Dick refers to his story “Chains of Air, Web of Aether” as an essay that illustrates that singular moment when someone stops running, confronts their fate and either lives or dies.

One of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s core concepts is throwness where we are aware of having to cope with existing in a foreign world we didn’t choose. Dick connects this to authentic Christianity and Gnosticism. He projects this onto a person who endlessly flees from the dread of their fate but never has any resolution. He knows with certainty the alien world will eventually destroy him, and he is correct. The solution to this is a Christian one of total capitulation to one’s fate. After that the world will change to accommodate us, not the other way around.  

Christ is injected into the world externally in order to keep the system from running down. He is an invader independent of any internal events and his appearance is “absolutely teleological” (related to the purpose he serves rather than what caused him to arrive).

Dick goes in circles with some Catch-22 reasoning about being a madman who claims to have seen Christ. If he knows he is a madman then he knows he didn’t see Christ. This is the puzzle of VALIS. He’s not sure what this means other than it’s a paradox that would serve to wake someone up who doesn’t know they are sleeping. 

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