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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio, Eric Davis, high Weirdness, drugs, esoterica, and visionary

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Speaker 1: experience in the seventies. Really just, I mean, from my mind,

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Speaker 1: Philip K. Dick is like he's the Babe Ruth of

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Speaker 1: the three heavy hitters you've mentioned so far as absolutely,

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Speaker 1: I mean, the whole book started out as just being

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Speaker 1: about Philip K. Dick, But I became interested in the

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Speaker 1: way in which his remarkable experience that he called two

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Speaker 1: three seventy four because it happened in nineteen seventy four,

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Speaker 1: it started in nineteen seventy four. It's sorry, it resonated

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Speaker 1: so much with these other experiences that I started to go, hey,

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Speaker 1: something's going on. It's more than just about Philip K.

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Speaker 1: Dick in his very singular imagination and singular life. But

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Speaker 1: he really is the person that I've been reading the

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Speaker 1: longest and studied the most, and have written the most about. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that is the heart of the tale. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: I think you I mean, you said singular and it

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Speaker 1: kind of rubs up against singularity, and I think that

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Speaker 1: that's not out of the question. And a conversation about

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Speaker 1: what was going on with Philip K. Dick's mind as

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Speaker 1: he blended pretty seamlessly the fact of his life and

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Speaker 1: the fictions that he was writing about. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: we've been talking about that blend between fact and fiction.

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Speaker 1: It's on our minds so much these days as we

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Speaker 1: try to just navigate consensus reality as it melted down,

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Speaker 1: and we looked back at these guys and they were

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Speaker 1: really pushing that that boundary. And Dick did it, you know,

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Speaker 1: just in a different way than than Wilson, but not

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Speaker 1: not too terribly different, where even though he had this

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Speaker 1: remarkable set of experiences that you know, visionary dreams and

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Speaker 1: synchronicities and experiences with light and getting downloading messages and

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Speaker 1: you know, all this kind of paranormal material, the closer

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Speaker 1: look at it, you realize that a lot of it

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Speaker 1: is kind of like his own fiction. But it's not

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Speaker 1: like he's making it up. It's like he's sort of

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Speaker 1: he's in a loop where like his own fictions are

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Speaker 1: entering into his life and then he's responding like a

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Speaker 1: character in one of his stories, and he's acknowledging that

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Speaker 1: his own works in some ways, you know, resemble reality

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Speaker 1: more and born he's like, there's something going on here

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Speaker 1: that's about It's beyond the difference between fiction and reality. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I've never read two three seventy four. I don't think,

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Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, it's been published in its entirety.

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Speaker 1: Now finally, eight are there a thousand of the eight

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Speaker 1: thousand pages or how many pages of the published Jesus? Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So he after he had this experience, he spent the

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Speaker 1: rest of his life writing about it in different ways.

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Speaker 1: He wrote novels based on it. Ballast is the most

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Speaker 1: famous and probably the most worthwhile. But he also wrote

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Speaker 1: this private diary that he never intended to publish that

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Speaker 1: he called The Exegesis, And it's this enormous work. And

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Speaker 1: I worked on the published version of it, which, like

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Speaker 1: you said, is a big, fat book. Fat in mind.

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Speaker 1: Come on, it's only a tense Yeah. What he wrote

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Speaker 1: I heard it was eight thousand pages something like that,

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Speaker 1: and eight thousand and I'm not saying this to Smirch's

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Speaker 1: good name, rest in peace, but eight thousand fairly drug

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Speaker 1: fueled pages, right, I mean he was writing like feverishly,

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Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty pages a week or day or

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Speaker 1: something like that for a while he was writing feverishly.

