 So usually my partner Lee would be here, but she couldn't make it. She has a health issue that is alright, but her healer thought it would be not good stress for her to add this to her stress. So she sent this. I wanted to show everybody our shower. This is our tank room. That's our shower that we've had from a painting by E.J. Gold. And my friend Denise and I did all the tile work for it. I love this shower. I hope you like it. Hi, I'm Lee Perry, and I've already said that, and I'm very happy to be here. I was expecting to be in Portland at the conference, but I'm unable to be here this year for the first time that I'm not there. And I want you to know I was going to brag and tell everybody, you know what? I'm 84 years old this year, and I have been floating for 44 years. And I consider that I'm pretty well fermented, and I highly recommend that kind of treatment for everyone. Float long and lots. Hi, Ashkan, Graham, Jake, Tash, and Janine. And I hope you're all having a wonderful time. Thank you so much for putting this together. And I understand that 700 people are getting together this weekend, which is a record breaker for sure. And I especially want to welcome all you newbies who are here, who are here, because you're pulled by the same thing we're all pulled by, by floating. By floating in tanks, because it's such a great thing. And that I want to bring you in on some of the secrets, you know. Glenn and I have been around for such a long time. And because we were trained by Dr. John Lilly, I think we were given different ways to think than we used to think before, and then other people think. And that he gave us all the information that he thought we needed to know about the tank and floating. And what he would like to see, he wants to see as many people in the world float as possible. And he gave us the leeway, and some of the advice that he gave us were, Get started. Get started. Get started. And always take the next step. So you're not like that. What do I do next? You're always taking the next step. So he gave us all this information, and it was up to us to put it to work to get this floating thing happening in the world. And so we decided to take a step, to get started and take a step. And we were, we had a tank to use. We were using one tank at home that people were coming and floating in. So we were getting that idea. That was really my end of it. How do you talk to the people who come in? What do you say? What's the language that you use? What kind of words can you use to somebody who's coming to float? And nobody's ever done this before. So that was my end of the work. Well, Glenn, my partner, was busy designing and thinking and getting things ready to go. And he had an amazing brain imagination, so that at the point where he had discovered a way to put a plastic door on a cardboard box, was the time that we knew we had to take a step in making tanks for people to get, to buy, to float in, to keep at home. And so we were buying Styrofoam. We're down in the Los Angeles area. And we were buying Styrofoam from a factory, made friends with the owner. And we said, you know, he was so interested in this thing that we were doing, floating in a box and it had salt water. He had never heard of it before, but we were enthusiastic and eager. And so we asked him, could we borrow your factory? Because we have a job. We have to make these tanks. And he very carefully explained to us, no, you cannot lend your factory to anyone. There are laws having to do with insurance. But, and this is what always comes up around John, there's always another way to go. But I have an alleyway. It starts right outside the front door, weaves around the building and goes around to the back. You can use my alleyway. Well, that was enough to get us going. And here comes Glenn. And we decided that what we're going to do is pool all of the money that we have, and we're going to buy the makings for 50 tanks. Now, we didn't have a whole lot of things to put together. However, what Glenn had come up with is making a tank out of cardboard. We were using the tri-wall three-layer cardboard for the base of the tank and double wall for the sides. And then this plastic tank that he was having formed so that it would be on the front so when people went in and out, the cardboard wouldn't get wet. So, okay, we sit down. What we were doing at night was we're drawing stations. We have a long, narrow alleyway and we're going to turn it into a production line. So we have station number one that has to do, staple the box together, number two, the next job that happens, number three, number four. And it ended up that we had 12 posts. So even though we only had 12 friends at that time, if your job was number one, you could run around and also be number four. And if you were number two, you could run around and be number five. So we were able to use this small cast of characters to run around and do all the steps. And at the end of the line where it joined the street, there was a rented truck. And by the end of day one, we had worked out all the problems and all the issues and we had 13 boxes, each one, one tank loaded onto that truck. And we went to our house because at the end of a hard work day, you celebrate. So we went home, we had some dinner made in the oven and we ate together and we sang and we had beers and we danced and we had so much fun. Had to get together early in the morning, first night I think at that time it was seven. There's a plane going over, sorry, hope you can hear me. But the next morning, which was a Sunday morning, we were there on the weekend. Sunday morning, we