Letter to Peter Fitting,3 June 28, 1974
[4:6]
Dear Peter,
[ . . . ] In regards to some of the intellectual, theoretical subjects all of us discussed the day you and your friends were here to visit, I recall in particular my statement to you (which I believe you got on your tape, too) that “the universe is moving backward,” a rather odd statement on the face of it I admit. What I meant by that is something which at the time I could not really express, having had an experience, several in fact, but not having the terms. Now, by having read further, I have some sort of terms, and would like to describe some of my personal experiences using, in a pragmatic way, the concept of tachyons, which are supposed to be particles of cosmic origin (I am quoting Arthur Koestler) which fly faster than light and consequently in a reversed time direction. “They would thus,” Koes tler says, “carry information from the future into our present, as light and X rays from distant galaxies carry information from the remote past of the universe into our now and here. In the light of these developments, we can no longer exclude on a priori grounds the theoretical possibility of precognitive phenomena.” And so forth (Harper’s, July 1974).4
I had been for several months experimenting with something I read about while doing research on the brain, in particular new discoveries on split-brain phenomena, for my novel A Scanner Darkly; I had come across the fact that the brain can transduce external fields of both high and low frequency providing that the thermal factor is quite low. Also, I had read about which vitamins in megadosages can improve neural firing and produce vastly increased brain efficiency. I began attempting, on the basis of what I knew, to bring on both the hemispheres of my own brain using the recipe for megadoses of the water-soluble vitamins; at the same time I tried again and again to exclude the ordinary external electrical fields that we customarily tune into: man-made fields, which we consider “signal,” and at the same time I tried to directly transduce what we usually think of as “noise,” in particular weak natural electrical fields.
One night I found myself flooded with colored graphics which resembled the nonobjective paintings of Kandinsky and Klee, thousands of them one after the other, so fast as to resemble “flash cut” used in movie work. This went on for eight hours. Each picture was balanced, had excellent harmony and possessed idiomatic style—that of a well-known nonobjective artist. I could not account for what I was seeing (this took place in the dark, and was evidently phosphene activity within my eyes, but the source of the stimulation of the phosphenes was an enigma to me at the time), but I was certain that those tens of thousands of lovely, balanced, quite professional and esthetic harmonious graphics could not be originating within my own mind or brain. I have no facility with graphics, and besides, there were too many of them; even Picasso, whose style predominated for over an hour, never actually painted so many, although he very likely saw that many in his own head.
In later studies about the brain I learned of an inhibiting brain fluid called GABA, which when its effect drops drastically, which is to say when an external stimulus causes disinhibition and firing of a programmed sequence up to then is inhibited, such colored graphics are often experienced. So I concluded that massive—unique in my life, in fact—disinhibition had taken place, although I could not identify the external stimulus, nor comprehend the programmed or engrammed sequences. At the same time (in the days following) I found myself possessed with enormous energy and did a lot of unusual things. This, in fact, is what probably raised my blood pressure so much that my doctor had to hospitalize me. I was constantly active, and in new ways. This tends to confirm the theory of massive disinhibition and unused neural firing along hitherto unusual neural pathways, perhaps an entire hemisphere of the brain held in readiness until then—I did not know for what.
All this may have been induced by the huge doses of water-soluble vitamins I took, gram after gram of vitamin C, for instance. But I doubt it. At the same time as I experienced the release of psychic energy (to use Esther Harding’s phrase, picked up by Jung), I became conscious of pathic language directed at me from all creatures, and finally, as it spread—and this is the point I’m getting at—from the direction of the sky, especially at night. I had a keen intuition that information of some kind was arriving at us all, in fact bombarding us, from sidereal space.
