Letters

I am a GameMaster, writer/editor and armchair qabalist from Los Angeles. I'm writing you because over the past ten years or so I have experienced a large number of incidents (some of them might better be termed "extended altered states of consciousness") which I feel Philip Dick would have been able to grok, or at least empathize with. In fact, if he was still alive - since I'm sure he'd be on the net - I would probably have e-mailed him directly by now. Depending upon the number and content of the responses you've received, you may or may not be surprised to hear that I often experience the feeling of "superimposed realities" Dick wrote about from time to time, that I'm followed around by auspicious synchronicity patterns, or that once in the midst of undergoing a psychic attack - the circumstances of which could have come straight out of a PKD novel - I was visited by Jesus Christ (and I was raised a Jew!)

I certainly wouldn't be surprised if you accepted these statements only with a very large grain of salt - I very often see them that way myself(selves). The word "weird," in its modern sense, refers to things which are unusual, and generally carries a pejorative or skeptical tone. But in its ancient sense it referred to things which were fated or numinous, and carried a tone of reverence and truth. An ancient and a modern both call something "weird." Who's telling the truth? Both. And that is the real topic of this e-comm. Allow me to explain...

One thing that's always struck me about the VALIS works is this quality they have of being somehow only "half-real." The more ephemeral elements of these works either resonate immediately and astoundingly deeply - or they don't. Obviously, this has to do with the interplay of the contents of my mind and the archetypal dynamics of the story. But the depth and clarity sometimes...

When the VALIS stories do "resonate," I feel a sort of vague/obvious wonderful/terrible TRUTH COMPLEX lying just beyond the tip of my mind; this is a feeling that I sometimes get via other means, but very few writers can capture it - no, channel it -so perfectly as Philip Dick. I believe this is because most writers have never experienced the requisite realities/alternities. Of course, when they don't resonate, they seem pulpy and contrived, even sophomoric. Eventually one reaches a point where the two belief fields become charged enough to force a decision - only the story won't allow it.

Of course, this "ambivalent suspension of disbelief" (as it may be called) is actually one of the most real things about the VALIS works. For no matter how many "altered states" you have reached, no matter how many "cosmic truths" you've uncovered, there is (in most of us) some part of the mind which will forever refuse to accept the reality of these experiences. At times you will disbelieve them yourself, while at other times they will take on a "fictional" air, or seem to have somehow happened to somebody else. Great logical gaps may be left in your memories of these events. This is a defense mechanism, of course. Motivated by egocentric beliefs and fears, the rational mind will go quite far to protect its treasured cartesian paradigm, and the result is that your own mystical experiences - among the most real and significant events you will ever participate in - may begin to feel pulpy and contrived. Even sophomoric.

And that is how I know that Philip K. Dick was telling the truth.

Indeed, THE EMPIRE NEVER ENDED.

LVX

TF

Los Angeles

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Well, a few years back (1989), I had an experience that could be called "phildickian". I was experiencing some particularly potent Limited Sight Distance, and after an encounter with a being that threatened to sprout horns and wanted to steal my soul, I staggered outside and wandered the streets, feeling like I was being "beamed" with an orbital, alien picture of life on Terra. Not too long after, I was in a used bookstore and picked up Radio Free Albemuth, knowing who Dick was, but not having read much of his work. Also, I had a record by Joe Satriani's bass player Stuart Hamm, with the same title. My jaw hit the floor upon reading the back cover blurb. I was scared to even read the book for several years. I also used to worked in a record store as an assistant manager, and recently worked, briefly, in the A&R department of a major record label. Come join the party!

Tom taTom

Atlanta

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I had a series of odd experiences myself surrounding VALIS, Timothy Archer, James Pike and a Sting concert. And I spotted a PKD lookalike chatting up a barmaid in a local pub. Pub was called The Gardeners. "Them to the Gardeners" - AI Voice misheard in the night.

A friend won some concert tickets and offered me one. There was no way I could get to it and back in the same night, so I went home to my ancestors. This was literally a flying visit, breaking off from research on The Transmigration [of Timothy Archer]. I got home about three and would leave about six. Dad asked me if I wanted to pop with him to Loughborough, a nearby town which I hadn't visited in years. I found a bookshop by accident, which was just about to close. On the way out I noticed a copy of The Other Side by [Bishop] James Pike, out of the corner of my eye, on the rack outside. It had only come in that morning.

