PKD, the Unicorn, and Soviet Psychotronics or Philip K. Dick: The Other Side, by Paul Rydeen
Date: 01 Apr 94 15:52 EST
From: {RYDEEN.PAUL@forum.va.gov}
To: RYDEEN.PAUL@forum.va.gov, pkd-list@wang.com
[For those who may have missed it the first time, here is a copy of an
article I wrote last year. It originally was published in Crash Collusion
magazine, no. 5. Copies may be had for $4 from Box 49233, Austin, TX 78765.
Issue 7 is due very soon, and features an article by Adam Gorightly called
"PKD, the Unicorn, and Soviet Psychotronics". It's also $4. For those of
you who saw this article last time I posted it, note that this is a
cleaned-up copy with all scanning errors and typos removed. Feel free to
distribute it elsewhere. As always, your comments are welcome.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip K. Dick: The Other Side
Paul Rydeen
... the group had taken an active interest in their situation, viewing it
as a manifestation on an earthly plane of certain super-terrestrial forces.
- Jack Isidore (1)
My first exposure to the mind-bending fiction of Philip K. Dick was in
early 1981. It must have been January or February because I remember it
still being quite cold. To my surprise, a friend of my dad's had given him
a recent issue of Playboy, which I eagerly perused whenever I had the
chance. On one such occasion I needed to prove to myself a maturity beyond
the pictures of naked ladies, so I commenced to read the magazine's various
features. It turned out to be the December 1980 issue; one feature was
Phil's story "Frozen Journey" (2). Although this high-school senior had
been reading science fiction for a decade or more, I must confess I was
confused by the shifting realities portrayed in "Frozen Journey". Further
readings did little for my comprehension.
By the time graduation rolled around, I had seen Phil's books recommended
repeatedly in the columns of Heavy Metal magazine. I picked up a used copy
of The Man in the High Castle (3). It was quite good, and a whole lot
easier to understand than "Frozen Journey" had been. Soon after, VALIS (4)
hit the stands. I bought it. I enjoyed it immensely, but was still unable
to fully realize the implications of Phil's speculations. Next I found the
Gregg Press hardcover reissue of Time Out of Joint (5) in a little science
fiction bookstore that had just opened off-campus. At last I understood;
what I had read of the false or illusory nature of reality while studying
Hinduism and Buddhism now made sense on a personal level. As I matured, my
appreciation for Phil grew. I started college that fall, and frequented
that bookstore often. I scoured almost every used bookstore in the
Minneapolis area, spending months in search of elusive PKD titles. I found
many rare first editions this way, and still have dreams wherein I continue
the search. When Phil died in March of 1982, I owned a copy of nearly every
book he had written. I considered his death a personal loss.
To understand Phil, one must grapple with his unique emotional states, and
his unique interpretations of same. Most importantly, in February and March
of 1974 Phil had a series of "mystic" experiences. When he died eight years
later he was still unsure of their origin or meaning. Left behind was his
so-called Exegesis, an 8,000-page, one-million-word continuing dialogue
with himself written late, late at night (6). Though Phil never did solve
the puzzle to his satisfaction, I believe he enjoyed the pursuit of the
answer for its own sake much more than he would have enjoyed resolving the
problem. In fact, I don't think any answer would've been entirely
acceptable to him for very long. By its very nature this mystery had no
rational solution.
Phil had suffered several personal setbacks during the time immediately
preceding these experiences. Stress over his wife and new son, a severe
case of writer's block, an unexplained break-in, lingering problems with
drugs (mostly prescribed medications), and worries over his political
actions all played their part. So did the loss of several close friends. He
even worried over whether he had inadvertently published high-level
government secrets in his novels (see KING FELIX discussion below). The
usually self- reflective Phil became much more introspective than normal.
His depression turned his thoughts to suicide more than once. The impetus
for this particular experience was the severe pain Phil was suffering as a
result of having an impacted wisdom tooth removed. Phil called his oral
surgeon, who promptly phoned in a prescription for some codeine to a local
pharmacy (or Darvon; accounts vary).
