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Superficial and entirely missing the mark. PKD spent years doing research trying to understand his most important mystical experience, and his extensive notes a

Superficial and entirely missing the mark. PKD spent years doing research trying to understand his most important mystical experience, and his extensive notes and documentation ended up in the book "exegesis" (also greatly influencing the philosophy underlying works such as Valis). None of that is of course mentioned in the article. What we get is a random psychiatrist performing armchair psychoanalysis on someone he knows very little about.

dboon 3y ago
Yeah, reads more like a collection of fun apocrypha than a serious look at something that affected the great author so profoundly
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Absolutely. If you want to get a handle on PKD and his problems, it's so much better to read his work and get his own perspective. Radio Free Albemuth is interesting as a kind of precursor to Valis, but I must admit to not wanting to read Exegesis as it looks too in depth.
- Trasmatta 3y ago
  I like just flipping through the Exegesis and reading random entries. It's always a fascinating trip. I would never be able to read it end to end (and it certainly was never intended to be). It really is amazing to read after you've gone through VALIS.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    Okay, you've intrigued me with that - I'll chase down a copy
    - Trasmatta 3y ago
      Here's a few random passages I've highlighted on my Kindle. It's completely full of stuff like this, that you can just find by flipping somewhere random. It skirts the line between genius and insanity (which describes the man himself, I think). Sometimes I read one of the passages and I'm like "this man had totally lost all semblance of sanity" and sometimes I'm like "he was one of the smartest men to ever live". I think both are true. (And you've got to love how PKD himself explores the "wow, I really must be insane" avenue when he talks about The Exegesis in VALIS.) > The brain is one multiperson ajna chakra, which one day as a unitary totality will open, discerning and annihilating (the 3rd eye of Shiva). (Herdsman of the souls.) All who participate in it will then see as I saw; they will be inside the eye; everything outside will be blasted, “burned like chaff,” i.e., cease to exist. At that point the brain will generate its own world out of itself. It, collectively, will totally control its world—the PTG. > Ah! In Ubik locating the Ubik messages in cheap commercials was absolutely right on. I couldn’t have “guessed” more accurately. It’s obvious that the real author of Ubik was Ubik. It is a self proving novel; i.e., it couldn’t have come into existence unless it were true. > This is a sinister life form indeed. First it takes power over us, reducing us to slaves, and then it causes us to forget our former state, and to be unable to see or to think straight, and not to know we can’t see or think straight, and finally it becomes invisible to us by reason of what it has done to us. We cannot even monitor our own deformity, our own impairment. > Axiomatically, if you derange the brain in precise ways, not only will it be deranged, but if you have affected precisely the correct circuits it will be unaware that it is impaired and so not seek to rectify the damage. > It’s like deciding something is real by comparing it with itself. So it’s a fool-proof simulation, > No, damn it, it is like Ubik! The outside macrobrain is signaling us to wake up, we are like the characters in Eye, asleep—not on the floor of the bevatron—but while watching for Christ to return. We were made toxic—i.e., put into “half life”—as if killed. Fuck! I know it; Ubik is the paradigm! The half-life, the messages, Ubik itself, Runciter—we are in a sort of bubble of irreality: spurious world generated by—the plenary powers, astral determinism, whatever the fuck that is.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - DontchaKnowit 3y ago
        Whats so fascinating to me about PKD is that he taps into this rich, long, history of esoteric philosphy and practices and connects dots between ideas from disperate traditions. Not in the same way theosophy does- he seems to be more lucid and consistant. This idea he has of wickedness being some kind of abscess in an otherwise perfect hermetically sealed bubble, and that the second coming of christ would be an event in which the evil is removed from the pure buble---- it explains concepts in christianity with concepts from other world religions and does so in an exceptionally vivid fashion. Quite terrifying.
  - User23 3y ago
    To add to that, VALIS is a trip. If you enjoyed the Illuminatus! Trilogy then it’s likely to be your jam.
Simplicitas 3y ago
Good point. On his passing away right before Blade Runner was release, not even a mention that reportedly Ridley Scott screened parts of the movie, and he evidently was lost for words, saying “I’m in awe that you were able to reproduce what was in my mind”.
8bitsrule 3y ago
Most people know nothing about what they have never experienced, naturally. Yet that doesn't stop them from taking any opportunity to share their cultured opinions on what others report. There's a large literature 'out there' about extraordinary, inner, life-changing experiences that people have have reported and recorded throughout history. Plenty of their neglected works were re-printed in the middle of the last century - for a reason. They're easy to discover once you are motivated to look. Until then, it's easy to assume that it's they who are imbalanced. Edit: Dick's 'Tractates: Cryptica Scriptura': https://dickiangnosticism.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/tractates-cryptica-scriptural/ https://dickiangnosticism.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/tractates...

dboon 3y ago

Yeah, reads more like a collection of fun apocrypha than a serious look at something that affected the great author so profoundly

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

Absolutely. If you want to get a handle on PKD and his problems, it's so much better to read his work and get his own perspective. Radio Free Albemuth is interesting as a kind of precursor to Valis, but I must admit to not wanting to read Exegesis as it looks too in depth.

