jueves, 17 de marzo de 2011

Philip K. Dick: The Other Side

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Información:

THE GNOSIS ARCHIVE
Gnostic Studies on the Web

| GNOSIS ARCHIVE | GNOSTIC SOCIETY LIBRARY |

Date: 01 Apr 94 15:52 EST
From: {RYDEEN.PAUL@forum.va.gov}
To: RYDEEN.PAUL@forum.va.gov, pkd-list@wang.com

[For those who may have missed it the first time, here is a copy of an article I wrote last year. It originally was published in Crash Collusion magazine, no. 5. Copies may be had for $4 from Box 49233, Austin, TX 78765. Issue 7 is due very soon, and features an article by Adam Gorightly called "PKD, the Unicorn, and Soviet Psychotronics". It's also $4. For those of you who saw this article last time I posted it, note that this is a cleaned-up copy with all scanning errors and typos removed. Feel free to distribute it elsewhere. As always, your comments are welcome.]


Philip K. Dick: The Other Side

Paul Rydeen

... the group had taken an active interest in their situation, viewing it as a manifestation on an earthly plane of certain super-terrestrial forces. - Jack Isidore (1)

My first exposure to the mind-bending fiction of Philip K. Dick was in early 1981. It must have been January or February because I remember it still being quite cold. To my surprise, a friend of my dad's had given him a recent issue of Playboy, which I eagerly perused whenever I had the chance. On one such occasion I needed to prove to myself a maturity beyond the pictures of naked ladies, so I commenced to read the magazine's various features. It turned out to be the December 1980 issue; one feature was Phil's story "Frozen Journey" (2). Although this high-school senior had been reading science fiction for a decade or more, I must confess I was confused by the shifting realities portrayed in "Frozen Journey". Further readings did little for my comprehension.

By the time graduation rolled around, I had seen Phil's books recommended repeatedly in the columns of Heavy Metal magazine. I picked up a used copy of The Man in the High Castle (3). It was quite good, and a whole lot easier to understand than "Frozen Journey" had been. Soon after, VALIS (4) hit the stands. I bought it. I enjoyed it immensely, but was still unable to fully realize the implications of Phil's speculations. Next I found the Gregg Press hardcover reissue of Time Out of Joint (5) in a little science fiction bookstore that had just opened off-campus. At last I understood; what I had read of the false or illusory nature of reality while studying Hinduism and Buddhism now made sense on a personal level. As I matured, my appreciation for Phil grew. I started college that fall, and frequented that bookstore often. I scoured almost every used bookstore in the Minneapolis area, spending months in search of elusive PKD titles. I found many rare first editions this way, and still have dreams wherein I continue the search. When Phil died in March of 1982, I owned a copy of nearly every book he had written. I considered his death a personal loss.

To understand Phil, one must grapple with his unique emotional states, and his unique interpretations of same. Most importantly, in February and March of 1974 Phil had a series of "mystic" experiences. When he died eight years later he was still unsure of their origin or meaning. Left behind was his so-called Exegesis, an 8,000-page, one-million-word continuing dialogue with himself written late, late at night (6). Though Phil never did solve the puzzle to his satisfaction, I believe he enjoyed the pursuit of the answer for its own sake much more than he would have enjoyed resolving the problem. In fact, I don't think any answer would've been entirely acceptable to him for very long. By its very nature this mystery had no rational solution.

Phil had suffered several personal setbacks during the time immediately preceding these experiences. Stress over his wife and new son, a severe case of writer's block, an unexplained break-in, lingering problems with drugs (mostly prescribed medications), and worries over his political actions all played their part. So did the loss of several close friends. He even worried over whether he had inadvertently published high-level government secrets in his novels (see KING FELIX discussion below). The usually self- reflective Phil became much more introspective than normal. His depression turned his thoughts to suicide more than once. The impetus for this particular experience was the severe pain Phil was suffering as a result of having an impacted wisdom tooth removed. Phil called his oral surgeon, who promptly phoned in a prescription for some codeine to a local pharmacy (or Darvon; accounts vary).

When the delivery girl arrived, Phil took one look at her and became mesmerized by the golden fish dangling between her breasts. When asked, the girl told Phil that this was the primitive Christian ICHTHYS symbol, ICHTHYS being the Greek for "fish". The fish was chosen in part because ICHTHYS was taken to be an anagram for "Iesous CHristos, THeou Yios, Soter" (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior) . "The girl and I are secret Christians, in hiding because of the Roman persecution. The only way we can identify ourselves to each other is the innocent-looking fish symbol, a harmless pendant in the eyes of most. This secret ally brings not only medicine to heal my sore tooth, but spiritual medicine as well. After all, is not Christ the Great Physician?" He accepted the package and bade the girl good-bye. Phil found himself transported back to first- century Rome - the time of the founding of the Church amidst much persecution. The vision of another reality superimposed upon this one lasted weeks. Phil had a hard time deciding which one was true, and which the illusion. During this period of uncertainty, he found himself "trapped" (figuratively, I would imagine) in a Black Iron Prison - a Gnostic symbol of our fall into History. It is deceptively referred to as the Cave of Treasures. Phil used this concept obliquely in "Strange Memories of Death" (7), wherein he refers to his apartment complex as having been prison-like until the new developers made it appear like a garden. From his further description it is quite obviously still a prison, despite its Edenic appearance.

In Freudian terms, the tooth can be a symbol of libido (not necessarily sexual). Dreaming of the loss of a tooth, for example, can represent a fear that one may lose one's standing in some way - physically or emotionally - or be a warning from the subconscious that this is threatening to happen. Note that one of Palmer Eldritch's three stigmata was his artificial teeth (8). Phil's impacted wisdom tooth was like his latent Gnosis, awaiting the proper stimulus to trigger his anamnesis. Another symbol of libido is the phalliform fish, whose sleek shape glides silently through the deep waters of the subconscious. As ICHTHYS, Christ strengthens our libido, our "psychic" energy, and asks nothing in return. He is UBIK, a negentropic force in a universe that is forever running itself down (9).

The Hebrew for "tooth" is shin, which is also the name of the twenty-first and penultimate letter of the Hebrew alphabet. (The reader familiar with Phil's novel The Penultimate Truth (10) may do well to ponder the connection.) The English equivalent to shin is "S" or "Sh". Perhaps because of its trident shape (literally, "three-toothed") and sibilant pronunciation, the kabbalists associated this letter with the element fire. Compare Phil's trident dream at the end of VALIS, after Fat departs again for the Greek islands. Shin also appears somewhat like a descending dove, so it should come as no surprise that a relationship between it and the Holy Spirit exists. That the numerical value of both the letter taken by itself and the Hebrew phrase RUACH ALHIM ("the Spirit of God", usually translated "Elohim") is 300 serves to solidify the connection. The Spirit is often represented as a flame, one example being the tongues of fire that came to rest on the apostles' heads on that first Pentecost. Many spirits and other air elementals have been associated with fire as well.