When the delivery girl arrived, Phil took one look at her and became
mesmerized by the golden fish dangling between her breasts. When asked, the
girl told Phil that this was the primitive Christian ICHTHYS symbol,
ICHTHYS being the Greek for "fish". The fish was chosen in part because
ICHTHYS was taken to be an anagram for "Iesous CHristos, THeou Yios, Soter"
(Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior) . "The girl and I are secret Christians,
in hiding because of the Roman persecution. The only way we can identify
ourselves to each other is the innocent-looking fish symbol, a harmless
pendant in the eyes of most. This secret ally brings not only medicine to
heal my sore tooth, but spiritual medicine as well. After all, is not
Christ the Great Physician?" He accepted the package and bade the girl
good-bye. Phil found himself transported back to first- century Rome - the
time of the founding of the Church amidst much persecution. The vision of
another reality superimposed upon this one lasted weeks. Phil had a hard
time deciding which one was true, and which the illusion. During this
period of uncertainty, he found himself "trapped" (figuratively, I would
imagine) in a Black Iron Prison - a Gnostic symbol of our fall into
History. It is deceptively referred to as the Cave of Treasures. Phil used
this concept obliquely in "Strange Memories of Death" (7), wherein he
refers to his apartment complex as having been prison-like until the new
developers made it appear like a garden. From his further description it is
quite obviously still a prison, despite its Edenic appearance.
In Freudian terms, the tooth can be a symbol of libido (not necessarily
sexual). Dreaming of the loss of a tooth, for example, can represent a fear
that one may lose one's standing in some way - physically or emotionally -
or be a warning from the subconscious that this is threatening to happen.
Note that one of Palmer Eldritch's three stigmata was his artificial teeth
(8). Phil's impacted wisdom tooth was like his latent Gnosis, awaiting the
proper stimulus to trigger his anamnesis. Another symbol of libido is the
phalliform fish, whose sleek shape glides silently through the deep waters
of the subconscious. As ICHTHYS, Christ strengthens our libido, our
"psychic" energy, and asks nothing in return. He is UBIK, a negentropic
force in a universe that is forever running itself down (9).
The Hebrew for "tooth" is shin, which is also the name of the twenty-first
and penultimate letter of the Hebrew alphabet. (The reader familiar with
Phil's novel The Penultimate Truth (10) may do well to ponder the
connection.) The English equivalent to shin is "S" or "Sh". Perhaps because
of its trident shape (literally, "three-toothed") and sibilant
pronunciation, the kabbalists associated this letter with the element fire.
Compare Phil's trident dream at the end of VALIS, after Fat departs again
for the Greek islands. Shin also appears somewhat like a descending dove,
so it should come as no surprise that a relationship between it and the
Holy Spirit exists. That the numerical value of both the letter taken by
itself and the Hebrew phrase RUACH ALHIM ("the Spirit of God", usually
translated "Elohim") is 300 serves to solidify the connection. The Spirit
is often represented as a flame, one example being the tongues of fire that
came to rest on the apostles' heads on that first Pentecost. Many spirits
and other air elementals have been associated with fire as well.
Later Christian kabbalists (namely, Pico) and the Theosophists attempted to
justify their doctrines by showing that the union of God as Yahweh/Jehovah
(YHWH) and the Holy Spirit (Sh) was Jesus (YHShWH). The four letters of the
ineffable name represent the four natural elements of the ancients, while
the fifth element - spirit - fills out the fifth point of the pentagram, a
symbol of man. The triple-pronged shin was taken to be representative of
the Trinity. YHShHW is usually translated "Yeheshuah", of which the English
form is "Joshua". "Jesus" is from IESOUS, the Greek version of this name.
This formula seems especially valid if one considers the esoteric doctrine
of the Holy Spirit as the feminine counterpart of God. Certain kabbalists
have maintained the Hebrew RUACH is of the feminine gender; if so then this
has been translated out of most versions of the Bible. In some Gnostic
systems, the consort of God is Sophia, Phil's Holy Wisdom (see the biblical
Book of Proverbs).
The Babylon whom St. John of Patmos tells us is "fallen, fallen" is usually
identified with first-century Rome (11). The Hebrews' subjugation under the
Romans was every bit as resented as it had been under the Babylonians six
centuries earlier. John's prophecy of Rome's fall was certainly wishful
thinking, penned sometime after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. I
identify John's Babylon with the Gnostic Sophia, a symbol of the world in
its fallen state. The Land of the Dead - Egypt - was a similar symbol for
later Gnostic sects. The implication of Phil's vision is that we still live
in Roman times, i.e. a "fallen" state. Gnosis must come from the outside.
