Have you ever wondered about the nature of reality? Ever considered that the world around you might not be as it seems that it's constructed, or that your life is on a course outside of your own control. If so, you've likely stumbled upon a series of questions which have been at the core of human thinking for thousands of years, from Plato's allegory of the Cave to Descartes's evil demon.
The nature of ontology, that is, the exact composition, veracity, and reality of living has given rise to a multiplicity of questions about not only our own place within the universe, but the fabric of the universe itself. We feel it acutely when we're sleeping, when our imaginations to borrow from Freud become untethered from the strictures of ego, offering us
a glimpse into strange and sometimes unsettling other worlds. Dreams, and hallucinatory visions are strange frontiers that cannot be mapped with any certainty. Scientifically speaking, they are simply images conjured from the depths of our subconscious a way for our brain to process the many complex events and emotions we experience on a daily basis. But what if, as some might have as believe, there was more to these often
familiar but other worldly, supposedly self made moving images. What if they weren't distorted depictions of our earthly experiences at all, but were in fact actually glimpses into other worlds. You may be familiar with Hugh Everett's many World's theory. Essentially, it posits that we exist as only one in an in series of possible worlds, so that at any given moment, there are potentially infinite versions of ourselves busily going about
our lives in ways that might seem unimaginable to us. Somewhere, some version of you has died in a war. Elsewhere, you have become a famous rock star, won the lottery, received the Field's Medal for mathematics, have three heads, or were never even born. At a time when so much about the world seems untethered and beyond our control or understanding, it is hardly surprising that the many world's interpretation is
now prevalent in mainstream culture. Two of Marvel's studio's most recent ventures, Spider Man No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, secured earnings of over two billion and one billion dollars at the box office, respectively. In twenty twenty two, A twenty four's Everything Everywhere, All at Once, directed by best friends Daniel Kuan and Daniel Scheinert,
took home six Academy Awards. The film was ostensibly about a mother traveling through the many worlds of Everett's theory to save her family. For the most part, it seems we have latched onto Hugh Everett's Many World's idea out of an urge to escape the uncertainty of the world, or to appease the disappointment we might feel when life and the world doesn't turn out the way we might
have hoped it would. There is great comfort to be found in the possibility that out there, somewhere is a version of our world and ourselves in which everything we have ever hoped for actually comes true. Surely, as many of Everett's colleagues believed when he first proposed the idea, the notion that there might actually be infinite versions of ourselves existing out there somewhere is an utterly ludicrous proposition.
And yet we need only look back at the history of our scientific understanding of the universe to see a field littered with strange, unfathomable theories, once thought ridiculous, only to later be proven to be very real. Indeed, it was back in nineteen oh five that Einstein published his Special Theory of relativity, later refined in nineteen fifteen as its General Theory of Relativity, in which he proposed that
mass and energy were essentially the same thing. Einstein's theory also suggested that time is experienced differently between two individuals if they are traveling at different speeds relative to each other. However, it would be another four years before concrete proof of this theory was actually demonstrated to be true. For every minute of those intervening years, many continued to doubt it.
The same with no doubt have being thought of Paul de Rack's theory on the possible existence of antimatter, which he first proposed in nineteen twenty eight, But the doubters would have been eating their words when it too was finally proven correct, also four years later. And it was nineteen sixty four when Peter Higgs theorized the possible existence of the Higgs boson, and by extension, the existence of the Higgs field, the field of energy that gives mass
to fundamental particles such as quarks and electrons. Many still doubted its existence right up until the moment when, almost fifty years later, it too was finally proved to be real.
