TLS signed “Love, Phil,” one page, 8.5 x 11, February 23, 1981. Letter to science fiction author Patricia Warrick, in full: "I lay awake all night thinking last night, experienced satori at 6:30 a.m., got up and wrote the following: Perturbation from outside; it turns (reality) from multiplicity to unity. This is a becoming abstract, as if one step removed. All its interrelationships become necessary, not contingent: hence logical. Hence Spinoza's two attributes. Hence it is mind equal and irreducable to spatial extension. Hence it can say, 'I' (am) (i.e. it is YHWH-Asher-YHWH). Nothing can act on it; it is free. It has acted on itself. It is its own necessity. It exists by its own will. Thus to know it this way (unitary, abstract, necessarily-interrelated, mind and spatial extension two 'sides' of one substantia, able to say 'I——') is to know it as YHWH-Asher-YHWH. The observer knowing it this way is not outside it; he, then, is part of this system, seeing it from one step removed: in totality and abstract and necessary and possessing mind hence identity. This is Spinoza's 'Deus sive substantia siva natura,' achieved as an event (perception as event) by an act of abstraction, due to the initial 'perturbation of the reality field.' It is the macrometasomakosmos and also the eide. Being necessary, finally, not contingent, it is real. When it was only contingent we only saw it seeming to be real. Now it is apprehended actually (and differently); as real. 'The entire universe is in the invisible process of turning into the Lord,' as it is put in VALIS. Which is Spinoza. Every element and aspect of these enhanced perceptions—apperceptions of reality is based on an abstracting: reality has become one step removed from mere raw sense data; it is conceived as a self-governing totality. Since nothing can act on it that is not it, then it has perturbed itself as if from outside; this is its ability to generate newness ex nihilo—which only YHWH can do. Thus my comprehending the Platonic Forms and, later, Spinoza's 'Deus sive substantia sive natura' are both due to a meta-abstracting on my part. Thus my system is one system, and it is YHWH-Asher-YHWH which can say, as with Descartes, 'I (am) (that which I am) (I will be what I will be'). The Tetragrammaton is 'Sum,' as in, 'Cogito ergo sum.' No one seems to have noticed that Descartes' maxim, his postulate, is a replication of the Divine Name." Dick adds a small heart with arrow next to his signature. In very good to fine condition, with creasing to the top edge. 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. Dick, who referred to them as ‘2-3-74’ in the shorthand, believed that his thoughts were being invaded ‘by a transcendentally rational mind’ of which he referred to as ‘Zebra,’ ‘God,’ or ‘VALIS.’ He documented these experiences in letters to Patricia Warrick and noted that Benedict de Spinoza’s philosophical theology was confirmed by his VALIS episodes. In an interview with Frank C. Bertrand in January 1980, Dick affirms his adulation for Spinoza's monist system: ‘Gradually my interest in philosophy passed over into an interest in theology. Like the early Greeks I am a believer in panpsychism. Of all the metaphysical systems in philosophy I feel the greatest affinity for that of Spinoza, with his dictum, ‘Deus sive substantia sive natura;’ to me this sums up everything (Viz: “God i.e reality i.e. nature’).' These concepts formed the basis of his 1981 sci-fi novel VALIS.
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