[4:1] In Ubik the forward moving force of time (or time-force expressed as an ergic field) has ceased. All changes result from that. Forms regress. The substrate is revealed. Cooling (entropy) is allowed to set in unimpeded. Equilibrium is affected by the vanishing of the forward-moving time forcefield. The bare bones, so to speak, of the world, our world, are revealed. We see the Logos addressing the many living entities.* Assisting and advising them.** We are now aware of the Atman everywhere. The press of time on everything, having been abolished, reveals many elements underlying our phenomena.

If time stops, this is what takes place, these changes.

Not frozen-ness, but revelation.

There are still the retrograde forces remaining, at work. And also underlying positive forces other than time. The disappearance of the forcefield we call time reveals both good and bad things; which is to say, coaching entities (Runciter, who is the Logos), the Atman (Ubik), Ella; it isn’t a static world, but it begins to cool. What is missing is a form of heat: the Aton. The Logos (Runciter) can tell you what to do, but you lack the energy—heat, force—to do it. (I.e., time.)

*Logos is an important concept that litters the pages of the Exegesis. An ancient Greek word with a wide variety of meanings, Logos can mean word, speech, reason (in Latin ratio) or giving an account of something. For Heraclitus, to whom Dick frequently refers, Logos is the universal law that governs the cosmos, of which most human beings are somnolently ignorant. Dick certainly has this latter meaning in mind, but most importantly, Logos refers to the opening of the Gospel of John, which invokes the word that becomes flesh in the person of Christ…the core of Dick’s vision is gnostic: it suggests a specifically mystical contact with a transmundane or alien God who is identified with Logos and who can communicate in the form of a ray of light, non-objective graphics, or some other visionary transfer. The novelty of Dick’s gnostic vision is that the divine communicates through information that has a kind of electrostatic life of its own.

**Neoplatonism is crossed with thermodynamics to provide a framework for Dick to think through his experiences here. The entire universe can be comprehended as subject to an imperative: more entropy! While entropy is usually associated with the negativity of disorder, here it functions as something like a revelation: the bare bones, so to speak, of our world are revealed. And while the revelation is a “regression,” it enables an insight into the nature of reality. The divine, “Atman,” is perceived within all things for Dick even as the vehicle of this revelation is entropy—in the guise of noise, he receives a clarifying signal.