In a space vically unstable and uncertain times, it can also seem as though reality is tenuous, that we live in a world not bound by strict physical laws, but something of far more insidious design, a world in which reality is decided for us in some other realm, that it is merely a fiction tramped up for the gratification of an absent audience. Take Neil Bostrom's simulation theory, for example, the concept that we might in fact be living in
a simulation created by other beings. In the late twentieth century, a science fiction writer from the United States took all of these ideas and condensed them into his own brand of paranoid fantasy. Perhaps you've read one of his stories or seen one of the many films adapted from his dozens of novels. I am talking, of course, about Philip K. Dick. There are some who declare him the greatest writer of
science fiction that ever lived. Others consider him a prophet fated like nostrodamis, and some believe he was nothing but a complete and utter madman. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. All things considered, it was an average day in Orange County. A tepid wind was blowing in off Newport Beach, and Philip known as Phil to
his friends, could almost taste something in the air. Perhaps it was the breakfast burrito he'd had that morning at the local diner, or maybe it was the series of stressful phone calls he'd had to feel from his ex wife Nancy. Whatever it was, Phil felt more apprehensive than usual, and it didn't help that he was on his way
to have his wisdom tooth removed. Despite being one of the most well respected writers in the world, forty five year old Philip Kindred Dick had just endured some of the most turbulent years of his life in nineteen seventy one, after a long standing amphetamine addiction began to derail his domestic life. Phil's marriage to his fourth wife, Nancy Hackett, fell apart when she moved out of their home, taking
their four year old daughter, is Old with her. Phil began indulging in a way he never had before, he often allowed other drug users to share his home with him. In November, the house was ransacked and burglarized. The increasingly paranoid Dick believed this was an attempt to undermine the work he'd been doing. When the police police investigated, however, finding no obvious suspects and nothing of value taken save for some of Dick's own personal papers, they concluded the
writer had staged the robbery himself. By March of the next year, Phil upended his life and moved to Vancouver to pursue a relationship. When that too fell apart, he overdosed on potassium bromite in a desperate attempt to end his own life. It was only after being convinced by friends to return to California that he tried to get his life back on track. All at once. He found himself writing again after more than three years of writer's block, and for the first time since his divorce from Nancy,
Phil was starting to feel good. It felt like nothing less than the universe giving him another chance. Now it was nineteen seventy four and Phil was convalescing after recently finishing his latest novel, A Scanner Darkly under guidance from his psychiatrist and several trusted friends and confidants. The then forty five year old author had recently started incorporating elements of his own life experience with the kind of speculative
fantasy he had first become famous for. Critics were excited by what they saw as the emerging broody, paranoid texture. This lent his work almost as if the author was on the cusp of something, and Phil was satisfied that he was producing some of the most thoughtful, philosophical, even therapeutic writing of his career. On the afternoon of February twentieth, nineteen seventy four, Phil underwent an excruciating bout of dental
surgery aisy from the dose of sodium pentathal. He was advised that he'd need painkillers if he was going to make it through the next few days. In peace, Phil Dulye contacted his local pharmacy and requested a home delivery of the synthetic opioid Darwin, which arrived soon after. Having taken some of the medication, Phil had just fixed himself an iced drink when his front doorbell began to ring
with urgency. Not expecting any visitors. He felt a pang of anxiety at the thought of who on earth might be calling on him at this time. With no small degree of trepidation, Phil opened the front door to find the striking aspect of a dark haired, young delivery woman standing on his doorstep, a woman whom he instinctively felt reminded him of the twin sister he had never known
who had died in childbirth. Taken in by the woman's beauty and something ineffable he would later struggle to explain, Phil was entranced by the golden necklace she wore over her uniform. In fact, he couldn't take his eyes off it. He asked the woman about its strange fish shaped design, something which at once felt both familiar and alien to him. What is that, he asked? The woman smiled. It's the symbol early Christians used to signal one another, she said.
The vesicle pie SATs, or christian icthus perhaps better known as the Jesus fish, consists of a simple fish shaped insignia fashioned out of one continuous loop or line. As the woman turned to leave, Phil noted that the sun on his porch seemed to then suddenly shine brighter, that it's energy almost seemed concentrated on the pendant as one of the Sun's rays made contact with the Iicthus, its glancing reflection threw off an intense beam of pink light.
