With the release of A Scanner Darkly, I thought this would be a suitable time to display some of the unique attributes of the mind responsible for creating the novel. For those of you not familiar with Philip Dick, I think you're in for a treat.
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In his youth, around the age of thirteen, Dick had a recurring dream for a number of weeks. He dreamt that he was in a bookstore, trying to find an issue of Astounding Magazine. This issue, when he found it, would contain a story called "The Empire Never Ended," which would reveal to him the secrets of the universe. As the dream repeated, the pile of magazines through which he was searching got smaller and smaller, but he never reached the bottom of it. Eventually, he became anxious that discovering the magazine would drive him mad (like the Lovecraftian Necronomicon, promising insanity to its readers). Shortly thereafter, the dreams stopped. They never returned, but the phrase "The Empire Never Ended" would appear in his later works.
Dick was a voracious reader of works on religion, philosophy, metaphysics, and neo-Gnosticism, and these ideas found their way into many of his stories as well as his visions.
On February 20, 1974, he was recovering from the effects of sodium pentothal administered for the extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth. Answering the door to receive a delivery of additional painkillers, he noticed the woman delivering the package was wearing a pendant with what he called the "vesicle pisces" (he probably was referring to the intersecting arcs of the vesica piscis). After her departure, Dick began experiencing strange visions. Although this may have been attributed initially to the painkillers, after weeks of these visions such a rationale became less plausible. "I experienced an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane," Dick told Charles Platt.[1]
Throughout February and March 1974 he received a series of visions which he collectively referred to as 2-3-74, shorthand for February/March 1974. He described his initial visions as laser beams and geometric patterns, and occasionally brief pictures of Jesus and ancient Rome, which he would glimpse periodically. As the pictures increased in length and frequency, Dick claimed that he began to live a double life, one as himself and one as Thomas, a Christian persecuted by Romans in the 1st century A.D. Despite his past and continued drug use, Dick accepted these visions as reality, believing that he had been contacted by a god-entity of some kind, which he referred to variously as Zebra, God, and, most often, VALIS.
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VALIS, (1980) is perhaps Dick’s most postmodern and autobiographical novel, examining his own supposed encounters with a divine presence. It may also be considered his most academically studied work and was adapted into an opera by Tod Machover [3]. It was voted Dick‘s best novel at philipkdickfans.com [4]
His later works, especially the VALIS trilogy, were heavily autobiographical, many with 2-3-74 references or influences. VALIS is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System; he used this term as the title of one of his novels (and continued the theme in at least three more books) and later theorized that VALIS was both a "reality generator" and a means of extraterrestrial communication. At one point, Dick claimed to be in a state of enthousiasmos with VALIS, where he was informed his infant son was in danger. Routine checkups on the child had shown no trouble or illness; Dick, however, insisted that thorough tests be run to ensure his son's health. During the examination doctors discovered an inguinal hernia, which would have killed the child if an operation was not quickly performed. His son survived thanks to the operation, which Dick attributed to the "intervention" of VALIS.
Another event was an episode of xenoglossia, when Dick's wife discovered him speaking Koine Greek, an ancient dialect used to write the New Testament and the Septuagint which he had never studied. A decade earlier, Dick claimed he was able to think, speak, and read fluent Latin under the influence of Sandoz LSD-25. In his essay, Will the Atomic Bomb Ever be Perfected, And if so, What becomes of Robert Heinlein?, Dick mentions that he began seeing pink light during an LSD experience, eight years before he wrote and attributed the so-called pink lasers to VALIS.
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Regardless of the feeling that he was somehow experiencing a divine communication, Dick was unable ever to fully rationalize the events. For the rest of his life, he struggled to fully comprehend what was occurring, questioning his own sanity and perception of reality. He transcribed what thoughts he could into an 8,000 page, million word journal dubbed the Exegesis.
