I think this is a passage from Valis. Was Dick being slyly autobiographical in that book?
> I am Horselover Fat, and I am writing this in the third person to gain much- needed objectivity.
The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
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Re: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
#12Interestingly enough, Kanye West had a nearly identical religious experience and breakdown, down to witnessing a divine pink beam. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/philip-k-dick...
I think this sort of "divine light" experience happens to a lot of people. In the Burmese school of Buddhism started by Mahasi Sayadaw, there is a stage of insight called the "Arising and Passing Away" that teachers identify when their students report phenomena like this. If you go to a Buddhist internet community like dharmaoverground.org, you will find a lot of people reporting and discussing this sort of thing.
Although I no longer consider myself Buddhist, I don't know what to make of it.
Re: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
#13Been there.
I refer to it as "losing my fucking mind" but each to his own.
Re: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
#14Interestingly enough, Kanye West had a nearly identical religious experience and breakdown, down to witnessing a divine pink beam. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/philip-k-dick...
good connection! Personally, I'm expecting Kanye to go mothership funky and embrace his alien origin.
Re: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
#15Been there. I refer to it as "losing my fucking mind" but each to his own.
You should check out Valis, the book PKD wrote as part of his attempt to deal with his experience.
He was very much aware he was likely going insane.
Re: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
#16Interestingly enough, Kanye West had a nearly identical religious experience and breakdown, down to witnessing a divine pink beam. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/philip-k-dick...
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Re: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
#17Been there. I refer to it as "losing my fucking mind" but each to his own.
Were you diagnosed?
Do you have neurological issues? (or suffer from risk factors? such as high blood pressure, overweight, diabetes, sedentarity) I wonder if that could be related (because of PKD's eventual tragic death by stroke). As far as my tiny medical knowledge goes schizophrenia hallucinations usually auditory in nature and not very explicit. There's also the question of the effect of the drug supposedly taken during his dentist procedure ( a compound which seems to have brain effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_thiopental#Side_effects ).
Of course he was probably in general risk for delusional thinking given his job to constantly devise bizarre plots questioning every aspect of reality. But it does make me curious whether he suffered from a neurological condition, or just a psychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia.
Hope you're doing well, mental disorders are scary :(
Re: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
#18Christian mythology is so boring once you realize what came before it. All the good stories in the Bible are basically Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Greek, Jewish, and other stories mashed up with historical fact (and historical fiction) and a good dose of PR and random rules that make no sense.
When people have these big religious experiences I just think, if you're going to believe in Gods and messiahs and all that, why not one that's actually old that all your stories come from anyway? It's like having a religious experience where you're reliving the life of a Viking farmer who's secretly still praying to the Old Gods and at risk of getting killed if they don't convert to Christianity. See how stupid it sounds when Odin is the big guy in charge?
Re: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
#19Christian mythology is so boring once you realize what came before it. All the good stories in the Bible are basically Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Greek, Jewish, and other stories mashed up with historical fact (and historical fiction) and a good dose of PR and random rules that make no sense. When people have these big religious experiences I just think, if you're going to believe in Gods and messiahs and all that, why n…
Seems like a variant of "I knew them before they were cool."
Re: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb
#20Interestingly enough, Kanye West had a nearly identical religious experience and breakdown, down to witnessing a divine pink beam. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/philip-k-dick...
You are kind of a prat to put those 2 in the same light honestly.