all show up again, all in a good mood and now we're experienced workers. We're assembly line workers. And so we start our production process starting with one, two. Everybody had made their own little improvements. How you do this faster, how you do this better. And in day two, everybody was into it. The crazy part was just about the time we were pulling out our sandwiches, it starts raining a little bit. Luckily, Southern California, not a terrible problem. And we prayed very hard. Luckily, it was not enough rain to get the cardboard all wet. And so after a short while, the rain was over and we jumped back into work and by the end of that day, we had 50 tanks in that rented truck. It was full up. We took all the stuff, not leaving anything behind. We were leaving a clean place behind us. We got into the truck. Everybody got in their cars and away we went to our house again. Everybody was delirious with accomplishment, with met intention, with everything that happened being so excellent. The feelings between us were so good and so high. People were saying, you know, I never thought work was so much fun. Could it be that work is a good thing? I mean, this was the best time I've ever had. Even though we, I mean, we had some beer, but we were sober and happy. We were in such good shape. Glenn and I looked at each other and we said, you know, this is a total revelation. Maybe what we need to do since we're so happy with work and they're so happy with work, what we ought to do is have people pay us to go to work and then we will give away the product. Well, I believe that it was coming from the idea of get started and take the next step that allowed an explosion of happiness through the eyes of somebody like John Lilly, to whom this would have seemed perfectly rational, that we were able to take a path like that. And we've always approached the impossible with eagerness and with knowing that it's possible to do. And we have a demonstration of that. I hope most of you got to see the Lilly Pond that we brought with us today, which also has been an impossible venture that we're delighted with and bring something brand new to the floating world. Float at home. Nice to see you all. Most of you know John from his invention of the isolation tank. And some of you know that he worked to talk with dolphins, but I suspect less of you know something else that he focused on in his life. When Lee and I met each other, she thought I was very different from the people she knew. In investigating that, what we came up with was that for the previous two years, I had been attending eight to twelve John Lilly workshops. He invited MDs to those workshops because he thought that they had the scientific sophistication to possibly understand what he was going to be talking about. When he was twelve years old, he wrote an essay about the nature of reality. Although he focused on many different things in his life, his primary major focus in his whole life was what is the nature of reality and of consciousness. And he explored and shared those insights and explorations that he had with people in the workshop. So going with those, I got infused with how he approached things and it was very different than other people approached things. Other people would have make assumptions, have a program, make conclusions, and he would, if he saw something incredible, he would think, ah, I'm in over-evaluation space. So he was always labeling objectively and noticing what he was doing. This was a very different way of being from most of us. This way of thinking got filled me and we used his approach or his philosophy to some of the things that we did in business. For instance, we used a method of inquiry when we wanted to learn sales. We didn't read books, we didn't go to sales trainings, we didn't ask people. We started asking questions of each other of what is sales? What is it really? What's the purpose of it? How does it work and so on? And so we came up with kind of basic things of how to do things. A lot of his approach we used in the tank and what I'd like to share with you today is how this approach of his related to the tank and to floaters. We feel that an obligation to you is to share this because we think it's as important a contribution as the tank is. So you may want to learn it and use it. Three things I'm going to use to illustrate this. One is before the float, one is during the float and the other is after. And the word that most represents this is the word nothing. Before the float, the word nothing is that he believed that we should not program people. We should not give people assumptions on how it was going to be or what they were going to do in there and however they had, whatever experience they had was perfect for them at that time. That we could not judge and evaluate or comment upon or help somebody's experience. No matter what their experience, it was appropriate. If they fell asleep in there, that was great. If they were bored, that was great. Relative to the tank, nothing means distraction free. During the orientation before the float, we were to handle two things. We weren't to tell people how to use a tank or what to experience. We were to handle two things. Housekeeping and safety. Housekeeping like, don't throw salt water all over the room before your shower. Well, probably after your shower too. Relative to safety, the biggest issue was comfort. Be sure that you use it at a comfortable temperature. Be sure that if you want the light on or the door open, you can do it. You can get in and out whenever you want to. And most importantly, be sure that you let them know