Later Christian kabbalists (namely, Pico) and the Theosophists attempted to justify their doctrines by showing that the union of God as Yahweh/Jehovah (YHWH) and the Holy Spirit (Sh) was Jesus (YHShWH). The four letters of the ineffable name represent the four natural elements of the ancients, while the fifth element - spirit - fills out the fifth point of the pentagram, a symbol of man. The triple-pronged shin was taken to be representative of the Trinity. YHShHW is usually translated "Yeheshuah", of which the English form is "Joshua". "Jesus" is from IESOUS, the Greek version of this name. This formula seems especially valid if one considers the esoteric doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the feminine counterpart of God. Certain kabbalists have maintained the Hebrew RUACH is of the feminine gender; if so then this has been translated out of most versions of the Bible. In some Gnostic systems, the consort of God is Sophia, Phil's Holy Wisdom (see the biblical Book of Proverbs).

The Babylon whom St. John of Patmos tells us is "fallen, fallen" is usually identified with first-century Rome (11). The Hebrews' subjugation under the Romans was every bit as resented as it had been under the Babylonians six centuries earlier. John's prophecy of Rome's fall was certainly wishful thinking, penned sometime after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. I identify John's Babylon with the Gnostic Sophia, a symbol of the world in its fallen state. The Land of the Dead - Egypt - was a similar symbol for later Gnostic sects. The implication of Phil's vision is that we still live in Roman times, i.e. a "fallen" state. Gnosis must come from the outside. Chokmah is the Hebrew for "wisdom"; her position on the kabbalistic Tree of Life is the second or penultimate one (representing a less than perfect reality) - but here she is given a masculine identity, despite the references to Holy Wisdom in the Scriptures. The Greek for "wisdom" is Sophia; a cognate term is Gnosis, "knowledge". Like Sophia, Chokmah is one step removed from the true Godhead. I equate Sophia with John's Babylon and the traditional Chokmah, the same yin principle which Phil took to be his anima in the form of his long-dead twin sister Jane (she had died aged five weeks). Her avatar has appeared previously in the form of Simon Magus' Helen, to cite a Gnostic example. In Phil's case, he sought her in each woman with whom he had an adult relationship - a reunion of the divine syzygy, as it were. His yearning for the sister he never knew did more to inspire his world-view than any other single factor; the appearance of twins throughout his work is ample testimony to this state of affairs. The encysted twin in Dr. Bloodmoney (12) is one of many such examples.

There is a kabbalistic tradition in which one sees oneself relating events from the future. The kabbalists' reticence to record autobiographical experiences, especially those of an ecstatic nature, has obscured this fact. Phil had a hypnogogic experience as a boy in which he saw himself as an adult standing at the foot of his bed. In later life he relived the experience from the "time traveler's" standpoint. The Persian Mani (founder of the gnostic Manichean religion) had the same thing occur to him when he was 12, and once more as an adult. He recognized this doppelganger as his Higher Self - the Divine Adam and called it in Arabic "al-Tawm", the twin. It guided him and gave him comfort throughout his life, and he was said to be gazing upon it in the cell just before he died. Despite Phil's Valentinian Sophian cosmology, I have often felt he was more akin to the Manichean school on a practical level.

In 1975 a two-word cypher was "sent forth"; the phrase KING FELIX appears in the juxtaposition of two adjacent lines in Phil's novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (13). It was only later that he happened upon its significance. The fact that Army Intelligence bought multiple copies of that one book perplexed him greatly. In VALIS one of the Lamptons tells him that the phrase has kabbalistic significance. I assume they refer to gematria, the practice of assigning numerical values to individual letters within a word and taking their sum. "King" is English, so should it be translated into Latin? "Felix" is the Latin for "happy" (literally, "fruitful"). "Rex" is the Latin for "king" so FELIX REX adds to 256 when transposed into Greek enumeration. This is the eighth power of two, which perhaps is the Gnostic ogdoad pointing back to a duality - Phil's Two-Source Cosmogony. "Basileos" is Greek for "king"; I'm not sure what the proper translation of "felix" would be, or even if Greek is the proper language to use. This practice existed in the Hebrew language before Greek became the common language of the Mediterranean area, and in other Semitic languages before that. The little girl, Sophia, reads from the Sephir Yetzirah when the Rhipidon Society visits her at the Lamptons' - establishing a Hebrew link - but she also tells them the Lamptons are insane. This issue remains unresolved.

At one point Phil experimented with a megadose of vitamins he had read about in Psychology Today. This mixture was being used by a certain doctor to stimulate simultaneous neural firing in both hemispheres of the brain. While the original experiments were strictly designed for split-personality patients, Phil concocted a batch and swallowed it down. He says it worked. The right side of the brain is often identified with the dark, irrational, "feminine" component of our minds; the parallel to the imperfect, premature Sophia is obvious. Speculation has arisen that the voices heard by prophets and madmen originate in the right-brain (14). Usually drowned out by the day-to-day noise of the more verbally active left-brain, under certain circumstances it may be heard. At one time in our not-so-distant past, this may have been far more common than it is today. This is one of many possibilities considered by Phil, probably no more right or wrong than any of the others.

Another possibility I'd like to briefly consider is that one possible subconscious influence was the "Roman" episode of the old Star Trek TV series. I've long forgotten the show's title, but it involved a planet similar to twentieth-century Earth with the exception that Roman rule still existed. Rome never fell - the Empire never ended - and secret followers of "the Son" were preaching peace and brotherhood rather than tyranny. This in no way lessens the import of Phil's vision, nor does it explain anything away. I merely find it an intriguing idea to ponder. Who can say what psychic debris forms the foundations of our subconscious?

As the image of first-century Rome persisted, Phil began seeing St. Elmo's fire almost everywhere he looked. He had purchased his own ICHTHYS sign to hang in the picture window of his apartment; admittedly his staring at the sunlight had much to do with the earliest manifestations. However, the pink light was even visible at night, when Phil would sit up in bed unable to sleep, enjoying the show. In A Scanner Darkly (15) he describes it as a rapid-fire succession of Paul Klee, Kandinsky and other modern artists. He also describes the times the St. Elmo's fire took on the shape of a doorway proportioned to the Golden Mean (representing perfection). This was a doorway to the Other World. The character in the book regrets having never thought to step through the doorway after the apparition finally disappeared. The nightly visions continued, often taking the form of incredibly complex dreams which Phil saw at once were unlike his usual sleeping habits. He called them "tutelary" dreams because of their information-rich content. In many he was actually shown texts, which he was able to read and transcribe their contents upon awakening. This is another kabbalistic tradition, the ability to read holy texts on the astral plane. Always for Phil, the pink beam of light was prominent.

