"The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick" by R. Crumb

Thank you. I intend reading it soon at my leisure.

A few months ago I was visiting a car boot sale and saw some of Dick's books on a second hand book stall. I had never heard of him before. I didn't buy his books, but a little later I saw something about him on the internet, and since then his name has come up in all sorts of ways. I think I have to read one of his books sometime in the near future.

Meanwhile, I will read about his personal experience and then will be able to relate more easily to his published stories.

Thanks for taking the time and trouble to bring these pages to TGD.

Carol A Noble

Hi Carol,

dp1974 here - and think nothing of it! It's interesting that you don't recall having written it though ...

I class PKD with Marx, Freud and Adam Smith in terms of how many people quote him without having read him in! And I can't say that I have read his entire output either ...

Once you've read it, Google "How To Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart in Two Days" - I think that is the origin of the graphic tale ...

The events depicted in Robert Crumb's cartoon were described in a fictional way in PKD's great novel VALIS. Indeed further information on this can be gleaned from the few sections of his journal "Exegisis" that have been published in recent years.

In researching material for the PKD chapter in my latest book I came across a series of letters that Phil wrote to his Alaskan pen-pall, Claudia Krenz. In a letter dated 9th May 1974 Phil wrote "p.s. What scares me the most is that I can often recall the future".

This is a fascinating use of words. PKD does not write "perceive" or "see" but "recall" in relation to the future. It is as if he considered that he was re-living his life.

But the best one is a letter dated 25th February 1975. In this Dick writes:

"I was up to 5:00 am on this last night. I disomething I never did before. I commanded the entity to show itself to me - the entity which had been guiding me internally since March. A sort of dream-like period passed, then, a stark single horrifying scene, inert but not still; a man lay dead, on his face, in a living room between the coffee table and the couch."

In February 1982 Philip K Dick was found unconscious in his living room, face down. He had suffered a massive stroke. He was never to regain full consciousness and was to die a few weeks later.

Was this part of the "recalling" of his own future that he mentioned in the earlier letter. But more interesting what was the nature of the "Entity" that he described?

Reading again what has been said about Phillip K Dick I was wondering if when he asked who the entity was, could it be that his spirit from the future, at the time of his death, went back into his own body in the past. Could it be that the entity which possessed him was his future self?

Just a weird thought.

Carol A Noble