Pulling the Cosmic Trigger: The Contact Experiences of Philip K Dick & Robert Anton Wilson

[Ichingcarpenter]

PHILIP K DICK

Philip K Dick ArtPhilip K Dick was a science fiction writer with a prolific output from 1953 to 1981 of 121 short stories and 44 novels. Since his death in l982 he has become even better known. His stories have been made into major films like “Blade Runner”, “A Scanner Darkly,” and “Minority Report”. He has also been acknowledged as a major influence on other films, including “The Matrix”.

PKD had themes that recur over and over again throughout his stories – What is real? What is human? How do we know that what we think of as reality is actually real? What defines humanity? Will humans be replaced by machines? PKD also had political themes and religious themes. Though he turned 40 in l968, he identified with the youth counterculture of the l960’s. He was against the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration. He refused to pay federal taxes in protest of the war, and his name appeared in published ads of writers and artists involved in the protest. The federal government confiscated his car for back taxes.

A typical PKD hero was a writer, small businessman, a TV repairman and/or a backyard inventor. He finds his life turned upside down when he discovers that reality is not what it seemed. He wages a fight against vast evil empires of heartless corporations, fascist governments, robots posing as humans, and alien invaders. He is often assisted by a beautiful and intelligent dark haired girl.

Starting in 1971, Phil was no longer just writing about government conspiracies, alternative realities, and struggles against an empire. He started living it. His home was broken in to. Things were damaged, papers were taken, but little of value was stolen. It did not seem like a traditional burglary. Strangely, part of Phil was actually relieved. He thought, “See! I’m not some crazy paranoid. They really are after me.” But he was also horrified and scared of what they would do next. It also validated him however. He must be getting through and having an impact if he was enough of a threat to have this done to him.



His wife Tessa confirms that in 1969 Phil got a phone call from a fan, Dr. Timothy Leary.


http://www.steamshovel.press/2015/05/24/pulling-the-cosmic-trigger-the-contact-experiences-of-philip-k-dick-robert-anton-wilson/


An interesting read for sci fi readers and those that think outside of the box.

[Tom Rinaldo]

1. Thank you very much for this

I first discovered PKD in the early 60's when I was 13 or so, and was captivated by him immediately. I've since read all of his Science Fiction novels, some of his mainstream ones, and most of his short stories, also biographies of him and part of his Exegesis. I was aware of the break in that happened at him home and of his visitation experience, which also involved a pink light if I remember correctly.

I've also been deeply influenced by John Lennon and attended a lecture once given by by John Lily and subsequently read one of his books. I wasn't aware of all of the threads that bind these men and the others mentioned also - this article is like a treasure trove of information for me. Philip K Dick has long been a hero of mine in many ways. He opened his mind to every possibility so It does not surprise or disappoint me in the slightest that some of the thoughts he entertained were way way out there - some version of reality might be also.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. I know those that won't read past what I posted.

But 'living is easy with eyes closed misunderstanding all we see''

[Dragonfli]

3. I read the entire article and felt it well worth the effort

I am well familiar with all the people discussed, but the article brought them together in ways I had not imagined. I was aware of some of the associations between some of them but fell short of connecting the dots of their shared enlightened experiences.

It was an excellent article, if DUer DeSwiss does not see it on his own, I think you will find him grateful if you PM'd him a link to the article, this is right up his alley of interests.

[AK Wilks]

8. Thanks glad you liked my article

I am really glad you liked my article! I too was surprised by some of the links and synchronicities between these folks. It was John Lennon singing when Phil got his message that his son had the dangerous hernia. And Robert Anton Wilson used the hypnosis tapes of John Lilly, etc., and the other links. And yes PKD is a mind opener, yet I tried to show that even his wildest ideas may have a basis in the reality as shown by Carl Jung's collective unconscious and Max Planck's quantum physics notion of a mind behind all matter.

