• Registered: 2004-03-28

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

aaron-- Muchos gracias! I'll check those out.

  • Registered: 2004-04-01

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

I liked the movie Impostor which was based on a story by Philip Dick. 

It is an action flick that includes a lot of deeper questions.

What is identity?

What parts of identity cannot be copied?

What will the future be like?

What will future technology be like?

How shall we view agencies whose stated role is to "protect" us?

18 Reply by Perceval (edited by Perceval 2004-09-12 17:03:31)

  • Registered: 2004-08-02

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

aaronfirebrand wrote:

If there's "life after death", he's still alive. Body stopped in '82.
Data recovered published throughout career.
If 4th is next, yes.

seeker,

Thought I'd drop in for a minute.  Was happy to see someone had picked up the PKD thread again. I don't know if you'd call me a "dick head" yet, but I'm really intrigued so far. I've been digging through all the sites and links AFB suggested, looking for Philip's original stuff until I can get hold of some of his books. (Several are on their way from Amazon right now.)  I found a lot of excellent interviews and even an excerpt from A Scanner Darkly in Philip's own voice to tide me over until then. 

http://www.philipkdick.com/media_files/hour25-2.ram

AFB,
I was struck by your remark, "if there's life after death..." Is that just a rhetorical device you use with someone who may not share your conviction? You don't have any reservations, do you?

Perceval

19 Reply by aaronfirebrand

  • aaronfirebrand
  • Guest

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

I've generally believed that since there's life before birth, and possibly life before conception, there's a good chance of life after death. But what's life? Maybe "life" is death and 'death' is life. Maybe its death before life. Maybe we are all "dead people" awaiting our birth into life (reality? 4D?).

20 Reply by wandering1 (edited by wandering1 2005-07-05 21:43:07)

  • Registered: 2004-04-01

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

I came across the quote and thought it was really funny:

"The ultimate in paranoia is not when everyone is plotting against you, but when everything is against you. Instead of "My boss is plotting against me," it would be "My Boss' phone is plotting against me.""
Philip K. Dick

Here's another one (insightful, rather than funny):

As Philip K. Dick wrote: "Not a person but a sort of walking, hiding symptom of their way of life."

  • Registered: 2004-04-01

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

"What a tragic world this is. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that
they don't know it, they think they are free because they never have been free, and do not understand what it means. This is a prison and few men have guessed. But I know, he said to himself. Because that is why I am here. To burn the walls, to tear down the metal gates, to break each chain."

- Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion

22 Reply by wandering1 (edited by wandering1 2005-07-23 13:02:13)

  • Registered: 2004-04-01

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

"Time is speeding up. And to what end? Maybe we were told that two thousand years ago. Or maybe it wasn't really that long ago; maybe it is a delusion that so much time has passed. Maybe it was a week ago, or even earlier today. Perhaps time is not only speeding up; perhaps, in addition, it is going to end."

- Philip Dick
(From a talk given in 1978)

http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm

23 Reply by wandering1 (edited by wandering1 2006-07-13 20:16:24)

  • Registered: 2004-04-01

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

In his own words:

"I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, &, for them, my corpus is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an integration & presentation, analysis & response & personal history."

                                                                                                        - PKD

  • From: Denver
  • Registered: 2005-08-02

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

Exegesis


http://www.philipkdick.com/new_exegesis.html


Although Philip K. Dick's In the Pursuit of VALIS: Selections from the Exegesis was published in the year 1991, there remain thousands of unpublished pages from this mostly handwritten journal. It contains autobiographical material, philosophical speculation and analysis of his own fiction. Due to the continuing interest in these unpublished pages, the Philip K. Dick Trust will be releasing additional volumes from the vast collection. These writings will be exclusive to PhilipKDick.com. Please visit regularly to see the most recent releases.

Note: http://forum.noblerealms.org/img/avatars/164.gif ‘s

#6:

http://www.deoxy.org/plurifrm.htm

The belief that we are pluriforms of God voluntarily descended to this prison world, voluntarily losing our memory, identity and supernatural powers (faculties), all of which can be regained through anamnesis (or, sometimes, the mystical conjunction), is one of the most radical religious views known in the West.