Admittedly, the idea one is being shot with a beam of energy is typical to many schizophrenics. So are the discarnate voices which haunted Phil's unplugged radio at night, telling him how terrible a person he was (his then-wife Tessa heard them too). The one difference here is that Phil perceived it as a healing light rather than a further descent into madness. He credited it with taking charge of his life, recovering a lot of income due from unpaid book royalties, and even re-margining his typewriter. He never decided what the beam's source really was. Guesses included the Rosicrucian Society, Soviet scientists experimenting with "psychotronics", and an alien satellite orbiting a distant star. One message came from the "Portuguese States of America", leading Phil to contemplate the possibility of parallel universes. He also thought it might have been God. The Roman Sybil in her later Christianized form was a particular favorite of Phil's; her similarity to Jane as Phil's "protectress" was the attraction. VALIS even quotes the Sybilline Oracles. Note also that the much-sought product UBIK in Phil's novel of the same name is depicted on the dustjacket of the original as spraying a pink substance. Coincidence? The connection is further made in VALIS when Phil and friends mistake a model of the satellite for a can lying in the gutter (in the movie-within-a- book). Does this refer to a can of UBIK as well?

In some of his dreams, Phil saw Soviet scientists rushing around behind the scenes to keep the alien satellite functioning. Phil originally thought VALIS was from Fomalhaut, which he called "Albemuth" (from the Arab Al Behemoth, "the whale"). Fomalhaut is the fish's mouth; Phil apparently mistook "behemoth" for "leviathan", two Hebrew words from the Old Testament. It is the latter which actually refers to the whale, according to most sources. What matters most is Phil's beliefs on the matter; if his subconscious mind processed "behemoth" as "whale", then "whale" it is - for him. At any rate, the fish symbolism is obvious, as is the reference to Jonah. Phil must have read Robert K.G. Temple's The Sirius Mystery (16) before writing VALIS, because he relocated the satellite to there. This brings in a host of occult references too involved to go into here. Suffice it to say that the dark companion of Sirius represents "occult" or hidden knowledge, as does Sirius' position as "the sun behind the Sun" (as Kenneth Grant calls it). Neither Phil nor Temple seem to have known this when they wrote their books. Phil cleverly tied in the dualist Dogon philosophy described by Temple with his own Gnostic beliefs, though as narrator of VALIS he ascribes this revelation to Fat and tells us this is the point at which Fat's madness became complete. Madness or not, VALIS stands as a classic on many levels. The three-eyed aliens had pincers like a crab where hands should be, just like Palmer Eldritch and his artificial hands. These "improved" hands seem to denote an elevated status as cosmic artificer or demiurge, while also indicating an inherent flaw of some sort. The beings were also deaf and mute; they communicated amongst themselves by means of telepathy. One could say their inability to hear or speak reinforces the notion of an imperfect demiurge, as well as it helps conceal his true nature. Then again, their physical handicap may be the results of a personal sacrifice undertaken to enhance their mental faculties.

Phil was consistent in documenting his major influences within the works they influenced. VALIS was no exception. Curiously, there are two which went uncredited, and to my knowledge no researcher has yet uncovered them both. The first is Robert K.G. Temple's aforementioned The Sirius Mystery. Temple documents the Dogon people of Africa and their precise astronomical data which predate telescopes. Their legends say that this knowledge was given to them by three-eyed crab-clawed beings from Sirius. Temple goes on to trace the Dogon's ancestors back to migrating Egyptians who continue a tradition well-documented in the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris. Certainly Phil read Temple's book after writing Radio Free Albemuth; why else would he have moved VALIS from Fomalhaut to Sirius?

The other major influence which went uncredited may be more of a surprise. It is not a scholarly influence like Temple's, but rather a little known facet of popular culture. The whole idea of an immortal and all-powerful race who build universes out of boredom, fall into them and become trapped because they forget who they are is indeed gnostic in flavor, as many have said. It should be noted, however, that this is exactly what Scientology teaches about the Thetans. WE ARE THE THETANS and we don't even know it.

Palmer Eldritch had three stigmata: his artificial eyes, artificial teeth and artificial hands. The cover of the original edition combines these to show the classic eye-in-palm design used by fortune-tellers to indicate occult wisdom. The all-seeing eye is a common motif in Masonic lore as well; at one point Phil challenged God to show himself and saw the Ark of the Covenant opened to reveal the eye-in-the-triangle. Esoteric tradition among the Masons identifies this occult eye with the star Sirius - named for Osiris, the dead and risen Egyptian savior who adumbrated Christ by centuries. It is also the eye of the cyclops and the third or ajna eye of Shiva, which Phil (as Fat) attributes to Ihknaton and his followers in the Tractates appended to VALIS. Others have placed a sexual interpretation upon it as well, but that's beyond the scope of the present work.

While listening to the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" one day, Phil heard the lyrics change into a prophetic warning: "Your son has an undiagnosed right inguinal hernia. The hydrocele has burst, and it has descended into the scrotal sac. He requires immediate attention, or will soon die." Phil rushed him to the hospital and found every word to be true. The doctor scheduled the operation for the same day. Once again, the healing power of Phil's vision comes to the fore. In a sense the boy was "reborn", which was to have great consequences for Phil's subsequent actions.

For a while Phil thought the spirit of Elijah had come upon him, much as the followers of John the Baptist felt about their Master. He even identified with a certain first-century Christian he called Thomas, whose thoughts Phil heard while falling asleep. There's someone inside of me, and he's living in another century. This Thomas was eventually garroted, which provides the connection to John the Baptist. "Thomas" is a Greek name meaning "twin"; whose twin was he if not Phil's? (Mani's twin was also called "tawm"; extant Greek Manichean texts refer to him as "syzygon".) Phil saw fit to baptize and confirm his infant son at this time (he was Episcopalian). Phil then gave his son a secret name which has never been divulged. In the posthumously-published Radio Free Albemuth (17) - the first version of what finally became VALIS - "Nicholas Brady" christened "Johnny" with the secret name "Paul". Since Phil saw himself as Elijah or John the Baptist, my best guess is that Phil told his son he was the Savior incarnate, and named him "Emmanuel", a Hebrew name meaning "God with us". His son's birth name was in fact Christopher, from the Greek for "Christ-bearer". Indeed, Radio Free Albemuth ends with the imprisoned Phil taking consolation in the knowledge that the Message has gone out after all - to the children. The importance of this assertion in light of the child-saviors in VALIS and The Divine Invasion cannot be underestimated. No wonder it hurt so badly when Phil's wife left with his son. It would have been interesting to see how Phil's son would have turned out under his father's tutelage. As it is, he may yet surprise us as he comes of age.

Phil's experiences culminated with a beatific vision of a Palm Tree Garden, which he described in Deus Irae (18) and mentioned several times in The Divine Invasion (19). Though this was still a part of first-century Rome, Phil felt at peace in the garden - the nostalgic Eden. The palm tree itself is the World Tree, the axis mundi, the pole at the center of the world which leads to heaven. Palm leaves were strewn before Christ when he returned to Jerusalem to indicate victory over temptation in the wilderness; today they are carried by those who have completed a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Palm Sunday commemorates this event in Christ's life. Palmer Eldritch's name is an obvious reference, but "palmer" could also refer to sleight of hand - indicating his position as malevolent demiurge.

Associated with the vision of the Palm Tree Garden was a young girl gathering water at riverside. On her vase was an interlocking pattern which Phil recognized as a series of ICHTHYS symbols. He also saw it as the double helix form of DNA. The universe, he understood, is information - just as DNA is the encoded information by which our bodies are created and maintained. He identified this girl with Aquarius, the water-bearer. To me this symbolizes a pouring out (from the subconscious) and the heralding of a new age. This scene was used in VALIS to announce the new messiah, the little girl called Sophia. A new age had indeed begun, short-lived as it was.

