VALIS, by Philip K. Dick at The Ralph Nader Library

VALIS

by Philip K. Dick
Copyright © 1981 by Philip K. Dick

Excerpt from The Pre-Socratics by Edward Hussey. Copyright © 1972 by Edward Hussey. By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. Excerpt from The Introduction from Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, translated by D. C. Lau. Copyright © 1963 by D. C. Lau. By permission of Penguin Books Ltd. Excerpt from The Nag Hammadi Library in English, "On the Origin of the World," James Robinson, General Editor; translated by Hans-Gebhard Bethge and Orval S. Wintermute. Copyright © 1977 by E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands. By permission of Harper & Row. Excerpt from Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant. Copyright 1935, © 1963 by Will Durant. By permission of Simon & Schuster, a Division of Gulf and Western Corporation. Excerpt from A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick. Copyright © 1977 by Philip K. Dick. By permission of Doubleday and Company, Inc. Excerpt from "Gnosticism" from The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, by Hans Jonas; Paul Edwards, Editor in Chief. Copyright © 1967 by Macmillan, Inc. By permission of the publisher. Excerpts from "On Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility of Our True Nature" from The Will to Live: Selected Writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, by Arthur Schopenhauer, edited by Richard Taylor. Copyright © 1962 by Doubleday and Company, Inc. By permission of the publisher. Excerpt from The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. Copyright © 1980. By permission of the publisher. Excerpt from Protestantism by J. Leslie Dunstan. Copyright © 1961 by J. Leslie Dunstan. By Permission of George Braziller, Inc.

To Russell Galen,
Who showed me the right way.

VALIS (acronym of Vast Active Living Intelligence System from an American film): A perturbation in the reality field in which a spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex is formed, tending progressively to subsume and incorporate its environment into arrangements of information, characterized by quasi-consciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an armillary coherence.
-Great Soviet Dictionary
Sixth Edition, 1992

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense. In the VW Rabbit as I had listened to Linda and Eric rattle on about being three-eyed people from another planet I had known they were nuts. This made me nuts, too. The realization had frightened me: the realization about them and about myself.

"There is no 'Zebra,'" I said. "It's yourself. Don't you recognize your own self? It's you and only you, projecting your unanswered wishes out, unfulfilled desires left over after Gloria did herself in. You couldn't fill the vacuum with reality so you filled it with fantasy; it was psychological compensation for a fruitless, wasted, empty, pain-filled life and I don't see why you don't finally now fucking give up; you're like Kevin's cat: you're stupid. That is the beginning and the end of it. Okay?"

You said it yourself: the universe is irrational because the mind behind it is irrational. You are irrational and you know it. I am. We all are and we know it, on some level. I'd write a book about it but no one would believe a group of human beings could be as irrational as we are, as we've acted."

"Sometimes I dream --"

"I'll put that on your gravestone."

-- Valis, by Philip K. Dick

A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
Clans of the Alphane Moon, by Philip K. Dick
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, by Philip K. Dick
Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick
The Divine Invasion, by Philip K. Dick
The Preserving Machine, by Philip K. Dick
Vulcan's Hammer, by Philip K. Dick
The Philip K. Dick Reader, by Philip K. Dick

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