I stumbled across PKD in a Borders; I bought a collection of his short stories with "The Short Happy Life Of The Brown Oxford" on the cover. I had never seen this before, so thank you for that. These two weirdos were practically made for each other.
If you've just read that collection, you have a lot of the most mind-bending PKD stories left. Try one of his novels. I'd recommend A Scanner Darkly and Man in the High Castle as two of the more accessible ones (the latter is much less sci fi - it's more alternative history).
His short stories are very variable in quality - a lot of his early stories makes you feel trapped in a 50's idea of a post-nuclear holocaust world because he repeats that setting endlessly as he churned out stories to pay the bills (but there are great gems there too), so the more curated antologies are good starting points. Pick up some more and you'll probably also recognize the plot of any number of movies you may have seen (direct adaptions from his short stories includes Paycheck - in your antology I think - Total Recall, Screamers, Adjustment Bureau, Minority Report and more), where a single idea from his stories was dense enough for a movie.
I think this sort of "divine light" experience happens to a lot of people. In the Burmese school of Buddhism started by Mahasi Sayadaw, there is a stage of insight called the "Arising and Passing Away" that teachers identify when their students report phenomena like this. If you go to a Buddhist internet community like dharmaoverground.org, you will find a lot of people reporting and discussing this sort of thing.
Although I no longer consider myself Buddhist, I don't know what to make of it.
>“I’ve heard that there are colors that are too bright for our eyes to see,”
I don't know about brightness, but psychedelic drugs routinely cause visuals of colors that are too saturated for the eyes to see. This is because the responsivity spectra of the eye's cone cells have a lot of overlap, especially between the red and the green types. See: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cones_SMJ2_E.svg
Psychedelic drugs affect the nervous system directly, so they can trigger one color channel without triggering the others. Presumably religious experiences can do the same thing.
You can approximate this effect without drugs by tiring out the overlapping channels before viewing the one you're interested in. Fill your screen with pure cyan (#00FFFF), and set up another tab full of pure red (#FF0000). Turn your display brightness up and switch off the room lights. Stare at the cyan screen for several minutes, and then immediately switch to the red screen. I suspect this color is close to what Dick and West saw.
It was anything but sly. He occasionally writes "I, I mean, Horselover Fat..." and never once concretely states that he and Fat weren't the same person.
Valis was part of Dick's attempt to interpret and come to terms with that experience
Do you have neurological issues? (or suffer from risk factors? such as high blood pressure, overweight, diabetes, sedentarity) I wonder if that could be related (because of PKD's eventual tragic death by stroke). As far as my tiny medical knowledge goes schizophrenia hallucinations usually auditory in nature and not very explicit. There's also the question of the effect of the drug supposedly taken during his dentist procedure ( a compound which seems to have brain effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_thiopental#Side_effects ).
Of course he was probably in general risk for delusional thinking given his job to constantly devise bizarre plots questioning every aspect of reality. But it does make me curious whether he suffered from a neurological condition, or just a psychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia.
Hope you're doing well, mental disorders are scary :(
Diagnosed, strapped to a gurney, and popped in the system for a couple of months. It was almost two decades ago, I'm fine. But having seen and thought most of the things people describe in these experiences, I find post facto attempts to elevate them (usually based on a few coincidences) wishful thinking.
Agreed. It's a disordered, scary place to be in. Not something to glorify and fantasize as a mythical or sensory experience (especially since unlike hallucinogen drugs it's not voluntary, it lasts potentially all your life and you're not in control).
Christian mythology is so boring once you realize what came before it. All the good stories in the Bible are basically Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Greek, Jewish, and other stories mashed up with historical fact (and historical fiction) and a good dose of PR and random rules that make no sense.
When people have these big religious experiences I just think, if you're going to believe in Gods and messiahs and all that, why not one that's actually old that all your stories come from anyway? It's like having a religious experience where you're reliving the life of a Viking farmer who's secretly still praying to the Old Gods and at risk of getting killed if they don't convert to Christianity. See how stupid it sounds when Odin is the big guy in charge?
A number of parallels have been drawn between the Christian views of Jesus and other religious or mythical domains.[1][3] However, Eddy and Boyd state that there is no evidence of a historical influence by the pagan myths such as dying and rising gods on the authors of the New Testament.[3][4] Paula Fredriksen states that no serious scholarly work places Jesus outside the backdrop of 1st century Palestinian Judaism.[5]
Scholars have debated a number of broad issues related to the parallels drawn between Jesus and other myths, e.g. the very existence of the category dying-and-rising god was debated throughout the 20th century, some modern scholars questioning the soundness of the category.[3][6] At the end of the 20th century the overall scholarly consensus had emerged against the soundness of the reasoning used to suggest the category.[6] Tryggve Mettinger (who supports the category) states that there is a scholarly consensus that the category is inappropriate from a historical perspective.[7] Scholars such as Kurt Rudolph have stated the reasoning used for the construction of the category has been defective.[6]
Scholars such as Samuel Sandmel, professor of Bible and Hellenistic Literature at Hebrew Union College, view conclusions drawn from the simple observations of similarity as less than valid.[1]Sandmel called the extravagance in hunting for similarities "parallelomania" – a phenomenon in which a scholar first presupposes the existence of a similarity and then "proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying a literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction", thus exaggerating the importance of trifling resemblances.[1][4]
On top of those, the ones I remember relate to the Greeks. For a long time Greek language and culture influenced the Christian church, and their lettering and symbolism still linger in the church today.
