what exactly is the experiment?

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[deleted]

What is the experiment?

I think you have to look at all of the author's influences to see the architecture of the story:

First, it's obvious that Paddy Cheyefsky had been reading 'The Human Biocomputer' and other work by John C. Lilly. This real, clever, weird scientist and his colleagues carried out some remarkably similar experiments in the '60s, using sensory deprivation tanks and LSD - separately, and then combined. They produced some fascinating results, though of course it was all subjective and hard to nail down repeatably. Lilly's basic thesis regarding sensory deprivation was that, in the absence of external stimuli, and with nothing external to occupy or distract the mind, it becomes possible in effect to 'hear' your own brain working. A little like the way one's eyesight becomes more acute in darkness.

Introducing LSD into this situation turned up the gain, because - according to Lilly - LSD 'introduces noise into all parts of the sensorium'. This is why, for instance, LSD makes you see patterns and symmetry where there is none, or movement without position change: the neurons that detect symmetry or movement are stimulated directly, without the inputs being there.

Put together, Lilly reckoned that his research team were able to 'listen in' on their brains' 'microcode' operating - and even make changes, removing little obsessions and neuroses that had previously impaired their lives. Reading the papers, it's clear that the authors were frustrated by the lack of an adequate language for what they were working on.

Who knows?: it could all be hallucination. I never got to try it - too lazy to build the SD tank.

Secondly, Cheyefsky almost certainly read John M. Allegro's 'The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross'. This is yet more bizarre stuff, but makes a very good and well-backed-up case for Christianity (and monotheism in general) having its roots in an ancient Amanita mushroom-eating cult. Sounds crazy, but if you look at some of the Scriptural subtext there are odd quirks.

Take the story of Eden and The Fall: what on earth is a 'tree of knowledge'? What would happen when you eat of it? - apart from ticking off the owner, that is. There are early Christian churches with wall murals that clearly show Adam & Eve plucking and eating from a 'mushroom tree', each branch of which is an Amanita Muscaria mushroom. In the film, one of these is shown briefly in the Mexican trip scene.

Thirdly, there's the highly suspect writings of Carlos Castaneda, especially his 'Yaqui Way of Knowledge' stuff that again describes ritual use of hallucinogens to achieve supernatural states among South American Indian mystics.

All of these and more like them pretty certainly influenced Cheyefsky's book. Ken Russell seems to have injected considerable amounts of his own Christian imagery into the film - especially during the hallucination/transformation scenes.

The actual purpose of the experiment is hard to express in realistic terms. The concepts are religious, spiritual and theological, not scientific. The plotline pretty much requires the existence of a 'soul', and probably a deity. The fact that Jessup's regressions go no further back than proto-human - in the quest for the 'first thought' - ignores the actual facts of evolution, and the possession of very adequate thinking and ratiocination in earlier primates, and even crows.

Ultimately this is more a fantasy that a science fiction story. Fun, though.

CD

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