My “summer of parallel universes” reading theme is about to come to an end. Which doesn’t mean I have to stop reading about parallel universes, it just means the meteorological, astronomical, and social season known as summer is coming to an end. I have made a significant dent on the last Dark Tower book, which is known as…The Dark Tower. I might actually finish it by Labor Day, but that doesn’t matter. Anyway, this speech reminded me that Philip K. Dick had a lot to say on the subject. Not only does he have a lot to say, he at least claims to believe it or at least consider it more than just a fictional plot line. Finally, he has gathered it into something almost approaching a coherent religion, and not only that but a unifying theory of religions, complete with a (quite rosy) end times scenario.

It’s very hard to pick an excerpt that captures the essence of the speech. The whole thing really is worth a read. But here is one unsatisfactory choice:

“We in the field [of science fiction writers], of course, know this idea as the ‘alternate universe’ theme. …Let us say, just for fun, that [such alternate universes] DO exist. Then, if they do, how are they linked to each other, if in fact they are (or would be) linked? If you drew a map of them, showing their locations, what would the map look like? For instance (and I think this is a very important question), are they absolutely separate one from another, or do they overlap? Because if they overlap, then such problems as ‘Where do they exist?’ and ‘How do you get from one to the next’ admit to a possible solution. I am saying, simply, if they do indeed exist, and if they do indeed overlap, then we may in some literal, very real sense inhabit several of them to various degrees at any given time. And although we all see one another as living humans walking about and talking and acting, some of us may inhabit relatively greater amounts of, say, Universe One than the other people do; and some of us may inhabit relatively greater amounts of Universe Two, Track Two, instead, and so on. It may not merely be that our subjective impressions of the world differ, but there may be an overlapping, a superimposition, of a number of worlds so that objectively, not subjectively, our worlds may differ. Our perceptions differ as a result of this… It may be that some of these superimposed worlds are passing out of existence, along the lateral time line I spoke of, and some are in the process of moving toward greater, rather than lesser, actualization. These processes would occur simultaneously and not at all in linear time. The kind of process we are talking about here is a transformation, a kind of metamorphosis, invisibly achieved. But very real. And very important…

Christ was saying over and over again that there really are many objective realms, somehow related, and somehow bridgeable by living – not dead- men, and that the most wondrous of these worlds was a just kingdom in which either He himself or God himself or both of them ruled. And he did not merely speak of a variety of ways of subjectively viewing one world; the Kingdom was and is an actual different place, at the opposite end of continua starting with slavery and utter pain. It was his mission to teach his disciples the secret of crossing along the orthogonal path. He did not merely report what lay there; he taught the method of getting there. But, the secret was lost, the Roman authority crushed it. And so we do not have it. But perhaps we can refind it, since we know that such a secret exists…

“This problem-solving by means of reprogramming variables along the linear time axis of our universe, thereby generating branched-off lateral worlds – I have the impression that the metaphor of the chessboard is especially useful in evaluating how this all can be – in fact must be. Across from the Programmer-Reprogrammer sits a counterentity, whom Joseph Campbell calls the Dark Counterplayer. …The Programmer-Reprogrammer is not making his moves of improvement against inert matter; he is dealing with a cunning opponent. Let us say that on the game board – our universe in space-time – the Dark Counterplayer makes a move; he sets up a reality situation. Being the Dark player, the outcome of his desires constitutes what we experience as evil: nongrowth, the power of the lie, death and the decay of forms, the prison of immutable cause and effect. …The printout which we undergo as historic events, passes through stages of a dialectical interaction, thesis and antithesis, as the forces of the two players mingle. Evidently some syntheses fall to the dark counterplayer.

Philip K. Dick, 1977

To me, this religion actually seems logically coherent with the world I am experiencing right now. Which doesn’t mean I believe it, but I would rate it as more probable than a number of others, and if I were currently shopping for a religion I might add it to my cart but not hit the check out button just yet.