MANTIS wrote:Scumfucker wrote:until he lost his mind.
I suspect this oversimplification does not quite explain Exegesis.
I haven't read Exegesis, but it's my opinion that his madness was his genius. Anyone that does THAT many hard drugs becomes paranoid and delusional. But in that paranoia and break from reality, he was still very coherent in his fantasies. Maybe he didn't lose his mind, but he certainly suffered from paranoid delusions.
As you're probably already aware:
Throughout February and March 1974, he experienced a series of visions, which he referred to as "two-three-seventy four" (2-3-74), shorthand for February-March 1974. He described the initial visions as laser beams and geometric patterns, and, occasionally, brief pictures of Jesus and of ancient Rome. As the visions increased in length and frequency, Dick claimed he began to live a double life, one as himself, "Philip K. Dick", and one as "Thomas", a Christian persecuted by Romans in the 1st century A.D. Despite his history of drug use and elevated stroke risk, Dick began seeking other rationalist and religious explanations for these experiences. He referred to the "transcendentally rational mind" as "Zebra", "God" and, most often, "VALIS". Dick wrote about the experiences in the semi-autobiographical novels VALIS and Radio Free Albemuth.
At one point Dick felt that he had been taken over by the spirit of the prophet Elijah. He believed that an episode in his novel Flow My Tears The Policeman Said was a detailed retelling of a story from the Biblical Book of Acts, which he had never read.[15]
In time, Dick became paranoid, imagining plots against him by the KGB and FBI. At one point, he alleged they were responsible for a burglary of his house, from which documents were stolen. He later came to suspect that he might have committed the burglary against himself, and then forgotten he had done so. Dick himself speculated as to whether he may have suffered from schizophrenia.
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