First, we are here voluntarily. We did not sin and we were not punished; we elected to descend. Why? To infuse the divine into the lowest strata of creation in order to halt its decomposing - the sinking of its lower realm. This points to a primordial crisis in creation in the total macrocosm.

The solution was for the divine (yang, light, form one) to follow the lower realm down, permeating it and thus reuniting the cosmos into one totality. To do this, elements (in ancient terms, sparks) of light advanced (descended) into the dark kingdom, the immutable prison world; upon doing so they shed (and knew they would shed) their bright nature, memory, identity, faculties, and powers, and fell under the dominion of the delusion that the dark kingdom is real (which when severed from the upper realm it is not; i.e. the world we presently live in doesn't exist).

There they have lived as prisoners of the master magician, lord of the dark realm who poses as the creator (and who may not know of the light god, the true creator, his other half). But the light god and his pluriforms, the descending (invading) sparks, have cunningly distributed clues in the dark realm to recall to the drugged and intoxicated sparks of light their true nature and mission (and true source of home).

Upon encountering these cryptic clues the forgetful sparks of the upper realm, now prisoners in and of the lower realm, remember, regain their powers and faculties, and link back up with the upper realm and the light god; they are the light god in pluriform, his way of invading the lower realm in disguise.

The light god (the divine) has now crucially occupied critical stations in the sinking lower realm, and begins the reannexing of it back into the totality composed of both realms. The sinking ceases; the master magician is stripped of his autonomy and assimilated to the yang part of the Godhead as its passive counterpart, and once more there is one macrocosm ruled by the yang or active (creative) light god assisted by the now receptive yin (dark) side.

The divine has triumphed at all levels; the prison is burst, and the vast, light-filled garden kingdom restored as the home of all creatures. These now whole creatures, composed equally of yin and yang, are what I term homoplasmates: The yin part is home (as we know ourselves to be now, only), and the light or yang part is the plasmate or energy part (vs. the physical). Thus renewed and complete microcosms mirroring the renewed and complete macrocosm are achieved. Reality is imparted to the otherwise irreal lower realm, and the upper realm now extends physically into the realm of matter. The integrity of the Godhead is restored; its two halves function in harmony; and the primordial split (or crisis) is resolved - healed.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b321/siriarc/exegesis.jpg

11   23   11
  • From: Denver
  • Registered: 2005-08-02

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

AN...d:

http://deoxy.org/plurifrm.htm

This is a view compounded of Zoroastrianism, Brahmanism, Gnosticism, Taoism, the macro-microcosmos of Hermes Trismegistus and other mystery religions, and not very much of orthodox Christianity. Christianity can be added if the pluriform microsparks of light are considered plural saviors or Christs comprising a single mystical corpus that is distributed widely in time and space in the dark realm but possessing only one psyche that is somehow also God, the yang or light god.

