a (Sone readers might complain that the folloving article is written in’ the raanner of a Nev York Times Book Review piece. That is, the book reviewer Usually devotes eight thousand words. to telling what he knows about the subject sat hand and proving that his knowledge 1s vastly superior to anyone else's, then, Lf the book author 4 lucky, he devotes the last paragraph of the review to. the book.--usually ssiggering, sneering and dismissing tt altogether.) "Tt vas after midnight in the spring of 1872, and a hansom carriage moved slovly through the "fog of Sherlock Holmes's London. Young Richard’ Maurice Bucke sat erect in a quiet, meditative ood, his shoulders rocking with the ‘uneven movenents of the carriage wheels over the worn cobblestones. Suddenly, as he vould recall Later, 8 flave-colored cloud seezed to sweep over him, | At firet he thought the city vas on fire. ‘Then the luminous cloud seened to enter his body, and lightning bolts crackled in his brain, Por a brief ‘moment he felt he vas one with the universe, and all knovledge-past, present end Future--ricocheted in the corners of his wind and he felt different. Changed somchow.” (from The Eighth Tover, 1976, by the author) Dr.. Bucke went on to becone one of Canada's sost Aistingutshed psychiatrists, And he vas the fret to ‘attenpt a study of the strange phonowenon that had engulfed hhim in that London fog. Then, “in 1901, he slipped on the ice and bashed in his head. But not before he produced the classic book, Cosmic Consciousness, which is still in print. Now we’skip ahead to the year “1945, An 18-year-old boy, fresh froa'a farm, le living in a cheap furnished room 2 couple of blocks from Times Square in New York City. Ia the middle of the night, he is avakenod by weird feeling. His “room is filled with an indescribable Iight, @ pinkish glow that leads him to think the building is on fire. Before he can move, his mind ts flooded with a torrent of inforeation. Miraculously, he understands everything. ALL that hes happened, all that will happen ~and- the total meaning of it ell!’ Excited though he is, he falls asleep again. The next morning he ronenbers the event vividly, Tt is seared into his wind, But the information <8 all inst. He “con't renesber any of it. As the years pass he wili realize thet iz vee entered into his subconscious wind end Saal] portions vill bubble to the surface from tine to tiae. T vas thot 18-year-old boy. For many years I never wsentioned the incident to anyone, although the incident. vae S30 resplendent that I thought of At often. Tt vasa't ned] the 1960s that T discovered other people had shared the sane experience. In fact, it is probable thet it happens to millions of people in'esch generation. Tt i known under bony different nanes...enlightennent, mystical illumination, cosmic illumination, etc. Many modern perciplents are misled nto thinking it is being "orn Again,” Others think of it as "the call" and they join priesthoods. Still others, often people of hunble station, quit their Jobs, dunp their fasilies and adopt a vhole nev way of life, becoming fanous Ieaders in the arts, politics and religion. The one thing that becomes clear vhen you study this process is that a. fairly large percentage of the hunan race ie overtly manipulated by Illumination, and they lead the rest fof husanity into future events, often calamitous in nature, Which sees pre-planned. Religion makes a feeble effort to explain this sanipulation. Men have been avare of it aince they” sat in eaves and whittled calendars on bones. Whole civilizations have risen--and collapeed—-because of this avareness. The source of this wanipulation seems. to. be Uinknowable and indefinable. So mankind has devised a Long series of anthropomorphic demons and gods to share the blane, “Since earliest times, ve have chopped out living hearts and vaged horribly brutsl vars ag part of this Was PKD A Flake? by John “it takes one to know one” Keel manipulation. At this very moment several religious wars ing on this pathetic mudbell, Hictims of Tllunination often suffer "static" and the whole process sisfires. People sho deliberately seek communicate with The Force, as George Lucas dubbed it, usually end “up as suicides or they get hit by a truck. Those who draw circles on the floor, Light black candles end wave svords around alwars cone to a tragic ead. ‘The lasas in the Himalayas discovered that it takes many years of effort to attain Illunination...snd then the process takes over completely. The successful adept becones a zombie in Ihuch the sane way thet religious fanatics everyehere becose fotelly. conswaed and ancrifice their individuality for state of happy nindlessness. Science fiction writers have dabbled with all thts for wany years, grinding out half-baked books loosely based on scholarly ' wisinterpretations of the phenomenological Literature. "The sword and sorcery stories fors a complete genre. Modern fantasy pays grudging acknovledgenent to very “real period in early history when men understood the magical forces aurrounding then and, in fact, magic vas the trie science of ite day. Sone science fiction writers have even been zapped by that big searchlight in the sky. The late Philip FE. Dick (1928-1982) wrote extensively and obsessively about a mind widening experience. Iie cult novel VALIS, one of his last Works, published by Bantan in 1981, described how a rather Unlikeable hero named Fat wandered through the Twilight Zone. I tell you these things for what they are worth, They are true things; they happened, Te Fat's opinion his apartnent’ had been saturated with high levels of radiation of sose Kind. In fact he hed seen it: blue Light dancing Like St. Elmo's Fire. What was more, the aurora that sizzied partwent behaved as if it were Sentient and alive. When it entered objects it interfered with their causal processes. And wher it reached Fat's head it transferred--nat just information to hin, which it did--but. also. a Personality. A pereonality which vasa't Fat's, A person with different memories, customs, tastes fand habits. (WALIS, p. 94) ‘The question before us <2 einple, Vas PAD a flake? He spent the Inst eight years of his life talking and writing about his "religious experience." lle had learned the. true eaning of the ancient phrase, "lie has seen the Light." Was he just’ a plain nut?” lad he been reading ty books and areizies? “Was he into druge? God, he told us, had