keep the air in the tank fresh, and a water filter for the reuse of the Epsom salts solution, were added over the years.
By the early 1970s, Lilly had perfected the float tank in much the design popularly used today. Installing a number of these tanks in his Malibu home, Lilly—who had by then attained some notoriety through his attempts to communicate with dolphins and his investigations of inner space, recorded in such popular books as The Mind of the Dolphin and The Center of the Cyclone—began inviting influential members of the newly born “human potential” movement to try a float in his tanks. Influential gurus, culture leaders, artists, and authorities on “the mind game” stripped down and climbed into the vessels for an experience of “psychological free-fall” in “a black hole in psychophysical space.” Figures such as Gregory Bateson, Werner Erhard, and many others came to float and found the tank an extraordinary toy and tool for exploring states of consciousness. They then wrote and/or spoke to others about the tanks, broadcasting the information in a widening ripple effect.
Many of these people had a lot of experience with meditation. They knew that to reach deep levels of meditation took much practice, repeated and sometimes frustrating efforts to shut out sounds, light, and other environmental stimuli. But the tank, they discovered, virtually eliminated these distractions, enabling them to go almost immediately to deep levels of meditation. In Lilly’s words, the tank’s “‘reduced’ environment allows one to start the meditation at the point only achievable outside the tank after some inhibitory work and some time spent doing that work. In the tank one need not do that work. Undistracted, one starts concentrating immediately upon one’s inner perceptions and dives deep into one’s mind.” 139
Many of Lilly’s guests emerged feeling that they would like to repeat the experience every day and eager to obtain tanks of their own. At that time a young computer engineer, Glenn Perry, came to one of Lilly’s float sessions. As Perry recently remembered it, he had always suffered from acute shyness: “I could never talk with more than one person at a time.” After his first float Lilly asked him to address the group, and he did so with no discomfort. “For me,” says the ebullient Perry, “that was in-credible! I immediately had to have my own tank.” Using his engineering skills, Perry designed and built a tank that was inexpensive and relatively easy to build and maintain. Lilly made use of Perry’s tank design. The word began to spread, and more and more of Perry’s tanks were installed in the homes of people who had discovered floating through an experience at Lilly’s place. Perry met and married Lee Leibner, an educator who had for several years studied floating as a tool for helping hyperactive and learning-disabled children, and they quickly merged their talents, building and marketing the first tank designed for home and commercial use: the Samadhi Tank.
By the late 1970s, without any backing by major corporations, without any real interest or publicity in the media, scores of thousands of people had floated, many doing so regularly with tanks in their own homes, or as members of informal tanking networks. Glenn and Lee Perry expanded from simply building tanks to providing commercial tank centers. Gary Higgins of Float to Relax, Inc., came out with a modestly priced home tank and began opening FTR centers all over the United States, with the avowed goal of becoming the “Big Mac” of floating.
In 1978, Paddy Chayefsky published a novel, Altered States, based loosely on Lilly’s experiences in the float tanks, with a bit of lurid but effective exaggeration. Two years later, a movie based on the book, directed with appropriate bombast and fustian by Ken Russell, was seen by several million people and quickly became a cult classic. The movie, like Chayefsky’s book, tells of a scientist who experiments on himself in a floatation tank. Like Lilly, Dr. Eddie Jessup combines floating with powerful psychedelic drugs. Unlike Lilly, Jessup emerges from the tank with a helluva yell and a thick coat of hair, having been transformed into a proto-humanoid ape. The Deep Self indeed!
While the film introduced many to the idea of floating, it also convinced a tremulous few that they would never dare enter a tank for fear they might emerge crazed, filled with an appetite for living beasts. Most people, however, found their curiosity and sense of adventure whetted by the film. Whatever it was that happened in the tank, it sure looked interesting. After the movie’s release, the numbers of floaters at public tank centers increased dramatically. And since most who float once want to do it again, many of them bought their own tanks, and sales of tanks went up sharply as well. More publicity came when celebrities like Kris Kristofferson, John Lennon, and Robin Williams acquired float tanks, and athletes took note when the very first year that the Philadelphia Eagles and Philadelphia Phillies installed a float tank in their training room (1980-1981) both teams went on to successful seasons that ended in the Super Bowl and a World Series victory.