For a time I imagined that an ESP experiment had somehow by accident involved me: the long-range transmission of graphics. I wrote to a lab in Leningrad and told them about my experience, having at the time the feeling that the point of origin of these signals was far distant, and hence in the USSR. Now I believe the point of origin was even farther: I think that I somehow for a short time transduced tachyon bombardment, which comes to us constantly, and which animals utilize to engram them into performing what we call “instinctive actions.” I had been consciously trying to transduce external weak fields, which I know to be possible, and I know that when this is done successfully the brain’s efficiency is increased; however, I had no preconception of what fields I might transduce—except that I felt they would be natural and not man-made—and what information, if any, they might contain. I was hoping only for increased neural efficiency. I got more: actual information about the future, for during the next three months, almost each night, during sleep I was receiving information in the form of print-outs: words and sentences, letters and names and numbers—sometimes whole pages, sometimes in the form of writing paper and holographic writing, sometimes oddly, in the form of a baby’s cereal box on which all sorts of quite meaningful information was written and typed, and finally galley proofs held up for me to read which I was told in my dream “contained prophecies about the future,” and during the last two weeks a huge book, again and again, with page after page of printed lines.
Without the tachyon theory I would lack any kind of scientific formulation, and would have to declare that “God has shown me the sacred tablets in which the future is written” and so forth, as did our forefathers, back on the deserts of Israel under the sky as they tended their sleeping flocks. Koestler also points out that according to modern theory the universe is moving from chaos to form; therefore tachyon bombardment would contain information which expressed a greater degree of Gestalt than similar information about the present; it would, thus at this time continuum, seem more living, more animated by a conscious spirit, to us giving rise to the concept of God. This would definitely give rise to the idea of purpose, in particular purpose lying in the future. Thus we now have a scientific method of considering the notion of teleology, I think, which is why I am writing you now, to express this, my own sense of final causes, as we discussed that day.
Much of this printed-out information arriving in dreams has had a teaching, shaping and directing quality; it tends to inform and guide me, and make me aware of what I should do. It literally educates me, and I’m sure each small creature, each bug and plant and animal and fish, has the same sense of it. I’ve watched my cat, now, as he sits out on the sundeck at night; he is beyond doubt considering the sidereal world above him and not moving objects below—when he comes in the house an hour or two later he seems modified, as if he has been taught during that period and knows it. I think this happens to us all but I managed consciously to transduce above the threshold of awareness, which is unusual but not unique, and became aware of this constant natural and normal process which shapes all life from the future, as Koestler describes. It is often described as the “Divine Plan,” or better yet “Continual Creation.” Any such terms will do, but I regard it for my own purposes as a continual informational print-out from the future which directs us all, not in the coercive sense that the past does, but experienced—and rightly so—as volition. As so to speak, free will. This term sounds right to me each morning when I wake up and reflect on the pages of print I’ve seen during the night; I am not forced to do what the information brings to my attention; I am free to consider it, digest and understand it, and, with its assistance, act on it.*
For well over two months I was convinced that the Holy Spirit, which is to say God, was directing me, and in a sense this is true; it is a matter of semantics: at one time these would have been the only terms we had available to us; we would have talked about a divine vision and so forth. What I think now is that more modern terms can be better applied; the future is more coherent than the present, more animate and purposeful, and in a real sense, wiser. It knows more, and some of this knowledge gets transmitted back to us by what seems to be a purely natural phenomenon. We are being talked to, by a very informed Entity: that of all creation as it lies ahead of us in time.
Cordially,
Philip K. Dick
P.S. In terms of Ubik (not the novel but the force described in my novel) perhaps I was coherence which the universe is moving toward and which bombards us backward, so to speak, with information about itself, thus giving us a certain awareness of itself. I would think that for purely fictional purposes the description given and the name given in the novel would be more rather than less accurate vis-à-vis the tachyon theory, which is connected with the theory that the universe is moving from chaos to form. Ubik talks to us from the future, from the end state to which everything is moving; thus Ubik is not here—which is to say now—but will be, and what we get is information about and from Ubik, as we receive TV or radio signals from transmitters located in other spaces in this time continuum.
I see no objection to interpreting the meaning of the force Ubik this way. Nor in interpreting the purpose of the novel Ubik by saying that in it I was trying in a dim and unconscious way to express a series of experiences I had had most of my life of a directing, shaping and assisting—and informing—force, much wiser than us which we in no way could perceive directly; where it was or what it was called I did not know; I knew it only by its effects: in Kant’s terms, it is (or as I understand now will be) a Thing-in-Itself.