Early Christian versions of Jesus were basically copies of Eros, and Late Christian versions of Jesus were basically copies of Zeus, and then in the middle ages everyone got depressed so they turned him into a holocaust survivor on a wooden plank. Eve falling victim to curiosity with a Tree of Knowledge is basically just Pandora's story re-spun for different effect. Great Flood? Zeus did it first. Cain & Abel? Acrisius & Proetus. Satan/Hell? Hades/Underworld. Holy Trinity? Pagan Trinity. Twelve disciples? Twelve elder gods.
Point is, Christianity came along well after the Greeks and Romans had been spinning these tales all over the place. The Christians wanted a religion that everyone could be part of regardless of ethnicity. They're pushing this idea that there's not only one God, but there's a Messiah doing a lot of David Copperfield shit, and a Holy Spirit, and more weird stuff. Of course they're gonna include familiar stories to give some credibility to the new ideas. Plus, the old stories had weight - we still have Zoroastrians today!
You seem to have fallen prey to propaganda sources online.
It is undeniable that biblical mythology was affected by other cultures (especially Genesis for example). But other than that you have no idea what you're talking about. What books have you read about this? And by which scholars?
>Early Christian versions of Jesus were basically copies of Eros, and Late Christian versions of Jesus were basically copies of Zeus, and then in the middle ages everyone got depressed so they turned him into a holocaust survivor on a wooden plank.
This claim is just simply false. I challenge you to present a single work that you have read by a professor of Classics, New Testament, Theology, or Ancient history that argues that.
k. But as for my assertion about depictions of Jesus as modeled after Roman or Greek gods, it's more of a fun theory than a fact, as all the depictions were just "What would we like him to look like?" They all just painted or sculpted him however they wanted to, which we know included classical depictions such as heroes, philosophers, and even gods, as well as with eastern influences and various other depictions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depiction_of_Jesushttps://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft3f59... (also I may have totally fucked up by saying the young Jesus was modeled after Eros, may have been a different youthful god, oops?)
Oh when you're talking about art, sure. People and cultures tend to want to identify with Christ and so end up depicting him in a certain way. Of course we know that Jesus was a Jewish man who lived in the middle east, so he's surely not black or white or hispanic, etc..
But you're original claim about the accounts about Jesus copying from Greek mythology, etc.. is just not viable historically.
I encourage you to delve into the literature actually it's quite fascinating! A good book to start with that I've enjoyed is Did Jesus Exist by Bart Ehrman.
Actually I was claiming the Bible's stories in general copied from other cultures' mythology, not stories about Jesus specifically. Certainly the Old Testament comes from Jewish tradition as well as others.
I'll look into the sources you mention, though. I haven't gotten deep into the study of religions themselves but I'm sure I'll want to at some point.
Would you like to cite your historical and archaeological references for your of view. Have you studied this subject in detail or are you just repeating other sources? Who do you call old, Ra, Baal, Zeus, Jupiter, Yahweh (otherwise known as I Am or Jesus Christ)?
You also don't seem to make a distinction between political systems that use Christianity as a veneer and the tenets as espoused by Jesus Christ. I also notice that you make no reference to Islam which does incorporate conversion by the sword when appropriate.
42 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 87.8 ms ] threadhttp://warinheaven.net
His short stories are very variable in quality - a lot of his early stories makes you feel trapped in a 50's idea of a post-nuclear holocaust world because he repeats that setting endlessly as he churned out stories to pay the bills (but there are great gems there too), so the more curated antologies are good starting points. Pick up some more and you'll probably also recognize the plot of any number of movies you may have seen (direct adaptions from his short stories includes Paycheck - in your antology I think - Total Recall, Screamers, Adjustment Bureau, Minority Report and more), where a single idea from his stories was dense enough for a movie.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/philip-k-dick...
Perhaps it was rather sideways.
VALIS
Although I no longer consider myself Buddhist, I don't know what to make of it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don't know about brightness, but psychedelic drugs routinely cause visuals of colors that are too saturated for the eyes to see. This is because the responsivity spectra of the eye's cone cells have a lot of overlap, especially between the red and the green types. See: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cones_SMJ2_E.svg
Psychedelic drugs affect the nervous system directly, so they can trigger one color channel without triggering the others. Presumably religious experiences can do the same thing.
You can approximate this effect without drugs by tiring out the overlapping channels before viewing the one you're interested in. Fill your screen with pure cyan (#00FFFF), and set up another tab full of pure red (#FF0000). Turn your display brightness up and switch off the room lights. Stare at the cyan screen for several minutes, and then immediately switch to the red screen. I suspect this color is close to what Dick and West saw.
