5 ms·
Tangential, but I recently read The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K Dick. It was one of his last books (and one of his best) and has a character in
by Trasmatta 3y ago
Tangential, but I recently read The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K Dick. It was one of his last books (and one of his best) and has a character inspired by Alan Watts. There's an interesting sequence where that character suddenly grasps the conceptual nature of reality at a deep level. He goes home to write it down, but sees two children playing in the street. He tries to explain to their mother that they're in danger, but she doesn't speak English. So he spends the rest of the afternoon watching the kids, and then forgets the epiphany he had.
> What I had acquired, there on that walk, out of my apartment where I had no access to pen and paper, was a comprehension of a world conceptually arranged, a world not arranged in time and space and by causation, but a world as idea conceived in a great mind, the way our own minds store memories. I had caught a glimpse of world not as my own arrangement—by time, space and causation—but as it is in itself arranged; Kant’s ‘thing-in-itself.’”
- bigmadshoe 3y agoWas this after he stopped doing drugs? I’ve always been curious to read some of his more coherent work, though I love some of the more rambling stuff I’ve read
- Trasmatta 3y agoYes, he wrote it near the end of his life. It's one of his few non sci-fi books. It actually hits on a lot of the same themes as VALIS (PKD's most bizarre, personal, and "rambling" book), but in a somewhat more "grounded" way? I highly recommend it.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoSame thing with poem "Kubla Khan". Coleridge was interrupted and couldn't finish the poem. Mention here since it is often referred to as an enlightened moment that was lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_from_Porlock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_from_Porlock
- fsckboy 3y agofrom the link: Elisabeth Schneider suggested that this prologue, as well as the person from Porlock, was fictional and intended as a credible explanation of the poem's seemingly fragmentary state as published. The poet Stevie Smith also suggested this view in one of her own poems, saying "the truth is I think, he was already stuck".
- passion__desire 3y agoThere are two analogies of Alan Watts which I love. Whirpool analogy : You see, each one of us is like a whirlpool. The water changes but the shape remains. Sense of Self as a "beacon signal" : In olden days, when the telephone conversation was recorded, it beeped at fixed intervals to remind both parties that this conversation is being recorded. Deep down in our subconscious we have the similar signal to indicate that all these experiences are happening to the same entity across space and time.
- rock8y 3y agoNot an analogy but he said in one of his speeches that "Preaching is moral violence", he said that in respect to religion but that that kind of helped me change my attitude whenever I talk to younger kids or cousins.
- ratg13 3y agoI see this book is the final book in a trilogy. Would you recommend someone to read this book, or do the whole 3?
- Trasmatta 3y agoThe only connection between the three is thematic. The have no narrative connection. It's odd that they call it a trilogy to be honest. You can read Timothy Archer without reading the others.
- hackernewds 3y agoKant's thing in itself?