Chokmah is the Hebrew for "wisdom"; her position on the kabbalistic Tree of
Life is the second or penultimate one (representing a less than perfect
reality) - but here she is given a masculine identity, despite the
references to Holy Wisdom in the Scriptures. The Greek for "wisdom" is
Sophia; a cognate term is Gnosis, "knowledge". Like Sophia, Chokmah is one
step removed from the true Godhead. I equate Sophia with John's Babylon and
the traditional Chokmah, the same yin principle which Phil took to be his
anima in the form of his long-dead twin sister Jane (she had died aged five
weeks). Her avatar has appeared previously in the form of Simon Magus'
Helen, to cite a Gnostic example. In Phil's case, he sought her in each
woman with whom he had an adult relationship - a reunion of the divine
syzygy, as it were. His yearning for the sister he never knew did more to
inspire his world-view than any other single factor; the appearance of
twins throughout his work is ample testimony to this state of affairs. The
encysted twin in Dr. Bloodmoney (12) is one of many such examples.
There is a kabbalistic tradition in which one sees oneself relating events
from the future. The kabbalists' reticence to record autobiographical
experiences, especially those of an ecstatic nature, has obscured this
fact. Phil had a hypnogogic experience as a boy in which he saw himself as
an adult standing at the foot of his bed. In later life he relived the
experience from the "time traveler's" standpoint. The Persian Mani (founder
of the gnostic Manichean religion) had the same thing occur to him when he
was 12, and once more as an adult. He recognized this doppelganger as his
Higher Self - the Divine Adam and called it in Arabic "al-Tawm", the twin.
It guided him and gave him comfort throughout his life, and he was said to
be gazing upon it in the cell just before he died. Despite Phil's
Valentinian Sophian cosmology, I have often felt he was more akin to the
Manichean school on a practical level.
In 1975 a two-word cypher was "sent forth"; the phrase KING FELIX appears
in the juxtaposition of two adjacent lines in Phil's novel Flow My Tears,
The Policeman Said (13). It was only later that he happened upon its
significance. The fact that Army Intelligence bought multiple copies of
that one book perplexed him greatly. In VALIS one of the Lamptons tells him
that the phrase has kabbalistic significance. I assume they refer to
gematria, the practice of assigning numerical values to individual letters
within a word and taking their sum. "King" is English, so should it be
translated into Latin? "Felix" is the Latin for "happy" (literally,
"fruitful"). "Rex" is the Latin for "king" so FELIX REX adds to 256 when
transposed into Greek enumeration. This is the eighth power of two, which
perhaps is the Gnostic ogdoad pointing back to a duality - Phil's
Two-Source Cosmogony. "Basileos" is Greek for "king"; I'm not sure what the
proper translation of "felix" would be, or even if Greek is the proper
language to use. This practice existed in the Hebrew language before Greek
became the common language of the Mediterranean area, and in other Semitic
languages before that. The little girl, Sophia, reads from the Sephir
Yetzirah when the Rhipidon Society visits her at the Lamptons' -
establishing a Hebrew link - but she also tells them the Lamptons are
insane. This issue remains unresolved.
At one point Phil experimented with a megadose of vitamins he had read
about in Psychology Today. This mixture was being used by a certain doctor
to stimulate simultaneous neural firing in both hemispheres of the brain.
While the original experiments were strictly designed for split-personality
patients, Phil concocted a batch and swallowed it down. He says it worked.
The right side of the brain is often identified with the dark, irrational,
"feminine" component of our minds; the parallel to the imperfect, premature
Sophia is obvious. Speculation has arisen that the voices heard by prophets
and madmen originate in the right-brain (14). Usually drowned out by the
day-to-day noise of the more verbally active left-brain, under certain
circumstances it may be heard. At one time in our not-so-distant past, this
may have been far more common than it is today. This is one of many
possibilities considered by Phil, probably no more right or wrong than any
of the others.
Another possibility I'd like to briefly consider is that one possible
subconscious influence was the "Roman" episode of the old Star Trek TV
series. I've long forgotten the show's title, but it involved a planet
similar to twentieth-century Earth with the exception that Roman rule still
existed. Rome never fell - the Empire never ended - and secret followers of
"the Son" were preaching peace and brotherhood rather than tyranny. This in
no way lessens the import of Phil's vision, nor does it explain anything
away. I merely find it an intriguing idea to ponder. Who can say what
psychic debris forms the foundations of our subconscious?