Today there are thousands of tanks in everyday use, with commercial float centers in more than a hundred American cities as well as in many European and Japanese cities. While tanks had for many years been used only in the laboratories of university psychology departments, in private homes, or in commercial centers devoted solely to tank use, by 1983 tanks were being used in health spas, biofitness institutes, hospitals, exercise/recreation centers, beauty salons, by professional athletic teams, in corporations, and for “superlearning” courses at several universities.
With the explosion of popular interest in floating, scientific researchers are in the position of struggling to catch up. More and more universities and research facilities have acquired tanks, and in recent months there has been intensified research with tanks in such fields as biochemistry, electromagnetism, brain waves, sleep, behavioral change, suggestibility, reduction of blood pressure, self-regulation, and healing.
The apparatus of today has little in common with the scary air hoses, monster helmets, and complete immersion tanks of twenty years ago. Tank designers have now made available everything from a state of-the-art fully computerized, egg-shaped, luxurious supertank complete with a Jacuzzi-type water massage, an ultraviolet purification system, in-tank lighting, a two-way intercom and underwater stereo that can be controlled by the floater, and optional video screen—a veritable Rolls-Royce of a tank—down through more modest vessels, to simple and inexpensive do-it-yourself home tank kits. Tanks are rapidly losing their air of the exotic, the laboratory, as they become attractive, glossy, high-tech appliances; they are no longer unwieldy curiosity pieces but tools, as accepted and as useful as the home computer.
The comparison with the computer is important. We’re told that we have passed from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Today, information is our strategic resource and real source of power. Information is so essential to life that trend analyst John Naisbitt proposes in his book Megatrends: “We need to create a knowledge theory of value to replace Marx’s obsolete labor theory of value.” 170 He stresses, “In an information society, value is increased by knowledge,” and points out that rather than mass-producing cars, our emphasis today is on the mass production of information. Today, says Alvin Toffler, “we still need land and hardware, but the essential property becomes information, and that … is a revolutionary switch because it’s the first form of property that is non-material, non-tangible, and potentially infinite.”251
The sine qua non of this information age has been the computer. But while the computer is the ideal device for producing, manipulating, and instantaneously communicating information about the social, global reality, and is altering our ways of learning and our modes of entertainment and giving us access to information never before available, its powers are limited when it comes to providing us with information about our inner states, about consciousness, mind, spirit, soul. The float tank, however, offers us direct access to and control over every cell in our bodies, and a wide variety of states of consciousness. What it can give us, then, is information about our selves. The tank is thus, in many ways, the computer’s internal counterpart, also altering our ways of learning and our modes of entertainment, and giving us access to information never before available. So, according to the “knowledge theory of value,” the float tank, by increasing our knowledge and information about our-selves, is a truly productive tool—economically, physically, even spiritually, increasing our own value and ability to function effectively in the information society.
Only a decade ago who would have believed that millions of private homes would be supplied with personal computers with 64K of RAM, two disk drives, and more intelligence than the huge room-filling monsters of the sixties? Similarly, it makes sense to think that it won’t be too long before millions of homes are equipped with inexpensive float tanks. In fact, the tank seems to be the perfect antidote for the age in which it was created: a technological escape from the pressures of technology, offering stress relief and opportunities for increased self-awareness, creativity, and a rediscovery of and control over the body.
The tank itself is almost too richly symbolic for comfort. Like the computer, it opens to receive the software with its unique program — i.e., you—and “runs” the program in an infinity of new ways. Like the space capsule it resembles, it offers escape from the gravitational pull of one reality while speeding you toward another reality as yet unknown. Like that resonant, intriguing phenomenon about which scientists also know very little, the Black Hole, the float tank seems to be like a two-way hatch, offering a way in and a way out at the same time, an opportunity to shrink so small you become infinite, to move so fast you become motionless, to plummet into darkness so deep you emerge in total light…. The metaphoric possibilities are simply too tempting. The only response to such temptation is to relinquish words, at least momentarily, and enter the tank.