The Divine Invasion by Philip K Dick

The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The premise of the book seems to be based on one of the central tenets of The Bhagavad Gita

यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत। अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् ॥4-7॥ परित्राणाय साधूनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम् । धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे ॥4-8॥
Whenever there is decay of righteousness, O Bharata,
And there is exaltation of unrighteousness, then I Myself come forth;

For the protection of the good, for the destruction of evil-doers,
For the sake of firmly establishing righteousness, I am born from age to age.

Vivekananda, Swami,’s translation:
“Whenever virtue subsides and wickedness prevails, I manifest Myself. To establish virtue, to destroy evil, to save the good I come from Yuga (age) to Yuga.

Of course, the book is based on Abrahamic religions and is the second part of The Valis Trilogy. A lot of allusions and terms are based on the Torah and the Bible. The evil that rules The Earth and struggles for supremacy in one of the alternate timelines is Belial, the one from the song Year Zero by Ghost B.C.

He could not get around the government ruling because this was Earth and the zone of evil lay over everything.

PKD at his quirky best – saying a lot succinctly

‘All I have is a cupee of Kaff.’

Here is the ‘Messiah’ in action

First he speeded up his internal biological clock so that his thoughts raced faster and faster; he felt himself rushing down the tunnel of linear time until his rate of movement along that axis was enormous. First, therefore he saw vague floating colours and then he suddenly encountered the Watcher, which is to say the Grigon, who barred the way between the Lower and Upper Realms…

As one of the cops apprehending one of the main characters of the book, this could all be the rantings of a schizophrenic living in a fantasy world – one wonders what is real and what is illusion – that is Philip K Dick at his whacky best!

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