What ties all this up—for me anyhow—is about ten months ago I began reading about two fascinating new areas of study: Robert Ornstein’s work in causing the right hemisphere to come on in people, his view as I’m sure you know being that we use only our left, and also the ortho-molecular vitamin formula, which is supposed to produce radically improved neural firing in the brain. As if there weren’t enough, I also began to read what to me was the most extraordinary idea of alclass="underline" that the human brain (are you ready?) can transduce external electrical fields, both high and low frequency, if the fields are weak, if the thermal factor is low, and if it so does, its efficiency is augmented by the field-influx. Well, Malcolm, having the ortho-molecular vitamin formula in my possession I began experimenting . . . and to compound all this, I had written the rough draft of my new novel A Scanner Darkly, in which I studied the drug-damaged brain and concluded that the basic impairment which I’d seen in the burned-out members of the drug subculture which so horrified me, had to do with “split brain” phenomena of some obscure kind, and had done a vast amount of study on this, and theorizing for the novel. Putting all the above together, I set out to obtain a radically improved efficiency in my own neural firing, with the emphasis on, hopefully, causing my unused right hemisphere to wink on and function as Ornstein at Stanford says it ought to. (“We sent half a man to the moon,” is Ornstein’s phrase.)
In mid-March I got abrupt, dazzling results, which I’d prefer not to go into just yet. Recently, when the New Yorker interviewer came to interview me,35 he had a friend with him and it turned out they know Ornstein personally and are well acquainted with his research and theories; this gave me a long-sought-for chance to discuss my ten-month-experiences to someone who could tell me, Did I indeed cause my right hemisphere to come on, and were/are my experiences genuine? Yes indeed, they decided, after listening to me. (We talked all afternoon, the interview forgotten, so important did we mutually consider this stuff to be.)
Basically, Malcolm, when I had both brain hemispheres functioning in tandem, in a parity relationship, each involved both in perception and cognition, I saw around me a different universe. It was, briefly, I later realized (it took me three months to so identify it), the universe I had depicted in Ubik. Most thrilling of all, I did indeed transduce an external very weak energy field (I think, as with most science, simply knowing it can be done is half the job), which gradually drained off during the following weeks: this explained the astonishingly great jump in neural efficiency which I experienced. (It also disastrously upset the physical equilibrium of my body; it raised my blood pressure from 140/93 to 268/170, causing my doctor to hospitalize me instantly, which shows the risk in these matters; it isn’t only the brain which took the ergic influx, evidently, but my whole neurological system.) However, the field did drain off normally and gradually, but during the time it was incorporated within me I got a priceless chance to experience for the first time the true koinos kosmos: the true things-in-themselves which Kant felt we could never experience. A vast noetic factor lived in me; I both saw and comprehended in a single mentational act, although it’s taken me months to label what I encountered (e.g., the Logos, God as Immanent Mind within the structural framework of reality surrounding me). I think what was the most thrilling of all, above and beyond everything else which was new to me, was visually to observe the constant, steady, unfailing signaling systems by which all living organisms are disinhibited; which is to say, their engrammed and then blocked instinctive patterns imprinted on them at the beginning are periodically released at the correct moment, for the appropriate occasion . . . in this fashion chaos becomes cosmos, and harmony and stability and regulated interaction between all parts of the structure are perpetually achieved. Being outside the ontological categories at one point I could watch signals coming up, about to be disclosed. We humans receive them as well as the animals do, but don’t realize it, since the signals, when they are disclosed to us, can’t be resisted; at the same time the interior engrammed assembly fires, giving us the delusional sense of internal volition; we wish to do what we then do. Thus I watched, fascinated, to see that we are never out of the hands of Our Creator, the Immanent God which surrounds us. The concept of entelechy of Aristotle (that our patterns are entirely within us, and unfold during our life) is a sublime delusion; we have part within, but part is outside because otherwise disjunction with our environment would occur almost at once. New views as to the nature of schizophrenia, in which the person withdraws and hence fails to receive or tries to fail to receive, these essential disinhibiting external signals, may someday arise . . . his manifold internal programmed systems, installed in him at conception, can’t properly fire, since regular, orderly disinhibition is impeded by his fugue. Like Jonah, he flees God. He flees his destiny, which is to say, his instructions as to how to grow and become.
Well, Malcolm, I’ve said more than I intended. Much of this would have gone into my London speech—some had, in the part I’d done before flu hit. Before closing, I want to stress that I was indeed lucky (although my heightened view of the world showed me that what we call “luck” is arranged methodically by our guiding Creator, and doesn’t happen by chance), inasmuch as not only did I transduce an external field successfully into the electrical field of my neurological system, as has been shown in laboratory work over recent years, but that field which I transduced was, shall we say, a benign one, that is, it promoted both mental and physical healing in me . . . a long process, but a start, inasmuch as I am quite a bit better off in both counts than before. I would characterize this transduced field as a semi-living bioplasmic field, sentient and deathless; I could see it in a few subtle arrangements outside me, so I realized that it had been present but not visible to me. [ . . . ] I don’t know about weak fields—I lack the technical training to identify it, but it is a plasma, very heavy and although possessing enormous mass, capable of terrific velocity on occasion; like red-and-gold shining mercury, it flowed off and disappeared almost as soon as I spied it, which was only a couple of times. When it pours into a person, which it can do and does do on rare occasions he claims that “The Holy Spirit” entered him, or “Dionysus,” if that’s the name by which he calls his god, or Apollo. I personally like to think of it as Mr. Runciter, still working ceaselessly to assist his friends, to give them the advice and help of a much older, wiser person. Let me know what you think of all this, Malcolm, and again, thank you for your article on Tears.
Cordially,
Phil Dick
Letter to Malcolm Edwards, January 31, 1975
[4:147]
Dear Malcolm,
Would you object if I completed my presentation to you of the material contained in my last two letters (January 29 and January 30)? I just want to add a point or so. . . .
What I saw about the external disinhibiting structure which evidently surrounds each human being, as a sort of cube-like chamber, was the utili zation of every sort of datum, especially visual, so that when required that particular datum projected a signal (as I mentioned) which the intended person to be disinhibited received. Other persons would not respond, since they would not be engrammed to respond to that signal; they would in fact perceive no signal at all. The intended individual would experience a sudden transformation of the ground-set formation of the environment around him; one item would come forward, alter from ground and become set, then go back once more, to resume its passive or inert mode, its park, its waiting mode. This appeared to me much like an enormous number of corrective rocket jets, very small, such as would be mounted on an interplanetary vehicle; they could fire at any time in any sequence, producing the most precise change in the course of the vehicle itself, stabilizing it, causing it to pick up or lose velocity . . . you can see the analogy. What in regard to us seemed to me especially high in this utility was written material, of any and all sorts: any sign, any ad, any piece of paper; the resemblance to Runciter’s communicating with the people via the trash of the gutter, the debris such as match folders, the labels of spray cans, etc.—this is exactly what I actually saw myself as functioning in the highest fashion to guide and instruct us, these same verbal instruments. It is evident why eventually I would suppose the presence of the Logos.