Folder 005a
[[005ap001]] Letter to Claudia February 27, 1975 page 1
February 27, 1975
Dear Claudia,
I just had a bizarre thought. The decay backward of forms which Joe Chip sees… it is not decay. This is not retrogression. It is the retrograde axis.
We already pointed this axis out – the one he sees in UBIK – as the orthogonal one. Now I say, its retrograde motion, expressed in the novel, as its proper development, its own forward.
This “decay” is the same direction that Holy Spirit (or whatever you wish to deem it) was moving. Backward vis-à-vis our own time. So Joe Chip isn’t seeing the anti-eidos. He is seeing the natural process of the other time exposed. Its normal motion under normal conditions leads back from rocketship to Corvette to La Salle to Model T. I mean, isn’t this important, to realize this? He has already seen it decay via a different axis (the Platonic forms); but he still calls it decay and imagines that what he sees is a reversal of its normal growth direction.
Maybe not. Maybe this is the counter time needed to create parity. I guess I said all this, but not this way; if we saw the orthogonal axis at work, we would not see it go from Model T to LeSalle to ’56 Chevy to ioniosphere… that for it would be the “film pulled backward,” so to speak. Joe (i.e. I) saw it naturally. So within our linear time, form (edola) develops in the opposite direction to what we in linear time see. “To enter the Kingdom of Heaven you must be as little children,” He said, our Savior. We must regain what in regular time is the past; orthogonally it is the future. Then what happened to me in March, I didn’t move backward, to linear time; I moved forward, to the completion of time. I saw time completed: the great Iron City which fell to the people hustling their asses for man and for God, for Justice and Truth and Joy and Freedom. I saw the Parousia.
I saw the Final Things (eschatology). There all forms including us, including me, we have our completion. The other way…
I lived through the Final Things, coming out finally in the Perfect Kingdom: moonlight and cold water (psychropos). And the archway through which – the narrow path? – to enter. I knew I could. And I saw the “hotel” register in which my name was carefully written. Claudia, honey, I saw time rush through to completion, down that orthogonal axis, which I know to be the true axis.
I never noticed this parallel:
Joe chip Saw: What I saw:
FORM REVERSION ROME AGAIN (Time reversion)
But this isn’t “reversion”; it is completion. Actually I had
[[005ap002]] Letter to Claudia February 27, 1975 page 2
never realized the analog between my seeing Rome, then the Hellenistic World, then Attika, then Crete, and what Joe et al in UBIK saw. Form reversion. Along the orthogonal axis. Wrong. Orthogonal (i.e.) the Forms) yes; reversion, no. Now, when I saw what I saw, I had “died” in an actual sense; like those in UBIK I came to the end point of my lineal time-line. But I wasn’t depleted; this “decay backward” to Rome which I saw wasn’t an entropic process, or even decay at all.
I saw the Parousia, and I couldn’t have unless they actually took place (I didn’t know enough to hallucinate them accurately). Did they take place? Has the Kingdom arrived? I say Yes it has, certainly in the sense that the Brit 3 macro says about Jesus Christ’s message about it. Not only is it real, it ihas arrived; the Day of Wrath – I think it is not a mere personal trip which I went through but which we all went through (toppling Nixon was not in my head, nor what Nixon had been doing). Which part was on my head? Only the realization of what it meant, these historical events, and I didn’t realize.
It has happened, the prince of this World fell.
This all has been an unfolding process. A revealing or disclosing of Being.
The Final Things (Parousia) is this: when God and his forces break through, penetrate into, linear time, and intervene for us. This took place. (March 1974.) This did happen. And the sign of its approach, and symbol, was the dream in FLOW MY TEARS: the old white haired king on horseback – imminent approach of Our King to assist us.
Time didn’t reach its completion as an entelechy does; it was pierced; breached. I’m a pre-cog and I saw this, in my dream, in 1970, which I put in TEARS. It was published in Feb 1974. The rat wqhich died died here in this apartment in March 74, as prefigured in the dream; but in the dream, I was amid the posse, on horseback; thus, some part of me, the “equal” part, survived. The rat was the part of myself which had to perish, and is based on an event in the ‘50s when I had the murder a poor rat which had gotten in among my sleeping little girls. It shrieked so when it heard me approaching, but I had to kill it. I buried it with my St. Christopher’s medal. It is now raised up as Christopher… my son’s name, born in 1973. Rog Phillips (who autographed this story of his “Rat in the Skull, ‘To Phillip K. Dick, a name under which I frequently write’ and who now is dead--) in that great story of his he has the rat pray with its foot, by moving its foot, as the boys destroy it; I cried over that (in the 50s) and when I met Rog just before his death, in 1964, I got him to autograph it.