It struck Phil on the forehead, leaving him momentarily mesmerized. Moments later, the woman was gone back alone inside his house. Phil couldn't be sure how he knew, but he felt that in that moment he'd been gifted with a long dormant sense of wisdom and clairvoyance, that the pink light
had been intelligent, even tangible in form. Over the next few days, Phil later claimed to have experienced several intense visions, visions which he at first dismissed as hallucinatory, but that he gradually came to believe were revealing the true nature of the universe to his Phil's visions apparently came in the form of words that he both saw and heard, as well as elaborate pictures, figures of people, and the
frequently repeated motif of words printed on a page. It was as if quote sights of his brain were being selectively stimulated by energy beams emanating from far off, perhaps millions of miles away. He believed it was a message coming directly from God. He remained house bound for several days as the messages kept on coming, later telling a journalist that it seemed to him that his mind had
been invaded by another transcendentally rational mind. He felt as though he had been insane all his life, but was now now finally, saying, though the frequency of the visions gradually began to wear off, their intensity seemed only to grow, moving from the conceptual to the physical, and several weeks after the initial event, he still found himself at their mercy. That any of this was the consequence of the high strength medication Dick had been taking was an impossibility to him.
As something of a self proclaimed authority on casual drug use, he knew of no drug he had taken before that would have affected him so strongly for such a long period of time. Dick's strange visions continued periodically into March. He began to document them in a series of journal entries he referred to as two three seventy four or
February to March seventy four. The visions were said to mostly comprise of complex geometric patterns, before later becoming vivid images of Jesus Christ, and even depictions of the plight of the early Christians and the corruption at the heart of the ancient Roman Empire. It was Phil's absolute conviction that this information was wholly in origin, and thus should be regarded as a form of scripture. One night, Phil was apparently woken by the sudden re emergence of the
strange pink light. In that moment, he was filled with the complete certainty that his youngest son, Christopher, was gravely ill, and that he needed medical attention before it worsened irrevocably. The problem he was supposedly in that moment being made acutely aware of was something to do with an undiagnosed hernia. After pleading with the boy's mother, Tessa that he needed to be taken seriously, she and Phil rushed Christopher to
hospital in a panic. Unknown to Phil at the time, the child had indeed been suffering from a vague abdominal complaint. The doctor found nothing wrong with him, but Phil insisted they give his son a scan, much to the doctor's astonishment. There in the boy's bow region was a clear herniation, for which the boy was promptly treated Throughout the nineteen seventies, Phil's visions increased in duration and frequency, though by now the author was so inured to their message that they
no longer frightened him. He began to regard them as a gift. By the time nineteen eighty came around, Phil now claimed that he was living to para lives, one as Philip K. Dick, writer father occasional person of interest for the FBI, the other as a man named Thomas an icthus swearing Christian and revolutionary who was persecuted by the Romans in the first century AD. Throughout it all, the pink Light had continued to visit him. He was now unequivocal in his belief that it really was some
kind of rational mind in its own right. Sometimes he called it Zebra, other times God, though the name he most frequently used for it was the one he would eventually choose for one of his most divisive and controversial novels, Vallis, in which he presented, through his alter ego horse Lover Fat,
much of what had been occurring to him. One evening, Valis, all Vast active living in teens eligent system told Phil that the reason for its communication with him was simple, the people of Earth were being silently controlled by an underground cabal with its roots in the Roman Empire. At the head of this cabal who had to be taken down in order for the descendants of Vallas's true messenger, Jesus Christ to continue their work liberating humankind from its
universal blindness. Phil would later claim that the Watergate scandal of August nineteen seventy four, which ultimately led to the resignation of Nixon from high office, marked the final downfall of this hidden Roman Empire. Philip K. Dick published Vallis in nineteen eighty one. In it, his alter ego horse lover Fats communication with the godhead Valis ultimately leads to an elaborate encounter with the fifth Savior of the universe,
a two year old Messiah figure named Sophia Lampton. Quite why Dick chose to first render his apparent real life experiences through the medium of fiction is not entirely clear, though what we do know about his private beliefs regarding his alleged contact with the divine was later recorded in a nine hundred page journal known as The Exegesis. What makes this a compelling story and not one which can easily be dismissed as the delusions of a man plagued
by mental illness and drug addiction. Is that Dick himself struggled with its veracity as a narrative. Using the figure of horse lover Fat to outline his concerns, Dick not only provided the supernatural explanation to everything that had befallen him, but also offers up several lucid, rationalist explanations about what
may have transpired. Philip K. Dick was well aware that visual and auditory hallucinations could sometimes seem persuasive to the sufferer, even going so far as to question whether schizophrenia, bipolar induced psychosis, or flashbacks could be responsible. Having spent significant time in psychiatric hospitals over the years owing to multiple suicide attempts, phil knew only too well about the counter
arguments in Valis. He outlined them with care and precision, ultimately leaving the reader to make up their own mind about whether the trials of Horse lover Fat had been self generated or really had come from some higher power. Perhaps what this all comes back to relates to what
we discussed at the beginning of the show. If the universe really is as complex as quantum mechanics theorizes, and the Many World's theory proves to be correct, then surely it must follow that some version of Philip K. Dick will have had these experiences somewhere, even if in this timeline they arose simply from mental illness or drug induced psychosis.