I have read the above cosmology over, and find no fault in it. In fact, I am amazed. It is in a sense acosmic, and certainly Gnostic, but the Taoist overlay is novel and pleasing; the Taoist overlay redeems it from the flaws of conventional dualist religions and the problems therein. Instead of stressing moral aspects (‘good vs. bad‘), it stresses epistemological (‘real vs. irreal,’ which I can understand). The lower realm sinks not because it is corrupt or evil or somehow has rebelled but because, as shown in hexagram 12, it is the nature of yin to sink, as it is the nature of yang to rise. The pre-Socratics (and Plato in ‘Timaeus‘) were aware of this; v. the model of the winnowing fan and the concept of the vortex. Yang must assimilate yin to keep the totality intact; i.e. yang must renounce its natural tendency to rise and must descend. It cannot expect yin to rise, because yin is not wise; it is only noos that can understand that it must compensate against its own natural tendencies, and do what is unnatural to it. Yin is, so to speak, thick, unthinking, not noos [mind] but soma [body]; noos and soma (or psyche and soma) are the total universe organism. Descending into the yin realm is a sacrifice on yang's part, which through its bright or wise nature it realizes it must make, but it pays a great cost in terms of suffering: loss of memory and identity, abilities, and faculties: It becomes pseudoyin, literally disguised in the yin realm as if it were actually yin, even to the point of forgetting (until reminded), that it is not. This is the agony we face here in this irreal and dense yin realm, we yang traces: This is not our home. We are voluntary exiles here, alienated and alone, violating our own natures for a salvific purpose - a necessary purpose. Yin would not understand this, and until anamnesis sets in for us, we in our distress do not understand the reason either. Eventually it will be revealed to us; meanwhile we ache with longing for our proper home, dimly remembered but deeply felt for. Thus we suppose we are being punished; it feels like punishment, and we make the error of assuming we have sinned. On the contrary; we have renounced joy now, to produce greater joy later, for the good of all creation; we are the Godhead itself suffering the need to be what it is not, to ensure the ultimate stability of krasis (as Empedocles termed it): the unity of love.

Moral: It is the ethical requirement placed on the yang traces by their own bright nature to abandon their natural tendency to rise, to escape what is heavy and dark and sinking; they must go in pursuit of the falling part of the cosmos, for the benefit of those and that which otherwise would be lost. This is the highest law: to violate one's own nature for another's good. And the most difficult - and painful - law to fulfill. Because of this need there is distress in the cosmos, distress for the innocent especially. My cosmology simply presents it as a fact. To escape it we would have to allow the cosmos to decompose. Could we do that? The tragedy is that by the very nature of the sacrifice we make we are occluded from knowing why. This is part of our sacrifices: our yang understanding. We must take on the dullness of yin to save the cosmos; we sacrifice the knowledge of why we sacrifice, and assume guilt - spurious guilt - in its place. This is asking a lot.




But consider who we really are. Or once were and will be again. Who else can do it? There is no one else. There is only yin, which does not know. The part of the organism that knows must help the part that doesn't know, but this means abandoning its own knowing. It becomes what it helps, a dreadful irony, one that hurts. But it is only temporary, just for a little while. And then we go home for all eternity.

11   23   11
  • From: Peru
  • Registered: 2004-08-06

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

Just found (thanks to Tim Boucher's site) an awesome essay by Philip K Dick which I'm not sure if anyone here has mentioned before.

It's called  Cosmogony and Cosmology and was written in 1978. It's a little bit dense and difficult to follow in places, but it's worth sticking with. I think what he refers to as the 'artifact' is what we generally call the matrix or MCS, or what the gnostics refer to as the Demiurge.

http://homoplasmate.blogspot.com/2005/0 … ology.html

"What can one say in favor of the suffering of living creatures in this world? Nothing. Nothing, except that it will by its nature trigger off revolt or disobedience -- which in turn will lead to an abolition of this world and a return to the Godhead. It is the very gratuity of the suffering that most of all incites rebellion, incites a comprehension that something in this world is terribly, terribly wrong. That this suffering is purposeless, random, and unmerited leads ultimately to its own destruction -- its and its author's. The more fully we see the pointlessness of it the more inclined we are to revolt against it. Any attempt to discern a redemptive value or purpose in the fact of suffering merely binds us more firmly to a vicious and irreal system of things -- and to a brutal tyrant that is not even alive. "I do not accept this" must be our attitude. "There is no plan in it, no purpose." Scrutinizing it unflinchingly, we repudiate it and aid in the repudiation of all delusion. Anyone who makes a pact with pain has succumbed to the artifact and is its slave. It has done in another victim and obtained his consent. This is the artifact's ultimate victory: The victim colludes in his own suffering, and is willing to collude in a willingness to agree to the naturalness of suffering in general. Seeking to find a purpose in suffering is like seeking to find a purpose in a counterfeit coin. The "purpose" is obvious: It is a trick, designed to deceive. If we are deceived into believing that suffering serves -- must serve -- some good end, then the counterfeit has managed to pass itself off and has achieved its cruel purpose."

