I’m going to put forth a very strange idea. I think that if either GO or NFMD is to be considered cause, NFMD — which comes second in linear time — is cause, so what is needed is an ability to make time run backward, or, if this is putting it better, to be able, oneself, to move retrograde in time (if this latter is the correct formulation, I or “Thomas,” whichever, moved retrograde in time back to 3-74 from the future; which accounts for my experiencing a mind-moving retrograde in time, a mind that fused with or entered mine that came from the future). But this would not be me in this world/life, say, me in 1977 or ’78, when I gave to Covenant House [a charitable institution for homeless children]. It would be the me who originally fucked up the Xerox missive and lived to regret it, because only the me on that time track, that groove, would have ever found out what it was and hence could tell me in this time track as the AI [Artificial Intelligence] voice that it was “from an intelligence officer in the Army.” It would be the me in the original real world. This is eerie. Presumably he (I) paid for fucking up (fucking up unless there was help would be natural; after all, it was a trap). Is this, then, a paranormal talent involving time on the [order of] Pat Conley’s psi talent in Ubik or the girl’s in Clans? [Dick’s novel Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964).] The ability to change the past? Anyhow, time is involved. Anyhow, “Thomas” is not on this track, in this world, but in that world on that track where the Xerox missive was not handled, where there was no override by “Thomas”; i.e. the original time.
Then did “Thomas” engineer himself out of existence? No; my earlier formulation in this article suggests that “Thomas” is now in the process of reascending to the pleroma [heavenly realm of the Gnostics]. He still exists, because I still hear the AI [Artificial Intelligence hypnogogic] voice (assuming it is “Thomas”; well, it’s very complicated, but probably it is “Thomas”). But in any case I’m saying that 3-74 can’t be understood except by including as fundamental a reverse cause-and-effect sequence, the effect coming first, the cause probably years afterward. I may (if this formulation holds) someday decide that it represents a paranormal talent on my part and not adventitious intervention. A talent allied to my precog talent: stupendously escalated due to the lethal stress of the Xerox missive situation [a mysterious letter received in March 1974, as to which Dick posed numerous theories]; I may have actually literally caused time to run backward. And everything else hinges on this fact. This would explain why in 3-74 I had information at my disposal — essential information — that could not be known until much later. This is the bare bones of a deep phenomenal shift somehow related to quanta, to quantum field mechanics and field activity that is little understood today; this would fit in with the modulating or “warping away from valence” that I saw, so it would render what I call “Valis” as an expression of my own warping of reality in terms of time, space, and causality.
My God; can I now subsume several phenomena (foreknowing about the Xerox missive coming, “Thomas” and “Thomas” handling it; having information that could not be developed until later; getting out of synch with reality so that I reacted [to] the stimuli before they occurred; and Valis itself) under one basic syndrome? This is scientific method! This is the way the modern rational mind deals with theory formation! And my sense of being in touch with a mind moving retrograde in time. Did I warp time so that it ran backward? And out of this one factor the above (and perhaps other) several phenomena were observed to take place?
As I said in my UK speech [“Man, Android, and Machine,” included herein]: “Maybe we’re seeing the universe backward.” Also, I tend —
Oh; and the double superimposition of worlds. Two “tracks,” which is to say alternate worlds. Alternate worlds involve time; every SF author knows that.
Oh my god.
Yes, and the koine [commonly spoken Greek of era of Christ; Dick believed that he heard words in this language during his hypnogogic experiences]. A time disturbance, caused by me. Alternate worlds, information from the future sucked back to the present; information from the past; and another me. Plus the breakdown of causal synch. Valis — the modulations; that’s causality. Set to zero, as I put it; due TO A CHANGE IN THE PAST.
All time disturbances. And quantum field like.
And my future NFMD affecting and effecting the GO. So non-GO (which is to say groove tracking) is just a way of talking about normal time and normal causality.
Is there anything that happened, starting with the material in “Faith of” [“Faith of My Fathers” (1967)] and TMITHC [The Man in the High Castle (1962)] and Penultimate [The Penultimate Truth (1964)] going to now and the AI voice that does not actually some way involve time? Certainly the material in the writing (especially Tears [Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)]) seems to involve time. I may find out that I have a chronic low-grade precog power that simply went off the scale into a basic qualitative change in 2-3-74 due to the Xerox missive, disjoining me from normal causal temporal reality entirely, both in terms of the past (anamnesis) and the future (moving retrograde in time and precognition). Something on the order of what I described in “World of Talent” [“A World of Talent” (1954)].
Now let’s try this theory. The ability to make time run backward gets you out of your programmed groove (“groove tracking”) and renders you free. This ability and only this ability frees you from an otherwise airtight [sic] tyranny that dooms all mankind. All life forms, in fact. Thus this is a stunning and probably new survival talent, an evolutionary new ability that advances the individual up the ladder of homeostasis to a stage where he is a whole other higher organism entirely. It is equal in terms of the evolution of life to the development of the opposable thumb, the eye, the lung, the wing, the large cerebral cortex, standing upright, etc. Upon the perfection (so to speak field operation) of this ability the human has become higher than the angels and all that implies. He is operating in a supratemporal dimension, and this has vast implications for knowledge; for overcoming causality — if he can affect the past he can modulate the present (what I called “Valis”), and if he can draw information to him from the future he can problem-solve like a crazy thing. This is not just phylogenic memory, as I supposed; it isn’t limited to drawing on the distant past. The crucial information related to 3-74 was information drawn from the future. He can set up alternate worlds, so in effect he is trans-world, spans not only time but world tracks.
Now, this raises the question as to whether there exists a vast meta-mind (as I conceive Valis to be) who is encouraging the development of this time-disruption faculty in order to evolve the human species further; or, put another way, the human being who has this faculty and makes use of it (for example, under vast stress, as I was under in 3-74) is an expression of this meta-mind. I am sure of it. I was not alone in what happened; it was as if angels — divine and partially visible — powers were present. There may be a species mind stretching back into the past and into the future where evolved humans (imaged as the three-eyed people?) may exist already using this faculty. When you start disrupting time you may be operating in the realm of a supratemporal composite discorporate mind — I think I was; this is what I call Valis. But it seems to me that the intrinsic nature of the sort of talent I’m discussing would cause to come in existence a meta-mind by itself, in that it would hop across expanses of time that lie outside its own lifetime, which would de facto make it a meta-mind; I mean it would be unlocked from the time span of its physical body. For one thing (here is Jung’s intuition function) he would exist (his mind would exist) in alternate worlds, and this alone implies a lot; by affecting the past he would then find himself shifting across laterally (orthogonally) in time. . . which would explain my subcortically remembering that it had just been cool, high, and moist a climate. So the mind with this talent would in itself become a meta-mind, outside of causality, spanning alternate worlds, able to modify his own present reality by changed actions in the past, thus setting up alternate worlds; he would be the cause and would in turn be affected by himself as cause — again the bootstrap phenomenon. Such a mind could act as cause to its own effect, affecting itself as if from outside like a feedback circuit, and, upon having successfully affected itself, the self as cause would eliminate itself as if it had never existed, which again is the ex nihilo or bootstrap paradox of time travel. Minds or versions of the mind, foci of the mind, would come into existence, influence the mind, and upon success render itself never having existed in the first place; but the mind would sense an adventitious other mind operating on itself in its behalf. Could it not then become its own AI voice, its own tutelary spirit? It would continually monitor its own status as if in a heuristic process; yes, it would be process, not hypostasis. You would have a mind that itself would evolve the way a species evolves.