Though Phil's vision of Rome faded, his tutelary dream continued for six more years. So too did the AI voice (for "Artificial Intelligence"), a soft feminine voice he heard in times of stress and during hypnogogic revery. Naturally he identified this voice with Jane/Sophia, and claims to have first heard it during a high school physics exam (it gave him the answers) 25 years earlier. It all ended November 17, 1980. Phil claimed to have had a theophany that day, though witnesses noticed nothing unusual. Phil suddenly comprehended God as infinite, by nature incomprehensible. In other words, the Exegesis would never solve anything because there was no answer to be had. Phil actually stopped writing for a time because of this, but was at it again before too long. He also wrote The Divine Invasion around this time, which was when the voice finally stopped. Had it not been for the theophany, Phil would have probably cried, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" As it was, he persisted in speculating the remaining year of his life, and managed to produce one more novel before the end - the posthumously-published The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (20). Phil suffered the first of several strokes in February 1982 and died several days later in the hospital, on March 2. He was 53.



NOTES:

(1) Philip K. Dick. Confessions of a Crap Artist. New York: Pocket
Books, 1982. (Orig. 1975.) Pg. 164.

(2) "Frozen Journey" was Playboy's name for the manuscript Phil
called "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon". It was reprinted under its
original title most recently in The Eye of the Sybil (New York:
Carol Publishing Group, 1992).

(3) The Man in the High Castle. New York: Putnam, 1962. This title
has gone through several editions and remains in print.

(4) VALIS. New York: Bantam, 1981.

(5) Time Out of Joint. Boston: Gregg Press, 1979. (Orig. 1959.)

(6) A very limited number of Exegesis entries were eventually
published in Selections from the Exegesis, edited by PKD biographer
Lawrence Sutin (Lancaster: Underwood-Miller, 1991). Sutin also
wrote the excellent Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (New
York: Carol Publishing Group, 1991).

(7) "Strange Memories of Death" first appeared in issue #8 of
Interzone magazine (Brighton, UK). It also was collected in I Hope
I Shall Arrive Soon (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987) and volume
5 of Underwood-Miller's Collected Stories (reprinted by Carol
Publishing Group).

(8) The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Garden City: Doubleday,
1965.

(9) Reference is to Phil's novel UBIK (Garden City: Doubleday,
1969).

(10) The Penultimate Truth. New York: Belmont, 1964.

(11) Revelations 18:2.

(12) Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (New York:
Ace Books, 1965. Reprinted Boston: Gregg Press, 1977.). Another
good example is the pair of lambs born near the end of Confessions
of a Crap Artist (ibid), the second of which is stillborn. In this
case it is the male twin Phil kills off - representing himself.

(13) Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Garden City: Doubleday,
1975. (Phil parodied this book as The Android Cried Me A River in
VALIS.)

(14) See Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1976.)

(15) A Scanner Darkly. Garden City: Doubleday, 1977.

(16) Temple's book is little more than a well-researched paperback
of the Ancient Astronaut variety. Only Phil could have turned it
into a whole universe. (London: Futura Publications Ltd., 1979.)
Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger was also an influence in
regards to the Sirius connection; Phil acknowledges it as such in
VALIS. (Berkeley: And/Or Press, 1977. It's been reprinted by both
Simon & Schuster and Falcon Press.)

(17) Radio Free Albemuth. New York: Arbor House, 1985.

(18) (w/ Roger Zelazny). Deus Irae. Garden City: Doubleday, 1976.

(19) The Divine Invasion. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981.

(20) The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1982.

WAS PHILIP K. DICK POSSESSED BY AN ANGEL?

Fuente:


Información:

From phineas@anarky.tch.org Thu Sep 9 01:29:05 1993
~Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
~Subject: Was Philip K. Dick Possessed By An Angel?
~Date: 7 Sep 93 01:35:19 GMT

I'm posting this to several newsgroups. I recently came across a chapter in a book by one of my favorite authors which is about another one of my favorite authors. Since I had transcribed it to send it to a couple of friends of mine, I thought I'd post a copy of it here. Any comments anyone has on this are welcome.
--Phineas Narco

WAS PHILIP K. DICK POSSESSED BY AN ANGEL?

[From the book, UNSOLVED MYSTERIES by Colin Wilson and Damon Wilson published by Contemporary Books, Chicago-copyright date 1992]

By the time of his death in March 1982, Philip K. Dick had become perhaps the most respected of modern science-fiction writers. The reason for this was expressed in an essay on Dick by Brian Stableford: "He has done more than anyone else to open up metaphysical questions to science fictional analysis" [In E.F. Bleiler, ed., _Science Fiction Writers_ (New York: Scribner), 1982].

He was also, with the possible exception of H.P. Lovecraft, the most neurotic of major science-fiction writers, obsessed by the notion that human beings are trapped in a web of unreality. His persecution mania developed to a point where he could undoubtedly have been described as a paranoid schizophrenic. Yet, toward the end of his life, Dick became convinced that he had been "taken over" by a kind of superalien, who went on to reorganize his life. And although Lawrence Sutin, in his full-length biography of Dick, _Divine Invasions_ (1991), casts doubts on some of Dick's claims, the case is too complex to be dismissed as simple self-delusion.

Philip Kindred Dick was an oversensitive little boy whose childhood was not designed to make him buoyant and optimistic. His twin sister died soon after his birth--as a result, he was later convinced, of his mother's neglect. He was a lonely child; his mother was cold and, in Sutin's words, "emotionally constrained." She was often in pain and spent long periods bedridden--she suffered from Bright's disease. Dick himself suffered from asthma and had eating and swallowing phobias. He was an introverted child who liked to retreat into daydreams of cowboys; he resisted all of his father's attempts to interest him in sports. His parents divorced when he was five. When he was nine, he and his mother moved to Berkeley, California, and Dick attended high school there. His relationship with his mother, who was slim and pretty, had classic Freudian overtones; when he was a teenager he even had a dream that he was sleeping with her. He finally left home at nineteen--he claimed his mother threatened to call the police to stop him--and moved into a bohemian rooming house populated by gay artists. From the age of fifteen he had worked in a local TV and record store and so was able to support himself.

At nineteen Dick was still a virgin who had never even kissed a girl. Then one of his customers--a short, overweight woman named Jeanette, who was ten years his senior--remedied the situation in a storeroom in the basement, and Dick decided to marry her; she was the first of five wives. When they had been married two months, Jeanette told him that she had a right to see other men; he dumped her possessions outside their apartment and changed the locks. His love life became sporadic and not particularly satisfying; one woman he fell in love with preferred his partner in the store; another went off with a lesbian. Another beautiful woman with whom he had an affair dropped him because he was so socially inept. A nervous breakdown--accompanied by agoraphobia--led him to leave the University of California a year later. "I managed to become universally despised wherever I went," he later told an interviewer. This led him, he said, to identify with the weak and to make the heroes in his stories weak.

