VALIS/PKD thread

[Anonymous No.20342830]

As well as a thank-you to Frater Asemlen for responding seriously and in-depth to a post I wrote as a joke. I actually was taken off-guard when a quickly cobbled-together post for fun I intended as a joking series of questions stringed together from references to occultism, mysticism, and sci-fi I found interesting and as potentially having a common thread, was responded to seriously and in-depth.

>>Have you ever read Philip K. Dick’s VALIS?

>I have years ago, but was profoundly unimpressed, I do not fall for aesthetic manipulations and do not have any shade of Gnosticism with me. I have a multitude of poems in deification to the demiurge concept for example.
I don’t believe his experiences or model to be particularly mighty or revelatory, if you want to see someone’s ajna ripped open, look into Jacob boehme who had a ball of light enter his skull and resulted in the mystical model which is basically the origin of hegelianism, that’s the ajna being ripped open.

[etc.]

Anyway, Frater’s cynicism aside, I’ve always had a respect for VALIS as a real literary and spiritual curio — a surreally sad and beautiful account of the Divine intruding into and merging with the banal, the lifestyle of the modern West, as well as with sci-fi tropes. When I first read the book as a curious adolescent still with some soul that hadn’t been destroyed by the education system as well as the experience of “working for a living,” and learned about how there were genuine biographical mystical experiences PKD based his VALIS upon, I had a powerful “mindfuck” experience of feeling as if I were a reading a genuinely mystical text, a religious revelation — an account of perhaps what certain Hindu yogis and scholars would label “Shakti Leela”, play or game of Shakti (Power, conceptualized as the feminine/passive/material pole of God, the Absolute, represented by and manifesting throughout the material universe). And so, when reading PKD’s VALIS, the games of “postmodernism” and “metafiction” which other Western authors have regarded as “profound” simply because they were more “experimental” in relation to previous literary works of their culture, ACTUALLY became profound in this instance due to how perfectly he blended philosophy, theology, reality, and fiction in the work — making me wonder if I was actually merely a “reader” “reading” VALIS, or actually a homomorphic miniaturized version of VALIS who was LIVING inside “VALIS” (Vast Active Living Intelligence System), a Divine Being which had chosen Philip K. Dick to write the novel entitled “VALIS” as a way of turning readers onto Itself.

Corny as it sounds, I thank PKD for being one of the figures to turn me onto God. So I make this thread as an appreciation of PKD, as well as of how his literature interlocks with the profoundest insights of Christianity, Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, even what you could call “the perennial philosophy” as conceptualized by Renaissance scholars and mystics and later by Aldous Huxley.

[Anonymous No.20342930]

Luv PKD honestly

[Anonymous No.20342943]

PKD lived in Orange County, where Huxley actually wrote the Perennial Philosophy at the Trabuco College coincidently.

[Anonymous No.20343644]

You're ready

[Anonymous No.20343662]

I've started Ubik yesterday. It's so funny compared to Blade Runner, which is the only other PKD's book I've read.

[Anonymous No.20344359]

bump

[Anonymous No.20345294]

>>20342830
>farter ass-selam(ın aleyküm)
i think his "vaguely popular thing on 4chan is bad because there is also this other more obscure thing, also read my poetry" response routine should tell you how much you should take him seriously. dont give namefags attention

the incompatibility of monism and dualism is a very dualistic idea anyways, which is a very hegelian thing to have said. i believe as far as the world within Logic is concerned pyhtagorian mysticism was right, whatever it is, but thats just philosophy. in practice god is a cheeky bastard
>hegelianism
ungrounded
>metafiction
the implied philosophy really makes a lot more sense for the characters in the book since he IS the author of that world and the author IS insane and there is communication between the author and the characters and the characters realizing that they are characters in a fictional book (while not explicitly stated as far as i remember) would be perfectly akin to an anamnesis experience. as confused as the book is (with the slightly better than usual but still present lack of editing on PKDs part) it works overall.
>surreal
my favorite aspect of it, like when david bowie and brian eno are the step parents of the second coming of christ, and her unsettling death, and the ambiguity of its implications and the ambiguity of the ending as well.