Thus I would express the purpose of the novel—my purpose, anyhow—to be a fictional statement containing a presentation of this directing presence which I arbitrarily chose the name “Ubik” for. That Ubik (or more accurately the future total Gestalt of purpose and Meaning) may well have written the book through me is possible, but only in the sense that all creatures from grasshoppers on up, in particular small creatures such as grasshoppers, are “written through,” by what we call instinct, rather than “writing” their lives. However, I do think one could say this; rather than having it read: Ubik, by Philip K. Dick, one could put it this way:
PHILIP K. DICK
By
Ubik
In a sense I am joking, of course, but in a sense I am not.
I don’t feel I was “picked” by a Future Force, as its instrument, etc., bidden to make manifest its word, etc., any more than when you are watching a TV program the transmitter has picked you. It is broadcast; it just radiates out in all directions and some people tune in, some do not; some like what they see and hear, some reject it. All I did was to transduce, as all creatures do. I just gave what I received a local habitation and a name, as Shakespeare put it.
P.P.S. One aspect of regarding this as an information transmission and reception-transduction system (like a teletype) might at last throw some light on the otherwise puzzling phenomenon of glossolalia when seized by the “Holy Spirit.” In my reception of tachyon bombardment (assuming this is what it is, of course) I frequently either fail to transduce properly (error at the receiving end) or else there is a lapse of accurate transmission (as if the teletype operator has his fingers on the wrong line of keys, etc.). When that happens, instead of seeing, in my dreams, the perfectly articulated English prose passages which would be the result of all components functioning correctly, I get gibberish like this: meaningless “names” and “words” and sequences of numbers which have no significance. Unless one is very, very careful to factor out, to use a scrupulous reject circuit of some kind (I suppose this would come with practice) one is confronted with the task of making sense out of random or inaccurate integers. I give these actual examples:
832
835
5412960
Eleanor
Mr. Arensky
Mrs. Aramcheck
Sadasa Ulna
17
Command—Odd
G-12
5242681
P-13
Considering the distance over which these packets of information travel, and their velocity, much contamination, signal-loss and other fa miliar invasion of the material contained must take place—cross-talk from other fields, so that when the tachyons at last impinge on us even if our transduction is superb (as in the case of “mystics” and “saints”) there would be something quite less than a perfect meaningful construct. I suppose that out of these etoin shrdlu type of ramblings (or whatever you get on a linotype when your fingers go from left to right) the various “Names of God” are constructed; they supply the spurious and dogmatic Holy Writ such as the Mormons treasure as their inspiration.
If you recall the weird word found on deserted Roanoke Island in 1591, which was CTOSYOAN, carved on a tree and everyone mysteriously gone,—well, look I did it just then; I had my fingers one key to the right on my keyboard: the word is CROATOAN; I was copying it from my text book and had my eyes away from my hands. Thus marvelously proving my point. But for centuries scholars have been trying to figure out what “Croatoan” means. Probably it means nothing; the terrified colonists of the island, faced by one or more hostile forces (famine, Indians, plague, etc.), had an inspiration and left the island for some other sanctuary, believing that those letters spelled out something meaningful. Perhaps the Cosmic Teletype Operator turned his head for a moment, as I did, and erred.
In my novel Galactic Pot-Healer there’s a girl character named Mali Yojez. Not being able to think of another name, I hit keys at random, and used what I got. Years later a burned-out freak who had read the book looked at me with secret insinuating accusation and said, pointing to these letters-used-as-a-name, “That’s me you’re writing about there in your book.” I pointed out that Mali Yojez was in no way his name. “It’s a code you used,” he explained, “to cover over my name so I wouldn’t know. But I do know.” I then pointed out that I had written and published the book years before I ever met him; at that his all-knowing paranoid glee increased. “That just proves how clever you are,” he said. “You even knew about me in advance.” You see what I mean, Peter.
