Thoughts? What is PKD trying to convey with all this rambling?

Thoughts? What is PKD trying to convey with all this rambling?
Have you experienced a theophany, Veeky Forums?
Is beliving in any kind of God paranoia?

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>Dick

This

Fuck off

His worst book

Ubik is his best work and anyone who disagrees is a goddamned plebeian.

The Exegesis of Philip K Dick might shine a light on it (currently just on part 2).
Also the divine Invasion (halfway through, but started on the Exegesis) and the transmigration of timothy archer would be the sequels.

So far to put it in a TL;DR form:
God/Sophia/Atman works in our world according to the logos which is why personal experience of symbols make your own gospel.
There can't be a text to convey the truth, but symbols (including texts) may make it more clear. (This may seem like or lead to paranoia)

>For the Exegesis it would be great to have read Ubik, Flow my tears the policeman said and semi do android dream of electric sheep.
>Basically (as far as I am, before he wrote Valis) Dick goes, like valis, back over his own work, his 3-74 experience and basically all gnostic shingamadjing over his life, mission and truth.

He also stated, i believe in a letter in the exegesis, that Valis was 'just' written to get out his Tractates out.

Also this:
youtu.be/jXeVgEs4sOo

>I'm just journeying through all this, this is a long hot day sleepy summary of it.

Flow my Tears was dreadful to read. Was a disappointing first entry for me into the what by all accounts is one of the best Sci-Fi writers of all time. I'll try another one sometime. For now give me Crichton, Clarke or Wells.

Weird way of typing best

>Have you experienced a theophany, Veeky Forums?
One time I was walking home from school and I legit started thinking I had solved the existence of God, I was thinking super fast and it all made sense. I started getting more and more energetic and when I saw tree or plants I thought their form and the patterns in which they grow were somehow the way in which God comunicates it's essence, I felt a little overwhelmed because there were lots of trees and other plant and it seemed like they were trying to "catch" "everything" around them because of how the sticks and ramifications are always growing towards the plant's "outside".
I don't know why that happened and I haven't experienced anything like it since.

It's just that in the exegesis he refers to flow my tears. {I liked the Marilyn Manson character sketch though, she sounded like the singer}
I've read the whole American library collection of novels of Dick (till halfway through DI) and Ubik is the best for anyone trying to get into it.
Personally I liked 'Now wait for last year' the most, because I've read it in a collection I wasn't really prepared for the ending which made it stand out.
>But Valis was better, but so different, post 3-74

Worst would be: Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb.
Though it had some nice sections.

reading this book was an unpleasant experience for me, though it's definitely my favorite PKD book and perhaps one of my favorite books of all time. the effect it seemed to have on me is the reason. blogpost incoming.

I'm not sure why, and nothing like this has really happened to me before in my life, but when reading this book I began to notice subtle coincidences in my life. like, nothing special, I would find an old TMNT postcard book and hear people talking about TMNT on the bus an hour later, I would introduce myself to someone and their name would be the same as the street name on the intersection I can see over their shoulder, I would suggest an album to a friend and hear it played at a bar's patio later that day. what was strange was the frequency, all day every day I would be experiencing these small meaningless coincidences, dozens of times a day, to the point that I questioned my sanity as though I was inventing memories. reality seemed increasingly insincere in some way to me. the icing on this is when I finished the book. I had been reading on the bus on the way back from work and had just finished the book, and I was just carrying it because I didn't want to wear a bag for a single object. my friend texted me and wanted to meet at a bar where he said he was picking up chicks, joined him on the patio next to a fire there. I sat next to the friend of the girl he was hitting on, and the first thing she said was "can I see that book you're holding?". she looks at it for a split second and pulls the same edition of the same book out of her bag. I internally nope'd the fuck out but after that when I wasn't reading the book anymore I didn't notice any more of these coincidences occurring. not sure if it was because of the book or not, I should probably re-read it, as this was many years ago and I barely remember it.

shrieking troglodytes covered in filth.

Thank you for sharing this story, as short and without much context it is, it is the basis of Valis kinda meets The man in the highcastle.
It could be a passage from The Exegesis of Philip K Dick, how he writes his letters in part one.

Just finished The Divine Invasion which is more thematic, but also has a more uplifting ending. Kinda excited for The transmigration of Timothy Archer.

Theophany?
A few times. Most importantly the first. I was on a heavy dose of dextromethorhan and came to identify my ego completely with Shiva. I lost myself and became at one with Shiva I did not become Shiva I simply lost what was not Shiva. Anyway much later I read the Upanishads and realized that this was basically true. My only experience with Hinduism up to that point had been listening to the Beatles. At the time I believed I had been possessed by an alien. It amounts to the same thing really.

Anyway that experience changed my life I have never from that moment looked outside of myself for divinity and after it happened my personality completely changed I was more confident, adventurous etc. Went from a simpering Ginsberg type to a reckless although flawed Kerouac type.

He's trying to convey an aesthetic inspired by a religious experience that he had late in his career.
Everyone experiences a theophany every second of every day.
It's not paranoia if there is a God--which there is.

>It's not paranoia if there is a God--which there is.
True, but there is a difference in noticing/acting upon it and obsessing about it and pointing everything out to everyone willing/unwilling to hear the whole time.
Dick balanced between the two.

I liked your post. Anywhere in particular best to start with PKD? I started Man in the High Castle and was not a fan. Really like the show.

Not those, but:
Ubik and 'Do androids dream of electric sheep' (it's pretty different from blade runner). The rest is up for grabs, haven't read much shortstories but they seem nice as well.
A Maze of Death is a nice intro into the Valis trilogy.

Start with Heraclitus.

Yes, I've also had this same feeling that plants are receiving a certain energy from "outside" (the stars? planets?) they transmit to the earth, in a way more profound than simple photosynthesis.

>Where does dew come from?
And:
Morphogenetic field

Things to look into if you're interested.
>Not necessarily true

My favourite work of his is A Scanner Darkly. I could recommend all of his books apart from Valis. For me Valis was mostly slogging through semi-religious metaphysical rambling

it's called "VALIS".

>these small meaningless coincidences
it's called synchronicity. look into it user. it's pretty interesting stuff. that's a cool story though. did you fug the pkd qt?

no, she was a little too voluptuous for my tastes.

>voluptuous
oh man i wish i had been there. i'm all about thicc girls, and if they're reading the same book as me then that's gg right there

I hadn't gotten into VALIS (just found it in a cupboard and threw it away last week, actually) but three years ago i had a similar experience with Robert Anton Wilson's work. I warn you and anyone else interested in this to stray from the spiritual interpretations of this experience. The paranoia that is latent (or sometimes clearly on display) in these author's books makes you receptive for all kinds of crazy and damaging ideas. MK Ultra was a program designed by people with a lot more money and manpower than we can have as individuals.

>Have you experienced a theophany, Veeky Forums?
Yes. I got a strange sense of vibrancy from everything in my room once; I could see everything around me as lively things with a strong aura, and I even got breathless. I remember staring at these big trees outside my room and I just felt freshness and serenity inside of me. Things just felt sincere and genuine.

To this day, I haven't been able to replicate what I felt back then. I seriously wish I could tho.

>Cock

yeah I'm not one to take things spiritually by any means. the closest I got during that experience of reading VALIS to anything spiritual was questioning the possibility of solipsism or simulation, due to the world becoming increasingly inauthentic in appearance to me. I very much think it had to do with experiencing second-hand how philip k dick experiences life. I think it's an incredible feat to instill such feelings in me, though, and the book will always stick with me for that reason. I went insane a little bit.

Bump