From an early age Dick was obsessed by pain and misery. He records that when he was four his father, who had fought on the Marne in World War I, told him about gas attacks and men with their guts blown out. And during World War II, when he was still a child, he saw a newsreel showing a Japanese soldier who had been hit by a flamethrower and was "burning and running, and burning and running," while the audience cheered and laughed. Dick wrote of the incident: "I was dazed with horror... and I thought _something is terribly wrong_." And in an autobiographical essay he wrote: "Human and animal suffering makes me mad; whenever one of my cats dies I curse God and I mean it; I feel fury at him. I'd like to get him where I could interrogate him, tell him I think the world is screwed up, that man didn't sin and fall but was pushed." Forced to kill a rat that had been caught in a trap in his children's bedroom, he was haunted for the rest of his life by its screams. As a youngster, Dick had had an urge to cruelty, but after an incident in his childhood that involved tormenting a beetle, the urge suddenly vanished and was replaced by a sense of the oneness of life--what he called satori: "I was never the same again."

Dick's obsession with the problem of cruelty resembled that of the Russian writer Dostoyevsky, whose Ivan Karamazov confesses that the cruelty and brutality of the world makes him want to "give God back his entrance ticket." It is unsurprising, therefore, that Dick's first science-fiction story, "Beyond Lies the Wub," concerned space explorers on an alien planet who buy a piglike creature called a wub, which is delighted to discuss philosophy with them--while their only desire is to eat it. A later wub story describes how wub fur is used to bind books because it is self- repairing, though the fur causes the texts to alter. Thomas Paine's _Age of Reason_ vanishes completely--an expression of Dick's feeling that it is an absurd form of hubris for human beings to believe they are rational creatures.

From then on most of Dick's work had a morbid, not to say paranoid, streak. In "Second Variety," machines get out of hand and create duplicate humans to trap real people. "The Imposter" is about a man who finds himself subjected to the nightmarish experience of being suspected of being a robot bomb; the final twist of the story is that it turns out to be true. (Dick's early stories were heavily influenced by the work of the older science-fiction writer, A.E. Van Vogt who often chooses such themes--e.g., a hero caught in a nightmare world of apparently insane misunderstandings--although his basic outlook is optimistic.)

There is a Kafkaesque quality to Dick's work, which often features individuals beset by endless complications that frustrate all attempts at purposeful action. Like so many modern writers—notably Arthur C. Clarke--Dick likes to play with the idea of computers developing their own intelligence and taking over from human beings. He is also inclined to experiment with the idea that the word "reality" is meaningless--that, instead, there are as many "realities" as there are living creatures and that the notion of "reality" is therefore purely subjective. This view, of course, leads easily to solipsism, the belief that you are the only person in the universe. After all, if the reality around us is "relative" and self-created, then perhaps other people are illusions we create to defend us from the recognition of our loneliness.

One of Dick's early novels, _Eye in the Sky (1957), encapsulates his views about "reality"; a group of people find themselves in an "alternative reality" where other people's beliefs can become "reality"; a religious cult imposes its own views on everyone's mind. They then realize that they are trapped in the insane reality of one of their own number. When they escape this illusion, they immediately find themselves entrapped in yet another. Their return to "reality" is a painful process in which they have to escape the "individuality reality" of every member of the group. But in this early work Dick at least believes that a "return to reality" is possible. His later work becomes more darkly pessimistic, infused with the underlying conviction that there is no overall "reality," only our individual illusions. This could be regarded as a dramatized version of the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer and possibly that of Buddha.

In 1963 Dick finally achieved relatively wide recognition with a novel entitled _Man in the High Castle_, which won the Hugo Award for best science-fiction novel of the year. It is another "alternative reality" novel, about a world in which the Allies lost the Second World War, with the result that America is divided into a German zone and a Japanese zone. A character named Tagomi has flashes of an alternative reality in which the Allies won the war, but they seem absurd. Dick apparently plotted this novel with the aid of the _I Ching_, the Chinese book of oracles; the result is a certain arbitrary quality. A later novel, _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_, concerns an attempt by "real people" to root out the robots that are trying to take over the earth and that are virtually indistinguishable from humans. (It was made into a successful film, _Blade Runner_.) All of Dick's work seems to express his own inability to cope with life. He wrote, "For us...there can be no system. Maybe _all_ systems...are manifestations of paranoia. We should be content with the meaningless, the contradictory, the hostile."

Meanwhile, Dick's life lurched from crisis to crisis: nervous breakdowns, suicide attempts, divorces, novels written at top speed to stave off debt, paranoid delusions-- at one point he saw a great metal face, with slots for eyes, looking down at him from the sky. His sexual relationships were reminiscent of those of the Swedish playwright Strindberg; again and again it looked as if the lonely, fear-ridden writer had found peace when some attractive woman thought that she could give him the security he needed. But his fundamental instability wrecked every relationship. And his loneliness and paranoia brought about writer's blocks. His biographer remarks, "If there is a dominant mood to his novels of the late sixties, it is that of a dark night of the soul." The novels themselves usually have a stifling, airless atmosphere that contrasts strongly with the wind of reality that seems to blow through the best of Tolstoy or Hemingway.

A quarrel he had with the science-fiction writer Harlan Ellison seems to embody everything that was wrong with Dick. At a science-fiction conference in Metz, France, Dick bewildered and bored his audience with a typically rambling speech entitled "If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others." Audience members suspected he was drunk or on drugs. (He was, in fact, addicted to numerous prescription drugs.) Dick and Ellison had parted company before because Ellison felt Dick was unreliable and "possibly loony."

When they met in the bar they engaged in a bitter philosophical debate that was basically a quarrel. Dick's girlfriend at the time gives a memorable word-portrait of the encounter:

“Phil was very antithetical to Harlan. Harlan is very cocky, glib, cool, and here is Phil going clunk clunk clunk. Phil was not a very debonair or self-assured man. Snuff falling out of his nose, ninety-two spots on his tie--you know. And Harlan thought Phil treated people very badly because he wandered away, got lost, had people support him rather than be master of his own ship. Anyway, they got into this huge debate. Phil does very well in these kinds of situations. Here is Harlan banging his chest, and Phil was more a philosopher. Phil was just great--more dynamic and sexy than I'd ever seen him.”

Clearly, Dick _could_ pull himself together and organize his ideas. Yet, as Ellison realized, he preferred to "have people support him rather than be master of his own ship."

But on March 2, 1974, Dick experienced a "vision" that transformed his life. He later told an interviewer, Charles Platt, "My mental anguish was simply removed from me as if by a divine fiat. ...Some transcendent divine power, which was not evil, but benign, intervened to restore my mind and heal my body and give me a sense of the beauty, the joy, the sanity of the world."

In February 1974 Dick was convinced that he was being persecuted by both American and Soviet authorities; he was also convinced that he was destined to die the following month.

