Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

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Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 05, 2010 2:58 pm

Image




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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby elfismiles » Wed May 05, 2010 3:36 pm

ZOINKS!!!
:shock: :shock: :shock:
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby Bruce Dazzling » Wed May 05, 2010 4:15 pm

Fascinating!

Not to sidetrack, but I recently ran across another very interesting story about Dick in Fortean Times.

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/ar ... rcon6.html

Dick claimed that he was:

"approached by an individual who I have reason to believe belonged to a covert organization involved in politics, illegal weapons, etc., who put great pressure on me to place coded information in future novels ‘to be read by the right people here and there’, as he phrased it. I refused to do this.”

it now appears that other science fiction writers may have been so approached by other members of this obviously Anti-American organization and may have yielded to the threats and deceitful statements such as were used on me.

“I stress the urgency of this because within the last three days I have come across a well-distributed science fiction novel which contains in essence the vital material which this individual confronted with me as the basis for encoding. That novel is CAMP CONCENTRATION by Thomas Disch, which was published by Doubleday & Co.


Camp Concentration is a terrific book, btw.

http://utopian-dystopian-fiction.suite1 ... as-m-disch
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby Simulist » Wed May 05, 2010 4:50 pm

Since I'm a pretty fast typist — and because I think this is important — I took the liberty of transcribing the above PKD video verbatim for those whose computers either can't view it, or for those who just don't have the time to.

The subject of this speech is a topic which has been discovered recently, and which may not exist at all. I may be talking about something that does not exist. Therefore I am free to say everything, and nothing.

[…]

I, in my stories and novels, often write about counterfeit worlds. Some are real worlds as well as deranged, private worlds inhabited often by just one person — while, meantime, the other characters either remain in their own worlds throughout, or are somehow drawn into one of the peculiar ones. This theme occurs in the corpus of my twenty-seven years of writing. At no time did I have a theoretical or conscious explanation for my preoccupation with these pluriform pseudo worlds.

But now I think I understand.

What I was sensing was the manifold of partially-actualized realities lying tangent to what evidently is the most actualized one: the one which the majority of us, by consensus gentium agree on.

[…]

Later that day, back at home but still deeply under the influence of the sodium pentathol, I had a short, acute flash of recovered memory. Then, in mid-March (a month later), the total body of memories — intact and entire — began to return. You are free to believe me or disbelieve, but please take my word on it that I am not joking: this is very serious, a matter of importance.

[…]

At that time I had no idea what I was seeing. It resembled nothing that I had ever heard described. It resembled plasmic energy. It had colors. It moved fast. It collected, and then dispersed. But what it was — what he was — I am not sure even now.

[…]

In other words, it’s a common theme in my writing that a dark-haired girl shows up at the door of the protagonist, and tells him that his world is delusional, that there is something false about it. Well, this did finally happen to me. I even knew that her hair would be black. I had an actual complete sense of what she would look like and what she would say.

[…]

She did appear. She was a total stranger. And she did inform me of this fact: that some of my fictional works were, in a literal sense, true.

[…]

I wrote out these dreams in novel after novel, story after story. To name two in which this prior ugly present obtain most clearly: I cite The Man in the High Castle and my 1974 novel about the U.S. as a police state called Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.


I am going to be very candid with you. I wrote both novels based on fragmentary, residual memories of such a horrid slave state world. People claim to remember past lives; I claim to remember a different — very different — present life. I know of no one who has ever made this claim before, but I rather suspect that my experience is not unique. What perhaps is unique is the fact that I am willing to talk about it.


We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed and some alteration in our reality occurs. We would have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present — déjà vu — perhaps in precisely the same way, hearing the same words, saying the same words. I submit that these impressions are valid and significant. And I will even say this: such an impression is a clue that at some past time point, a variable was changed, reprogrammed as it were, and that because of this an alternative world branched off.
"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby elfismiles » Wed May 05, 2010 5:07 pm

Simulist wrote:Since I'm a pretty fast typist — and because I think this is important — I took the liberty of transcribing the above PKD video verbatim for those whose computers either can't view it, or for those who just don't have the time to.


You ROCK Simulist! Thank you. :lovehearts:
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby SanDiegoBuffGuy » Wed May 05, 2010 5:10 pm

Interesting video.

Did I see Sophia Stewart in the background??

http://guerillaarts.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=668579%3ATopic%3A12461
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby elfismiles » Wed May 05, 2010 5:29 pm

I thought Cameron stole TERMINATOR from Harlan Ellison?

SanDiegoBuffGuy wrote:Interesting video.

Did I see Sophia Stewart in the background??

http://guerillaarts.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=668579%3ATopic%3A12461
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby justdrew » Wed May 05, 2010 6:02 pm

La invención de Morel (1940) -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Morel

Simulacron-3 (1964) -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacron_Three
Simulacron 3 is the story of a virtual city (total environment simulator) for marketing research, developed by a scientist to reduce the need for opinion polls. The computer-generated city simulation is so well-programmed, that, although the inhabitants have their own consciousness, they are unaware, except for one, that they are only electronic impulses in a computer.

filmed as -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welt_am_Draht
By 1964 there were 1.5 million mobile phone users in the US
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 05, 2010 9:15 pm

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby happenstance » Thu May 06, 2010 11:03 am

Terrence McKenna on PKD
http://www.sirbacon.org/dick.htm

How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later
http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm

The Religious Experience of Philip K Dick illustrated by R.Crumb
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3230/Robert-C ... lip-K-Dick
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby Iamwhomiam » Thu May 06, 2010 11:21 am

Thank you, Simulist, for your transcription. I am one so afflicted with an incredibly slow dial-up connection and cannot view videos. Very much appreciate your efforts to further our understanding.
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby beeline » Thu May 06, 2010 12:20 pm

Iamwhomiam wrote:Thank you, Simulist, for your transcription. I am one so afflicted with an incredibly slow dial-up connection and cannot view videos. Very much appreciate your efforts to further our understanding.


