January 1978

Dick speculates the entity transcends all religions. It is Shiva/Cernunnos/Dionysus/Christ/St. Sophia. Whatever currently rules our world has usurped it from the rightful God and marginalized him, but now he is everywhere.

Dick sees himself as a subversive fifth columnist, although he wasn’t aware of this when he was writing his earlier novels. His later books and stories (Flow my Tears, “Faith of Our Fathers,” Ubik, A Maze of Death and Our Friends from Frolix 8) included encoded commands that he didn’t know about and people only think were added deliberately.

He reinterprets his earlier idea of retrograde time. Since we can’t remember the future we must have faith to see that “evil” events will be used ultimately for good purposes. 

We are caught in a web of illusory images just as the Brahmans believed the Divine Mother Kali spun the illusion of reality. 

Dick says he has reached a dead-end with his exegesis (doubtful since we have over 600 pages to go). It’s a little melodramatic here, but he says this has been a failure so far because he still doesn’t understand or remember why we are cut off from God. Every answer just turns up more questions.

January 1977

Dick has evidently begun exploring outside of the Bible for answers. He is now convinced the divine entity which he encountered was Brahman from the ancient religion that was practiced in India during the Vedic period (1500—500 BC). Brahman (from my in depth study of the first line in its Wikipedia entry) is the ultimate reality in the universe. Dick compares Christ to Hindu’s Vishnu and calls Brahmanism his new religion. 

The theme of all of Dick’s novels has been the idea that reality is not what it appears to be and he is not who or what he thinks he is. His 3-74 experience verified this. He believes what he saw when one world faded into the other may have been an alternate Earth. He tries to admit he may never be able to explain what happened to him. He consults the I Ching and interprets what it tells him to mean he escaped illusion and reached reality. 

He thinks God may have tinkered with his past resulting in an alternate world for him. Where does this old world, the Black Iron world, exist? He examines different ways to model our world in relation to the Black Iron Prison. 

Perhaps something has been mimicking the true world. Dick names this form-mimicker Deus Absconditus and speculates he was possessed by it in 3-74 due to his regimen of vitamins which allowed him to see the mimicry. Reinterpreting the Bible with this knowledge of the form-mimicker reveals a new way of understanding the puzzles of the Scripture.