August 1978

Dick marvels over the scope and originality of his exegesis. He wonders how to live his life day by day after an encounter with a superior life form. 

The Black Iron Prison which began in Rome 45 A.D. is stuck on repeat. Some sort of cosmic brain opposes it. It interfered with U.S. history during the Nixon/Vietnam era through an evolution toward individuality. The authorities tried to suppress it by killing the leaders but the “leaderless revolution” couldn’t be stopped. Zebra/God/Noös is the brain and we are the brain’s components.

The early Christians knew Zebra (the electrical impulses firing at us) as the Paraclete. The messages the brain communicates to us are subliminal, but the brain doesn’t control us since we are the brain. The book of Acts, when it describes the Pentecost, is the only written account of the brain.

Most people are still under the spell of the BIP. Without the brain the BIP would control all of us. Christ’s sacrifice created this distributed brain which forms a bridge between our world and the upper realm. Once the brain has achieved its goals it will reveal the true world of ancient Rome. If we could view the last 2000 years sped up we would see something like Yin and Yang: the brain (light) vs those still under control of the BIP (darkness) until eventually the light wins and takes over.

May 1978

Dick believes the true deity had a role in overthrowing the U.S. Government. It was able to sneak in unnoticed disguised as lowbrow trash just as in Ubik. 

He thinks the Black Iron Prison world has yielded to the PTG (Palm Tree Garden) world, but because the BIP world was a bogus copy of the real world, and the PTG world copied that, we are then living in a fake of a fake. He goes on to clarify there is no world. We are enclosed in the BIP which is firing signals at us and creating what we see as the world. He doesn’t believe it is evil though.

The information Dick received in 3-74 was meant for Zebra and not for him. Whatever it was means Zebra is a permanent part of him now and he is in a symbiotic state with it.

It sounds like he thinks the information hidden in his book Flow My Tears is a way for Zebra to replicate itself in the minds of its readers. He suggests the Book of Acts in the Bible is not a book but is actually a world which he entered into in 3-74. I’m not sure Dick really understands what he is talking about here.

Dick has hit on the idea that we built Zebra to help us remember because we knew the BIP would take over and enslave us. Zebra is metabolic information restoring elasticity to the rigid BIP of the universe. Each person must rebel in order to see the world for what it truly is. 

Because we each contain the totality of the holographic universe Zebra and Dick are the same, but he is still reckoning with this.

For the previous 15 months Dick thought that Paul was the author of “Acts” in the Bible but he finds out that it was actually written by Luke. This new knowledge matches up to recent dreams he has been having. He incorporates Luke into the plot for To Scare the Dead: St. Luke will visit the protagonist and teach him that the Holy Spirit can possess ordinary people. 

Dick compares what happened to him with Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End (a book about an alien invasion of Earth) which he just read, although he doesn’t find too many similarities to his experience. Dick rejects a sci-fi interpretation and embraces a theological one. 

He recounts a new experience. Some light entity which he calls The Moth visited him and then the following morning he spoke with Astraea, the Greek (Dick incorrectly calls her Roman) virgin goddess of innocence and justice. She told him they will judge those who destroy the Earth. Afterwards he went in for a scheduled blood pressure reading and found his b.p. was normal. 

He considers folding an older story about a man who remembers the future instead of the past (I believe he is referring to “Recall Mechanism”) into To Scare the Dead.