We will call the first: groove override. Or GO.
We will call the second: new free merit-deed. Or NFMD.
If you do GO, but subsequently fail to do NFMD but instead do evil, you will gain new bad karma. All that GO gives you is the freedom to act; it does not guarantee more merit (good karma); that must be done later and separately. So you could get the GO without the NFMD. You could have a new free demerit-deed or NFDD, and as a result you would again fail Ma'at and be sent back yet another time, perhaps forever; you would have lost your chance for release. GO can be done without NFMD but not vice versa. Yet this is not quite so, since the divine forces (Christ, the Buddha) are working to save you. They (apparently) will not grant you the GO situation unless through their omniscience they see NFMD lying ahead along the linear time axis. But I can't say for sure that if there is GO it means they know for sure there will be NFMD in the future; if you do it by free will -- well, I can probably never settle this, but being omniscient they probably know how to grant you GO only if NFMD lies ahead of you based on your own free choice. Put another way, they do not grant you actual freedom unless they know in advance that you will put it to a wise use, so then there is reverse cause and effect, effect (NFMD) operating as cause retroactive in time to GO, to cause GO.
Wait. I'm saying GO is causally the effect of NFMD. And I'm saying that NFMD can't happen without GO. So it's an up-by-his-bootstrap situation, a self-causing situation—then truly it is ex nihilo (no wonder there was no ideation!). This is a time-travel paradox. Both GO and NFMD are generated within a close [sic] system out of nothing and enter from nowhere; that is, from outside the system. GO is dependent for its existence on NFMD, and NFMD on GO, so which is cause and which is effect? Answer: Each is the cause of the other and the effect of the other. Consider the original groove-tracking situation. How do you get out of it? Answer: You have to be out of it to get out of it; look to the Tao of physics ([Fritjhof] Capra) and the bootstrap theory for the answer; I knew I was dealing with field theory and quanta when I dealt with Valis. Put even more simply, How can you do something you would not do?, which is required for salvation in my system (disregarding the temporal factor the paradox still remains). There would have to be a psychological (mental) death and rebirth as someone different; but where did it come from? Hence "Thomas," who knew not the dog, car, nor cat [i.e. was unfamiliar with basic aspects of Dick's life]. It is possible that the only event that could make this possible would be abasement, suffering and pain and apprehension and tension so great that it would break down the historical self and literally assassinate it. In the absence of when, thereupon, an ex nihilo new self would come onto [sic] existence, like a newly granted second soul. This brings me back to my shamanist analysis of the crucifixion, the Passion of Christ story, as a secret method of overcoming the world (as Jesus put it); viz.: The world overcomes you; you die; a new self is born; it is ipso facto in a GO situation, for, being new, it will not track the old groove; the twin tapes simply won't work, since the outer tape remains but not the inner. The way to destroy synchronization is to destroy the self (you can't very well destroy the world), and the best way to destroy the self is to bilk the world into doing it. But this is a tricky business because you must not physically die; you must be alive to perform the NFMD. The early Christians themselves soon got it wrong and began to leap under Roman chariot wheels, upon which they physically died, making NFMD impossible. That they failed is shown by the fact that they did not rise from the dead in three days; they were never seen again. The field for right action is in this world, not the next.
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.