As the image of first-century Rome persisted, Phil began seeing St. Elmo's
fire almost everywhere he looked. He had purchased his own ICHTHYS sign to
hang in the picture window of his apartment; admittedly his staring at the
sunlight had much to do with the earliest manifestations. However, the pink
light was even visible at night, when Phil would sit up in bed unable to
sleep, enjoying the show. In A Scanner Darkly (15) he describes it as a
rapid-fire succession of Paul Klee, Kandinsky and other modern artists. He
also describes the times the St. Elmo's fire took on the shape of a doorway
proportioned to the Golden Mean (representing perfection). This was a
doorway to the Other World. The character in the book regrets having never
thought to step through the doorway after the apparition finally
disappeared. The nightly visions continued, often taking the form of
incredibly complex dreams which Phil saw at once were unlike his usual
sleeping habits. He called them "tutelary" dreams because of their
information-rich content. In many he was actually shown texts, which he was
able to read and transcribe their contents upon awakening. This is another
kabbalistic tradition, the ability to read holy texts on the astral plane.
Always for Phil, the pink beam of light was prominent.
Admittedly, the idea one is being shot with a beam of energy is typical to
many schizophrenics. So are the discarnate voices which haunted Phil's
unplugged radio at night, telling him how terrible a person he was (his
then-wife Tessa heard them too). The one difference here is that Phil
perceived it as a healing light rather than a further descent into madness.
He credited it with taking charge of his life, recovering a lot of income
due from unpaid book royalties, and even re-margining his typewriter. He
never decided what the beam's source really was. Guesses included the
Rosicrucian Society, Soviet scientists experimenting with "psychotronics",
and an alien satellite orbiting a distant star. One message came from the
"Portuguese States of America", leading Phil to contemplate the possibility
of parallel universes. He also thought it might have been God. The Roman
Sybil in her later Christianized form was a particular favorite of Phil's;
her similarity to Jane as Phil's "protectress" was the attraction. VALIS
even quotes the Sybilline Oracles. Note also that the much-sought product
UBIK in Phil's novel of the same name is depicted on the dustjacket of the
original as spraying a pink substance. Coincidence? The connection is
further made in VALIS when Phil and friends mistake a model of the
satellite for a can lying in the gutter (in the movie-within-a- book). Does
this refer to a can of UBIK as well?
In some of his dreams, Phil saw Soviet scientists rushing around behind the
scenes to keep the alien satellite functioning. Phil originally thought
VALIS was from Fomalhaut, which he called "Albemuth" (from the Arab Al
Behemoth, "the whale"). Fomalhaut is the fish's mouth; Phil apparently
mistook "behemoth" for "leviathan", two Hebrew words from the Old
Testament. It is the latter which actually refers to the whale, according
to most sources. What matters most is Phil's beliefs on the matter; if his
subconscious mind processed "behemoth" as "whale", then "whale" it is - for
him. At any rate, the fish symbolism is obvious, as is the reference to
Jonah. Phil must have read Robert K.G. Temple's The Sirius Mystery (16)
before writing VALIS, because he relocated the satellite to there. This
brings in a host of occult references too involved to go into here. Suffice
it to say that the dark companion of Sirius represents "occult" or hidden
knowledge, as does Sirius' position as "the sun behind the Sun" (as Kenneth
Grant calls it). Neither Phil nor Temple seem to have known this when they
wrote their books. Phil cleverly tied in the dualist Dogon philosophy
described by Temple with his own Gnostic beliefs, though as narrator of
VALIS he ascribes this revelation to Fat and tells us this is the point at
which Fat's madness became complete. Madness or not, VALIS stands as a
classic on many levels. The three-eyed aliens had pincers like a crab where
hands should be, just like Palmer Eldritch and his artificial hands. These
"improved" hands seem to denote an elevated status as cosmic artificer or
demiurge, while also indicating an inherent flaw of some sort. The beings
were also deaf and mute; they communicated amongst themselves by means of
telepathy. One could say their inability to hear or speak reinforces the
notion of an imperfect demiurge, as well as it helps conceal his true
nature. Then again, their physical handicap may be the results of a
personal sacrifice undertaken to enhance their mental faculties.