In his nineteen sixty nine semi autobiographical novel slaughter House Five, Kurt Vonnegut envisioned a fourth dimensional race of beings called Trouphammadorians. These aliens are imbued with the power to traverse the universe, as well as the latent ability to observe all points within the space time continuum. They treat death as barely registrable on their infinite timeline, a non event that interrupts rather than ends proceedings. They see the past, present, and
future simultaneously. They embody both free will and determinism, chaos and order, and for them, death is merely the transfer of energy from one state to another. It is comforting to think that in some other reality the people we've been bereaved by are still happily living their lives. It also provides comfort to think that somewhere we are right, even if in this universe our actions or beliefs have
proved wrong. For centuries, we lived under the presupposition that the universe works entirely within the realm of Newtonian mechanics, that it is a kind of giant clock, with each of its components in perfect harmonious working order. In reality, what quantum mechanics proves, and the many as yet still unproven theories like Everett's Many Worlds suggest the universe is vastly more complex. An antecedent to the many world's interpretation developed by Hugh Everett can be found in the double
slit experiment. It is, according to Richard Feynman, the experiment with which all of the mystery of quantum mechanics can be found. The experiment was first devised by Thomas Young in eighteen o one and revealed that photons of light also behave like waves. In the experiment, photons of light are fired at a screen with two slits cut out of it, with another screen behind to record the pattern
they make. You might assume the resultant pattern recorded on the back screen would mimic the shape of the slits, creating two matching lines in the manner of a stencil. Instead, it creates a wave interference pattern of many strips of
light interspersed with darkness. Subsequently, however, the experiment revealed something even more staggering that when single particles, be they photons of light or electrons, have fired one at a time through the slits, an interference pattern is still generated behind the screen, suggesting the single particles are somehow interfering with themselves.
As if that weren't strange enough, if you place a device next to the slits to detect which particle go through which slits exactly, the pattern generated behind the slits is not one of wave interference, but rather two lines that mimic the shape of the slits. After all. In other words, it seems to suggest that a subatomic particle is not one single thing, but that it exists rather
as a probability of possibilities until it is observed. Though the true implication of the double slit experiment has yet to be established, it has led to some interesting interpretations, chief among them being the idea that it is consciousness that somehow fixes what could potentially be an infinite amount of possible realities into the one that we actually experience, a fanciful notion, perhaps, but one that at least allows for the poetic idea that perhaps we really do hold
the power to make our own reality, and that other worlds are always possible and always existing side by side in one way or another. I'll leave you with the beautiful poem Snow by Lewis mcneie. Yes, the room was suddenly rich, and the great bay window was spawning snow and pink roses against it, soundlessly, collateral and incompatible. World
is suddener than we fancy it. World is crazier and more of it than we think, encourageably plural, I peel and portion are tangerine and spit the pips and feel the drunkenness of things being various, and the fire flames with a bubbling sound. For world is more spiteful and gay than one supposes on the tongue, on the eyes, on the ears, in the palms of one's hands. There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
Thank you, as ever for listening to the show. Please subscribe and rate it if you haven't already done so. In some other news, unexplained will be coming to YouTube very shortly in video form, so please watch out for future developments there. You can subscribe to the channel at YouTube dot com Forward slash at Unexplained Pod. You can also now find us on TikTok at TikTok dot com.
Forward slash at Unexplained Podcast. This week's episode was written by James Connor Patterson and produced by me Richard McClain Smith. James is a brilliant writer and poet. His debut collection of poems titled Bandit Country, exploring the hinterland between the North of Ireland and Republic, was shortlisted for the twenty twenty two ts Eliot Prize and is out now to buy. Do check it out Unexplained as an av Club Productions
podcast created by Richard McClain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
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