religion-related PKD Quotes from Selected Letters 1975-1976

again lifted from Palmer Eldritch (some overlap with my other Letters 75-76 post)

see also these quotes from the 80's Letters and notes on religion in the 70's letters

Every time I try to care about a spiritual matter I have to bust my ass earning more money.

If this is all a game and there is something else, since the game is lousy and drecky then it also follows although less evidently that the something else must be of true value, true good.

For what it's worth, God drives a lot better than I do. Which seems reasonable.
Nobody ever guessed that God would be reborn in the form of a building. This is to shag it past the Prince of This World. I think it is a neat-o plan.

What do I know? What does any writer know?

We accept his work, his offerings, his help; but him we kick away. He could reveal himself, but he would then spoil our illusion of a beautiful god. But he doesn't look evil like Satan; just homely. Unworthy. Also, although he has vast creative and building power, and judgement, he is not clever. He is not a bright god. Often he is too dumb to know when he's being teased or insulted; it takes physical pain, rather than mere scorn, to register.

In our own current view we are forced to admit that if time can flow only forward, never in reverse, then it lacks the property of symmetry, which other forces in the universe seem to have; therefore, perhaps - but not likely - our view of time is incomplete.

Why would God take his Sole Son, whom He loved, and send Him here?

Every novel of mine is at least two novels superimposed.

I did something I never did before: I commanded the entity to show itself to me - the entity which has been guiding me internally since March. A sort of dream-like period passed then, of hypnagogic images of underwater cities, very nice, and then a stark single horrifying scene, inert but not still: a man lay dead, on his face, in a living room between the coffee table and the couch.

You see, if one starts with music, the chanted drama of Dionysian tragedy, then by progressing methodically one finally arrives at the stunning realisation that SCIENCE AND SANITY, i.e. General Semantics, is totally insane.

I just wrote Ornstein about certain hypnagogic information input I've experienced which suggest the reality of Tielhard's noosphere; I may inadvertently have substantiated its reality.

The coercive enforcement of mere power, the ability to compel men, to reify them - this all constitutes qualities of Winter and is passing.

The symbol of half-life in UBIK must be viewed as an accurate dramatic representation of our true state of Being: we are only half alive, or slumbering in our icy coffins, severally, and individually as shown in the novel.

Maybe somewhere God has a set of headphones on and is listening to our civilisation. . .

Someday it will be noted in this country that UBIK contains extraordinarily important new theoretical material having to do with the nature of the universe, and we will all be rich.

It will not be published as a science-fiction novel. . ."It has too many four-letter words in it. . .and it'd wreck the novel to take them out." You can see. . .how God works it: from the bottom up. Gosh, I could have gotten one of my novels published as non science-fiction years ago if I'd known this.

It's as if the gods were sitting around and having nothing better to so they said, "Let's see old Phil get THIS down on paper." And then revealed all the mysteries of the universe to me and sat back laughing. Gods must have the same kind of sense of humour as cats.

. .what I have most against creed Christianity is its downgrading of intelligence, man's most precious possession.