At the beginning of this letter Dick brings up Ubik and the Ubik screenplay he is writing for a European producer.
Dick connects Ubik, the force itself, with the immanent mind he mentioned in his last letter. All of us have bits of this universal mind which can be sparked by an external catalyst such as Christ.
I’m curious what Claudia Bush thinks as she receives letter after letter from Dick repeating variations of the same thing again and again.
Dick tells Claudia about a hypnagogic vision he had of a godlike figure while at the same time a Greek phrase entered his head. His wife helps him determine the Greek was from Hebrews 7:26 (in the King James translation: “For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.”)
Whatever is visiting him has gone by many names in the past: Apollo, the Holy Spirit, Elijah and what Virgil called the “Immanent Mind” in the Aeneid. Dick is convinced the Immortals made a promise to return thousands of years ago and they are finally keeping that promise.
Dick and Ursula Le Guin both attended Berkeley High School and graduated in 1947. Although they didn’t know each other at the time, and I don’t believe they ever met face to face, they did correspond in the 70s.
Dick tells Le Guin that when he explained everything that has been happening to him to fellow sci-fi author Thomas Disch, Disch suggested Dick might have been possessed by Elijah. Dick is excited at the idea that it might very well have been the same spirit that filled Elijah, Elisha and reappeared as John the Baptist.
Dick tells Claudia about a dream involving an elevator, a policeman and a pile of spaghetti. He decides the cop represents the guide who leads souls across to the ‘Other Side.’
In another dream he sees some men with egg-shaped heads who he is convinced are the superior race of Immortals.
In an addendum to this letter Dick expands on his concept of these aliens who he refers to as ‘the Other.’ Dick believes ‘the Great Builder’ is orchestrating everything to get us to merge with this other race.
Dick complains about how he was portrayed in a recently published interview he did for the London Daily Telegraph.
Asklepios, accompanied by a posse of several others, visited his dreams several times the night before, and Dick realized with disappointment they were not gods but just ordinary men like everyone else.
Dick solves the puzzle. He has been dreaming about the Dead Sea Scrolls. These scrolls from the Qumran Essene community were found in 1946 in the Judean desert, so they weren’t exactly a brand new discovery when Dick wrote this letter. Nonetheless he is convinced that is what he is tapping into at night. Jim Pike studied the scrolls so perhaps this is because of Jim’s influence.
I’m not sure how serious he is when he tells Claudia to be careful who she tells about all of this.
