Was Philip K. Dick crazy? Or was he on to something?

Question

Anybody care to share their interpretation of this fascinating man's life, and mission? What was contained in his mysterious unpublished exegesis journal? Is VALIS real? Was he delusional? Schizophrenic? Blessed? Cursed? What did he know that we do not?

Answer 1

everythin is real for you if you really believe it

Answer 2

Mission? Blessed? If you start your journey of discovery with wild assumptions like these, you aren't apt to discover much of anything.

Here's what we know about the fellow. He was a fascinating author. He was a habitual drug user... to the degree that virtually none of his work was ever produced when not under the influence of drugs. He personally had very unusual conceptions of reality. And he was very well read, particularly in the subjects of psychology, philosophy, and religion.

Given those facts, we need little else to imagine the series of highly philosophical works which brood on the difficult-to-know difference between external and internal reality. People with just a fraction of Dick's experiences have done as much, to be sure. There is no need to postulate actual contact with the Divine, alien entities, or even massive mental disorder. A highly imaginitive person thinking overmuch about any of these things might produce the same effects.

Still, that doesn't discount the possibility that any of the above occurred, if you believe in such things. I would just caution most not to confuse the weird with the wierdly true. Sometimes the inspired are mistaken for madmen, but that hardly means that all madmen are inspired, after all.

Ultimately, he and his work all now dwell in the past, and are just as subject to living imagination as the future. What they WERE is in some ways less important than what you WISH them to be. Yet another evidence of that questionable aforementioned internal-external boundary.

Peace.