Philip K. Dick Discloses the Matrix in 1977

[Gouda]

Didn't Plato disclose the matrix in the 4th century BC?

yes. (as I said on page two )

Indeed you did! Cheers. Page 2 is like ancient history.

[justdrew]

Didn't Plato disclose the matrix in the 4th century BC?

yes. (as I said on page two )

Indeed you did! Cheers. Page 2 is like ancient history.

no worries, "great minds" and all that...
but yeah, it was about 18 months ago, seems like yesterday and forever ago at the same time. half a generation in internet years.

[IanEye]

Mr. Dick was just another CIA-propelled novelist churning out decoy psyops with the right keywords and themes. woo.

*

Radio Free Albemuth is a novel by Philip K. Dick, written in 1976 and published posthumously in 1985.

In this alternate history the corrupt US President Ferris F Fremont (FFF for 666, Number of the Beast) becomes Chief Executive in the late Nineteen-Sixties following Lyndon Johnson's administration.

The character is best described as an amalgam of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, who abrogates civil liberties and human rights through positing a conspiracy theory centered around a (presumably) fictitious subversive organization known as "Aramchek". In addition to this, he is associated with a right-wing populist movement called "Friends of the American People" (Fappers).

...

Fremont eventually captures and imprisons Dick and Brady after the latter attempts to produce and distribute a record that contains subliminal messages of revolt against the current dictatorship.

Brady and Silvia are executed, and Dick narrates the concluding passage about his life in a concentration camp, where his supposedly latest work is actually penned by a ghost writer and regime-approved hack. Suddenly, however, he hears music blaring from a transistor radio which contains the same subliminal message.

He and his friends, it turns out, were just a decoy set up by VALIS to detour the government from stopping a much more popular A-List band from releasing a similar record with a better-established recording company.


As Dick realizes this and hears youngsters repeating the lyrics he realizes that salvation may lie within the hearts and minds of the next generation.

(repeat)
" someone's always playing - corporation games
who cares they're always changing - corporation names "







Aramchek hates the Jefferson Airplane, but Aramchek loves Starship.

*

Ronald Wilson Reagan


FFF

*

[IanEye]

.

"Fremont," Nicholas ruminated. "The greatest liar in the history of the world. He probably wasn't actually born there; he probably had a PR firm pick it out as the kind of place he ought to have been born in. I'd like to see it. Drive by there now, Rachel; let's take a look at it." She made a left turn; presently we were moving along very narrow tree-lined streets, some of which weren't paved. This was Oldtown; I had been driven through it before.

"It's on Santa Fe," Rachel said. "I remember noticing that and thinking I'd like to ride Fremont out of town on a rail.".She pulled up to the curb and parked. "There it is, over there to the right." She pointed. We could see only dim outlines of houses. Somewhere a TV set played a Spanish program. A dog barked. The air, as usual, was warm. There were no special lights put up around the house where, allegedly, Ferris F. Fremont had been born. Nicholas and I got out of the car and walked over, while Rachel remained in the car, holding the sleeping baby.

"Well, there's not much to see, and we can't get inside tonight," I said to Nicholas.

"I want to determine if it's a place I foresaw in my vision," Nicholas said.

"You're going to have to do that tomorrow."

Together he and I walked slowly along the sidewalk; grass grew in the cracks, and once Nicholas stubbed his toe and swore. We arrived at last at the corner, where we halted.

Bending down, Nicholas examined a word incised in the cement of the sidewalk, a very old word put there some time ago, when the sidewalk had been wet. It was professionally printed.

"Look!" Nicholas said.

I bent down and read the word.

ARAMCHEK

"That was the original name of this street," Nicholas said, "evidently. Before they changed it. So that's where Fremont got the name of that conspiratorial group: from his childhood. From finding it written on the sidewalk. He probably doesn't even remember now. He must have played here."

The idea of Ferris Fremont playing here as a little boy the idea of Ferris Fremont as a little boy at all, anywhere was too bizarre to be believed. He had rolled his tricycle by these very houses, skipped over the very cracks we had tripped on in the night; his mother had probably warned him about cars passing along this street. The little boy playing here and inventing fantasies in his head about people passing, about the mysterious word ARAMCHEK inscribed in the cement under his feet, conjecturing over the weeks and months as to what it meant, discerning in a child's mind secret and occult purposes in it that were to blossom later on in adulthood. Into full-blown, florid, paranoid delusions about a vast conspiratorial organization with no fixed beliefs and no actual membership but somehow a titanic enemy of society, to be hunted out and destroyed wherever found. I wondered how much of this had come into his head while he was still a child. Maybe he had imagined the entire thing then. As an adult he had merely voiced it.

"Could be the contractor's name," I said, "rather than the original street name. They inscribe that too, sometimes, when they're done with a job."

"Maybe it means an inspector had gone by here and completed his job of checking all the arams," Nicholas said. "What's an aram? Or it could mean the spot where you check for arams. You stick a metal pole down through a little hole in the pavement and take a reading, like a water-meter reading." He laughed.

