Comments on: Things Aren’t What They Seem

By: Nate

Nate — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 10:03:57 +0000

PKD’s VALIS experience intrigues me - I’ve read the few pages from the Exegesis that are up on philipkdick.com (http://www.philipkdick.com/new_exegesis.html) and I find the concepts he’s struggling to express familiar. They match my own hard-won mystical intuitions of Christianity, and the accounts of various saints’ lives I’ve been reading recently: Thomas Merton, Evelyn Underhill’s ‘Mysticism’, Katya Rivas from Bolivia, and an obscure book by a neighbour of mine documenting a channeling experience of ‘Saint Stephen’ in 1970s New Zealand. I suspect Jacob Boehme and Emmanuel Swedenborg of glimpsing similar things. A kind of cosmic vision of just how interconnected things are, and how Love is at the heart of the universe. Also a deep respect for the body, the Earth and the material world despite sensing that it is not the only plane of reality.

It’s weird to me how the religion established in Christ’s name seems to often be the sworn enemy of these kind of teachings.

By: Haeresis

Haeresis — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 22:32:54 +0000

I’ve gotten lots of improimptu street lectures from homeless people (kind of inevitable in the Bay Area), but the really weird one was a man outside of the Hare Krishna temple (my friends went there for dinner sometimes when I was a teen) who accosted me and started screaming I was the devil- he kept pointing at me and yelling “evil eye! devil! Satan!

By: james

james — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:48:04 +0000

My dad, very religiuos man that he was, told me as a kid that angels and demons might be walking among us, testing us humans. I’ve since grown up and think of such talk as entertaining but not practical. However, a part of me still thinks about it when I encounter strangers on the street.

Even though I don’t bus around anymore, it still happens. I’m the one guy who people start talking to on the street. I don’t know what it is about me that draws them to me, but when it happens I think first of all “Here we go again” and then I think “Devil or angel?”

The great pulp writer Jim Thompson once said (and I hope my citation isn’t too far off): “There are 23 ways to write a story but only one plot: things are not what they seem.” Thompson’s paranoid noir works resemble PKD in substance, if not in style (it can be argued that Blade Runner the movie is the perfect marriage of Thompson and Dick’s respective styles)

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 19:53:23 +0000

In regards to the first question asked of me, I don’t take your comment as “snarky”, Avalon. I feel that this is something to balance out–trusting myself, but also understanding that in my conditioning to not trust myself, there are these other voices that I have begun to label “the echo chamber of CAD” (short for “civilization-addiction-domestication”). I have a lot of different ways of looking at my “need” to confer with other deities besides myself, be they alive or pre-/post-/non-carnate, human, rock, electronic, animal, plant, meshugah or was immer sonst. I LIKE being a human do-it-yourself project with input from others, although it gets frustrating sometimes when desires run rampant.

I do have a system for myself of Mayan-Richard correspondences.

Here’s a link to my posting on my *ahem* blog.

http://disappearingchef.blogspot.com/2...6/02/mayan-correspondence-system.html

By: jp

jp — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:27:39 +0000

Anyway, I noticed that I now had 13 gods and goddesses, and I also work with 20 critter-guides. In other words I had the makings for my own personalized version of a Mayan Calendar. Today for example is a Persephone Chimera day. Yesterday was an Odin-Dragon day, interestingly enough.

hey, that’s pretty neat! do you have the whole calendar system posted somewhere?

weird synchronicity– i was just asked, out of the blue, to provide some comments about the mayan calendar for an article in a florida newspaper. seems the reporter found an old post on my blog about the subject and had a few questions for me.

By: Avalon

Avalon — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:15:50 +0000

Twenty-three entities holding your hand, Richard?

What is it going to take to get you to a point where you can be trusted and depended upon to make good decisions on your own?

I’m actually asking that in all sincerity, not trying to be snarky.

By: prnsqlr

prnsqlr — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:03:38 +0000

he believed that the Holy Spirit might be the â€œnegative terminalâ€ of Time. That is, the final point towards which Time flows. And that it influences Time by flowing backwards from the Future.

This is what I have tried to describe as the ultimate reference point, or the end of time.

From the standpoint of beyond-time, all of history is seen to have been set up for exactly this outcome. All histories terminate in this outcome, apokatastasis. All things which are not their own end or purpose have some other thing as their end or purpose. There is only one thing which is it’s own sufficient purpose, and all other purposes eventually terminate in it.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 13:50:22 +0000

Uh… Wow. I–well, I feel a mite embarrassed to post this, but about 6 weeks ago, I had an amazing meditation. I work with a pantheon of deities, and at that time they had numbered 9. (A god and goddess for each direction and the Source of All That Is/Plerorma/Sophia/Star Goddess for the Center.) On this particular day, I felt Odin, Freyja, Persephone and Hades come together in my meditation space. They’ve done this before, emerged together. It had been happening quite frequently–I didn’t get my East Goddess Freyja without getting the other 3. Same with Odin, who was my North God, at least that’s what I had thought at the time.

I asked them about this, and they told me I had been mistaken about my directions, that I’d neglected to include above and below. That O&F were Above and P&H were below, and that I needed to “audition” a God and a Goddess once the other directions shook out now that there were vacancies.

Anyway, I noticed that I now had 13 gods and goddesses, and I also work with 20 critter-guides. In other words I had the makings for my own personalized version of a Mayan Calendar. Today for example is a Persephone Chimera day. Yesterday was an Odin-Dragon day, interestingly enough. (It was also my 3-year anniversary of not having sugar or flour cross my lips intentionally in any significant way.)

So it’s a bit synchronic to me to read your post, Tim. Just thought I’d share that.

By: Rev max

Rev max — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:16:57 +0000

The Holy Spirit flowing backwards through time from he future as a form of negentropy.. thats a wild idea.. love it

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:11:28 +0000

The Holy Spirit can work through anyone, at any time. This is a good thing to remember.

By: alistair

alistair — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 23:18:23 +0000

nice of you to give that woman your spare gloves…………..her words will ring in your ears for years to come. things aren`t what they seem…….no shit.

By: JK

JK — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 23:15:51 +0000

Holy shit! That’s amazing Tim.

The other night I was at a club, went outside to smoke and was about to remark to someone on how I am beginning to feel like I am living in a PKD book when someone a few feet away said to the other, “Hey Phil! Hey Phil!”.

I about fell over. I couldn’t even continue talking about what I meant to talk about (living in a PKD book). I just stood there dumbfounded and explained to my friend that I had a lot to process all of a sudden.