I recently finished VALIS by our mutual PKD - It influenced me in a small way, if we are just machinations of the universe, perhaps the monster of reality itself is a slave.

This then turns my thoughts back to whether the universe is deterministic or a place of free will.

A slave has no choice, they must do their master's bidding, and I ask myself, are our minds slaves to our bodies, or the other way round? What sort of strange symbiotic or parasitic relationship do we have with the calorific content we consume, the energy we borrow, and return back into the void?

Perhaps here, not the place for such a discussion, but that video yoy shared of Dick's speech really did give me a different perspective on the nature of reality as he described it. A more open philosophical approach than my prior nihilism / atheistic / scientific approach to the cosmos and all being, and something instead more charged with energy and mystique.