Andy Butler

England

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I had a similar weird experience in 1982, immediately after reading TRANSMIGRATION [of Timothy Archer]. I was in a bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana; I visited this bookstore on a regular basis (a couple of times a month). Right after finishing TRANSMIGRATION, I noticed THE OTHER SIDE [by Pike] in the bookstore. I didn't recall seeing it there before.

H. Stephen Wright

Northern Illinois University

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I had just finished TRANSMIGRATION, and a week later I stumbled across, in the Salvation Army used-book pile, a copy of SEARCH. This is a book written by the woman who was with Bishop Pike when he died in the Israeli desert. She describes the events surrounding the ill-fated excursion in the desert, including the warm bottle of Coca-Cola.

Paul M. Elliott

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... On several occasions I have seen a man who resembled PKD. I don't know if it is the same guy or not - once was months ago at a coastal town, and just recently, in a used bookstore. I got closer to get a better look at him and discovered that he was carefully looking at books in the Gnosticism/Apocrypha section in the religious books!

Nina Crummett

Oregon

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It [a letter] arrived on March 2, the same as the lower date on the rubbing [of PKD's tombstone]. When I noticed this the whole day suddenly got darker and windier. Although I was on the train at the time I could hear and feel low rumblings through the land. The whole sky opened up and became a big eye which looked down on me. A pink beam shone down out of the center of it and suddenly I could see stone columns and marble steps on every passing house. Kimonos became robes draped over shoulders. People seemed to stop and orate to each other, hands gesticulating in Roman poses, olive leaves around their heads. Slime molds on both sides of me oozed frighteningly from side to side of the car, peering out at the passing landscape. One bigger blob oozed up a vocal apparatus and began booming out wails of fear. Down out of the pink sky a swarm of locusts fluttered. They stuck on the windows outside, trying to get in. In the center of the cloud a flapple appeared. It swooped low by our rolling train, keeping even with it. In the darkened interior a steel smile, no grin, speared out. A casual metal arm dropped out of the open window. I couldn't help focusing in on the smooth joints flexing, the "hand" turning over and beckoning, the can of Ubik which was suddenly there in it. Then it sprayed on us, the car, at me. I jolted... and was sitting holding the rubbing all jammed in with a bunch of others on an express headed into the city.

Perry Kinman

Japan

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... On July 23 I received my first transmission at a local "Hazy Daze" event - "Sirius Love" (rave party). I was dancing and loving and free-floating in trance-induced hyperspace when things started getting a little weird. An individual was standing to the side. I walk over and I was hit with a series of holographic instances. I immediately left the party and went home...

This particular individual was wearing a tee-shirt with the [winged globe of Isis] Rosicrucian adaptation...

My conversation with him seemed as if it might be half telepathic and half verbal...

As I approached this plain-looking, middle-twenties-looking man at the dance club on the patio, my mind was in a very volatile or susceptible state. Instinctually, after we said Hi, I tried to touch him. This made him feel uncomfortable, I could tell. He kept moving a step or two away. I just remember looking into his eyes and blacking out. He seemed to have spoken half of everything he said, like when I thought in amazement, "What could I have been thinking," he said, "That's all irrelevant." I don't know exactly what it was that's irrelevant but it must have been associated with my initial naive response to a telepathic visitor.

I asked, "Are you telepathic?"

"I am a telepath," he said.

After that I was very annoying, I'm sure, because I kept trying to touch him (I was "X"-ing) and I kept saying, "Am I bothering you?"

Please realize I do not understand or remember much of the two-minute "conversation" I had with him. He said, "There is going to be a draft." I don't mean a beer or a manuscript. This only made sense, though, of course, that's the way secret societies or ultra-conscious entities seek out worthy information carriers and associates (VALIS).

