Pythagoras (fl. 580-490 BC)

P. held that the substance of all things was number, and that the Universe came forth out of chaos, through measure and harmony acquiring form: P., indeed, was the first to call the universe the "cosmos", meaning "the harmonious order of things". In his view numbers are the very essence of the cosmos, and not merely symbols of quantitative relations; and for this reason they are sacred. The unit (1) symbolises the spirit, the force from which everything comes into being; the dyad (2) indicates the two forms of matter - Earth and Water; the triad (3) manifests time in its three dimensions: past, present and future; and so on. Cosmic phenomena can be understood through numerology, geometry and music. Dick adopted P.s concept of the cosmos.

http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/archeo/greece/pythagoras/ideas.htm

Plato (427-347 BC)

Heracleitus of Ephesus (fl. 540 - 480 BC)

H. held fire to be the primary substance of the universe, transmuting into many different forms without ever losing its identity. He claimed that "all things are in a state of change", and that matter is created by "compression out of energy". During the visions 2-3-74, Dick invented the term of the latent form "crypte morphosis" which he would later trace to H. fragment 51: "They do not understand how that which differs with itself is in agreement: harmony consists of opposing tension, like that of the bow and the lyre." Similarly revealing are the following fragments 123: "Nature likes to hide.", and fragment 124: "The fairest universe is but a dust-heap piled up at random."

http://www.mtsu.edu/~jpurcell/Classes/Texts/presocratics.html

Parmenides of Elea (fl. 514-440 BC)

Where Heracleitus is the philosopher of becoming, P. is the philosopher of being. His philosophy is suffused with doubt of the validity of the evidence of the senses. According to Parmenides, the world is a multiplicity of phenomena; in this world every phenomenon or object is something and at the same time is not something else. That is, everything in this world has its own nature, its own properties, its own characteristics. This underlies his theory of being and non-being. Everything is and at the same time is not. This explains why for Parmenides there is no coming-into-being or perishing. Objective multiplicity is merely a belief. According to an entry of the Exegesis 1978, Dick understood his work, in which irreal, fake universes are presented, as an expression of P. insight concerning the non-reality of "Form II". It prepares the idea of a botched world.

Epimenides (ca. 500 BC)

It was the famous paradoxon "All greeks are liars. I am greek.", which is most often ascribed to E., that Dick used as the model for the split personality Horselover Fat/himself VALIS is written by. As E. didnŽt say: "Horselover Fat is nuts. I am Horselover Fat." 'Not true' is here replaced by 'nuts' and Horselover Fat could be seen as the human embodiment of the paradoxon. http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sjblatt/notes/nottrue.html

Apollo

Dionysos

Askleipos