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+--- Thread: The divine fire of Philip K Dick’s religious visions (/thread-2740.html)
The divine fire of Philip K Dick’s religious visions - C C - Aug 19, 2016
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-divine-fire-of-philip-k-dick-s-religious-visions
EXCERPT: Although the earliest psychoanalysts saw religion as neurotic, the modern mental health field has stopped pathologising religious beliefs. Contemporary systems of psychiatric diagnosis have no problem with a belief in God, Zoroaster, Demeter, or the Moon Goddess. At least in theory, we are free to hold whatever religious beliefs we wish without fear of being labelled mentally ill.
However, the field has made less progress when it comes to actual religious experiences. Patients meet with less tolerance when they reveal that Jesus is speaking to them, right now, in the consulting room, or that the Moon Goddess flew in through their bedroom window last night and initiated a lunar romance. When spirituality makes the leap from an abstract belief to a real, live experience, therapists get nervous.
The science-fiction writer Philip K Dick puzzled over the distinction between mental illness and religious experience after he had one himself. He claimed that, while he was recovering from dental surgery in February 1974, his consciousness was awakened by a mysterious flash of pink light. After the pink flash, he had visions of abstract paintings and unfamiliar engineering blueprints. Streams of fiery energy – of ‘liquid fire’, he said – seemed to weave through his environment and inhabit his body. He saw scenes of ancient Rome superimposed over his neighbourhood: ‘I looked around and saw Rome! Rome everywhere! Power and force, stone walls, iron bars.’
A local daycare centre appeared to be a Roman prison. To Dick, its children were Christian martyrs to be fed to lions. Pedestrians on the sidewalk seemed to be wearing Roman uniforms. The totalitarian Roman Empire had returned, and Dick felt he was secretly a spiritual warrior doing battle with it. In a letter to a friend, he wrote: ‘At last Rome began by stealthy degrees to surface once more, to manifest itself. Therefore it is not surprising that the same Holy Spirit which rose against it then… has returned to arouse us as before.’
Although the visions eventually vanished, Dick remained fascinated by them. So captivated was he that he wrote an 8,000-page commentary he called his Exegesis...
RE: The divine fire of Philip K Dick’s religious visions - elte - Aug 19, 2016
What people know and have experienced is always where any imagination that is at all coherent goes. Philip K. Dick must have known a lot about ancient Rome, whether he realized or didn't realize how much his mind had been taking in stuff about it over time, or subconsciously analysing it also.
RE: The divine fire of Philip K Dick’s religious visions - stryder - Aug 19, 2016
(Aug 19, 2016 01:49 PM)elte Wrote: What people know and have experienced is always where any imagination that is at all coherent goes. Dick must have known a lot about ancient Rome, whether he realized or didn't realize how much his mind had been taking in stuff about it over time, or subconsciously analysing it also.
I'm pretty sure that P.K.Dick was also concerned about various groups/grovernments spying on him (if memory serves correctly), while it might seem improbably, it's possible that what he saw was actually an external input, perhaps to muse him, perhaps to muse someone else.
RE: The divine fire of Philip K Dick’s religious visions - C C - Aug 19, 2016
Vaguely seems like there was a spurt of speculative fiction in the late 70s and 80s that revolved around the world being variably realized in a way quite different from the usual "parallel universes" and "multiverse" stuff. As if each version of the world was part of a stratified system of allegories interpenetrating each other. I'm not sure if PDK inspired the trend, since he may have deemed his Roman vision as the "underlying reality" and ours a deceptive illusion corresponding to its affairs. Whereas in that minor literary ripple all the variations were figuratively symbolic of each other, minus any being more or less authentic than the rest. "John Smith" might just as much be an inanimate hat rack in a different allegory as an alternative "John Smith" like in the conventional "many worlds" theme. Probably it just sprang from postmodernism rather than PDK.