Phil was consistent in documenting his major influences within the works
they influenced. VALIS was no exception. Curiously, there are two which
went uncredited, and to my knowledge no researcher has yet uncovered them
both. The first is Robert K.G. Temple's aforementioned The Sirius Mystery.
Temple documents the Dogon people of Africa and their precise astronomical
data which predate telescopes. Their legends say that this knowledge was
given to them by three-eyed crab-clawed beings from Sirius. Temple goes on
to trace the Dogon's ancestors back to migrating Egyptians who continue a
tradition well-documented in the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris. Certainly
Phil read Temple's book after writing Radio Free Albemuth; why else would
he have moved VALIS from Fomalhaut to Sirius?
The other major influence which went uncredited may be more of a surprise.
It is not a scholarly influence like Temple's, but rather a little known
facet of popular culture. The whole idea of an immortal and all-powerful
race who build universes out of boredom, fall into them and become trapped
because they forget who they are is indeed gnostic in flavor, as many have
said. It should be noted, however, that this is exactly what Scientology
teaches about the Thetans. WE ARE THE THETANS and we don't even know it.
Palmer Eldritch had three stigmata: his artificial eyes, artificial teeth
and artificial hands. The cover of the original edition combines these to
show the classic eye-in-palm design used by fortune-tellers to indicate
occult wisdom. The all-seeing eye is a common motif in Masonic lore as
well; at one point Phil challenged God to show himself and saw the Ark of
the Covenant opened to reveal the eye-in-the-triangle. Esoteric tradition
among the Masons identifies this occult eye with the star Sirius - named
for Osiris, the dead and risen Egyptian savior who adumbrated Christ by
centuries. It is also the eye of the cyclops and the third or ajna eye of
Shiva, which Phil (as Fat) attributes to Ihknaton and his followers in the
Tractates appended to VALIS. Others have placed a sexual interpretation
upon it as well, but that's beyond the scope of the present work.
While listening to the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" one day, Phil
heard the lyrics change into a prophetic warning: "Your son has an
undiagnosed right inguinal hernia. The hydrocele has burst, and it has
descended into the scrotal sac. He requires immediate attention, or will
soon die." Phil rushed him to the hospital and found every word to be true.
The doctor scheduled the operation for the same day. Once again, the
healing power of Phil's vision comes to the fore. In a sense the boy was
"reborn", which was to have great consequences for Phil's subsequent
actions.
For a while Phil thought the spirit of Elijah had come upon him, much as
the followers of John the Baptist felt about their Master. He even
identified with a certain first-century Christian he called Thomas, whose
thoughts Phil heard while falling asleep. There's someone inside of me, and
he's living in another century. This Thomas was eventually garroted, which
provides the connection to John the Baptist. "Thomas" is a Greek name
meaning "twin"; whose twin was he if not Phil's? (Mani's twin was also
called "tawm"; extant Greek Manichean texts refer to him as "syzygon".)
Phil saw fit to baptize and confirm his infant son at this time (he was
Episcopalian). Phil then gave his son a secret name which has never been
divulged. In the posthumously-published Radio Free Albemuth (17) - the
first version of what finally became VALIS - "Nicholas Brady" christened
"Johnny" with the secret name "Paul". Since Phil saw himself as Elijah or
John the Baptist, my best guess is that Phil told his son he was the Savior
incarnate, and named him "Emmanuel", a Hebrew name meaning "God with us".
His son's birth name was in fact Christopher, from the Greek for
"Christ-bearer". Indeed, Radio Free Albemuth ends with the imprisoned Phil
taking consolation in the knowledge that the Message has gone out after all
- to the children. The importance of this assertion in light of the
child-saviors in VALIS and The Divine Invasion cannot be underestimated. No
wonder it hurt so badly when Phil's wife left with his son. It would have
been interesting to see how Phil's son would have turned out under his
father's tutelage. As it is, he may yet surprise us as he comes of age.
Phil's experiences culminated with a beatific vision of a Palm Tree Garden,
which he described in Deus Irae (18) and mentioned several times in The
Divine Invasion (19). Though this was still a part of first-century Rome,
Phil felt at peace in the garden - the nostalgic Eden. The palm tree itself
is the World Tree, the axis mundi, the pole at the center of the world
which leads to heaven. Palm leaves were strewn before Christ when he
returned to Jerusalem to indicate victory over temptation in the
wilderness; today they are carried by those who have completed a pilgrimage
to the Holy Land. Palm Sunday commemorates this event in Christ's life.
