November—December 1976

We are on to Part Two. Everything in Part One was in Folder 4 of Paul William’s system of organization. From what I can see going forward these next sections are collections of smaller fragments and notes.

Dick affirms the ‘inexhaustible truth’ of the Bible and recalls reading the Old Testament when he was a child. He talks more about the moth he dreamt about earlier and speculates about its identity and purpose. Because he is a science fiction author he knows that no one, not even his friends, will believe anything he as been saying, but he reassures himself that all of it was orchestrated by Christ. 

Dick tries to figure out what James-James is up to. We have to go to Radio Free Ablemuth to find out about that entity where he is described in a dream as a red-haired, godlike scientist who is equated with Valis. It’s not clear if he is evil or just a mad deity. In these notes Dick calls him the ‘improvident genius creator’ so perhaps he is just reckless and irresponsible. Either way he is after Dick for exposing what is really going on. Dick has a new dream in which James-James makes everyone immortal, and he tries to understand the geometry of James-James’s world. 

He wonders about the connection between what happened in Ubik and his 3-74 experience when he regressed through time. He details a dream about bees flying and buzzing in unison and decides that represents the collective joyful state of humans when we will all wake up in the end days. 

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.