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Speaker 1: But the interesting thing about about Dick and makes them

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Speaker 1: different than Terrence McKenna and Robert Antone Wilson, is that

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Speaker 1: those guys were really into psychedelics, and they were taking

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Speaker 1: psychedelics big time to blow themselves to the ends of

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Speaker 1: the universe. But Dick, especially by the early nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: wasn't actually taking that many drugs. And he no, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's psychedelics. I'm not saying he was taking speed though, right,

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Speaker 1: but by by this by the by the seventies, he

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Speaker 1: was he was not really taking speed anymore because that

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Speaker 1: was the sixties. So that's what's interesting about him is

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Speaker 1: he's not actually I mean, he's drug damaged, no doubt,

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Speaker 1: and he but the thing about Dick is that he

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Speaker 1: can't It's not just about the drugs because he was

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Speaker 1: always weird. Like when he was a kid. He had

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Speaker 1: very strange experiences he had. They had him in, you know,

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Speaker 1: seeing psychiatrist and he was on meds you know, at

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Speaker 1: a very early point. So he is what we would say,

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Speaker 1: not neurotypical. You know. The other guys were kind of

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Speaker 1: bringing it on. They were like Prometheus. They wanted to

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Speaker 1: push it to the edge. In a way, Dick brought

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Speaker 1: it on, but he also kind of suffered it. He

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Speaker 1: kind of he was more like a classic mystic that

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Speaker 1: had things just sort of happened to him, and so

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Speaker 1: he wrote like a maniac, but in a way he

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Speaker 1: was almost outside of the really drug fueled period that

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Speaker 1: he had had early in his life. Yeah, fair enough.

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Speaker 1: And I'm not the expert in order I claim to be,

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Speaker 1: but I do remember reading at one point, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: maybe it was in the reviews when A Scanner Darkly

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Speaker 1: came out um as a movie, and people were talking

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Speaker 1: about the he was living with. He had all these

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Speaker 1: like hippies that were living in in his big old

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Speaker 1: house with him, right, he let street people live with

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Speaker 1: him for a period of time. Yeah, that was that

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Speaker 1: was just before you know, that was at the very

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Speaker 1: or basically he had he was living with the hippies

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Speaker 1: and his life was really spiraling out of control. He

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Speaker 1: hit bottom, and then he went into a clinic, you know,

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Speaker 1: like a like a rehab clinic. And after he got

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Speaker 1: the rehab clinic, he moved to southern California and that's

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Speaker 1: where like things kind of settled down. Okay, you know,

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Speaker 1: comparatively comparatively right, still living, still living on the edge,

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Speaker 1: and uh, but The Extra Jesus is a fascinating strange book.

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Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, it's just like a million

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Speaker 1: crank literature pieces of literature out there where people write

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Speaker 1: there like they're metaphysics of the actual true structure of

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Speaker 1: the cosmos, and they're just in some attic somewhere, you know,

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Speaker 1: in a basement somewhere, And in a way it's like

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Speaker 1: one of these like crazy texts, but it's also written

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Speaker 1: by this brilliant science fiction writer, so's it's much richer

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Speaker 1: than that. And so it's a fascinating way to see

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Speaker 1: what happens when people have really far out experiences and

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Speaker 1: then they try to write their way out of it,

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Speaker 1: they try to understand what's happening, and they leave this

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Speaker 1: these texts behind that we can look at and go, WHOA,

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Speaker 1: what were they thinking or what were they on? Or

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Speaker 1: what were they what had gone down with? Yeah? That

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Speaker 1: the word is interesting too, exa Jesus coming from the

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Speaker 1: Greek and meaning very specifically in literature, how one allows

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Speaker 1: the text to speak for itself. But in his case,

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Speaker 1: I think the ex of Jesus and this, you know,

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Speaker 1: voluminous work which we'll never hear the end of we'll

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Speaker 1: never probably see the end of it in our lifetimes.

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Speaker 1: Published was an exact was letting that period of his life,

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Speaker 1: that two three seventy four period of his life speak

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Speaker 1: for itself. Yeah. One of the interesting things about the

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Speaker 1: Dick's whole situation is that he felt like he had

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Speaker 1: gotten a revelation, like in the full religious sense, that

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Speaker 1: he had seen through the falseness of reality and see

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Speaker 1: in glimpse the truth. But at the same time, it's

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Speaker 1: like he didn't really get the message, like he didn't

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Speaker 1: really know what it meant. He didn't really know what

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Speaker 1: the revelation was about. And so what you see in

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Speaker 1: the ex of Jesus is he just he offers theory

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Speaker 1: after theory after theory after theory. I mean he's like,

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Speaker 1: you know, the wildest speculators that you have on the

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Speaker 1: show turned up to eleven over and over and over

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Speaker 1: and over again, like night after night, year after year.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it was the Soviet satellite beaming signals to my head.