Valis was part of Dick's attempt to interpret and come to terms with that experience
I refer to it as "losing my fucking mind" but each to his own.
He was very much aware he was likely going insane.
Do you have neurological issues? (or suffer from risk factors? such as high blood pressure, overweight, diabetes, sedentarity) I wonder if that could be related (because of PKD's eventual tragic death by stroke). As far as my tiny medical knowledge goes schizophrenia hallucinations usually auditory in nature and not very explicit. There's also the question of the effect of the drug supposedly taken during his dentist procedure ( a compound which seems to have brain effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_thiopental#Side_effects ).
Of course he was probably in general risk for delusional thinking given his job to constantly devise bizarre plots questioning every aspect of reality. But it does make me curious whether he suffered from a neurological condition, or just a psychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia.
Hope you're doing well, mental disorders are scary :(
When people have these big religious experiences I just think, if you're going to believe in Gods and messiahs and all that, why not one that's actually old that all your stories come from anyway? It's like having a religious experience where you're reliving the life of a Viking farmer who's secretly still praying to the Old Gods and at risk of getting killed if they don't convert to Christianity. See how stupid it sounds when Odin is the big guy in charge?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_comparative_mythology
A number of parallels have been drawn between the Christian views of Jesus and other religious or mythical domains.[1][3] However, Eddy and Boyd state that there is no evidence of a historical influence by the pagan myths such as dying and rising gods on the authors of the New Testament.[3][4] Paula Fredriksen states that no serious scholarly work places Jesus outside the backdrop of 1st century Palestinian Judaism.[5]
Scholars have debated a number of broad issues related to the parallels drawn between Jesus and other myths, e.g. the very existence of the category dying-and-rising god was debated throughout the 20th century, some modern scholars questioning the soundness of the category.[3][6] At the end of the 20th century the overall scholarly consensus had emerged against the soundness of the reasoning used to suggest the category.[6] Tryggve Mettinger (who supports the category) states that there is a scholarly consensus that the category is inappropriate from a historical perspective.[7] Scholars such as Kurt Rudolph have stated the reasoning used for the construction of the category has been defective.[6]
Scholars such as Samuel Sandmel, professor of Bible and Hellenistic Literature at Hebrew Union College, view conclusions drawn from the simple observations of similarity as less than valid.[1]Sandmel called the extravagance in hunting for similarities "parallelomania" – a phenomenon in which a scholar first presupposes the existence of a similarity and then "proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying a literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction", thus exaggerating the importance of trifling resemblances.[1][4]
On top of those, the ones I remember relate to the Greeks. For a long time Greek language and culture influenced the Christian church, and their lettering and symbolism still linger in the church today.
Early Christian versions of Jesus were basically copies of Eros, and Late Christian versions of Jesus were basically copies of Zeus, and then in the middle ages everyone got depressed so they turned him into a holocaust survivor on a wooden plank. Eve falling victim to curiosity with a Tree of Knowledge is basically just Pandora's story re-spun for different effect. Great Flood? Zeus did it first. Cain & Abel? Acrisius & Proetus. Satan/Hell? Hades/Underworld. Holy Trinity? Pagan Trinity. Twelve disciples? Twelve elder gods.
Point is, Christianity came along well after the Greeks and Romans had been spinning these tales all over the place. The Christians wanted a religion that everyone could be part of regardless of ethnicity. They're pushing this idea that there's not only one God, but there's a Messiah doing a lot of David Copperfield shit, and a Holy Spirit, and more weird stuff. Of course they're gonna include familiar stories to give some credibility to the new ideas. Plus, the old stories had weight - we still have Zoroastrians today!
It is undeniable that biblical mythology was affected by other cultures (especially Genesis for example). But other than that you have no idea what you're talking about. What books have you read about this? And by which scholars?
>Early Christian versions of Jesus were basically copies of Eros, and Late Christian versions of Jesus were basically copies of Zeus, and then in the middle ages everyone got depressed so they turned him into a holocaust survivor on a wooden plank.
This claim is just simply false. I challenge you to present a single work that you have read by a professor of Classics, New Testament, Theology, or Ancient history that argues that.
Bart Ehrman, Robert Funk, Dale Martin, John Dominic Crossan, Mark Goodacre, Gerd Lüdemann, James Dunn, and the list goes on and on.
If books are not your thing, you can find a great Yale course about the subject here: New Testament History and Literature with Dale B. Martin: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL279CFA55C51E75E0
But you're original claim about the accounts about Jesus copying from Greek mythology, etc.. is just not viable historically.
I encourage you to delve into the literature actually it's quite fascinating! A good book to start with that I've enjoyed is Did Jesus Exist by Bart Ehrman.
I'll look into the sources you mention, though. I haven't gotten deep into the study of religions themselves but I'm sure I'll want to at some point.
Praise "Bob" !!
You also don't seem to make a distinction between political systems that use Christianity as a veneer and the tenets as espoused by Jesus Christ. I also notice that you make no reference to Islam which does incorporate conversion by the sword when appropriate.