Secret Teachings of the 20th Century

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will be publishing Philip K. Dick's Exegesis in two volumes, according to an article in the New York Times, Publisher to Release Philip K. Dick's Insights Into Secrets of the Universe.

In 1974, after a number of novels that explored the notions of personal identity and what it means to be human, Mr. Dick had a series of experiences in which he believed he had information transmitted to his mind by a pink beam of light. He wrote about these and similar occurrences in autobiographical novels like “Valis,” but also contemplated their meanings in personal writings that were not published. 

I can't help associating this news with the similar publication of Carl Jung's Red Book last year.  Dick's Exegesis and Jung's Red Book are both what the Church would classify as "private revelations", though they are also heterodox and roughly "gnostic" in character.

These two works indirectly had a tremendous influence on me when I was "seeking" in my twenties and thirties, by way of Jung's wonderful memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and Dick's novel, Valis.  One insight from Valis that has stuck with me over the decades is that, "the empire never ended".  That is, in some sense, we are still living in the Roman Empire, and that the Church is still the Church of the Apostles, resolute in unworldly opposition.