Occult Experiments in the Home

John Lilly’s autobiography is a very unorthodox book. He was a scientist who (among other things) invented the floatation tank and was the first to research direct communication with dolphins. He also dosed himself up to a heroic extent with LSD and ketamine, as a means to explore higher dimensions of reality.

What intrigued me most about Lilly’s explorations was the stark map of the territory that he made. Everyday experience is what Lilly describes as ‘the external reality’. The step up from this is ‘internal reality’ – our mindspace, in other words. After that we break into ‘extraterrestrial reality’, where we encounter the alien beings who guide our lives. But beyond this is yet another level where the ultimately conjoined nature of ourselves and the extraterrestrials is recognised – this Lilly terms ‘the Network’. The level past this – for Lilly, at least – is where everything whites-out beyond our comprehension. He calls it ‘The Unknown’.

He even goes so far as to specify the exact dosage of ketamine required to break through into each specific level. He liked his ketamine intravenous and neat, so I wouldn’t recommend trying to replicate this.

The parallels between Lilly’s map and countless other mystical systems are pretty clear. It sparked associations for me particularly with Ken Wilber’s hierarchy of states and Rudolf Steiner’s notion of increasingly more inclusive layers of being. But most of all, it made me decide I wanted to have a try. I want to ascend the levels of being and see what kind of map my experiences make from it.

Another thing is how all of this stuff – all the maps – have at least one other way in which they can be interpreted: as the symptoms of mental illness.

Lilly’s autobiography is instructive in this regard. Depending on your view, Lilly was a courageous investigator into the nature of reality; or he was a man with dissociative personality disorder who developed a severe addiction to ketamine and became deranged as a result.

Of course, he may have been both.

Here at OEITH we just say no to drugs. (Most of the time.) Our mantra is: just this. All we need to understand human reality is already here, in this experience at this moment, if only we can look in the right way. Instead of psychoactive chemicals, I resolved to use dreaming as my springboard into higher realities. The objectives are twofold: firstly, to see what I can see; secondly, to have a closer look at what makes ‘higher realities’ seem suspiciously like mental illness. Does this have to be the case, and – if so – why?

I’m not that great at lucid dreaming. But my experience is that if you set your mind on something, sooner or later an opportunity comes along. (Usually later, in my case.)

I was having a normal dream a few nights ago that I’d dropped into a gym for some one-off exercise, but the guy behind the desk was hard-selling me a membership. I was annoyed and walked away, and this somehow nudged me into awareness that I was dreaming.

My mission – I remembered – was to grab the nearest passerby and ask them: ‘Who’s in charge?’

Heading through the back-door of the gym, I discovered rolling playing-fields outside. Someone came in as I was going out: a pudgy man with a pale face and curly hair. ‘Who’s in charge?’ I asked him. ‘He is,’ said the man, and pointed.

I couldn’t see anyone, but I walked across the fields in the direction he’d indicated. I was heading toward an enormous tree. Was this who the guy had meant? Fine, I thought. I don’t mind talking to a tree. But then I saw a solitary man walking across the grass and I changed course slightly to greet him.

As I got closer I realised he was a giant. The top of my head was about level with his knee. He had the average-looking face of a white bloke in his thirties, but his expression was remarkably kind. His hair was curly and dark. ‘Are you in charge?’ I asked him. He nodded, sheepishly, and started to talk but his speech sounded garbled.

Immediately I had the impression that he wanted to talk, but it was difficult to step down his means of expression into a form I could understand. I sensed also that he was a little disappointed at my not being able to connect with him. Feeling that I was short on time, I asked his name. I reasoned this would give me at least some small insight into who and what he was. He nodded in agreement with this thought and said something like: APPACON, APPERCON or APPERÇU. Less probably it seemed he said: APPAPACK. The way he seemed to have said all these words at once perhaps gives an indication, I hope, of how the sounds and meaning seemed to slip all over the place whilst he spoke.

The dream fell apart soon after this, but afterwards followed some normal dreams in which it seemed I was being helped to make sense of what I’d experienced.

Firstly, someone came to install software on my home computer called ‘SOUND PACK’. In the dream this was a mind-boggling synchronicity with the name ‘APPAPACK’ that the giant had given.

Next, I was informed that there were clues to the giant’s communications in the early career of TV-presenter Davina McCall. I was advised that she’d appeared in a soft porn video with the singer Madonna, which I should check out in order to gain more information.

After waking, this seemed a tad unlikely. What felt more definite, however, was the impression of having spoken with being of great compassion and power, so immense – in fact – that its message could only with great difficulty be expressed in human language.

The best method I’ve used for checking the significance of names is The English Qaballah. Using this system, APPACON enumerates to 30, which corresponds also with eternal, mankind, passion, ring and spangles. APPERCON is 43, which – even more strikingly – is come unto me, I love you, splendour and withdraw. These – if granted credence – testify to the angelic nature of the being in the dream.

Qaballistically, APPAPACK and APPERÇU were far more ambiguous, so I decided their full meaning must lie elsewhere. An aperçu is a witty insight; and apperçu is French for ‘preview’. So, it seems I met an angelic being of a highly compassionate and humanistic nature whom I should regard as having afforded me an insight into the nature of things, of which there is quite possibly more to come.

Next, dutifully, I checked the entry for Davina McCall on Wikipedia. Of course, there was no reference whatsoever to a soft porn video appearance with Madonna.

It was, in fact, with Kylie Minogue.

Well, I say ‘soft porn’ – it was just a music video, actually, for a song released in the early 90s called Word Is Out. In the video (which I found on YouTube) Kylie and Davina take on the roles of prostitutes dancing provocatively around a sleazy docklands set.

Mistaking Kylie for Madonna isn’t so hard, I reckon. And the fetishy costumes in the video weren’t a million miles from a soft porn film. So I was rather stunned by this curious coincidence – for it was either that, or evidence of an unhealthy subconscious fixation on Davina McCall’s early career.

The song is forgettable, but given the intriguing synchronicity, surely there’s meaning in it somewhere? ‘You may as well accept your fate,’ the lyrics go. ‘Ooh you can’t wriggle out of this, it’s gone too far. It’s much too late.’

The words are addressed to someone who has committed an action he or she can’t go back on, as much as they’d like to. I couldn’t escape the impression that this now applied to me: I’d set foot into a higher reality and now (I was being told) I had to go along for the ride.

Why else would an angel of compassion make me sit through such an execrable song?

This was merely the start of my exploration, and there would soon be more to follow, but poring over the lyrics of Kylie Minogue in the search for occult meaning is hardly sane. Already, even opening oneself to the possibility of higher realities seems to entail kissing bye-bye to the consensus and earning oneself an appointment with Dr. Psychiatrist.

But if anyone asked me straight-up whether I was really in communication with angelic beings via the lyrics of Kylie Minogue, of course I’d give them a frank and lucid answer.

Yes. I am.

Reference

John C. Lilly (1997). The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography. Oakland, CA: Ronin.