Palmer Eldritch's name is an obvious reference, but "palmer" could also
refer to sleight of hand - indicating his position as malevolent demiurge.
Associated with the vision of the Palm Tree Garden was a young girl
gathering water at riverside. On her vase was an interlocking pattern which
Phil recognized as a series of ICHTHYS symbols. He also saw it as the
double helix form of DNA. The universe, he understood, is information -
just as DNA is the encoded information by which our bodies are created and
maintained. He identified this girl with Aquarius, the water-bearer. To me
this symbolizes a pouring out (from the subconscious) and the heralding of
a new age. This scene was used in VALIS to announce the new messiah, the
little girl called Sophia. A new age had indeed begun, short-lived as it
was.
Though Phil's vision of Rome faded, his tutelary dream continued for six
more years. So too did the AI voice (for "Artificial Intelligence"), a soft
feminine voice he heard in times of stress and during hypnogogic revery.
Naturally he identified this voice with Jane/Sophia, and claims to have
first heard it during a high school physics exam (it gave him the answers)
25 years earlier. It all ended November 17, 1980. Phil claimed to have had
a theophany that day, though witnesses noticed nothing unusual. Phil
suddenly comprehended God as infinite, by nature incomprehensible. In other
words, the Exegesis would never solve anything because there was no answer
to be had. Phil actually stopped writing for a time because of this, but
was at it again before too long. He also wrote The Divine Invasion around
this time, which was when the voice finally stopped. Had it not been for
the theophany, Phil would have probably cried, "Eloi, Eloi, lama
sabachthani?" As it was, he persisted in speculating the remaining year of
his life, and managed to produce one more novel before the end - the
posthumously-published The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (20). Phil
suffered the first of several strokes in February 1982 and died several
days later in the hospital, on March 2. He was 53.
NOTES
(1) Philip K. Dick. Confessions of a Crap Artist. New York: Pocket
Books, 1982. (Orig. 1975.) Pg. 164.
(2) "Frozen Journey" was Playboy's name for the manuscript Phil
called "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon". It was reprinted under its
original title most recently in The Eye of the Sybil (New York:
Carol Publishing Group, 1992).
(3) The Man in the High Castle. New York: Putnam, 1962. This title
has gone through several editions and remains in print.
(4) VALIS. New York: Bantam, 1981.
(5) Time Out of Joint. Boston: Gregg Press, 1979. (Orig. 1959.)
(6) A very limited number of Exegesis entries were eventually
published in Selections from the Exegesis, edited by PKD biographer
Lawrence Sutin (Lancaster: Underwood-Miller, 1991). Sutin also
wrote the excellent Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (New
York: Carol Publishing Group, 1991).
(7) "Strange Memories of Death" first appeared in issue #8 of
Interzone magazine (Brighton, UK). It also was collected in I Hope
I Shall Arrive Soon (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987) and volume
5 of Underwood-Miller's Collected Stories (reprinted by Carol
Publishing Group).
(8) The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Garden City: Doubleday,
1965.
(9) Reference is to Phil's novel UBIK (Garden City: Doubleday,
1969).
(10) The Penultimate Truth. New York: Belmont, 1964.
(11) Revelations 18:2.
(12) Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (New York:
Ace Books, 1965. Reprinted Boston: Gregg Press, 1977.). Another
good example is the pair of lambs born near the end of Confessions
of a Crap Artist (ibid), the second of which is stillborn. In this
case it is the male twin Phil kills off - representing himself.
(13) Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Garden City: Doubleday,
1975. (Phil parodied this book as The Android Cried Me A River in
VALIS.)
(14) See Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1976.)
(15) A Scanner Darkly. Garden City: Doubleday, 1977.
(16) Temple's book is little more than a well-researched paperback
of the Ancient Astronaut variety. Only Phil could have turned it
into a whole universe. (London: Futura Publications Ltd., 1979.)
Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger was also an influence in
regards to the Sirius connection; Phil acknowledges it as such in
VALIS. (Berkeley: And/Or Press, 1977. It's been reprinted by both
Simon & Schuster and Falcon Press.)
(17) Radio Free Albemuth. New York: Arbor House, 1985.
(18) (w/ Roger Zelazny). Deus Irae. Garden City: Doubleday, 1976.
(19) The Divine Invasion. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981.
(20) The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1982.
[end]