He spent sleepless nights furiously writing into this journal, in some instances high on large quantities of amphetamines, which no doubt contributed to its eclectic tone. A recurring theme in the Exegesis is Dick's hypothesis that history had been stopped in the 1st century, and that "The [Roman] Empire never ended". He saw Rome as the pinnacle of materialism, which, after forcing the Gnostics underground 1900 years earlier, had kept the population of the Earth as slaves to worldly possessions. Dick believed that VALIS had contacted him and unnamed others to induce the "impeachment" of Richard M. Nixon, whom Dick believed to be the current Emperor incarnate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_dick
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Philip K. Dick: In an essay that he wrote two years before he died, Philip K. Dick wrote ("Introduction: How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" in I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., pg. 9-10): In 1974 the novel [Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said] was published by Doubleday. One afternoon I was talking to my priest -- I am an Episcopalian -- and I happened to mention to him an important scene near the end of the novel in which the character Felix Buckman meets a black stranger at an all-night gas station, and they begin to talk. As I described the scene in more and more detail, my priest became progressively more agitated. At last, he said, 'That is a scene from the Book of Acts, from the Bible! In Acts, the person who meets the black man on the road is named Philip--your name.' Father Rasch was so upset by the resemblance that he could not even locate the scene in his Bible. 'Read Acts,' he instructed me. 'And you'll agree. It's the same down to specific details.'
I went home and read the scene in Acts. Yes, Father Rasch was right; the scene in my novel was an obvious retelling of the scene in Acts . . . and I had never read Acts. The rest of this introduction (pages 10-23), as well many of his other writings, make clear Philip K. Dick's Christian affiliation and background, although his religiosity is highly idiosyncratic.
"Philip K. Dick: The Other Side" by Paul Rydeen (source): For a while Phil thought the spirit of Elijah had come upon him, much as the followers of John the Baptist felt about their Master. He even identified with a certain first-century Christian he called Thomas, whose thoughts Phil heard while falling asleep. There's someone inside of me, and he's living in another century. This Thomas was eventually garroted, which provides the connection to John the Baptist. "Thomas" is a Greek name meaning "twin"; whose twin was he if not Phil's? (Mani's twin was also called "tawm"; extant Greek Manichean texts refer to him as "syzygon".) Phil saw fit to baptize and confirm his infant son at this time (he was Episcopalian). Phil then gave his son a secret name which has never been divulged. In the posthumously-published Radio Free Albemuth (17) - the first version of what finally became VALIS - "Nicholas Brady" christened "Johnny" with the secret name "Paul". Since Phil saw himself as Elijah or John the Baptist, my best guess is that Phil told his son he was the Savior incarnate, and named him "Emmanuel", a Hebrew name meaning "God with us". His son's birth name was in fact Christopher, from the Greek for "Christ-bearer". Indeed, Radio Free Albemuth ends with the imprisoned Phil taking consolation in the knowledge that the Message has gone out after all - to the children. The importance of this assertion in light of the child-saviors in VALIS and The Divine Invasion cannot be underestimated. No wonder it hurt so badly when Phil's wife left with his son. It would have been interesting to see how Phil's son would have turned out under his father's tutelage. As it is, he may yet surprise us as he comes of age. Dick also wrote extensively about, and appears to have been influenced by, gnosticism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Zen, and the I Ching (often associated with Confucianism). He spent time in Utah and mentioned Utah and/or Latter-day Saints in half of his books. "In 1975... Dick had one of his mystical experiences that explain the almost divine nature of his last novels." [Source]; "PKD had a number of strong religious experiences on 2/3/74 that colored his subsequent work. 'An Exegesis' is a huge set of handwritten notes that he would work on at night to try to make sense of these experiences. After a subsequent religious experience on 11/17/80 he finally fashioned a title page... 'THE DIALECTIC: God against Satan, & God's Final Victory foretold & shown'". [Source] Jeff Rubard has written an excellent article on this subject: "The Mystical Experience in Science Fiction: Philip K. Dick's Radio Free Albemuth and Valis." The book jacket of The Man in the High Castle sa
http://www.adherents.com/people/pd/Philip_K_Dick.html
-------------------- Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, "The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See there!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you." Luke 17:20-21 (New King James Version)
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