The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  Both of those alternate universes were wonderful. Different from each other but equally wonderful. In different ways (in the poor Mexican one I enjoyed being close to the street—note street, not "earth" or "soil"—and being in a familiar place. In the wealthy cosmopolitan one I enjoyed variety and expensive tastes), each was equally complete, an entire world. It's as if God informed me:

  "You turn north, I'll spin for you an entire world and a wonderful one which you'll love."

  "You turn south, I'll plant you in a little town and it'll be a whole universe, that little town, with dreams about other towns in the north, rumors of wealth you will treasure as rumors."

  "You decided to live dead-center, and I will show you that the Tao, which is what you have found in Fullerton, because there you do speak in public, you do receive royal guests, but near you is the poor barrio, and you're stuck in Fullerton forever as if you were poor—you decide on the Tao, the Middle Path, and I will show you that each path is the Middle Path, that there is no universe which I can't make complete. You can't be where I am not. And if I am there, which I always am, it is a total world, good as any other."

  I get the impression that universes are a natural event, or put another way, a natural act on God's part, without premeditation. Like the bourgeois gentleman who found, with delight, that he spoke prose. [...]

  While I have the typewriter here, let me quote you a small bit from "The Gospel According to John" which never seemed to be there ever before when I read it. Because of your Sufi interest, I quote:

  Jesus answered, "Is it not written in your own law, 'I said: You are gods'? Those are called gods to whom the word of God was delivered—and Scripture cannot be set aside." (10:34/36, NEB)45

  That's sort of amazing; Jesus says this when they accuse Him of claiming to be a god or appearing to be. I think the key Greek experience, mentioned by Plato, from the Orphic religion and also in Christianity is—anamnesis. I'll bet Jesus refers to this (supra).

  I'd enjoy hearing from you. (I think what I experienced was the Neoplatonistic anamnesis which Plotinus mentions, but ... well, I hope so.)

  Love,

  Phil

  ***

  [4:219] It almost seems as if the consciousness of a Racial Planetary Being were surrounding civilization, compressing it and turning it into a miniaturized artifact of the past.

  [4:220] The vitalistic principle or force Ubik is also sentient. It impinges on transmissions such as TV, phones. Has to do with ions. Gives full life to "half-lifers," i.e., those who are half dead. It communicates over long atmospheric distances.

  Entity in ionosphere due to growth of radio signal patterns? An AI bounce-back to us? Obtains information from our electrical impulses, and this is the "noösphere"?

  The entire pattern of our radio signals, and their information, have formed a living, or anyhow sentient entity which is why the idea of the noösphere came into being. Effect on us is not only informational but vitalistic and healing; best example is to "rouse us from half-life" which is to say, move us along evolutionary lines toward completion of our now only half-finished entelechies (v. Teilhard's idea of Christ as paradigm of mankind; we are moving along the Way; continual evolution expressed in the Passion). This is brought to completion by the vitality and information imparted (like "additional spin") by the entity which lies within the ionosphere.* This is perhaps not a life form, and not from another planet, but it is an intelligence; maybe like one of our robot probes (if that's the case, then it is the Holy Spirit which knows only what it gets from the Father, or Source, which isn't here as the Spirit is; the Spirit was sent here. Its source is extraterrestrial, then.).

  Time (Dr. NK) is involved in that we are dragging (expressed by entropy), not completing ourselves; i.e., moving growth time forward to its end. Ubik helps this by adding the needed increments to time, itself and energy. But Ubik is in the ionosphere; is probably magnetic or electrostatic (v. Soviet cosmonaut's experience with phosphene activity).

  Ubik, this entity, came here to render assistance to a stalled or bogged down biosphere/ecosphere (v. "Dreams" of stagnant ocean with few "helium filled balloons rising now") ("the crabs and other life forms under wa ter, such as butterflies"). Butterflies under water as a life form means: our atmosphere is a—lower—ocean, to it. [...] noösphere—Teilhard de Chardin. This does exist; this is where I felt the firebright spirits to exist. But this doesn't tell me what came to me, although in truth a restoration of everything men have thought is possible from the noösphere; also, it would be growing in strength, hence its usefulness. But anyhow what came to me was alive, as well as thinking; anyhow it had the characteristics which I associate with the living; it felt concern; it answered. If it is an AI system, then it has what I value. (Agape?) (This would tend to give a cosmological definition of agape: a response to need as if responding to a distress signal, perhaps from the earth's surface, from a life form here, to one in the noösphere; it picked it up and rendered aid. Agape would link the universe together in bonds of voluntary interaction.)

  The U.S. Indians were right: when we die our souls—i.e., our brain-print patterns—go to join the noösphere growing in the sky (the ceiling of St. Sophia); the dome over our heads. Our ancestors are there now. I sort of already joined/was joined by them. But it's a single mind not a bunch of individual ghosts. No wonder it spoke in Greek; it is very old.