I’ve reinserted this into the typewriter because just as I was about to mail this, it occurred to me that according to my tachyon theory, I could well have anticipated meeting the above-mentioned burned-out freak. This brings to my mind my strange and eerie feeling that my novels are gradually coming true. At first I laughed about this, as if it was only a sort of small matter; but over the years—my God, I’ve been selling stories for 23 years—it seems to me that by subtle but real degrees the world has come to resemble a PKD novel; or, put another way, subjectively I sense my actual world as resembling the kind of typical universe which I used to merely create as fiction, and which I left, often happily, when I was done writing.
Other people have mentioned this, too, the feeling that more and more they are living in a PKD novel. And several freaks have even accused me of bringing on the modern world by my novels.
Well, a case could be made here for my above tachyon theory, I guess, although I hadn’t thought of it until now. Let us say that I am inspired by a creative entity outside my conscious personality to write what I write. (I had imagined it to be my subconscious, but this only begs the question, What is the subconscious?) There is no doubt that quite frankly I do not in any real sense write my novels; they do come from some non-I part of me. Often they contain dreams I’ve had (this was true of Lovecraft, I’ve heard). If tachyon bombardment was inspiring my novels, then it would stand to reason that the world—it is really all the same world which my books depict, as has been pointed out in critical essays many times—it would stand to reason that, as the years pass, my books would, so to speak, come true. They are about the future in two ways: they describe it fictionally, like S-F tends to do, and, they being inspired by tachyon information about the actual future (or possible several alternate futures) depict on-coming reality. Isn’t our world now somewhat like the world in Solar Lottery, my first novel? And other, later novels of mine even more so? I do not wish to be in one of my own novels, by the way. So this isn’t wish-fulfillment. Anyhow, I’m not the only person who’s noticed that the world seems to be getting like my novels; it was pointed out to me recently that if I had waited another year to bring out Flow My Tears it would have been out of date (actually it was by-and-large finished in 1970).
Several times I’ve had the uncanny experience of meeting people who resemble persons, characters, I’d previously made up for my novels. In Flow My Tears there’s a 19 year old girl named Kathy, as you recall, whom Jason meets; she is a girl of the gutter, so to speak, living a quasi-illegal existence. The next year, 1971, I in fact did meet a girl, the same age, living a life so similar to that of the girl in the novel as to frighten me—frighten me that if she reads the book ever she may sue. Her name—Kathy.
I am not the true and actual source of my own fiction, and I’ve always wondered what the source was. John Denver, the current folk singer, says he doesn’t compose his many songs; “They’re out there in the air somewhere,” he says, “and I just fish them in.” Well, my novels aren’t out there in the air; they’re in my unconscious—or are they? Maybe Denver is right; it’s coming at us from a standpoint physically outside our brains, not down deep below the surface. In point of fact, S-F is often thought of as “future history,” and this notion is one I’ve combated, with great irritation, over the years. And yet I’m faced with the fact that time and history have caught up with me, which is perhaps one reason why you and others were disap pointed with Flow My Tears; I waited too long to bring it out. Put another way, the gap between my vision and the actual world has gotten smaller and smaller over the years; when I wrote Solar Lottery it was a vision that no one else had, but how can I claim my vision in Flow My Tears to be unique in the same way? I could do as well by getting my information from newspapers, perhaps. How strange. How frightening, to me, anyhow.
And yet, as of this March, with the sudden bombardment of the nonobjective graphics, perhaps I have once again regained contact with the authentic future; for example, the work I’m engaged in now is a sequel to Man in the High Castle, at last—I’ve wanted to do that for 12 years, but never come up with an idea good enough. Based on my experiences from March of this year on, I believe I have indeed, finally, come up with an idea good enough, and am deep into it. I feel that the external creative force which I’ve discussed throughout this letter, whatever its source, whatever its nature, has inspired me as I have never been inspired before. More important to me than what it is, what it’s called, is the quality of its inspiration to me and the effect on my writing. Well, from these experiences over the past three months I do have a terrific idea, I think the best of my life, and in no way will it be anything you can read about in the present day newspaper. Perhaps what has happened is nothing more or less than a sudden return of the old force of creativity which animated me in years past and novels past. . . . Whatever it is, God bless it, and I am grateful for it. Wish me luck—and also, let me know what you think of all this; I value your opinion uniquely.
