John C. Lilly, M.D., is a distinguished and unusual scientist. His credentials include training at Cal Tech (B.Sc. in Biology) and at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (M.D.); research in medical physics and biophysics as an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Foundation; work in psychoanalysis at the Institute of the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis and at the Washington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute; and work at the National Institute of Mental Health and at the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness.

Dr. Lilly founded and directed the Communications Research Institute. For thirteen years he researched dolphin-human communications, dolphin anatomy, physiology, neuroanatomy and psychological behavior. In 1954 he invented the Isolation Tank Method for research into the Deep Self (including his own).