"Are you serious?" (or what I meant was "Sirius"). He looked at me (now this is the tricky part) and he thought Yes and said No. As I'm sure he was a telepath, I am equally as confused and skeptical due to a second run-in I had with him at another club where I approached him. He looked at me with those same searing eyes and merely said, "Are you serious?" (Sirius). Cynical as hell he repeated, "Let's get serious." My instinct told me he was hiding something, but what? Well, I'm not the same naive metanoid I was then, and I'm glad for my run-in with him. It has triggered my skeptical and cautious nature.

My friends and I have four helpful models for evaluating experiences, messages, coincidences, etc. They are:

The Spirit or Entity Model consists of a variety of perceivably externalized entities that communicate with the intrepid psychonaut.

The Energy Model does away with beings and instead sees the Other as fields of energy you can tap into and control (Vril, Orgone, Prana, Chi, the Force, etc.).

The Psychological Model is the most popular as of the '70s (or '20s). It uses the various archetypes and constructs of the subconscious and perhaps the collective unconscious.

Information Model (from Dance ov thee Pyramids: A Chaos Magick Primer by Frater U D):

"a) NRG (as such) is "dumb": it needs info on what to do. This can be called laws or nature or direct command.

"b) Info doesn't have mass or NRG. It is faster than light and not bound by restrictions of einsteinian "S-T" continuum. It can therefore be transmitted or tapped at all times and places. It can also attach itself to a medium [emphasis added]."

Magoo

Dallas, Texas

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... I, myself, have had other friends who, after I introduced them to the works of Mr. Dick, have come to me with their experiences with what Mr. Dick calls VALIS... The things we all have in common are the fact that, to date, all of the people who I have introduced VALIS (the work) to (myself included) have been male, 21 and under, have very active spiritual lives, and usually experience Dickian phenomena under specific states of consciousness (most without the aid of hallucinogenic materials).

... So I read VALIS, and was not prepared for what a number that "book" (more like Vertical Word Pharmacy) did to my general state of mind. The synchronicities that followed were of a nature that I have grown used to, but one in particular caught my attention. If you ever have the chance, pick up the collected works of William Blake and find the poem, "The Grey Monk." I believe it is in his First Series, or maybe his Songs of Innocence. It deals with, in very symbolic terms, the Empire concept, which he titles, "... the Purple-Robed Tyrant," being an obvious mention of the Roman Caesars and their toga purpura. I find it interesting that Mr. Dick uses the symbolism of the gray-clad monk in his Radio Free Albemuth, pages 115-116: "I saw as if superimposed on the black metal walls of this huge prison certain rapidly scurrying figures in gray robes; enemies of the Empire and its tyranny... We were the enemy, we who wore the gray robes..."

Some of the more obvious conscious or subconscious constituents of the Empire theory would be Franz Kafka, George Lucas, and others. Kafka's paranoid vision of the Tower which no one could ever reach the center of serves as a fine corollary to PKD's idea of the Black Iron Prison, and anyone's inability to fight it directly and expect to win with sanity intact. A more hopeful version of the same archetype that PKD has expounded for us in his writings is the Star Wars saga by George Lucas involving the Death Star as the Black Iron Prison, and the Jedi Knights as the Gray Monks. In it Lucas touches on the fact that by fighting a Dark Side Knight with the same tactics he uses, you subvert yourself to the influence of the Dark Side (Robert Anton Wilson's "Tar-Baby Principle"). The Rebellion, however, is infinitely more successful than either Kafka or Dick. Terence McKenna also speaks voluminously about the Dominator culture that has suffuses our planet. In his view, the Dominator culture took birth and rose to prominence when many cultures of the world transferred from use of psilocybin to use of alcohol for seasonal ceremonies and rites of passage; the road from Pan to Bacchus. In switching over we have lost the "connection to the Gaian Mind, and the voice that beckons us from beyond hyperspace." Many voices, but one Word.

I tend to see VALIS as one man's description of something very ancient, something I like to term as the Akashic Database, something which Jung called the Collective Unconscious. The Theosophists call it the Akashic Record. Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and Antero Alli term it the Neurogenetic Circuit of Consciousness. Whatever the title, it seems to be a fairly consistent archetype in the minds of those willing to explore such things...

Shawn Richburg

Nacogdoches, Texas