In my book Gods of Aquarius:
UFOs and the Transformation of Man [Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1976], I introduced the concept of the
Star People, individuals who feel that they bear within
their genes an awareness acquired by extraterrestrial
interaction with humans in prehistoric or ancient times
and who have now been activated by DNA memory to fulfill
a mission in assisting others in their spiritual and
evolutionary advancement.
Sometime after the book's
publication, I received a letter from Philip K. Dick, the
well-known science fiction writer who told me that he
suspected that he was such an individual as those whom I
had profiled in the book. He had first realized this in
1974 when his own “DNA memory packet” began to
fire within his psyche.
At that time, he told me, he was
shown in a vision, “more properly, an inner
hologram,” the cover of my book, Revelation: The
Divine Fire (Prentice-Hall, 1973). A feminine voice told
him that this book would help him to understand what was
occurring to him. He was also told by the voice to get in
touch with me.
Although Dick said that he did read
the book and that he did receive the requisite
information and comfort that he was promised during the
vision, he was reluctant to contact me until he read of
my research with those individuals whom I had given the
name of Star People. Dick said that he was about to
publish a novel (Valis, 1981) that would advance numerous
similar concepts.
“I wish to hide behind the
veil of fiction,” he wrote. “I can claim that I
made the whole thing up. The revelations that I received
were so astounding that it has taken me five years to
arrive at a place where I will even put forth the concept
as fiction.”
Dick was shown a vision of himself
in a disabled spacecraft heading toward Earth in
prehistoric times. He was one of the emigrants of a
technologically sophisticated civilization that was
undergoing vast convulsions. But the survivors of that
extraterrestrial civilization feared that, once contact
was lost with the home planet, they might lose continuity
in terms of the handing down of their culture from
generation to generation. The solution was
“phylogenic memory.”
Dick explained phylogenic memory as
complex DNA information packets distributed in dormant
form:
“These dominant DNA
information packets would be disinhibited--induced to
fire--in due time, depending on either synchronized inner
biological clocks or pure chance stimuli. Or a
combination of both, ideally. Thus even thousands of
years later, the primordial civilization will be
’released’ in the minds of the astonished
descendants who suppose themselves autochthones
[aboriginal inhabitants] of the planet they now
inhabit.
“The DNA packets in a given
individual will tell him: 1) Where he is from; 2) What
made up that original civilization, his civilization; 3)
His true nature and faculties; 4) What he must
do.
“Ideally, he will act out a
series of responses based on the packet, the purpose of
which is to create on his planet, insofar as it is
possible, the civilization which his ancestors
maintained.
“I evaluate the current
widespread firing of these phylogenic memory packets in
those you call the Star People as a matter of supreme
importance.
“In February, 1974, my own DNA
memory packet was disinhibited, either by an inner
biological clock, which synchronized it with
disinhibitions in other people, or by accident. It fired
for one complete year.”
When The Star People was published
in February 1981, I included a number of anonymous quotes
from Phil, attributing them to a "well-known science
fiction writer's" take on what seemed to be a global
phenomenon of men and women experiencing the awakening of
their own DNA memory packets of somehow coming from the
"stars."
During the course of our
correspondence over the next few years, Phil told me that
he had recognized the feminine voice that told him to
read Revelation: The Divine Fire as the one that had
spoken to him sporadically since his high school days.
Eventually, the voice had identified herself as the Ruah,
the Hebrew word for Spirit of God, Holy Spirit. She was,
according to Phil’s understanding, a “tutelary
spirit,” possessed of a “transcendentally
rational mind.” The Ruah spoke to him in terse,
succinct sentences, and communicated most often when he
was falling asleep or waking up. He had to be very quiet
and attentive in order to hear the brief messages that
she relayed.
I had a revelation to share with
Phil: The essence of The Divine Fire had been given to me
in 1969 during a late night encounter with a hooded,
monk-like entity. To silence my inquisitive--and
startled--mind, the mysterious visitor had placed me into
a deep sleep, but in the morning I arose with the
complete outline of Revelation: The Divine Fire in my
awakened consciousness. The book was published in 1973,
about a year before Phil received the vision from the
Ruah advising him to read it.
I lived in Phoenix in 1982, and
Phil planned to come over around the time of my birthday
in February to discuss a number of new concepts which
were occurring to him. Blade Runner, based on his novel
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, had not yet been
released. My memory is uncertain on this point, but Phil
either called me after he had seen a rough cut of the
film or just before he was going to see a screening. In
either event, he died before the motion picture was
released and before he made the trip to Phoenix that
would have enabled us to have that final mind-meld. I was
pleased a couple of years ago when Phil’s widow
filled out the Star People/UFO Mystical Questionnaire
that Sherry and I still make available on our
website.
I know that Phil’s revelations
are expanding with every new release of a motion picture
based on his work, a film library that appears to birth
another cinematic creation each year--Total Recall,
Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Paycheck, Next.
Somewhere Phil smiles upon his legacy with an even
greater expanded memory packet, one now suffused with the
cosmic awareness that awaits us all.