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from John Lilly: Altered States Interview with John Lilly  by Judith Hooper
Jan 1983   Omni Magazine

The year leading up to my bicycle accident in 1974, I spent in saton, or a state of grace. I was having a ball, mostly living in alternate realities and sometimes falling flat on my face. In The Autobiography of Ramakrishna [1836-1886, a famous Indian saint], there's a story about Ramakrishna getting ready to board a river steamer. Two of his disciples began to fight, and so Ramakrishna went into samadhi. Since he was out of his body, his disciples had to stop fighting and carry him aboard. Well, that was the sort of state I was in, and Toni was the disciple who had to "carry me around."

OMNI

In your reflections in The Dyadic Cyclone, you seem to consider your accident as a way of paying for that year of bliss.

Lilly

It terminated that year. In our workshops we have a saying: "If you pass the cosmic speed limit, the cosmic cops will bust you." I got "busted." I had taken forty-two milligrams of PCP [angel dust]. I'd been out there too long and hadn't paid enough attention to my planetside trip; so the Earth Coincidence Control Office called me back by throwing a bike accident at me while I was on PCP. I appreciate what the Control Office did. They are not cruel; they're in a state of high indifference.

While my body was in the hospital and in a coma for five days and nights, I was in alternate universes, where the guides instructed me about various planetary catastrophes. I can't make up my mind whether that was an experience of genuine realities or just a projection of the damage to my body. In any case, I begged the guides to let me go back.

I had to say, "I want to go back to Toni." At one point I clung to Toni for six solid hours so I could stay with her. It was very frightening.

The guides told me, "You can stay here, in which case your body dies, or you can go back."

I chose to go back to Toni, as I have chosen to go back every time.