[Tom Rinaldo]

11. A pleasure to hear from you dorectly - hope you are still around

With the possible exception of LSD - which it was not hard to find when I first did it in 1969, Carl Jung clearly did the most to open up my mind. There was something about the fearless nature of exploring a concept as far as it naturally led coming from a man of a clearly elder generation to mine as Jung was to me, that shook my sense of the solidity of our commonly held perception of realty. Jung was to my naive and inexperienced mind a staid intellectual, appearing conservative to me at first glance - his autobiography is still one of my all time favorite reads. And Jung had powerful personal experiences that took tangible form that can not easily be explained in any conventional way.

The quality that I see alike in so many of these figures discussed in this thread, is a virtual inability to look away from questions so central to our existence that we often fail to even articulate them let alone wrestle with them, perhaps out of trepidation of how unsettling that quest can be to living a conventional life with normal blinders on. PKD had that quality in spades - I respecedt that about him greatly.

[AK Wilks]

12. Maverick Minds

Very well said. Yes if you really take seriously what Jung said it is clear he was a maverick. It is similar to what the Nobel Prize winning father of quantum mechanics Niels Bohr, “If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you yet, you don’t understand it .” What quantum mechanics was to traditional physics, is what Jung was to traditional psychology. And yes most of the men discussed in my article "took the red pill" or "went through the looking glass". They did not accept the conventional religious explanations for the world and they also were not satisfied with the modern science dead end of fundamentalist materialism. They took the blinders off, they were seekers.

And yes that quality comes through in the writings of Philip K Dick and Robert Anton Wilson. We see flashes of it elsewhere, from HP Lovecraft to the best of the Twilight Zone. These fictional things, and films like The Matrix or BladeRunner, are entertaining, but also often the first thing to expose people to these alternative ideas. To encourage them to peek beyond the veil, to take the blinders off, to question what is reality, what is human?

Glad my article found its way to people who enjoyed it and that it inspired people to think about these questions and seek out these thinkers and others like them.

And yes glad toi find this site, looks very interesting, I will stick around. Happy to answer any specific or general questions people may have about my article, or just hear any other comments.

[doxyluv13]

4. Interesting piece but I'd keep in mind Phil loved his hallucinogens

Like many pulp writers Phil used a lot of benzedrine to make his deadlines. Later, he took tons of acid and other mind-altering drugs. So I wouldn't give his recollections full credence.

FYI:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/aug/12/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.philipkdick

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. Regarding PKD and LSD

You wrote "Later, he took tons of acid and other mind-altering drugs". The article you link to simply states this:

"In 1960s California it was inevitable that a writer like Dick would become a counterculture guru, expected - practically obliged, in fact - to flaunt a drug-rich lifestyle of his own, and he rose enthusiastically to that challenge. His writing had always been fuelled by vast quantities of amphetamines, but he soon branched out into marijuana, mescaline, LSD, sodium pentothal and even PCP."

However the source article for this OP writes this:

"It’s true that Phil had mental health issues, but they mostly revolved around depression. In this period, living with his wife Tessa and young son Christopher, he was happy most of the time. Phil did take legal uppers, and he experimented with LSD, but only twice. His reputation as a wild man drug user was exaggerated in the press. [italics mine] One time Phil was eating dinner at a sci-fi convention, and a fan snatched a pill beside his plate and swallowed it. 'What’s going to happen to me?' the fan asked. Phil explained, “Well, if you have a sore throat it will feel better"..."

Dick consumed vast quantities of only one drug, speed in various forms. He did so because he was not considered a "serious" writer throughout most of his life. The only market open to him was paperback pulp publishers and they paid poorly. Dick needed to write several novels a year plus assorted short stories to grind out a meager living, and even so he was often very poor. Hence "uppers" to help him churn out "product" to keep some income coming in.

The source article for this OP is very even handed, it offers all of the possible Dick was unhinged explanations for events in his life, but also illuminates the aspects of them that can not so easily be dismissed that way and why.

