Saturday, November 12, 2011

David Gill on Dick's Sanity


"Like Cordwainer Smith, I was taken over by my own S-F universe." Exegesis p. 371

David Gill's note:

* Readers skeptical about Dick's sanity after reading the Exegesis should pay careful attention to this passage, where he explores the possibility that the events of 2-3-74 were a schizophrenic hallucination. In interrogating the veracity of his visions, Dick examines his own psychological makeup and analyzes what was going on in his life at the time. Simply put, crazy people do not question their own sanity like this, at least as a general rule. I find this one of the most moving passages of the entire Exegesis because, in it, Dick places the cosmic scope of his vision in relation to the lack of love and excitement in his own life and goes so far as to suggest that this loneliness may have given rise to delusions of grandeur. Such honesty is refreshing and points to the sincerity that underlies Dick's belief in the authenticity of his experiences, as well as his desire to determine whether those experiences were generated internally, as a manifestation of his psyche, or externally, by an encounter with the divine.—DG

1 comment:

  1. The divine is within. So that's a paradoxical statement from Gill. Also, it's clear that schizophrenia is not an affliction of the "crazy" but a "break through" of spirituality.

    ReplyDelete