I yes, I see – that rat was the instrument of saving me; I died with it, and I prayed for it when I killed it; and it’s been transformed… in Rog’s story, the rat operated a humanoid robot, and android; it could manage to say, “mama” and “papa” and could recognize the two people who were testing it, the android. It worked pedals. When the boys removed it, it was trying to work the pedals, now gone, and Rog said, It was as if it were praying. I’m sorry, poor rat; Rog is dea; the rat is dead, and I must stop typing or Tessa will get me.
[[005ap003]] Letter to Claudia February 27, 1975 page 3
Tessa’s name for me (without her knowing all this, supra) is Rowie Rog. A combination of sounds which pierce my soul, for evident reasons. Rog Phillips, by the way, was a friend of Tony Boucher, also dead… Ich sih die liethe etc. Preface to UBIK.
My personal activation was a lapidary work achieved throughout many steps, interlocking, in my life. I had to shed the poor rat, and acquire the fawn, via the (blood of) the lamb.
Synchronized with this is time were: the publishing of TEARS, with the dram; and: (macro) the fall of the tyrant.
“Tears” - vide the libretto for Wagner’s Parsifal. The role of tears to nourish and water and vivify new life at Easter – the tears of the repentant sinner is the psychropos, which brings new life.
Ruffie Rat; that’s what Tessa calls herself, also without realizing how these lives live on from the past.
I think if seen in proper perspective, sub specia aeternitatis,we’re like WIND IN THE WILLOWS, to God. (“A motorcar???”)
God has returned. Resumed his Kingship (the Kingdom of God has been restored, here). I saw it – Him – in the alley, as I walked. I never saw that before because He was gone from her; or rather, our eyes were “dead,” i.e. we were blind.
He is with us again, as last night revealed; as soon as I got stoned and went in to pray when I glanced up I saw two huge tree-trunk legs and shoes/feet – a Great Man standing between me and my shrine. He was there… like I saw Mrs. Donlevy. (God of the House of Levi”,) (Discarded shoes on the beach… tennis shoes – but huge and filled, but mostly the tree trunk legs. So dense. He remains here.
I forgot; only after that did I see anything else (e.g. Dionysus). My experiences wouldn’t have been possible in our lineal time prior to March 1974. (He wasn’t here.) And He remains; hence they can reoccur.
(N.B. The Iron City – Rome – didn’t just go away… we threw it over, the tyranny. We fought well, organizated.
Yes; it was Elijah who came first, in mid-March; he prepared us gt blub zeesxh.
First, the “Artist” (Logos) is drawing you (or universe is fashioning you) more and more like Christ. These are the first kinds of changes you’re made to look i.e. be like him. But the real thing is when you can see the likeness. First, see Him seated there, being drawn, then see that you the 1.5 minute sketch resembles Him; it’s when you see that affinity, that’s the last transformation, in you. That follows in linear time what the artist (continual creating) is doing: upon completion, of the entelechy; when time stops, being “filled up” or realized.
[[005ap004]] Letter to Claudia February 27, 1975 page 5 (no page 4 in pdf) or in selected letters see page 109 1975 volume
If my seeing Rome, that was the Parousia, and it was analogous to Joe Chip seeing the form reversion, then I guess when you die you enter the Parousia at once (this makes sense; how else couldn’t it be? I was indeed describing the Parousia when I described the “decay” along the orthogonal axis in UBIK which is logical). I myself first hit the Dies Irae when I first dropped acid (about 350 mices). It was cold, it was hell; I used it in later books (e.g. UBIK, MAZE OF DEATH). Now, how come I in March experienced what you’re supposed to only after you’re dead? I was judged and so forth, all those things, now. Either this says something about what befell me, or what befell our world in March 1974 (or both). Was it a freak thing for me, a dispensation or accident like being allowed to stay up late or all night, etc. as a child?