Join me in Peru to celebrate December 21st 2012 - Visit: http://2012awakeningretreat.com/

Ayahuasca's Website

  • From: usa
  • Registered: 2007-07-14

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

Have just finished reading PKD's Valis about a week ago and liked it.

Its hard for me to concentrate and read but I finished this book, but because i'm schizophrenic and PKD's main hero was a schizophrenic himself (Horselover Fat, really PKD himself), I could relate to it.

I found it interesting about the plot involving going to see an underground cult movie and postulating theories about it and how it was relevent to real life and then meeting the stars and director and music composer finding them to be really crazy and scary.  Perhaps reading too much into a movie was part of the message.

I am currently reading off and on, The Man in the High Castle.

As a candle burning on, in the breezy shades of night, I keep up my faith and underset my hope, to call on a realm of light --Little Light of Love --Eric Serra --The Fifth Element (movie soundtrack)

Waving banners, swinging swords, queens and kings and other lords, and the battles of our pride, greed and hunger deep inside, all the sorrow born of pain, cruelty and cruelty again, who will stop this vicious spin, Open Arms and Let Love In  --My Heart Calling  --Moa and Eric Serra --The Messenger (movie soundtrack)

28 Reply by Capitan (edited by Capitan 2007-07-16 18:27:24)

  • Registered: 2005-12-27

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

This is kind of a synchronisity,  I just searched out my favorite scene from a scanner darkly last night,  Full of paranoia and poor logic:  And now I give you "8 speed bike" 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid … ;plindex=1

Ayahausca: Thats a really good find.  I wonder if anyone is right when it comes to the purpose of suffering.  I have been listening and reading David Wilcock's stuff right now and he is promoting the viewpoint of Ekhart Tolles of being able to be content where ever you are.   So you have two highly contrasting viewpoints, total rejection of your situation here, or total acceptance?  Both from seemingly intelligent sources, so which is right if either?   When ever I start really getting the ability to reflect deeply and well focused, I begin to see these like reptilian sorcerers or something and they are frantically acting as if to conceal themselves from me again.  I don't know where I am seeing them though it is not here.  And I think the thought "what if everything is a distraction"  I mean that they have manufactured multiple levels of lies to keep us in here, and we are currently contemplating one of the higher levels of lies.  What if all you had to do was get out and stay out, don't listen to the man in the white robe on the other side telling you you still have stuff to learn here on earth, tell him "I'm out of here".  Who knows, I suppose one point in our future we will find out.

"...But Nothing is Lost:" "Nothing lasts... nothing lasts. Everything is changing into something else. Nothing's wrong. Nothing is wrong. Everything is on track. William Blake said nothing is lost and I believe that we all move on." - Terrence McKenna - Shpongle - But Nothing Is Lost
  • From: Denver
  • Registered: 2005-08-02

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

In Addition To http://forum.noblerealms.org/img/avatars/165.jpg’s #26:

http://forum.noblerealms.org/viewtopic.php?id=3034   #5

http://forum.noblerealms.org/viewtopic. … 34&p=2   #17

Pain and suffering are designed.

Would Genuine Love and Caring (or YOU) teach YOUR child, or Anyone else’s with pain, let alone suffering?

Duality and predation (and validation of pain and suffering) are the water in this fish tank - It’s what we “know"

as interpreted by the “mind" parasite which seems like “self".

[center]And #30[/center]

11   23   11
  • From: Isle of Lucy
  • Registered: 2005-11-07

Re: Philip K. Dick - On Our Nature

wandering1 wrote:

"What a tragic world this is. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that
they don't know it, they think they are free because they never have been free, and do not understand what it means. This is a prison and few men have guessed. But I know, he said to himself. Because that is why I am here. To burn the walls, to tear down the metal gates, to break each chain."

- Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion

The Divine Invasion is the best PKD book outside of "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer!" Required reading, muppets!

There will be two Ages. The first: The Age of Power. The next: The Age of Equality.

kid mongo's Website