Everyone gets to Yes in the end....

This is extracted dialogue from Linklater's Waking Life concerning Philip K. Dick's novel FLOW MY TEARS THE POLICEMAN said.

It was about that book, "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said." You know that one?

Uh, yeah yeah, he won an award for that one.

Right, that's the one he wrote really fast. It just like flowed right out of him. He felt he was sort of channeling it or something. But anyway, about four years after it was published, he was at this party, and he met this woman who had the same name as the woman character in the book, and she had a boyfriend with the same name as the boyfriend character in the book, and she was having an affair with this guy, the chief of police, and he had the same name as the chief of police in his book. So she was telling him all of this stuff from her life, and everything she is saying is right out of his book. So it's totally freaking him out, but what could he do?

And then shortly after that, he was going to mail a letter, and he saw this kind of dangerous, shady looking guy standing by his car, but instead of avoiding him, which he says he would have usually done, he walked right up to him and said, "Can I help you?" And the guy said, "Yeah, I ran out of gas." So he pulls out his wallet, and he hands him some money, which he says he never would have done, and then he gets home and thinks, wait a second, this guy can't get to a gas station, he's out of gas. So he gets back in his car and goes and finds the guy, takes him to the gas station, and as he's pulling up at the gas station, he realizes, hey, this is in my book too. This exact station, this exact guy, everything. So this whole episode is kind of creepy, right?


And he's telling his priest about it, you know, describing how he wrote this book, and then four years later all these things happened to him. And as he's telling this to him, the priest says, "That's the Book of Acts. You're describing the Book of Acts." And he's like, "I've never read the Book of Acts." So he goes home and reads the Book of Acts, and it's like uncanny. Even the characters' names are the same as in the Bible. And the Book of Acts takes place in 50 A.D., when it was written, supposedly. So Philip K. Dick had this theory that time was an illusion and that we are all actually in 50 A.D., and the reason he had written this book was that he had somehow momentarily punctured through this illusion, this veil of time, and what he had seen there was what was going on in the Book of Acts.

And he was really into gnosticism, and this idea that this demiurge or demon had created this illusion of time to make us forget that Christ was about to return, and the kingdom of God was about to arrive. And that we're all in 50 A.D., and there's someone trying to make us forget that God is imminent. And that's what time is. That's what all of history is. It's just this continuous daydream, or distraction.

And so I read that, and I was like, that's weird. And that night I had a dream. And there was this guy in the dream who was supposed to be a psychic. But I was skeptical. I was like, he's not really a psychic, you know I'm thinking to myself. And then suddenly I start floating, like levitating up to the ceiling. And as I almost go through the roof, I'm like, okay, Mr. Psychic. I believe you. You're a psychic. Now put me down please.

And I float down, and as my feet touch the ground, the psychic turns into this woman in a green dress. And this woman is Lady Gregory. Now Lady Gregory was Yeats' patron, this Irish person, and though I'd never seen her image, I was just sure that this was the face of Lady Gregory. So I'm walking along, and Lady Gregory turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. Philip K. Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 A.D. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.' And so time actually is just this constant saying No to God's invitation. That's what time is, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's 2001. There's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in." Then she tells me that actually, this is the narrative of everyone's life. That behind the phenomenal differences, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from No to Yes. All of life is like, "No thank you, no thank you, no thank you," then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in, yes, I accept, yes, I embrace." That's the journey. Everyone gets to Yes in the end, right?