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Speaker 1: Maybe the universe is in is one god. Maybe there

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Speaker 1: are two gods and they're fighting. Maybe it's one side

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Speaker 1: of my brain and the other side of the brain.

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Speaker 1: It's just like theory after theory after theory. But he

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Speaker 1: had this like revelatory experience, so he knew it was

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Speaker 1: really important. So in a way, he was in a

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Speaker 1: very challenging bind, you know, trying to think his way out.

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Speaker 1: It's the exegy to interpret or to let the text

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Speaker 1: of his own experience speak. But the thing is is

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Speaker 1: that the text was garbled, like it was full of

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Speaker 1: noise and multiple meetings, and he could never really figure

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Speaker 1: it out. So it's it's a remarkable it's sort of

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Speaker 1: like a postmodern religious experience, you know, like religious experiences

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Speaker 1: in the old days. People have the revelation and they

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Speaker 1: come out and they go, I know, you know right,

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Speaker 1: we must all sit around in a circle and stare

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Speaker 1: at each other's eyes and God will come down and

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Speaker 1: that everybody follows them or does it. But with Thick,

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Speaker 1: he had a revelation, but it's like he never really

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Speaker 1: got anything except the profound sense that the world as

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Speaker 1: we know it is an illusion, except I don't know. Again,

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Speaker 1: you're the expert here. We're talking about high weirdness. Eric Davis.

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Speaker 1: In this particular period of literature and art in the

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Speaker 1: late sixties early seventies, particularly the early seventies, which leads

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Speaker 1: to some I think, you know, it's the blueprint for

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Speaker 1: a lot of things which turn out all the time

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Speaker 1: on coast to coast. But there was a level of

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Speaker 1: particular I thought, sort of a Christian experience that Philip K.

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Speaker 1: Dick had during that time. Is that not right where

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Speaker 1: there's definitely a big steam of Criman. He actually became

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Speaker 1: a Christian in the early nineteen sixties, and even though

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Speaker 1: from the outside you might look at his life and

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Speaker 1: work to go, it doesn't see that that Christian meal,

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Speaker 1: but you would always say, no, I'm an Episcopalian, I'm

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Speaker 1: a piscopalian, I'm a Christian. And so yeah, his two

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Speaker 1: three seventy four is full of Christian stuff, but it's

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Speaker 1: also has Buddhist stuff and Daoist stuff, and Greek stuff,

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Speaker 1: Gnostic stuff up the wazoo, but a lot of it

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Speaker 1: is Christian. I mean, he definitely was focused on the

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Speaker 1: figure of the Christ. He was very into the idea

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Speaker 1: of the logos, the idea that the kind of God's

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Speaker 1: sort of information enters into our false world and begins

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Speaker 1: to transform and even redeem it, and he was interested

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Speaker 1: in the idea that there would be another, another kind

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Speaker 1: of savior figure. So even though he wouldn't be recognized

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Speaker 1: as a conventional Christian by most Christians, there's definitely an

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Speaker 1: important Christian lera. And that's actually one of the arguments

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Speaker 1: that I have is that nobody, really, nobody thinks of

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Speaker 1: him as a Christian writer. There's a lot of writers

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Speaker 1: out there that you know, Walker Percy or somebody, and like, oh,

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Speaker 1: it's a Christian author. And Dick was very always insisted

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Speaker 1: he was a Christian as Christian motifs in his book,

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Speaker 1: but people never think about him as like a Christian

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Speaker 1: science fiction writer or something. But in some ways you

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Speaker 1: have to have to recognize that is I think, and

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Speaker 1: I think actually you hit on it in a way

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Speaker 1: in this I can speak from because I'm ordained in

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Speaker 1: the Episcopal Church's he's got a very he's got a

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Speaker 1: very Episcopal outlook. And so even when you mentioned things

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Speaker 1: like you know, Taoism and other tradition, Buddhism and stuff,

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Speaker 1: that that too becomes part of a regular conversation. It's

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Speaker 1: not the core of the faith by all means, but

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Speaker 1: there are things that happen within the Episcopal tradition because

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Speaker 1: it tends to be much more open minded maybe than

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Speaker 1: other Christian Oh yeah, and another I think another important

