"Dick,_Philip_K._The shifting realities of Philip K Dick" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

the extent that our mental and sensory awareness happens to extend beyond these socially ratified
screens, any one of us may become subject to "hallucinations" -- which are, in essence, unshared
realities. While it is possible that "mystical" insights may ensue, there is a greater likelihood -- and a
fearfully tragic one it is -- that we may find ourselves in a hell realm of utter mental isolation:
In the light of this, the idea of hallucinating takes on a very different character; hallucinations, whether
1 I would like to thank Kleo Mini for permission to quote from Michael in the 'Fifties, which offers a valuable
portrait not only of Dick but also of the Berkeley milieu in which he came of age.
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induced by psychosis, hypnosis, drugs, toxins, etc., may be merely quantitatively different from what we
see, not qualitatively so. In other words, too much is emanating from the neurological apparatus of the
organism, over and beyond the structural, organizing necessity. . . . No-name entities or aspects begin to
appear, and since the person does not know what they are -- that is, what they're called or what they mean
-- he cannot communicate with other persons about them. This breakdown of verbal communication is the
fatal index that somewhere along the line the person is experiencing reality in a way too altered to fit into
his own prior worldview and too radical to allow empathic linkage with other persons.
There is an interesting parallel between Dick's emphasis here on a societally based definition of
hallucinations -- as perceptions unshared by others -- and the insight offered by the eminent
anthropologist Edward T. Hall in his Beyond Culture: "Perceptual aberrations are not restricted to
psychoses but can also be situational in character, particularly in instances of great stress,
excitation, or drug influences2." Instances, that is, in which, in Dick's words, "too much is emanating
from the neurological apparatus of the organism."
In his 1965 essay "Schizophrenia and the Book of Changes" (also included), Dick sought to give
the fearful and isolated perceptions of the schizophrenic an analytical coherence that might extend
beyond the purely personal to a new viewpoint on human experience:
What distinguishes schizophrenic existence from that which the rest of us like to imagine we enjoy is the
element of time. The schizophrenic is having it all now, whether he wants it or not; the whole can of film
has descended on him, whereas we watch it progress frame by frame. So for him, causality does not exist.
Instead, the a-causal connective principle which [quantum physicist] Wolfgang Pauli called Syncronicity
is operating in all situations -- not merely as one factor at work, as with us. Like a person under LSD, the
schizophrenic is engulfed in an endless now. It's not too much fun.
Dick described himself, in this essay, as "schizoid effective" -- a "pre-schizophrenic personality."
This fearful dancing on the high wire of self-diagnostics is a recurrent element in Dick's essays and
journals. Two opposite possibilities set the boundaries: the fear that he might be insane ("psychotic"
and "schizophrenic" were his most common terms), and the possibility that he might, through an
encompassing intellectual understanding (anamnesis, the recollection of the archetypal realm of
Ideas of Plato), win spiritual redemption -- freedom from his crippling fears, and a haven from the
deluded and sorrowful world.
There was, for Dick, a certain sense in which his own writings might alleviate some of the sorrow
-- for his readers and for himself -- by at least openly acknowledging the doubts and questions that
existence posed for those who had eyes to see. As he wrote in one Exegesis entry:
I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to
formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can
do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of
sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom
my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature
of reality, &, for them, my corpus of writing is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an
integration & presentation, analysis & response & personal history3.
One aspect of that "personal history" that has continued to intrigue his readers is the bizarre and
powerful series of dreams, visions, and voices that flooded Dick's consciousness in February and
March 1974 (or "2-3-74," Dick's shorthand for that period) and stood for him as the central -- and,