"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.

external to the internal psychological state of the person who's got the hallucination. But
there are nevertheless a lot of experiences by a lot of people who believe there's reality in
hallucinations. The same general idea may account for a certain amount of success that
interpreters of dreams have. For example, some psychoanalysts interpret dreams by
talking about the meanings of various symbols. And then, it's not completely impossible
that these symbols do appear in dreams that follow. So I think that, perhaps, the
interpretation of hallucinations and dreams is a self­propagating process: you'll have a
general, more or less, success at it, especially if you discuss it carefully ahead of time.
Ordinarily it would take me about fifteen minutes to get a hallucination going, but
on a few occasions, when I smoked some marijuana beforehand, it came very quickly.
But fifteen minutes was fast enough for me.
One thing that often happened was that as the hallucination was coming on, what
you might describe as "garbage" would come: there were simply chaotic images ­­
complete, random junk. I tried to remember some of the items of the junk in order to be
able to characterize it again, but it was particularly difficult to remember. I think I was
getting close to the kind of thing that happens when you begin to fall asleep: There are
apparent logical connections, but when you try to remember what made you think of
what you're thinking about, you can't remember. As a matter of fact, you soon forget
what it is that you're trying to remember. I can only remember things like a white sign
with a pimple on it, in Chicago, and then it disappears. That kind of stuff all the time.
Mr. Lilly had a number of different tanks, and we tried a number of different
experiments. It didn't seem to make much difference as far as hallucinations were
concerned, and I became convinced that the tank was unnecessary. Now that I saw what
to do, I realized that all you have to do is sit quietly ­­ why was it necessary that you had
to have everything absolutely super duper?
So when I'd come home I'd turn out the lights and sit in the living room in a
comfortable chair, and try and try ­­ it never worked. I've never been able to have a
hallucination outside of the tanks. Of course I would like to have done it at home, and I
don't doubt that you could meditate and do it if you practice, but I didn't practice.
Cargo Cult Science*
*Adapted from the Caltech commencement address given in 1974.
During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of
rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating
the ideas ­­ which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it.
This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so
that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have
difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that
they proposed ever really worked ­­ or very little of it did.
But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a
conversation about UFOs, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded
consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's
not a scientific world.
Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why