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Speaker 1: element it is Christianity that that will be you know,

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Speaker 1: remind is of how you know, different periods of Christian

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Speaker 1: history have have had different effects. Is that he really

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Speaker 1: glombed onto the early period, not just because you know,

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Speaker 1: you're closer to Christ Christ is going to come again,

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Speaker 1: but he you know, one of his ideas was that

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Speaker 1: the whole period of time between uh you know, uh

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Speaker 1: Rome and our current moment was an illusion and that

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Speaker 1: we were basically actually living in the you know, expecting

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Speaker 1: the imminent return of Christ in the Roman period, and that,

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Speaker 1: as he put it, you know, Rome never died, and

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Speaker 1: that we were still kind of living in this in

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Speaker 1: this period of this time, in the time of crypto Christianity,

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Speaker 1: when Christians were still hiding in tombs exactly. And that's

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Speaker 1: what he really identified with, was the idea that that

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Speaker 1: as spiritual people, as people who had seen the light,

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Speaker 1: as people who were struggling for the good, we were

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Speaker 1: were underground. The dominant world is dark, it's controlled, it's

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Speaker 1: it's a black iron prison and so now you know

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Speaker 1: where we're in different countries in different ways. You know,

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Speaker 1: Christianity has more or less power depending on you know,

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Speaker 1: it depends on the situation. But we don't tend to

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Speaker 1: think of it as this underground rebel, you know, like

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Speaker 1: the rebels in the first Star Wars movie. And that's

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Speaker 1: what he's really relating with, is that aspect of Christianity,

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Speaker 1: which is for me, has always been the most attractive

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Speaker 1: part of Christianity. Yeah, through a you know, through a

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Speaker 1: scanner darthly you might be m where the rebel alliance

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Speaker 1: taking on the And I think that's interesting because you

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Speaker 1: mentioned that where two hemispheres of his brain seem to

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Speaker 1: always be in competition with each other, and that was

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Speaker 1: another internal struggle that I don't know whether that was

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Speaker 1: the result of the previous psychedelic drug use or whether

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Speaker 1: it was a some residue of a psychotic break at

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Speaker 1: some point, but I mean, he that's part of that

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Speaker 1: Philip K. Dick, at least the legend of Philip K.

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Speaker 1: Dick that I find so interesting is he was he

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Speaker 1: really was. He felt like a little bit like it.

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Speaker 1: He was at his mind was at war with itself. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean sometimes he felt that there was another person

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Speaker 1: inside of him. It was usually good like it was

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Speaker 1: usually someone who was who was on his side, so

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Speaker 1: it wasn't too conflictual. But you know, I mean he

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Speaker 1: definitely you know, veered into into something like psychosis or

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Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, bipolar this and that.

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Speaker 1: I mean, he was as I said, he was not

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Speaker 1: He was non neurotypical and one of the things that

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Speaker 1: you can you know, so you could you see, you

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Speaker 1: could look at his life and read his books and

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Speaker 1: go wild, guy's pretty crazy. But in other ways to say, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe he was even crazier than that. And he did

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Speaker 1: all this to keep himself as sane as he could,

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Speaker 1: and by telling these stories and by pursuing spirituality in

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Speaker 1: research you know, the history of myth and the history

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Speaker 1: of religion and trying to figure out what was going on,

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Speaker 1: he was actually like weaving himself back together. And so

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Speaker 1: it's a it's a really powerful way of recognizing some

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Speaker 1: of the really important relationships between religion or esoteric mystical

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Speaker 1: experience and psychopathology. They're not the same thing, but their

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Speaker 1: their intension and in some people in particular, it's a

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Speaker 1: it's a serious tension, and you know, we find if

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Speaker 1: you look at the lives of mystics, or if you

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Speaker 1: look at the most like the most spiritually powerful people

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Speaker 1: you've known, some of them live very upright lives, but

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Speaker 1: some of them live pretty crazy lives because they spend

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Speaker 1: some time being kind of crazy. So there's something about

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Speaker 1: that light that also brings you closer to pathology, and

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Speaker 1: that's one of the things that I'm really interested in

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Speaker 1: with with all it. Guys, listen to more Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast AM every weeknight at one a m. Eastern and

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