American writer (1928-1982) known for his works of science fiction, including The Man in the High Castle, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik, and A Scanner Darkly; acclaimed film adaptations of his works include Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report. TLS signed “Love, Phil" with added heart and arrow, two pages, 8.5 x 11, January 23, 1981. In-depth letter to science fiction author Patricia Warrick, in which Dick begins expounding on a "March 1974" experience as it relates to reality and "the workings of the new world-order," a moment of which he concludes as "theological." He continues: "I am now of the opinion that 11-17-80 consisted of a theophany, a self-disclosure by the Divine, of the divine nature, which is agape; but March 1974 was (in contrast) an act of God. It was God exerting sentient force on reality, rather than God communing with me mind to mind. Thus March 1974 falls into the category of miracle and pronoia (Divine Providence), which I have long suspected. The actual fabric of reality was altered by divine intervention in order to extricate me from dire and immediate peril. In an act of Divine Providence, the transcendent God of Christianity becomes immanent God; I learned this from a study of official Roman Catholic theology (doctrine); God is transcendent except when he exercises his control of world, world-history and world events to carry out his will, all this known to us as pronoia. So he becomes immanent—or reveals himself as immanent—in the world not transcendent to it (this doctrine derives from Judaism; I treat it in The Divine Invasion). This explains why I have thought ever since March 1974 that I had seen immanent deity and thus I wrongly supposed pantheism, hence Brahman or Spinoza or the Tao. Yet in 11-17-80 God specifically told me that I had erred; that he is transcendent to world, that what I saw in March 1974 is just fragments of him filtered through world, far less than he is in his intact transcendent other-than-world state. This view fits in with my revelation of Christian apocalyptic history; this is specifically the field in which Yahweh operates in his immanent form; he is the architect of the ultimate disposition of human history hence human affairs." In fine condition. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope.
In the months of February and March 1974, Dick, then still convalescing and medicating himself from an impacted wisdom tooth, began to experience a series of hallucinations following a visit from a young woman delivering him an order of the analgesic Dorzan. The hallucinations, to which he referred to as ‘2-3-74’ in the shorthand, consisted of intelligent ‘pink beams,’ geometric patterns, images of Christ and ancient Rome, and a belief that his mind was being invaded ‘by a transcendentally rational mind’ to which he referred to as ‘Zebra,’ ‘God,’ and ‘VALIS.’ The length and frequency of the visions and visitations to Dick dispelled the notion that they were in fact medicinal side effects, and he soon became convinced that he was living two parallel lives: one as himself and the other as ‘Thomas,’ a Christian persecuted by Romans in the first century AD. Dick wrote about these experiences in the semi-autobiographical novel Radio Free Albemuth, VALIS, The Divine Invasion, and then in the unfinished The Owl in Daylight.
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