
The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb - evo_9
http://www.philipkdickfans.com/resources/miscellaneous/the-religious-experience-of-philip-k-dick-by-r-crumb-from-weirdo-17/
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harbie
Interestingly 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...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/philip-k-dick-was-a-
sci-fi-prophet-did-he-predict-the-unraveling-of-kanye-
west/2017/10/11/e7366ffe-ad78-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html)

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nugi
You are kind of a prat to put those 2 in the same light honestly.

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dang
Please don't comment like this here. If you have a substantive point to make,
make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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kyo3
This is a favorite topic of a favorite author of mine. If you want more
information: [https://wuu.bi/the-religious-experience-of-philip-k-
dick/](https://wuu.bi/the-religious-experience-of-philip-k-dick/)

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locrelite
Been there.

I refer to it as "losing my fucking mind" but each to his own.

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harbie
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.

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vlunkr
Well he also says it saved his sons life, so I don’t think it’s that clear to
him

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palad1n
I'm Thomas.

[http://warinheaven.net](http://warinheaven.net)

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jschwartzi
I think this is a passage from Valis. Was Dick being slyly autobiographical in
that book?

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harbie
It was anything but sly. He occasionally writes "I, I mean, Horselover Fat..."
and never once concretely states that he and Fat weren't the same person.

Valis was part of Dick's attempt to interpret and come to terms with that
experience

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apocalypstyx
Philip --> derived from the Greek Philippos, meaning: lover of horses. Dick
--> German for fat.

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kr4
Deducing the existence of soul through reasoning and reflection, on the mind
and states of consciousness: [https://www.swami-
krishnananda.org/brdup/brhad_IV-03.html](https://www.swami-
krishnananda.org/brdup/brhad_IV-03.html)

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phjesusthatguy3
I stumbled across PKD in a Borders; I bought a collection of his short stories
with "The Short Happy Life Of The Brown Oxford" on the cover. I had never seen
this before, so thank you for that. These two weirdos were practically made
for each other.

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vidarh
If you've just read that collection, you have a lot of the most mind-bending
PKD stories left. Try one of his novels. I'd recommend A Scanner Darkly and
Man in the High Castle as two of the more accessible ones (the latter is much
less sci fi - it's more alternative history).

His short stories are very variable in quality - a lot of his early stories
makes you feel trapped in a 50's idea of a post-nuclear holocaust world
because he repeats that setting endlessly as he churned out stories to pay the
bills (but there are great gems there too), so the more curated antologies are
good starting points. Pick up some more and you'll probably also recognize the
plot of any number of movies you may have seen (direct adaptions from his
short stories includes Paycheck - in your antology I think - Total Recall,
Screamers, Adjustment Bureau, Minority Report and more), where a single idea
from his stories was dense enough for a movie.