how to find the door in total darkness. Tony Lilly, John's wife, had floated many times and then one day she freaked and she couldn't find the door. She tried to come out the top. So it became critically important to let people know how to find the door, how to distinguish it from the rest of the tank in total darkness and have them practice that. During the float, the floater may become nothing. What does that mean? Well, I recall being about four or five and my mother hired a photographer and set my brother and myself down on a piano bench to have our pictures taken. And I was just hanging out there. Just everything was really cool. And my mother said, smile. Glenn, your smile is so cute when you smile. It's so sweet. Well, wanting a relationship with my mother, I smiled. But that was a point where I started, there may have been others before that, I don't know, but this is when I remember where I became socialized. Well, I was present there just hanging out, not having any positive emotion or negative emotion, just feeling the sense of peace and well-being and just being there when I was asked to do something different. When we're very young, we're hanging out in our being space. As we get older, we start to have more mental stuff. The reason kids can learn so well and so quickly is because they are in that being space simply present. Creativity comes from that same space. High performance sports happen the same way. So even though most of us go around in our lives with all this mental chatter, we all have had lots of experiences where our mind stills and we become present simply here. If you float often enough and long enough, the mental chatter may subside and you'll become present. If you can get rid of that mental chatter, it turns out that much of our physical disturbances in our body are the result of mental emotional states. So by reducing our mental emotional states for a time, pains disappear and so on. So once we have become present, possibly, or have some other experience in the tank, we come out of the tank and we may still be in the middle of our experience. So John felt the last thing we should do is to get the person to judge and evaluate and consider things. So asking people how was your float would put us, put them right back into their mind and maybe, since they were having so much trouble getting out of it, maybe it wasn't the best thing to do. Maybe it would be better to say nothing or ask them if they'd like a cup of tea. So that's another aspect of nothingness is that the staff person also is empty simply there with the floater. Not having an agenda of our own but simply being there for them. Listening, truly listening with an open heart and a quiet mind takes practice. We have to learn to do it. Eventually, we should be able to listen to somebody for half an hour, give back what we've heard and they may even tear up and say, well, I never felt so heard. Truly listening is a spiritual practice. It's a practice in being present. So what I've talked about is John infusing his philosophy in our approach to the tank and the floater where the floater may become nothing and the staff person can also become nothing and that can radiate out into the world. There's another thing I would like to address for a couple of minutes. I'd like to touch on who the market is, where the industry is going and John's involvement. After four years of floating people in first one tank and then two tanks in our home, we opened a five tank center in Beverly Hills in 1979. Within three months, we were filled to capacity but we didn't know who our market was. We hired a marketing professor to do a study and what he came up with was that our market were cultural creatives. This was a new term related to value oriented marketing and these people were people who came from all the different movements since the 60s. The civil rights movement, the women's movement, the hippie movement, ecological movement, spiritual movement and so on. That has coalesced into two general areas that are about equal in size, one the ecological and the other the spiritual and he said this is your market, the spiritual half of that. In 1979, that was 3% of the population in the United States, Europe and Japan. Four years ago, it was over 50%. This will continue. Nothing can stop it. The globe is becoming spiritual. Many of you came out of your first tank experience changed. I encourage you sometime to float every day for two weeks. I think you will find it incredible. We have worked on a tank for the home for over 10 years and full time in the last year. Cliff Smith down here has joined us a year ago and I came up with some impossible criteria that together we were able to design. We both love design and enjoy working with each other. Together we designed this incredible thing and then he single-handedly manifested it incredibly. Have most of you seen the one up on the third floor? It's really incredible. Most men who are far ahead of their time have been misunderstood, people like Galileo. John spent his life trying to expand consciousness. That's how he spent his life. Lee and I were friends with him after we met him for his whole life. And we were part of a handful of people who helped him in his last year of life and in fact we took him to the hospital the day before he died there. We always found him full of love and compassion and we found that he was totally addicted to his research. We see our new floated home personal tank as one to expand your market and since it's going to happen anyway you might as well join John and the rest of us in spreading love through the world.