This is why (uniquely for me) my thoughts and phosphene activity speeded up in March so that the rate was beyond count. My personal time used itself up… but for me the actual Fulfillment of Time was quite different from the Day of Wrath under acid in 1964, ten years or so earlier. I saw the Day of Judgment this time, when, it was real, only that Sunday night when the pale white light filled the room and I once more knew death was there, and began to pray frantically in Latin, exactly as I had done in 1964 under acid. I relived it; and this time, in 1974, my vision was authentic, because 4 days later my guide and friend the Pinky cat died of cancer. Thus, this was real in an existential way; I thought the pale white light, which exposed him and me, meant death had come for me; but the fact that I saw the light, and that light was real, that event was real, Pinky was going to die – the rest has not been a mere head trip; I know the difference; the acid trip in 1964 was the head trip.
Time had to run out for me before the Final Things could take place. I at last reached God: the beautific Void. I think He gave me a guide to replace Pinky; he gave me Erasmus the way he gave Dante Virgil. I did and do have a guide. Erasmus is my guide now. I guess I am in need of that; I remember the other night (Feb 25) when I go so loaded… as I prayed I remember I said, “I am so lonely. Give me understand. Why is it? I don’t understand.” Later I did understand: that it was because I still missed my father, god bless him whom I’ll never see again. ?But God gave me (1) a friend (v. lat line in Grey’s “Elegy”: “And found in heaven a friend,” which always appealed to meJ; God gave me as of my prayer on the 25th (2) understanding, that I missed my father’ (3) He also gave me the only absolutely Platonic ideal perfect stone out trip in my life. And most of all, as I sat praying, (4) I realized that Erasmus was with me and had been. I need not be only any more. Erasmus replaces my father; I haven’t been alone since March 1974.
My gifts of the spirit. Oh yes, before I forget; when I had killed the poor rat I tossed the St. Christopher’s medal into his grave with him, poor rat who only wanted to live. But you see how I had been educated by that dreadful morning: the rat had to be killed because of my little girls. It was a lesson for me, uniquely my lesson: that death was unavoidable, in more than the descriptive way: that creatures do die. I saw that day that sometimes they should die; that it was of a moral necessity that I literally kill that rat. I never had that rat’s
[[005ap005]] Letter to Claudia February 27, 1975 page 6
Karma on me, not really; I had that less in me, that understanding. Yet – I felt so sorry for the rat, since it didn’t want to die. The lesson was for me the hardest of all: that things must be done in response to decisions or considerations or needs or directives or to accord with a higher morality which make it binding on one to take life. Therefore I saw the role that death had in the universe: a necessary one (clay pots have to be deliberately thrown back as long as they remain unsatisfactory, and that rat, honey, was he unsatisfactory). It showed me that death could not be avoided. But – I still grieved and I still prayed. Rog Phillips story had a lot to do with my empathy; I had read the story a bit earlier, as I recall. And got the autograph later. The rate came inbetween. This was my baptism into reality, my having to kill this huge gutter-water rat which had gotten into the house and as hiding back in the girls’ rooms. As their father I knew what to do. I guess our father (God) knows what to do, too, when he judges, and now we come to Judgment Day and why it must be so. Exactly as I had to judge and condemn and execute that rat, so much God do this – judge us all and spare some (accept them) and execute others; he would like to save them all, but the necessity of the structure precludes it.
If the fucking rat had only left the house I would have spared it. Thus we too, all of us, are given clues and help; we are guided so that “we can leave in time.” And be spared.
I didn’t draw a personal lesson through that I should shape up or ship out; my lesson was one regarding the universe, outside me: that death was required as a deliberate thing. It was a terrible shock to me. I was anti-war, a pacifist, raised as a Quaker. Now, having read Empedocles, I see that strife or disunion must be present in the universe to balance love or harmony; together they keep changing going. I always succumbed rather than struggled. Struggle is strife and strife is for war and war leads to deliberate killing. Last night on the phone, though, I called Laura again, and got my former wife Anne. I had the opportunity to share some of my thoughts with her, about working out the ionosphere plasmic entity theory about the Holy Spirit, where upon Anne said, “Well, that’s the sin of pride, what you’re doing; that is hubris. To think that you, Philip K. Dick, can figure out God – that is a sin.” Instead of feeling bad I pointed out that judgment had been rendered on us all already, by the Divine Judge; whereupon Anne belatedly recalled that “he who is without sin” and so forth and apologized. But I didn’t say, “The Divine Judge as arrogated this to him and will judge,” I said that He had. Now, you can regard this as my saying that He was/is/always will be, or you can think to yourself, Maybe Phil said what is so: the Day of Judgment came and went, and hardly anybody noticed. Except they noticed something. Straaaaange things went on during 1974.