One night, lying awake and wrestling with "dread and melancholy," he began to see whirling lights. A week later he again had visions but this time of "perfectly formed modern abstract paintings"--hundreds of thousands of them replacing each other at dazzling speed. Then he experienced the Bardo Thodol journey" (an after-death journey, as described in the _Tibetan Book of the Dead_) and found himself face to face with the goddess Aphrodite. After this he began hearing female voices as he hovered in hypnagogic states on the edge of sleep. On March 16 "it appeared--in vivid fire, with shining colors and balanced patterns--and released me from every thrall, inner and outer." Two days later "it, from inside me, looked out." In other words, Dick now felt another being inside himself; he was "possessed." But the entity seemed benevolent: "It seized me entirely, lifting me from the limitations of the space- time matrix; it mastered me as, at the same instant, I knew that the world around me was cardboard, a fake. Through its power I suddenly saw the universe as it was; through its perception I saw what really existed, and through its power of no-thought decision, I acted to _free myself_."

All this sounds like the typical rambling of a psychotic. Yet what actually took place was by no means entirely in the realm of fantasy. Dick had a conviction that he would receive a letter that would kill him. His wife, Tessa, confirms that one morning he selected a letter from a large batch of mail, handed it to her unopened, and told her that this was what he had been expecting. In fact, it was a photocopy of a book review about the decline of American capitalism, and every negative word, such as _die_, _decline_, _decay_, and _decomposition_, had been underlined. Paranoid or not, Dick seemed to have a sixth sense that enabled him to detect the strange letter unopened.

Now, says Dick, he was taken over by the "intelligence." "On Thursdays and Saturdays I would think it was God, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I would think it was extraterrestrial....It set about healing me physically, [as well as] my four-year-old boy, who had an undiagnosed life- threatening birth defect that no one had been aware of."

The "intelligence," which Dick called Valis (Vast Active Living Intelligence System), fired information into his brain by means of pink light beams. It told him that his son, Christopher, suffered from a potentially fatal inguinal hernia. The Dicks checked with the doctor and found that the information was correct; the hernia was remedied by an operation.

Dick told Charles Platt:

This mind was equipped with tremendous technical knowledge--engineering, medical, cosmological, philosophical knowledge. It had memories dating back over two thousand years, it spoke Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, there wasn't anything that didn't seem to know. It immediately set about putting my affairs in order. It fired my agent and my publisher. It remargined my typewriter. It was very practical; it decided that the apartment had not been vacuumed recently enough; it decided that I should stop drinking wine because of the sediment--it turned out I had an abundance of uric acid in my system--and it switched me to beer. It made elementary mis- takes, such as calling the doge "he" and the cat "she"-which annoyed my wife; and it kept calling her "ma'am."

His wife, Tessa, told Dick's biographer, Lawrence Sutin, that she had no doubt of the genuineness of these "mystical" experiences. But she herself also had reason to believe that there was some basis for her husband's paranoia. Dick though that the radio was transmitting programs in which a popular singer called him names, told him he was worthless, and advised him to die. This sounds like a typical schizophrenic delusion. But Tessa herself verified that the radio would go on at two in the morning and play music (she did not hear the voice); the odd thing was that the radio was unplugged.

Dick goes on:

My wife was impressed by the fact that, because of the tremendous pressure this mind put on people in my business, I made quite a lot of money very rapidly. We began to get checks for thousands of dollars--money that was owed me, which the mind was conscious existed in New York but had never been coughed up. And it got me to the doctor who confirmed its diagnoses of the various ailments I had....it did everything but paper the walls of the apartment. It also said it would stay on as my tutelary spirit. I had to look up "tutelary" to see what it meant.

Sutin verifies that Dick galvanized his agent--the one he had fired for a time--into pursuing back royalties from Ace Books and that the agent was able to send him a check for $3,000.

Tessa also confirmed that Dick normally refused to go to the doctor but that the "spirit" insisted and that the doctor immediately had Dick check into a hospital for treatment of high blood pressure. He came out physically much improved. His wife wrote, "It made Phil more fun to be with. Every day brought an adventure." And his experiences culminated in this insight: "This is not an evil world....There is a good world under the evil. The evil is somehow superimposed over it...and when stripped away, pristine, glowing creation is visible."

Dick's life began to improve. He had always been poor. In 1974 he made $19,000, and in the following year, $35,000. As his reputation increased, so did demands for interviews, and an increasing number of his novels were translated into foreign languages. Several books were optioned by Hollywood, and one of them, as mentioned earlier, became a classic movie, _Blade Runner_. When Dick died--of a stroke and heart failure--in 1982, he had achieved cult status among thousands of science-fiction fans and had become something of a legend.

How far can we accept Dick's own estimate of his "possession" experience? His biographer, Lawrence Sutin, is obviously ambivalent about the subject. Yet the title of his book, _Divine Invasions_, indicates that he feels the experience to be the most important in Dick's life. His ambivalence is understandable. Dick sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic, and paranoid schizophrenics have "visions." Yet there is enough factual evidence to suggest that Dick may not have been suffering from delusions after all.

The problem, of course, is that a rational human being finds it practically impossible to believe in "possession"-- except as a psychiatric label. Chapter 26 in this book argues that such an attitude may not be as reasonable as it sounds. It depends upon the assumption that disembodied "spirits" cannot exist, and while no one will agree that this is a perfectly sensible *assumption* for a rational and practical human being, we cannot assume that it is *true* for that reason. And if we are willing even to admit the logical possibility of spirits, then we have also admitted the logical possibility of "possession."

An American psychiatrist, Wilson Van Dusen, found himself in this position, simply as a result of his work with mental patients at Mendocino State Hospital in California. In a book entitle _The Natural Depth in Man_ (1972), Van Dusen defined madness as "a turning in on one's self that makes one a constricted uselessness that misses one's highest potentials." In other words, madness is a *limitation* of our natural potential--which inevitably raises the question: What *is* our natural potential? Van Dusen's conclusion was that all human beings have the potential to undergo "mystical" experiences, in which consciousness seems to expand far beyond its normal limitations, and that therefore, in a certain sense, we are all "mad."

He went on to describe how he managed to establish contact with one of his patient's hallucinations. The girl had a phantom lover, and "just for the heck of it," Van Dusen asked her to "report faithfully what [the lover] said and did." Van Dusen was thus able to hold "conversations" with the hallucination, using the patient as a go-between. He then found, to his surprise, that he was able to give psychological tests to his patients *and* to their hallucinations, separately. He next made a startling and disturbing discovery: the hallucinations were sicker than the patients. That should have been quite impossible, since the hallucinations *were* the patients. Yet "what was revealed of the hallucinations looked remarkably like ancient accounts of spirit possession." There could be no doubt in Van Dusen's mind that the hallucinations behaved like real people, and really replied to his remarks; for example, the patient's eyes would sometimes flash sideways as Van Dusen was talking and the hallucination interposed some remark.

Patients often told stories of how they had come to "meet" their hallucinations: "One woman was just working in her garden and a kindly man started talking to her when no one else was around. One alcoholic heard voices coming up a hotel light well. Another man saw a spaceship land and green men getting out." (This experience is worth bearing in mind, when one considers so-called contactees of flying saucers; if Van Dusen is correct, these may not always be hallucinations.) "it takes a while for the patient to figure out that he is having private experiences that are consequently not shared by others."