"It is mysterious," I said. "It doesn't sound like a street name. Probably, if it was, it was named after somebody."

"An early Slavic settler to Orange County. Originally from the Urals. Raised cattle and wheat. Maybe owned a big land-grant ranch, deeded to him from the Mexicans. I wonder what his brand would be. An aram and then a check mark."

"We're doing what Ferris did," I said.


"But along more reasonable lines. We're not nuts. How much can you get from a single word?"

.

*


The walrus was Paul, Ferris lies.


*

[Nordic]

[Simulist]

Sorry to burst fan bubbles.

Mr. Dick was just another CIA-propelled novelist…

When I read that, I did start to wonder what might "propel" some of your theories, Hugh.

But I doubt it's the CIA. Something a bit more gastrointestinal perhaps.

Try Beano.

[Laodicean]

^Anyone read this yet?

Excerpt from Slate:

In the excerpt below, Dick writes that reality and his imagination seem to be folding into one another; in particular, he senses a mysterious connection between the life and death of his friend James Pike—a prominent Episcopal bishop who chronicled his own mystical experiences in a book called The Other Side—and his novel Ubik (which Time magazine included on a list of the 100 best novels since 1923—and which may be the next Dick novel to hit the big screen).


The best psychiatrist I ever saw, Dr. Harry Bryan attached to the Hoover Pavilion Hospital, once told me that I could not be diagnosed, due to the unusual life I had led. Since I saw him I have led an even more unusual life and therefore I suppose diagnosis is even more difficult now. Something strange, however, exists in my life and seems to have for a long time; whether it comes from my odd lifestyle or causes the lifestyle I don’t know. But there it is.

For years I’ve felt I didn’t know what I was doing; I had to watch my activities and deduce, like an outsider, what I was up to. My novels, for example. They are said by readers to depict the same world again and again, a recognizable world. Where is that world? In my head? Is it what I see in my own life and inadvertently transfer into my novels and to the reader? At least I’m consistent, since it is all one novel. I have my own special world. I guess they are in my head, in which case they are a good clue to my identity and to what is happening inside me: they are brain prints. This brings me to my frightening premise. I seem to be living in my own novels more and more. I can’t figure out why. Am I losing touch with reality? Or is reality actually sliding toward a Phil Dickian type of atmosphere? And if the latter, then for god’s sake why? Am I responsible? How could I be responsible? Isn’t that solipsism?

It’s too much for me. Like an astrophysicist who by studying a Black Hole causes it to change, I seem to alter my environment by thinking about it. Maybe by writing about it and getting other people to read my writing I change reality by their reading it and expecting it to be like my books. Someone suggested that.

I feel I have been a lot of different people. Many people have sat at this typewriter, using my fingers. Writing my books.

My books are forgeries. Nobody wrote them. The goddam typewriter wrote them; it’s a magic typewriter. Or like John Denver gets his songs: I get them from the air. Like his songs, they—my books—are already there. Whatever that means.

The most ominous element from my books which I am encountering in my actual life is this. In one of my novels, Ubik, certain anomalies occur which prove to the characters that their environment is not real. Those same anomalies are now happening to me. By my own logic in the novel I must conclude that my or perhaps even our collective environment is only a pseudo-environment. In my novel what broke through was the presence of a man who had died. He speaks to them through several intermediary systems and hence must still be alive; it is they, evidently, who are dead. What has been happening to me for over three months is that a man I knew who died has been breaking through in ways so similar to that of Runciter in Ubik that I am beginning to conclude that I and everyone else is either dead and he is alive, or—well, as in the novel, I can’t figure it out. It makes no sense.

Even scarier is that this man, before his death, believed that those who are dead can “come across” to those who are alive. He was sure his own son who had recently died was doing this with him. Now this man is dead and it would seem he is “coming across” to me. I guess there is a certain logic in this. Even more logical is that I and my then wife Nancy participated as a sort of disinterested team observing whether Jim Jr. was actually coming through. It was our conclusion that he was.

On the other hand, I wrote Ubik before Jim Pike died out there on the desert, but Jim Jr. had already died, so I guess my novel could be said to be based on Jim Jr. coming through to his father. So my novel Ubik was based on life and now life is based on it but only because it, the novel, goes back to life. I really did not make it up. I just observed it and put it into a fictional framework. After I wrote it I forgot where I got the idea. Now it has come back to, ahem, haunt me, if you’ll pardon me for putting it that way.