[Anonymous No.20345352]

>>20342830
Read it this winter after Three Stigmata. Definitely revelatory piece of literature which partially suffers having a disjointed plot in lieu of the wealth of philosophical and theological knowledge it has to offer; definitely more thought provoking than giving some sort of definite explanation, which I like. Not sure if it turned me into God quite yet, but it opened a space for this perennial cyclical idea that humanity revolves around which is most definitely outside of physicalist interpretations. I think there could be a bridge between the works of Carl Jung, PKD and the Gnostics; this idea that conceptualization of God is simply out of reach from the conscious, or the body, and one requires understanding through life experience and interpretation of ‘the soul’. His shorter works seem to continuously explore this world of innate human nature and relationships and the contradictions of technological advancement that conflicts with logos.

[Anonymous No.20345981]

>>20345294
>the incompatibility of monism and dualism is a very dualistic idea anyways
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction

[Anonymous No.20347904]

>>20342830
Have you delved into much of his Exegesis? He spent the last 8 years of his life chronicling bizarre experiences he was having, accumulating ~10,000 pages of text trying to explain the phenomenon. As far as I could tell, he seemed to believe he was living in a feedback loop of his own creation - succumbing to the situations and circumstances of his self-insert characters from his earlier writing. He'd write a short story, include a bunch of weirdly specific details, and years later those events would catch up to him. He'd write characters who he'd meet later in life, and fall victim to horrible accidents he foretold in novels.

He's not the only one, Dostoevsky could write his own future. So did Kurt Vonnegut.

[Anonymous No.20347923]

>>20342830
>I had a powerful “mindfuck” experience of feeling as if I were a reading a genuinely mystical text, a religious revelation

I spent my teen years reading PKD, RAW, and the Principia Discorida, looking for that feeling. But it never came to me. I'm in my mid 30s now and I'm still looking for anything to challenge my cynical materialist outlook.

Nothing yet.

[Anonymous No.20348187]

>>20347923
why do you need whacky shit to challange materialism? (altough wacky shit does exist) just look into the hard problem of consciousness

[Anonymous No.20348294]

>>20348187
Anything outside of materialism is wacky. And I've yet to see convincing evidence of any wacky shit.

>hard problem of consciousness
What about it? Lots of questions, no answers.

[Anonymous No.20348419]

>>20342830
Outrageously based and Dickpilled. I love Dick, but I've only read the first chapter of VALIS, but your post makes me wanna read all three books, as I agree that there's a real mystical revelatory aspect to them to be understood and appreciated. I came across Dick in the wake of my own mystical experiences and reading about the background of these books and his Exegesis made me feel much more grounded and less alone in what I was dealing with.

[Anonymous No.20348434]

>>20347923
eat psilocybin mushrooms and contemplate the relationship between your consciousness and the universe as a whole in addition to the absurdity behind all of reality

[Anonymous No.20348445]

>>20348419
skip the second one

>>20348294
>Lots of questions, no answers.
well the point isnt to answer but to eliminate materialism as an aswer, or at least to question it. its definitely not a position to be cynically held onto as long as the question is around. you dont see 1st person experience when you cut into a head and there is no consensus as to why

[Anonymous No.20348462]

>>20345981
no

[Anonymous No.20348640]

>>20342830
>“Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

[Anonymous No.20348816]

Based Dickenjoyers. VALIS was such a wild trip packed with so much theological insight but the constant flood of information combined with the drug-fueled plot and the constant dissimulation between himself and Horselover Fat made it kinda hard to follow.

Ubik started out as a generic scify, than turned into a mystery cat and mouse chase and ended abruptly without never really using any of the elements presented at the beginning. The conclusion is non existent beyond Ubik/spray/salad dressing/cream is God(?). Jorry was fucking terrifying though.

A Scanner Darkly was great. The way he wrote the progression of Bob Actor's mental illness was so well done that at times even I the reader started to wonder if he and Fred are two entirely different persons. It had me live the confusion of that state he was in.

Time Out of Joint started out really strong as a slow burn psychological/mystery novel but the end was pretty much AYYYY LMAO.

The man was a genius at portraying the psyche of a man suffering from dissociative and personality issues. He was also extremely well read witch is surprising given the times he lived in. I will soon pick up Three Stigmatas of Palmer Eldritch. Any thoughts on it?

[Anonymous No.20348862]

Just reread The Divine Invasion again recently and I genuinely think it's his most beautiful work, it's definitely one of my favorite books ever written, the ending gives me actual unironic goosebumps every time I read it

>"Above them the city machine worked, gathering up the remains of Belial. Gathering together the broken fragments of what had once been light."