There was evidence that the "hallucinations" were not entirely subjective and unreal. One of the patients was a woman who had "murdered a rather useless husband." The Virgin Mary had come to her in the hospital and advised her to drive to the southern part of the state and stand trial for murder. The Virgin told her there would be an earthquake on the day she left for the south and another on the day she arrived. In fact, both earthquakes took place on cue.

Van Dusen soon noted that there seemed to be two types of hallucinations, which he termed "higher order" and "lower order." The lower order were stupider than the patient. They would lie, cheat, deceive, and threaten. They might repeat the same word over and over again for days on end; they might tell the patient he was useless and stupid and that they were going to kill him. They behaved, says Van Dusen, like "drunken bums in a bar."

The "higher order," on the other hand, were more intelligent and talented than the patient, and far from attacking him, they respected his freedom. They were "helpers." In one case, Van Dusen was introduced by his patient--a "not very gifted gas fitter"--to a "beautiful lady" who referred to herself as the Emanation of the Feminine Aspect of the Divine and who seemed to have an incredible knowledge of religious symbols: "When I or the patient said something very right, she would come over to us and hand us her panties." One day Van Dusen went home and spent the evening studying Greek myths. The next day he asked the "hallucination" about some of the obscurer parts. "She not only understood the myth, she saw into its human implications better than I did. When asked, she playfully wrote the Greek alphabet all over the place. The patient couldn't even recognize the letters, but he could copy hers for me." As the gas fitter was leaving the room, he turned to Van Dusen and asked him to give him a clue as to what the conversation had been about.

The detail of handing over the panties makes it sound as if, whatever Van Dusen thought, this hallucination was conjured up by the gas fitter--who admitted that he had made "immoral" proposals to the woman and had been rejected. Yet her description of herself as the "Emanation of the Feminine Aspect of the Divine" offers an important clue. She was describing herself as the archetypal symbolic woman, Goethe's "eternal womanly." For a male, the incredible essence of the female is that she is willing to give herself; the handing over of her panties may be regarded as a singularly apt symbol for this essence.

Van Dusen was fascinated to discover that the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) had described the lower and higher orders with considerable accuracy. They were, according to Swedenborg, "spirits," and the lower order were earthbound spirits who were driven by malice or boredom. These tended to outnumber the higher spirits by about four to one. Like Kardec (see chapter 26), Swedenborg commented that spirits could only "invade" people with whom they had some affinity--which probably explained why the low spirits outnumbered the high ones. Swedenborg referred to "high spirits" as angels and said that their purposes was to help; low spirits might be regarded as devils, yet their function was often--in spite of themselves--a helpful one, for they pointed out the patient's sins and shortcomings.

Could Swedenborg have been mad? asks Van Dusen, and replies that there is no evidence no evidence for it whatever. What *is* odd is that his high and low spirits are not confined to Christian mental homes; they transcend cultural barriers and can be found just as frequently among Muslim or Hindu lunatics.

Van Dusen reaches the interesting conclusion that "the spiritual world is much as Swedenborg described it, and is the unconscious".

If he is correct, and the "spirit world" lies *inside* us—as another remarkable mystic, Rudolf Steiner, asserted-- then we can begin to see why mental patients might experience hallucinations. They might have "opened" themselves to their own depths, to the curious denizens of those regions.

When Philip K. Dick's strange experiences are considered in the light of these comments, it becomes clear that it is impossible to dismiss him as a paranoid schizophrenic. We must at least be willing to leave open the possibility that he was aware--as expressed in the title of Wilson Van Dusen's second book--of "the presence of other worlds".

[Transcribed by Phineas Narco on 9/7/93]

maintained by Jeff Morton / Ioldanach@yahoo.com / Ioldanach@yahoo.com
disclaimer

EEUU bloquea el foro de descargas 'exvagos.es'

¡FASCISTAS! ¡Mentira! ¡Sus razones son MENTIRA!

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INTERNET | Por violación del 'copyright'

EEUU bloquea el foro de descargas 'exvagos.es'

[foto de la noticia]

EEUU ha 'secuestrado' el servidor de 'exvagos.es', un foro español dónde se compartían de forma gratuita enlaces para la descarga de materiales audiovisuales (películas, series, música). Desde la tarde noche del miércoles no se podía acceder al sitio y un mensaje de las autoridades estadounidenses comunicaba que la web había sido cerrada por incumplir la normativa de copyright del país.

La cuenta oficial en Twitter de la comunidad de descargas informabaanoche del repentino cierre: "Nos cerraron el foro y nos quitaron el acceso al server!!". En la red de 'microblogging' también explicaronno podían entrar al servidor "ni por ssh, nos han sacado hasta el email".

La orden de cierre ha sido emitida por la fiscalía del distrito sur del estado de Nueva York. La misma que hace más de un mes ordenara el cierre consecutivo de varios dominios de 'rojadirecta', el popular sitio de enlaces a retransmisiones deportivas.

De hecho, desde Twitter también intercambiaron mensajes con rojadirecta. En el último de ellos les pedían que les recomendaran un servicio de 'hosting'.

En la anterior ocasión, el fiscal de Nueva York actuó contra 10 sitios web que ofrecían servicios similares a rojadirecta.

España y el catolicismo

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A PROPÓSITO DE UNAS PALABRAS DE MENÉNDEZ PELAYO

España y el catolicismo

Por Pío Moa

Menéndez Pelayo
Consideremos este párrafo de Menéndez Pelayo: "España, evangelizadora de la mitad del orbe; España, martillo de herejes, luz de Trento, espada de Roma, cuna de San Ignacio...; ésa es nuestra grandeza y nuestra unidad; no tenemos otra. El día en que acabe de perderse, España volverá al cantonalismo de los arévacos y de los vetones o de los reyes de taifas".

Y este otro:

Presenciamos el lento suicidio de un pueblo que, engañado por gárrulos sofistas, emplea en destrozarse las pocas fuerzas que le restan y hace espantosa liquidación de su pasado, escarnece a cada momento las sombras de sus progenitores, huye de todo contacto con su pensamiento, reniega de cuanto en la Historia hizo de grande, arroja a los cuatro vientos su riqueza artística y contempla con ojos estúpidos la destrucción de la única España que el mundo conoce, la única cuyo recuerdo tiene virtud bastante para retardar nuestra agonía. Un pueblo viejo no puede renunciar a su cultura sin extinguir la parte más noble de su vida y caer en una segunda infancia muy próxima a la imbecilidad senil...

Este segundo describe bastante bien una corriente que alcanzó su apogeo tras la quiebra moral del 98, repleta de interpretaciones simples, cuando no meramente sandias. Me he ocupado algo de ellas en Nueva historia de España, y un debate al respecto sería interesante, aunque difícil, vista la incapacidad aparente para debatir hoy en España, indicio de otras incapacidades más profundas. En cuanto al primero, no puede menos de sorprender en un intelectual de la inteligencia y altura de don Marcelino.