The implication in Ubik that they were all dead is because their world devolved in strange ways, projections onto their environment of their dwindling psyches. This does not carry across to my own life, nor did it to Jim’s when his son “came across.” There is no reason for me to project the inference then of the novel to my own world. Jim Pike is alive and well on the Other Side, but that doesn’t mean we are all dead or that our world is unreal. However, he does seem to be alive and as mentally enthusiastic and busy as ever. I should know; it’s all going on inside me, and comes streaming out of me each morning as I—he—or maybe us both—as I get up and begin my day. I read all the books that he would be reading if he were here and not me. This is only one example. It’ll have to do for now.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/201 ... ality.html

[The Consul]

How they got in my head hardly matters any more. I can't trust my own memory since what I recall might be one of their revised versions of my own history. I am certain of various "fate alterations" in my conditioning. It was known as the final days of glass, though I was never sure what that meant nor if I heard it by accident or design or if it was just a dream. Still, I am suspicious that even my dreams are not entirely my own. I meditated on Wittgenstein's duckrabbit for hours on end, or were they years?

I saw myself swimming in a river of churning bodies, some dead, some dying: people, dogs, cats, birds, sparse wildlife then a sudden wave of panicking cattle and swine. There was no water, there was only blood and excrement and a milky rivulette of what I presume was liquifyed bone and flesh.

The palindrome "Trade ye no mere moneyed art" played over and over in the sound center of my brain.

And then one day my son asked me "Dad, what would you rather have, a thousand robots or a friend you only got to see once or twice for the rest of your life?"

The next day I quit my job.

[sw]

Repressed Memories can have many meanings.

I can repress memories in this lifetime.

I can repress memories from other lifetimes.

When you begin to dig, you can find that there is not bottom to that rabbit hole. It might take you to Middle Earth.

When you get to Middle Earth, you might dig another hole and that takes you to the Matrix.

When you dig that hole, you might find yourself right back where you started, at your self.

Phillip K. Dick reminds me of the movie theme in Inception. In the end, they wake up from the dreams which were all happening at the same time. (in a vertical set up, not horizontal.)

Only a handful ever figure out we are dreaming in layers.

I think PKD picked up signals of the truth that are sent like radio waves to us but most are asleep and never pick up the signals. If you concentrate at the 3rd eye, you can get sucked into the source and that entry is the only real place that is not a dream. That is the place to go to when you wake up from the dreams.

That atom point is the portal to the only place where reality exists.

I have not entered there but I think that is what's going on.

[Harvey]

Does anyone have the Greg Rickman interview? I shared a minivan ride with Greg Rickman, Rolling Stone journalist Paul Williams and I think maybe Lawrence Sutin too, all biographers of Dick, and got a copy of it, but I can't find the damn thing. If I do I will try to post it to youtube, but I'm sure it was on tape, and if it was, that tape is long gone.

[The Consul]

Repressed Memories can have many meanings.

I can repress memories in this lifetime.

I can repress memories from other lifetimes.

When you begin to dig, you can find that there is not bottom to that rabbit hole. It might take you to Middle Earth.

When you get to Middle Earth, you might dig another hole and that takes you to the Matrix.

When you dig that hole, you might find yourself right back where you started, at your self.

Phillip K. Dick reminds me of the movie theme in Inception. In the end, they wake up from the dreams which were all happening at the same time. (in a vertical set up, not horizontal.)

Only a handful ever figure out we are dreaming in layers.

I think PKD picked up signals of the truth that are sent like radio waves to us but most are asleep and never pick up the signals. If you concentrate at the 3rd eye, you can get sucked into the source and that entry is the only real place that is not a dream. That is the place to go to when you wake up from the dreams.

That atom point is the portal to the only place where reality exists.

I have not entered there but I think that is what's going on.

"And if the great fear had not come upon me, as it did, and forced me to do my duty, I might have been less good to the people than some man who had never dreamed at all, even with the memory of so great a vision in me."

-Black Elk

[sw]

Of course there was very much in the vision that even I cannot tell when I try hard, because very much of it was not for words. But I have told what can be told.

It has made me very sad to do this at last, and I have lain awake at night worrying and wondering if I was doing right

for I know the meaning of the vision is wise and beautiful and good; and you can see that I am only a pitiful old man after all.

(more Black Elk) that I love.


For the greatest dream, it was evident that I was being pushed into the madness, not because I was a soul warrior at all, for my feet were crushing the breaks in terror. But, none the less, I was pushed by divine forces into the battle. It is not the faucett that is divine, it is the divine water that runs through it that is divine. sw

[justdrew]

a bit of the VALIS opera...



apparently "The full recording is available on Amazon"

this may also be of interest :

[druff]

^Anyone read this yet?

I think it just became available earlier this month... it's definitely on my wish list (hint hint, dudes).

(edited to make sense)

[elfismiles]

I've not read it yet but there is this interview...

Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis
Posted on November 18, 2011 by admin

VALIS, visionary glimpses, and the spiritual practice of writing: a talk with Pamela Jackson, co-editor of the recently published edition of Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis.

Check out the original source here
Expanding Mind
http://expandingmind.podbean.com/2011/1 ... -exegesis/

http://expandingmind.podbean.com/mf/web ... 111711.mp3

www.ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com

Check Out Erik Davis’ website www.TechGnosis.com

^Anyone read this yet?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/201 ... ality.html