Time is an illusion, we all live in 50 A.D.

[Awakener93]

Hi, I'm new at the forum and I'll probably post just in this thread. Sorry for my not precise english, I'm italian. And I also have never read some of Dick's books.

I'm here because I watched a movie, Waking Life, and there is a curious situation (I'm going to paste it from a site):

Dick once wrote things into a novel, believing them to be pure fiction, only to learn later that they were true. The novel in question is Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a book that (according to Linklater) Dick wrote "really fast," as if he was channeling it from somewhere. Dick himself described his "baffling" experience in a 1978 speech titled "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later":

In 1970 I wrote a novel called Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. One of the characters is a nineteen-year-old girl named Kathy. Her husband's name is Jack. Kathy appears to work for the criminal underground, but later…we discover that actually she is working for the police. She has a relationship going on with a police inspector. The character is pure fiction. Or at least I thought it was.

Anyhow, on Christmas Day of 1970, I met a girl named Kathy--this was after I had finished the novel, you understand. She was nineteen years old. Her boyfriend was named Jack. I soon learned that Kathy was a drug dealer. I spent months trying to get her to give up dealing drugs…. Then, one evening as we were entering a restaurant together, Kathy stopped short and said, "I can't go in." Seated in the restaurant was a police inspector whom I knew. "I have to tell you the truth," Kathy said. "I have a relationship with him"…

In 1974 the novel was published by Doubleday. One afternoon I was talking to my priest…and I happened to mention to him an important scene…in which the character Felix Buckman meets a black stranger at an all-night gas station, and they begin to talk. As I described the scene…my priest became progressively more agitated. At last he said, "That is a scene from the Book of Acts, from the Bible! In Acts, the person who meets the black man on the road is named Philip--your name"…

I went home and read the scene in Acts. Yes, Father Rasch was right; the scene in my novel was an obvious retelling of the scene in Acts...and I had never read Acts… But again the puzzle became deeper. In Acts, the high Roman official who arrests and interrogates Saint Paul is named Felix--the same name as my character. And my character Felix Buckman is a high-ranking police general; in fact, in my novel he holds the same office as Felix in the Book of Acts: the final authority. There is a conversation in my novel which very closely resembles a conversation between Felix and Paul.

Because of this baffling experience, Dick theorized that time is an illusion (not unlike Talbot's holographic paradigm) and he had somehow seen through it. Being religious, Dick guessed that we are all actually existing in 50 A.D. (when the Book of Acts takes place), and that someone has created time to distract us from the fact that God is imminent.

I checked and I discovered that it's true that Dick noticed those matches between his books, Acts, and reality. But I didn't manage to find where he theorized that thing about time. In the movie it's explained better: he thinks that the Messiah is going to come, but humanity is forced to live in 50 A.D. forever from the Devil, which creates time, and time, and time, and we can't get out of there.

Do someone of you know where could I search for that theory?

Thanks

Alex

 

[Awakener93]

Ok i found it, thanks anyway.

 

[Wandering Raven]

Hello friend! Can you share with me what did you found about the subject?

 

[Venusian Broon]

Hello friend! Can you share with me what did you found about the subject?

Hi WR,

In case you don't get an answer from Awakener - as it seems he last posted 4 years ago...

A lot of Philip K. Dicks Religious and visionary thoughts and arguments are contained in The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exegesis_of_Philip_K._Dick

It is big though...

However, the Essay "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" you can find in other sources - it's in my copy of The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings, edited by Lawrence Sutin. Which also has extracts from Exegesis (so you can see if you want to dive into that!) I'd say that book is a better intro to PKD's revelations and has all sorts of other interesting essays and writings on other topics.

I note though that if you are poor and can't afford to buy a book, or find it in the library, that particular essay is on the internet - just google the title and the first one that comes up gives you it.