Free Valis by Philip K. Dick

suicide before?" Dr. Stone asked him.
    "No," Fat said, which of course wasn't true. At that moment he no longer remembered Canada. It was his impression that his life had begun two weeks ago when Beth walked out.
    "I think," Dr. Stone said, "that when you tried to kill yourself you got in touch with reality for the first time."
    "Maybe so," Fat said.
    "What I am going to give you," Dr. Stone said, opening a black suitcase on his small cluttered desk, "we term the Bach remedies." He pronounced it
batch.
"These organic remedies are distilled from certain flowers which grow in Wales. Dr. Bach wandered through the fields and pastures of Wales experiencing every negative mental state that exists. With each state that he experienced he gently held one flower after another. The proper flower trembled in the cup of Dr. Bach's hand and he then developed unique methods of acquiring an essence in elixir form of each flower and combinations of flowers which I have prepared in a rum base." He put three bottles together on the desk, found a larger, empty bottle, and poured the contents of the three into it. "Take six drops a day," Dr. Stone said. There is no way the Bach remedies can hurt you. They are not toxic chemicals. They will remove your sense of helplessness and fear and inability to act. My diagnosis is that those are the three areas where you have blocks: fear, helplessness and an inability to act. What you should have done instead of trying to kill yourself would have been, take your son away from your wife -- it's the law in California that a minor child must remain with his father until there is a court order to the contrary. And then you
    
    
    should have lightly struck your wife with a rolled-up newspaper or a phonebook."
    "Thank you," Fat said, accepting the bottle. He could see that Dr. Stone was totally crazy, but in a good way. Dr. Stone was the first person at the North Ward, outside the patients, who had talked to him as if he were human.
    "You have much anger in you," Dr. Stone said. "I am lending you a copy of the
Tao Te Ching.
Have you ever read Lao
    
    
    Tzu?"
    "No," Fat admitted.
    "Let me read you this part here," Dr. Stone said. He read aloud.

    "Its upper part is not dazzling;
    Its lower part is not obscure.
    Dimly visible, it cannot be named
    And returns to that which is without substance.
    This is called the shape that has no shape,
    The image that is without substance.
    This is called indistinct and shadowy.
    Go up to it and you will not see its head;
    Follow behind it and you will not see its rear."

    Hearing this, Fat remembered entries #1 and #2 from his Journal. He quoted them, from memory, to Dr. Stone.
    #1. One Mind there is; but under it two principles contend.
    #2. The Mind lets in the light, then the dark; in interaction; so time is generated. At the end Mind awards victory to the light; time ceases and the Mind is complete.
    "But," Dr. Stone said, "if Mind awards victory to the light, and the dark disappears, then reality will disappear, since reality is a compound of Yang and Yin equally."
    "Yang is Form I of Paramenides
     [sic]
    ," Fat said. "Yin is Form II. Parmenides argued that Form II does not in fact exist. Only Form I exists. Parmenides believed in a monistic world. People
imagine
that both forms exist, but they are wrong. Aristotle relates that Parmenides equates Form I with 'that which is' and Form II with 'that which is not.' Thus people are deluded."
    Eying him, Dr. Stone said, "What's your source?"
    "Edward Hussey," Fat said.
    "He's at Oxford," Dr. Stone said. "I attended Oxford. In my opinion Hussey has no peer."
    "You're right," Fat said.
    "What else can you tell me?" Dr. Stone said.
    Fat said, "Time does not exist. This is the great secret known to Apollonius of Tyana, Paul of Tarsus, Simon Magus, Paracelsus, Boehme and Bruno. The universe is contracting into a unitary entity which is completing itself. Decay and disorder are seen by us in reverse, as increasing. Entry
    
    
    #18 of my