(Side note while I have you: if your real name isn't SashaShulgin can you please email hn@ycombinator.com with a different username we can rename you to? It's distracting to use a username like that if it's communicating the wrong thing.)
"We are strongly prejudiced against psychedelic drugs which cause such mind-body separation, as we are against any drug which causes separation from feelings and emotions. However, we acknowledge that the ketamine state can be highly instructive for researchers trying to understand the functions of the human mind."
Is it really so confusing that I use his nickname as a handle online?
John C. Lilly died of heart failure at age 86 in Los Angeles on September 30, 2001. His remains were cremated.
Re Lilly - sorry for not being clearer - what I'm curious about is that you seemed to imply that at a certain point he was adversely affected by his own use of dissociatives, that it had some profound effect on him, and that he never fully recovered from it. I was curious to hear more about what happened there. I'm not super familiar with his work but I read a bit and found it to be a mixture of penetratingly lucid and completely unintelligible (mostly the latter).
John C. Lilly's later books are a beautiful example of ketamine delusions and loss of contact with reality.
Quoting Wikipedia:
In 1974, Lilly's research using various psychoactive drugs led him to believe in the existence of a certain hierarchical group of cosmic entities, the lowest of which he later dubbed Earth Coincidence Control Office (E.C.C.O.) in an autobiography published jointly with his wife Antonietta (often called Toni). Lilly states that "[t]here exists a Cosmic Coincidence Control Center (CCCC) with a Galactic substation called Galactic Coincidence Control (GCC). Within GCC is the Solar System Control Unit (SSCU), within which is the Earth Coincidence Control Office (ECCO)."