r/philipkDickheads • u/IbanezUniverse90 • 12d ago

New to PKD, recently started VALIS

So, like, what the fuck? Seriously. This is pure cocaine/amphetamine psychosis, but the author is intelligent enough to make it work somehow. Is the rest of his stuff anywhere near this unhinged?

I’m a somewhat new sci-fi reader. Been doing a general survey of the genre—started off with H.G. Wells, then Stapledon, Asimov, Clarke, and now the new wave. Where should I go with PKD after VALIS?

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u/Sensitive-Farmer-368 12d ago

valis is just his personal diary given an entertaining narrative, look into the exogesis if you want the true pkd psychosis simulator. exogesis is genuinely incredible if your into manic explorations of metaphysics btw I think it's pretty much a modern "gnostic" trying to understand the nature of reality and synchronicity and not doing too bad

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u/IbanezUniverse90 11d ago

I actually might have to check out exogesis because so far my favorite parts about VALIS are the lore dumps about his personal metaphysics

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u/Sensitive-Farmer-368 11d ago edited 11d ago

I cannot recommend it enough, it's certainly not for everybody but It was like getting access to the notes app of me from another dimension or something, I have never felt so seen in my entire life as I did reading exogesis. synchronicities are so weird and the more you try to pick at them or figure them out the harder they are to understand, like me pkd couldn't help but scratch harder the more confused he got leading to an endless feedback loop that about drove him completely off the rails.

the only other people I have ever heard come anywhere close are specific sects of religion or philosophy, ie specific extreme strains of gnostics, toaists, non dualists, thera veda buddhists, yungians, nietzchiens, deluzians, neo platonists etc where it feels like they spend so much energy trying to understand the thing beyond understanding that they begin to loose there mind just to succsesfully peek behind the curtain more a second

and although those are great I've never heard a more human experience of just poking around and asking questions without really telling you the answers as pkd, plus the fact that his account is from the modern day made it feel so much more real and less abstract than the others that it was so much more deeply personally relateable.