+1

And, it occurs to me, this is very similar to what is happening on Lost this season, if anyone else is watching it, with the 'flashes sideways'---I think the two worlds on Lost will collide eventually.
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby elfismiles » Thu May 06, 2010 3:06 pm

beeline wrote:
Iamwhomiam wrote:Thank you, Simulist, for your transcription. I am one so afflicted with an incredibly slow dial-up connection and cannot view videos. Very much appreciate your efforts to further our understanding.


+1

And, it occurs to me, this is very similar to what is happening on Lost this season, if anyone else is watching it, with the 'flashes sideways'---I think the two worlds on Lost will collide eventually.


Hmmm ... your phrase "flashes sideways" makes me think of the series FLASH FORWARD as well as the over-arching themes of two reality-timestreams colliding in FRINGE. And the end of season one / beginning of season two of EUREKA.
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby Simulist » Thu May 06, 2010 3:08 pm

You're welcome, Elfismiles, Iamwhomiam, and Beeline. I'm glad to hear it was useful.

By the way Beeline, I think you might be on to something there. There have been several allusions to Philip K. Dick throughout LOST.

For just two examples, in the season four episode, "Eggtown," John Locke gives a copy of VALIS to Ben Linus. As Ben accepts the book, he says, "I've already read it." Locke retorts, "You might catch something you missed the second time around."

Later, in the episode, "The Other Woman," Ben Linus is seen reading VALIS.

It may be that the entire island of LOST is some kind of "Vast Active Living Intelligence System." Certainly many of VALIS' themes are shared with the series.

Lostpedia has a pretty nice write up on VALIS and its many shared themes with LOST:

Lostpedia wrote:VALIS is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System.

VALIS is a story of a man, named Philip (same as the author), and his journey to find God with his alter-ego, Horselover Fat. Most of the story is a narrative that disguises a set of theological ideals established by Dick. The major subject of this narrative is spirituality, as both the protagonist, his alter-ego, and the author (who are all essentially one and the same) are ostensibly obsessed with several religions and philosophies, including Christianity, Taoism, Gnosticism, and even Jungian psychoanalysis. They are searching for a cure for what he believes is simultaneously both a personal and a cosmic wound.

The novel is the first in a trilogy (the final three novels written by Dick). It is followed by The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.

[...]

Both VALIS and Lost discuss the possible human ability to "mentally" travel through time, without the subject's body ever physically leaving. In the book, Horeselover Fat states that this is accomplished through "remembering" the past and the future. According to the book, this is achievable since all humans are born with a compilation of DNA from their ancestors, which also includes a compilation of their ancestor's memories. This being the case, time travel merely becomes the ability to access information regarding the past from one's own brain. This is similar to the mental time travel events Desmond experienced. ("The Constant")

Cancer is a major theme in VALIS and Lost. Following his first love's spectacular suicide, Fat find himself desperate to aid Sherri, a woman whom he believes has willed herself to have cancer. The cancer's original cause, remission, and relapse - being either self-willed, acts of God, or medical anomalies - serve allegorically as a main query of the book. Also, Fat's pets both die of cancer, which he relates to the radiation caused by VALIS' communicating with him. Ben, Rose, Rachel (Juliet's sister), and Kate's mother Diane Janssen, all suffer from the disease in Lost.

Both VALIS and Lost incorporate many religions and theological ideas into their varying themes. These include references to the Bible, Taoism, and Buddhism.

VALIS discusses many scientific studies focusing on the brain, including telepathy. According to the Swan Orientation Film, parapsychology is one of the areas of study that the DHARMA Initiative was involved in. In particular, the film shows a woman participating in what appears to be a classic telepathy experiment. ("Orientation")

In the book, VALIS is the name of a movie that the protagonist, Philip, goes to see. In this movie, there are many easter eggs, subliminal messages, and hidden acronyms. Lost also uses these techniques in the show, such as the Room 23 brainwashing video. ("Not in Portland")

The purple laser Daniel Faraday uses to shoot Eloise's consciousness forward in time has many similarities to the purple laser that gives Horselover Fat information about his son's illness. ("The Constant")

The fact that both Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, LOST's senior writers and executive producers, are such great fans of Philip K. Dick makes me consider the possibility still that some kind of "simulated reality" or "game" themes may somehow figure into the overall mystery of LOST, despite several carefully-worded denials.

Certainly these ideas are peppered throughout the series.
"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."
    — Alan Watts
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Re: Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

Postby justdrew » Thu May 06, 2010 5:13 pm

Having finished the divine invasion "trilogy" some months before I was re-reading Man in the High Castle upon my arrival in this city for a new contracting job... After crossing a somewhat narrow bridge what did I find parked off the left bank...
Image
the spelling was only one letter different and it could still fit with the acronym as AI instead of just I, and it pronounced nearly the same. :shock: the books really shook me up. Kinda wish I'd saved them for later really, but that's the way it goes.
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