Trasmatta 3y ago
I like just flipping through the Exegesis and reading random entries. It's always a fascinating trip. I would never be able to read it end to end (and it certainly was never intended to be). It really is amazing to read after you've gone through VALIS.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Okay, you've intrigued me with that - I'll chase down a copy
  - Trasmatta 3y ago
    Here's a few random passages I've highlighted on my Kindle. It's completely full of stuff like this, that you can just find by flipping somewhere random. It skirts the line between genius and insanity (which describes the man himself, I think). Sometimes I read one of the passages and I'm like "this man had totally lost all semblance of sanity" and sometimes I'm like "he was one of the smartest men to ever live". I think both are true. (And you've got to love how PKD himself explores the "wow, I really must be insane" avenue when he talks about The Exegesis in VALIS.) > The brain is one multiperson ajna chakra, which one day as a unitary totality will open, discerning and annihilating (the 3rd eye of Shiva). (Herdsman of the souls.) All who participate in it will then see as I saw; they will be inside the eye; everything outside will be blasted, “burned like chaff,” i.e., cease to exist. At that point the brain will generate its own world out of itself. It, collectively, will totally control its world—the PTG. > Ah! In Ubik locating the Ubik messages in cheap commercials was absolutely right on. I couldn’t have “guessed” more accurately. It’s obvious that the real author of Ubik was Ubik. It is a self proving novel; i.e., it couldn’t have come into existence unless it were true. > This is a sinister life form indeed. First it takes power over us, reducing us to slaves, and then it causes us to forget our former state, and to be unable to see or to think straight, and not to know we can’t see or think straight, and finally it becomes invisible to us by reason of what it has done to us. We cannot even monitor our own deformity, our own impairment. > Axiomatically, if you derange the brain in precise ways, not only will it be deranged, but if you have affected precisely the correct circuits it will be unaware that it is impaired and so not seek to rectify the damage. > It’s like deciding something is real by comparing it with itself. So it’s a fool-proof simulation, > No, damn it, it is like Ubik! The outside macrobrain is signaling us to wake up, we are like the characters in Eye, asleep—not on the floor of the bevatron—but while watching for Christ to return. We were made toxic—i.e., put into “half life”—as if killed. Fuck! I know it; Ubik is the paradigm! The half-life, the messages, Ubik itself, Runciter—we are in a sort of bubble of irreality: spurious world generated by—the plenary powers, astral determinism, whatever the fuck that is.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - DontchaKnowit 3y ago
      Whats so fascinating to me about PKD is that he taps into this rich, long, history of esoteric philosphy and practices and connects dots between ideas from disperate traditions. Not in the same way theosophy does- he seems to be more lucid and consistant. This idea he has of wickedness being some kind of abscess in an otherwise perfect hermetically sealed bubble, and that the second coming of christ would be an event in which the evil is removed from the pure buble---- it explains concepts in christianity with concepts from other world religions and does so in an exceptionally vivid fashion. Quite terrifying.
- User23 3y ago
  To add to that, VALIS is a trip. If you enjoyed the Illuminatus! Trilogy then it’s likely to be your jam.

Simplicitas 3y ago

Good point. On his passing away right before Blade Runner was release, not even a mention that reportedly Ridley Scott screened parts of the movie, and he evidently was lost for words, saying “I’m in awe that you were able to reproduce what was in my mind”.

8bitsrule 3y ago

Most people know nothing about what they have never experienced, naturally. Yet that doesn't stop them from taking any opportunity to share their cultured opinions on what others report. There's a large literature 'out there' about extraordinary, inner, life-changing experiences that people have have reported and recorded throughout history. Plenty of their neglected works were re-printed in the middle of the last century - for a reason. They're easy to discover once you are motivated to look. Until then, it's easy to assume that it's they who are imbalanced. Edit: Dick's 'Tractates: Cryptica Scriptura': https://dickiangnosticism.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/tractates-cryptica-scriptural/ https://dickiangnosticism.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/tractates...