Jeff Bridges’ forgotten contributions to sensory deprivation research
Undoubtedly, Jeff Bridges is one of those actors who could make a smile appear on the faces of any of his audience members. After all, this is the man who gave one of the most iconic and hilarious character portrayals of the 1990s as The Dude in the Coen brothers’ legendary stoner comedy The Big Lebowski.
While The Dude is undoubtedly Bridges’ most iconic character, the truth is that his filmography and history in the cinematic spotlight spread far and wide. For instance, the Los Angeles-born actor and son of Lloyd Bridges has been in countless notable motion pictures of a wide variety of tones and genres.
The likes of The Last Picture Show, Crazy Heart, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Starman,The Contender, True Grit and Hell or High Water have all profited from Bridges’ talent and prowess as an actor, but remarkably, he had also offered his services to scientific research in the field of sensory deprivation.
Speaking with Tricycle, Bridges once pointed out the time he worked with the neuroscientist, psychonaut and inventor John C. Lilly. “In the 1980s, I was a kind of a guinea pig for John Lilly, who invented the isolation tank,” Bridges explained. “You sit in this tank of water at 98.6 degrees, you have no sensory input, and your mind produces all this output. It started very softly.”
The experience in particularly saw Bridges sit in the tank, thinking claming thoughts like, “Oh, this is kind of interesting,” and John seemed like a nice guy,” before stranger, more intrusive thoughts started entering the actors brain. “He was wearing a weird jumpsuit,” Bridges said. “Did he have…breasts? I let my mind run on that. Fear came – whoosh! – roaring into my body.”
Bridges explained that the fear he experienced is known as the idea of “shenpa”, i.e. “attachment or craving”, which is the kind of thing you do in acting, consciously, all the time.” The sensory deprivation work of John C. Lilly had looked deeply into the reality of human consciousness when external stimuli is taken away from our perception.
Lilly had been part of a group of countercultural thinkers including Timothy Leary, Ram Dass and Werner Erhard, and his research was frequently considered controversial amongst more mainstream avenues of science. Still, Lilly developed the isolation tank in the 1950s as a means to explore consciousness and his work was used as an inspiration for the Ken Russell science fiction movie Altered States.
Discussing his experience in the isolation tank, Bridges continued, “I went, ‘Wait a minute! That’s my mind!’ Instead of jumping out, I made a little adjustment. I noticed I could breathe in and out slowly and observe my breath and not be in control of it. It was my first experience with meditation, although I didn’t call it that.”
Indeed, Bridges has spent many years meditating and being involved in Buddhism. In the Tricycle interview, he spoke of being interested in “all kinds of spirituality,” although he doesn’t have a particular “formal teacher,” noting, “Everybody I come in contact with is my teacher. Other actors are certainly my teachers.”
We know and love Jeff Bridges for his eternally memorable roles in Crazy Heart, The Big Lebowski and The Last Picture Show, but the world of alternative and experimental science also owes the legendary actor his welcome dues.
