DICK, Philip K.

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Typed letter signed, to Claudia Bush. A typed letter signed from Dick to Claudia Bush, a university student who was writing a thesis on Dick's novels, with eight brief authorial manuscript corrections. Dick delves into the particulars of his VALIS visions and draws parallels between his own experiences and that of his friend James Pike, a controversial Episcopal bishop and the inspiration for Bishop Archer in Dick's The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982).Pike was the fifth bishop of California. He was an early proponent of the ordination of woman and racial desegregation within mainline churches. After the suicide of his son in 1966, Pike became a believer in spiritualism and psychic phenomena. In this letter, Dick remarks with pride that a bookseller compared his experiences to those of Pike and posits that he and Pike share a psychic connection: "all these ideas, all this classical information, was some how connected with Jim, somehow came from him". This letter is written in the aftermath of Dick's VALIS visions of 1974, which happened shortly after a wisdom tooth operation. Dick received a home delivery of opioids from a woman wearing a Christian Ichthys necklace. The symbol emitted a pink beam of light which was the catalyst for months of visionary experiences, including Dick's belief that his mind had been invaded by a benign but separate consciousness. The period of PKD's visions began in February or March of 1974, and continued for anywhere between two and 12 mon

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