The pink beam of light PKD wrote about a lot in published works. I read that he claimed it told him his son had a brain tumor and when taken to hospital that turned out to be true. Thus, PKD believed that the divine intervention of the pink light saved his son's life.
Is there any evidence of his son being treated for such an illness or this just more grapevine twaddle?
I had also read, I think in the introduction to one of his novels (I could try to find it but I have many of his books on my shelf and I'm not home right now) that he claimed not to take drugs! That would be contradictory to what is written in this article, to say the least.
He did take drugs. In fact, he basically wrote novels to support his hobby. When he got low on cash, he would lock himself in his shed for a week with a bunch of amphetamines and bang out a novel. He hated LSD though.
Toward the end of his career, he quit drugs when he saw what had happened to all his friends. The preface to A Scanner Darkly, the first book he wrote off drugs, lists all the friends he lost.
It seems that he didn't really need the drugs anymore when the pink beam event occurred. After that incident, he started to have all sorts of hallucinations that he lead a duel life as a Christian being persecuted by Nero.
Not just with the article, but with his own work. A Scanner Darkly is all about the people, including him, who had taken drugs during the 60s. His after words, dedicating the book to the friends he lost to drug misuse, are particularly touching.
re: his son's brain tumor, let's say this is true. Could it be explained by him noticing symptoms of it and subconsciously being suspicious, which led to the pink beam "telling" him?
Look, there is a really sinister interpretation of Philip K. Dick which one could engage in, if one were so inclined.
I don't actually believe this, but it has occurred to me before. Here goes.
Phil (whose stories I love) claimed at one point that the FBI - or some outside agent - had broken into his apartment and detonated explosives in his filing cabinet. This could've very well been Dick himself.
Regarding his son, it was not a brain tumor, but a testicular hernia, or related, that his son had. Simply put, perhaps Dick was feeling up his son and decided to blame the finding on the light?
I believe what happened is that he likely found the hernia and then, in a fit of paranoia, decided to find another context for its discovery. You need to remember that Dick claimed to have seen a giant Teuton warrior in the clouds, looking down on him, as if a demiurge was making its presence known to him. This was likely a very paranoia-inducing event.
I am now reminded of the Anime Berserk.
Anyway, I do not believe that Dick was a child molester or false-flag operator against his own filing cabinet (although I am unsure about the cabinet one). We don't really know.
I think maybe he took a lot of amphetamines, and maybe he also had a mystical experience. Who knows? I have my own ideas but they may do more harm than good.
* This is your friendly reminder that human rights and a cessation of killing and torture globally serve as the bedrock for all modern law and that violent tendencies must be culled from our collective consciousness.
Is there any evidence of his son being treated for such an illness or this just more grapevine twaddle?
I had also read, I think in the introduction to one of his novels (I could try to find it but I have many of his books on my shelf and I'm not home right now) that he claimed not to take drugs! That would be contradictory to what is written in this article, to say the least.
It seems like PKD is much more than the man.