Having dealt with a few people with schizophrenia, either diagnosed, or clearly exhibiting many of the symptoms and refusing to engage with medical professionals until I cut off relationships for my own safety. I think something really sad was happening here.<p>In fact, in a bout of lucidness, he tried to take his own life because "Elijah had left him". That's horrid.<p>The people I have known have hurt themselves and took actions that were designed to hurt others - physically, emotionally, in one case financially - because they believed in a higher order. Sometimes, that higher order was, errr, me. [1]<p>If the story of saving his son's life is true, that's marvellous and mysterious and wonderful. But the surgery referred to at the start of the surgery sounds like it introduced an infection and/or change in brain function somehow, and he suffered with the consequences the rest of his life.<p>As an aside, it's weird how many stories of mental hallucinations are tied to the music of the Beatles. Perhaps its popularity, or because it was a step change in how music was written and produced, but I was watching something the other night that mentioned just how obsessed Manson was with the White album. Now this with Strawberry fields. Don't know what to make of it, just an odd data point.<p>[1] These people felt I was controlling their mind, I could read their mind, I was instructing them, and so on. I was just having a chat down the pub with them, nothing more (but then, if I were a mystic being trying to do my work through others I <i>would</i> say that, wouldn't I?). The common factor in all these men (and they were all men < 35 years old at the time), was heavy cannabis use, particularly in teen years. This is now well documented in literature as being linked to schizophrenia.
The surgery was just the extraction of a wisdom tooth. If Philip K. Dick was brain damaged, it probably wasn't from that, but from the years of heavy drug use (he praised/romanticized LSD, but by most accounts he didn't take it more than a few times - meth was his drug).
> <i>it's weird how many stories of mental hallucinations are tied to the music of the Beatles</i><p>I think Lennon once made the claim that he had taken acid 1000 times. So it lines up.