[AK Wilks]

9. Philip K Dick's Real Life Experiences

That is a common perception about Philip K Dick, that he took tons of acid and was constantly hopped up on speed and other drugs. But see what Tom Rinaldo wrote here. I tried to show in my article that those perceptions were mostly the product of great exaggerations. He did take LSD - exactly twice, and not in the time period of the unusual experiences. For years he did take legal uppers to help him write books, but was not doing so in this time period, and those uppers would not cause these type of visions or communications. The only other illegal drug he took was marijuana. In interviews with his last wife Tessa, she told me that in this fairly happy and stable period in Phil's life, living with her and their son Christopher, Phil was not taking any illegal drugs or legal uppers. She also confirmed that out of the blue Phil awoke from sleep and stated that their son Christopher had a hernia that could kill him if it strangulated. A doctor later confirmed this diagnosis. Tessa had no explanation for how Phil could have know about the hernia. There are also no quick easy explanations for the hours of visions of abstract paintings, the sense that whatever was communicating with him helped to successfully reorganize his life and respark his creativity. Phil himself had no answers and I don't either! I don't rule out mental illness, runaway imagination or other causes. But I leave the door open to some extraordinary possibilities.

One thing I can say is that if something contacted Phil, and/or the other people I look at, it was probably not extraterrestrial in origin. Even if it used that as a disguise. Instead it is far more likely to be Earth bound, coming from within our dimension or from another dimension that quantum physics says likely exists. It may also just be coming from incredibly powerful areas of our brain that are usually untapped.

The other interesting thing is in this dangerous time period of the rise and fall of the Nixon regime, other people had some similar and different types of unusual contact experiences. Many of them have a chain of connections, like Philip K Dick and Robert Anton Wilson being friends, Dick being a fan of John Lennon, with Lennon reporting a strange sight in 1974 and giving a childhood memory of a strange encounter (maybe). RAW also listened to the tapes of Dr. John Lilly, the human-dolphin communication researcher, who had unusual contact experiences of his own. And Dr. Timothy Leary makes a cameo appearance in almost every person's experiences I looked at. Also we should not think that all ideas that may come from using LSD are pure nonsense. LSD, DMT and other substances may facilitate communication with this "other" that exists out there and/or open up owerful untapped areas of the brain.

And these ideas may sound far out or pure sci-fi, yet they have parallels in the ideas of Carl Jung on the collective unconscious and synchronicities and Nobel prize winning quantum physicist Max Planck on a intelligent and conscious mind that is the matrix of all matter.

Thanks to the OP for linking to my article, and I am glad that so many found it interesting! Thanks to all those who commented on the article and stated how it affected them or resonated with their experiences. It means a lot to a writer that his efforts found an audience that was appreciative, and that it further sparked discussion, conversation and ideas.

[Rhiannon12866]

10. Thank you so much for the additional information!

This is truly fascinating stuff and, after reading this, it's only natural to want to hear more... So glad that you found us and welcome to DU!

[bananas]

6. k&r nt

[hunter]

7. Philip K. Dick is one of my favorites.

It irks me quite a bit that the Hollywood films seem to deliberately obscure his message.

A film true to Philip K. Dick would leave most of the audience feeling vastly uncomfortable, like "What the Fuck did I just see?" and big money isn't going to finance anything like that, not by design, anyways, except as they are blind to their own sordid kinks. I'm not talking about the what-the-fuckishness of Battlefield Earth or Eyes Wide Shut.

Enough of Phil's vision leaked into Blade Runner's script that the producers felt compelled to paste on a happy ending in the first release. The "Directors Cut" of the film, with it's ambiguous ending, isn't such a grotesque maiming of the vision, but it's still not Phil.

It's not any deep dark conspiracy, I guess, except that our entire society would rather not explore what's under the surface of this reality.

Those who do explore these places often get weird. Look at some notorious theoretical mathematicians and physicists. Paul Erdős leaps first to mind in any discussion about Philp K. Dick.

It's not common knowledge, since his public face was so approachable, and his reputation as a skeptic so solid, but Carl Sagan was such an explorer too. I've met several people who knew him earlier in his career. One described Sagan as a guy who wore all black and rarely talked, and when he did talk he was "dark." I've always seen him as a man struggling against, dare I say, that hallucinogenic "mystical" part of his own nature. A little of that leaked out in his novel Contact, but of course Hollywood maimed that vision too.