fired e beam of pink Light difectiy at him, at his head, his eyes; Fat had beon tesporarily blinded and'his head’ had ached for days, Tt was easy, he, asid, to describe the beas of pink ight: it's exactly what you get as a phosphene after-inage when a Flashbuib hes gone off in your face. Fat. var spiritually hagnted by that color. salle Lived for that Light, that one particular color, However, "he could never really find it again. Hothing could generete that color for Light’ but God. In other vords, normal light did not contain thet color. One tine Fat studied a color chart, a chart of the visible spectrum. The color vas absent. He had seen a color vhich no one can ee; it lay off the end. ALIS, p. 12) It’ does sound as if PRD nay have had personal experience with the dazzling light’ that has now been Feported by counties UFO contactees, angel witnesses (there are thousands of reports of angels each year), snd chim Sighters, The visible spectrun goes from red at one end of the scale to purple at the other end. Beyond these ve have infra-red and ultra-violet. Some humans are able to perceive those “invisible colors" and peck into the edges of | whole universe that is hidden fron the rest of us. That may be the universe that gleefully manipulates us into Charging into battle to spew out guts’ all over the- Tt 1s also a universe that grinds vay endle: propaganda Ike a broken phonograph to” generation after eneration of prophets, seers, contactees and, in the 1980s, channels. In a letter written on May 20, 1977 (PKDS 4:1), PRD reveals that his mind vas picking up the signals fron’ that broken phonograph, Like most contactees and spiritualista. "Moanshite Twas shaping ay cosmology," he wrote, "when it finally took form in March of 1974, "based on ay nystical revelations I understood noetically that two opposing Forces, powers, eides or entities contended in our world, using it'as a ganeboard or battlefield, Intellectually i could then Adentify these two absolute forces with the two forces T had formerly seen ay foe, which becane Identified with the Sons of Darkness, and ay friends, the Sons of Light...to use Zoroaster's teres, Thad been” part of 8 cosmic’ struggle acted out on our earth. It was a struggle taking place in the arena of husan history. Bvidencly I yas'a Son of Light who had cone here, forgotten his origin, “Identity and parpose, but regained mesory and understanding of all this after Thad done ny. work...I renenpered who Twas, why I vas here and I experienced’ ay true father, whom I call the Programmer." ‘The Programmer! Was PED the Plake just ranting? Or ‘was he standing on the edge of one universe and peering into another with greater perception and lucidity’ than aost contactees, channe a Philip K. Dick had Lived a tortured, paranoid 1ife, hounded by' the IRS and the other cruel social Forces of the 1970s. He hag also apparently summoned up those Sone of Darkness, Walle I can find no direct references to ity his vritings hint that he may have been flirting with pentagcame ang sword-vaving in darkened rooms. [Possibly, but not that T know of. —-PW] Tn 1970, his hone was broken’ into and high explosives were used to blast open his filing cabinets, He fled for his Life, hiding out for some tine fron” sone nysterious eneny...aithough the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, vas performing ail Kinds of atrocities against norsaly innocent citizens during. that’ period. Following the ilitary coup of 1963, ve were ail Living in an Orwellian police state. fyerybody's phone vas tapped, or so it Seonod. Everybody's nail vas being tapered with. (The CIA has acknowledged intercepting at least one letter PED. sent, to a Soviet scientist, in the 19508. ~-PW] The New Age vas suddenly upon us and Ouija Boards vere outselling Monopoly sets. The pointless bloodbath in Vietnas was steadily escalating. "Te vas a sorry time. "A massive worlduide UFO wave had enchanted millions from 1964 to "65, Enlightenzent ea taking place wholesale...all biased towarda” antiquated Secult beliefs. “If you didn't belleve in anything, you Could join the growing drug novenent. which would "later dominate the 1970s, along with the weirdly selfish anti~ Christian "Me First” trend...forerunner to the total greed of the 1980: Te was not surprising that PED would be caught up in atl those things. lle tried druge, ile studied the occult. An according to Tessa B. Dick, one of his tive wives, Neaein March of 1974, we felt that ve were in real dange Something ominous loosed over the horizon, just out of views Our radio refused co behave. Te vould cone on when it was not on, and would pick up broadcasts that just did not beiong on the station it was tuned to... Our telephone behaved strangely, too. Yes, radios’ behaved most strangely then. My ovn included. And telephones! Telephones were running anok all over the country. (See my book, The Mothnan Prophecies, for 2 full account of these prableas.) FED'S paranoia was’ not onty well-founded, it was shared by a great” many other people. We were all being manipulated. Many of ue were on 3 great voyage of self-discovery. PED vas learning of povers he hed never been fully aware of. "Sone part of my brain ts out of synch with tine," he observed. His powers of precogaition fascinated and terrified fam. He fait foreboding weeks before his house vas broken into in. Maria County. He vorked on VALIS and other “enlightened” projects with a frenzy because he knew there waa a black clout just oyond the horizon. from hia letters, books and interviews it’ is apparent that he knew when his work was done there would be a sudden stillness, “Pascal said, "ALL History is one imortal nan who continually tearng.' This is the Imortai One uhom "we worship without kaowing his nase,” PKD observed. Like all writers, PED vas a neurotic, Like all those who, allow their minds to probe Lato the misty corners of fan's spiritual existence, he suffered. And in 1952, he ‘slipped on the ice" when he was felled by a stroke.” iis work'was done. All the proper words had been placed in the Proper order, Was he a flake?” Millions of renders fron yesterday and tosorrov vill see his ss a very special man in a world” without tise vhere vondersent ig a baste law 1tke aravity. [Copyright 1987 by J. A. Keel, This essay also appeared. ina aagazine called New Frontiers, published” in Oregon, Wisconsin. See PKBS 6, pp. 9-10, for more about John Keel.)