En primer lugar, suena a exceso de simplificación reducir el Siglo de Oro a algunas hazañas de tipo religioso, por muy notables que fueran. En segundo lugar, el texto es profundamente derrotista: los tiempos de la espada de Roma, etc., habían terminado dos siglos y medio antes, y desde entonces España había pasado a recibir bastantes martillazos de los herejes, su luz había palidecido extraordinariamente, si le quedaba alguna, y había dejado de producir sanignacios, pese a haberse mantenido católica en todo momento. En tercer lugar, describe una historia falsa: en ese largo período de decadencia, la unidad de España se había mantenido, y atribuir a retrocesos religiosos las tensiones disgregadoras de la I República o los separatismos posteriores resulta extraño, cuando en dichos separatismos influyeron tanto, precisamente, interpretaciones religiosas no tan lejanas de las defendidas por Menéndez Pelayo: tras la derrota carlista en la tercera guerra, Vascongadas y Cataluña quedaban como los reductos más auténticamente católicos en un régimen liberal que traicionaba las supuestas esencias hispanas de antaño. Sin olvidar que, en épocas anteriores, el Papado había favorecido decisivamente la secesión de Portugal. Quizá el gran erudito era a veces más papista que el Papa.

Hay otras objeciones al texto citado: de ser el catolicismo la esencia de España, nuestro país sería indiscernible de otros países católicos, como Italia, Polonia, Irlanda o Francia (esta última, "la hija predilecta de la Iglesia"). Además, la tesis no es propiamente cristiana, de acuerdo con el dicho "A Dios lo que es de Dios y al César lo que es del César". Por otra parte, ¿habría que excluir de la calificación de españoles a los oriundos no católicos? ¿O reducirlos a una ciudadanía de segunda clase?

Obviamente, el cristianismo es la base de la cultura occidental y un factor clave en nuestra historia, pero ¿cómo ha afectado ese hecho al carácter e historia de nuestro país? España pudo ser especialmente católica, o católica de un modo particular, por haberse reconstituido como país de frontera ante el Islam, y luego como la potencia que hubo de bregar en primera línea con el Imperio otomano y las potencias protestantes, además de con la "hija predilecta de la Iglesia" y, a veces, con las intrigas del mismo Papado. El esfuerzo hispano no fue solo político y militar, sino en el pensamiento, el arte, etc. Pero desde el siglo XVII el país fue quedando cada vez más superado por los progresos y fuerzas de otras naciones que habían pasado a ser punteras: Francia, Inglaterra y, en un sentido cultural, Alemania. Nuevo hecho demostrativo de que el catolicismo, por sí solo, no suponía la grandeza o la potencia del país. Es más, cuando aparecen, a principios del siglo XIX, los estados nacionalistas o liberales, más homogeneizadores y fuertes que los de tiempos pasados, la Iglesia, o gran parte de ella, se convierte en una rémora, al pretender la pervivencia de formas de derecho, propiedad y soberanía anticuadas, que no solo impedían a España ponerse a la altura de otros países, sino que, de imponerse, la habrían hundido definitivamente, reduciéndola a una colonia de los más fuertes, los cuales podrían incluso habérsela repartido.

España tuvo la mala suerte histórica de que el liberalismo llegara asociado a la Revolución Francesa y la invasión napoleónica, lo que creó un sinfín de malentendidos en cuanto a patriotismo, nacionalismo, religión y política. Los antagonismos empezaron a reducirse y armonizarse con el régimen liberal de la Restauración, pero este sufrió, a partir del trauma del 98, el embate de los utopismos y los separatismos, un nuevo reto histórico ante el que fracasó, dando lugar a las ulteriores convulsiones de la II República y la Guerra Civil. La tremenda experiencia de esta última provocó una fuerte reacción en el sentido querido por Menéndez Pelayo, acompañada, paradójicamente, de un desarrollo social en sentido divergente.

Los desencuentros entre catolicismo y liberalismo no son forzosos, pero han marcado los siglos XIX y XX, causando desastres, mientras ahora el gobierno socialista vuelve a las andadas. No estaría de más explorar esa experiencia histórica y buscar una síntesis que respetase lo de Dios y lo del César.

Pinche aquí para acceder al blog de PÍO MOA.

Cuenta su crimen por móvil en un autobús y su compañero de asiento era un policía

Porque el Mal busca su propia destrucción.

¡De Málaga tenía que ser!

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13
DETENIDO AL LLEGAR A SU DESTINO

Cuenta su crimen por móvil en un

autobús y su compañero de asiento

era un policía

Se puso en contacto con sus compinches para verificar la muerte de un joven por apuñalamiento.

    LIBERTAD DIGITAL

    La Policía Nacional ha detenido a un joven de 19 años como presunto autor de un homicidio en Málaga después de que el arrestado contara el suceso por su móvil mientras huía en un autobús con destino a Madrid y la conversación fuera escuchada por otro viajero, casualmente un policía de paisano que alertó al 091.

    Óscar Eliseo C.F. fue arrestado nada más pisar tierra en la Estación Sur de Autobuses de Madrid, en la que le esperaba un dispositivo de la Policía Nacional avisado por el agente de paisano, que viajaba en el asiento contiguo.

    Los hechos ocurrieron en la madrugada del lunes, cuando la sala del 091 recibió una llamada en la que un policía de paisano, que viajaba en un autobús desde Málaga comunicaba que en el asiento de al lado se encontraba otro viajero que acababa de mantener una comprometida conversación telefónica.

    En la llamada, el joven informaba a su interlocutor que había tenido que huir de Málaga porque había matado a otra persona con un arma blanca.

    Tras la denuncia, el jefe de la sala del 091 de Madrid se puso en contacto con sus colegas de Málaga al objeto de verificar la muerte de un joven por apuñalamiento en la ciudad andaluza.

    Una vez comprobada la veracidad de la información, los agentes establecieron un dispositivo en la estación de autobuses para identificar y detener al presunto autor del apuñalamiento.

    Por medio de mensajes de teléfono, el agente describió al individuo como alto, delgado, con melena corta, lisa y morena, y que vestía ropa oscura con zapatillas deportivas blancas, y les informó de que llegarían a la Estación de Autobuses de Méndez Álvaro sobre las cinco y media de la madrugada.

    Además, acordó que, una vez el autobús se detuviera, se situaría detrás del implicado e indicaría a los agentes que estaban esperándole la persona a la que debían detener.

    A la hora prevista, el autobús llegó a la estación y, siguiendo lo acordado, los agentes de la Comisaría de Arganzuela esperaron a que el presunto agresor recogiera su maleta para identificarle y detenerle como presunto autor de la muerte de un hombre en Málaga.

    Los hechos que se le imputan sucedieron el sábado 12 de marzo en la Plaza Murillo Carrera de Málaga. Varias personas participaron en una pelea en la que resultó gravemente herido por arma blanca una persona de 37 años que falleció poco después como consecuencia de las heridas que alcanzaron zonas vitales.

    En total ya han sido detenidas ocho personas por su implicación en este homicidio, entre ellos el joven de 19 años que escapó a Madrid.