April-May 1978

Dick suggests hyperuniverse II (the Black Iron Prison) is dead and exists only as a mechanical construct. The BIP world may be stuck in 70 A.D. because VALIS “dealt it a death blow.” Since then fake time continues on with no growth. Because its psyche is dead it just repeats the same thing over and over again. 

Dick said he once described reality “as that which, when you withdraw assent from it, it does not disappear.” Dick withdrew assent and during his 3-74 experience 1974 California disappeared.  

We used to be able to distinguish the two hyperuninverses before the Fall and that’s how we were able to speak with God. We are stuck between Zebra’s living hyperuniverse and the dead BIP hyperuniverse which wants to enslave us.

Dick doesn’t think what he believes can be explained in traditional terms. It’s not Christianity. It’s possible Satan and Christ are twins and that Christ/Zebra is a female (Hagia Sophia/Aphrodite) who is the projected hologram and can take any form she wants. 

All humans amplify the faint signal trying to break the hold our fake world has over us. The pursuit of power is the false god. 

Dick lists nine stages one must go through to reject the BIP world and expose it as an illusion. The true creator is the quiet voice not the loud, threatening one. 

After reading John Sladek’s PKD parody “Solar Shoe-Salesman” Dick feels the need to clarify his own point of view. His writing is not sophisticated. The low-brow and the trash are the keys to his work. He juxtaposes things randomly with the hope of exposing greater truths which may be hiding in plain sight. 

Early 1978

Our universe is a sort of hologram. VALIS/Zebra is trying to wake us up to this with illusions that demonstrate our phony world. Everything is flipped. What we expect to be grounded reality is fake and the nonsense is real. Dick’s writing has value in exposing this.

Dick is deep down the rabbit hole at this point. I often wonder what he would make of the conspiracy theories overwhelming our present time. He quotes a passage from Robert Anton Wilson’s 1977 Illuminati book Cosmic Trigger about Terence and Dennis McKenna’s book the Invisible Landscape. The McKennas, whose theories also borrowed from the I Ching, apparently believed two hyperuniverses interact to form the hologram of our universe. Every piece of a hologram contains information of the whole thing, so that concept would extend to our brains which would contain the whole of the universe. From their idea Dick extrapolates that the two hyperuniverses are the Black Iron Prison and the palm tree garden world which combine to create the hologram. One is signal and one is noise, and Christ is invading the Black Iron Prison world in order to destroy it. 

Dick wonders why the omniscient entity doesn’t do more to alleviate undeserved suffering. Does it have limited power or knowledge, or is it operating in stealth mode to hide from its adversary? Dick concludes Christ is supplanting each suffering creature.