  Ionosphere. Which transacts radio wave exchanges as energy and in terms of distribution. Also the Auroras ("Dawn"). Acting as cathode ray tube to produce TV-screen-like effects. Receives magnetic storms and ions from Sun. Disturbances, solar flares ... all these are characteristics of Ubik. (Dream of "people renting space above ceiling of store who leave notes on bulletin board. Dream, too, of the Bob Silverberg Commission, which is investigating something—for U.S. Government.")

  Letter to Claudia Bush, February 25, 1975

  [4:222]

  Dear Claudia,

  Here are nine pages of further notes for my new novel, and you will see unless you did it again how I do it; i.e., take my own experiences and put them into a novel. I wish to point out another and almost always there element in my novel plotting per se: what I do is:

  I think up a novel in my head and take notes (in this case Valisystem A, about Hawthorne Abendsen and how it went later on after the Nazis got him, based on my life after Nancy left me, and also based on my ideas about my March experience that were early ideas; my plot of say around April to November 1974).

  Then I forget the whole thing, motivated by not being motivated.

  Then I am bopping around, as in this case working on my Time Theory and Ionosphere Theory and trying to combine them—with no idea about the book or any book—and a new plot idea comes (see enclosed pages, which are further on To Scare the Dead).

  I combine Valisystem A and To Scare the Dead.

  Every novel of mine is at least two novels superimposed. This is the origin; this is why they are full of loose ends, but also, it is impossible to predict the outcome, since there is no linear plot as such. It is two novels into a sort of 3-D novel.

  You'll see from this enclosure of 9 pages. But later when the novel is done, you will really see. But this is how I work; I always decide that idea one wasn't sufficient, and forget it.

  Okay/?/

  P.S. I was up to 5 A.M. on this last night. I did something I never did before: I commanded the entity to show itself to me—the entity which has been guiding me internally since March. A sort of dream-like period passed then, of hypnagogic images of underwater cities, very nice, and then a stark single horrifying scene, inert but not a still: a man lay dead, on his face, in a living room between the coffee table and the couch. He wore a fawn skin! I rose from bed at once, convinced that I had Dionysos. The night or so before, I had dreamed about the dappled fawn; it is a basic image to me, that and the lamb, but I'd never connected the fawn with Dionysos, even though I'd been shown that Zagreus and Jesus are the same, and of course the lamb is a symbo
l of Jesus. For hours I studied everything about Dionysos I could find; nothing about his garb, except "he was dressed in the Greek style." Today I found in The Bacchae of Euripides this: "... I have fitted the fawn-skin to their bodies." It is Dionysos who speaks. He means his followers. And I have a dim memory that in The Frogs he wears a fawn skin. It is thus shown.

  Dionysos is not only related to Zagreus; he is even more important in that he is the first mystery god, the first one we know of. He appeared abruptly in Attika in 600 B.C., coeval with Elijah. I wish to quote the Brit 3 on this, it is so important to us all: "... Though not necessarily sacramental, these rites enabled the Maenads to surmount the barrier that separated them from the supernatural world and to surrender themselves unconditionally to the mighty powers that transcended time and space, thus carrying them into the realm of the eternal" (macro "Sacrament"). Then very shortly after, the Orphic appears, in which (it) "... was to confer divine life sacramentally on its initiates so that they might attain immortality through regeneration and reincarnation, thereby freeing the soul from its fleshly bondage."

  I think by bondage of the flesh we should read "time," since the Brit 3 macro article on "Salvation" says this specifically.

  There was none of the electrostatic ion-like vitality to this picture of the murdered man in fawn skin; I don't think it was a "picture" at all; i.e., his thoughts to me or in me, a communication, or anyhow one he wanted me to see. You'll find more about this on [>] of the notes. I gather that the help came from the deity in fawn skin for whom the fawn is totem as the lamb is for Jesus Christ. If these are two different hyperentities, then good; if the same, then good.

  Well, and so to TV.

  (Enclosure, letter to Claudia Bush, February 25, 1975)

  [4:224] Novel plot, the twin brains/minds the U.S. fears is that the Soviets are using their research into psychic ESP powers for long-distance mind control etc. Like electronic boost of telepathic suggestion via satellite; maybe even specific persons in U.S. affected (or so the U.S. counterin. thinks). Specific individuals reached in their dreams without knowing it, their views and even decisions influenced. This is the theory, anyhow; something, anyhow, is happening. And then it happens to the protag: the Essene reborn inside him; the Parousia is here! That is what's happening! Yep; a superpowerful mind-force was indeed influencing people, causing them to do things they otherwise wouldn't, and yes they are secretive about it, reluctant to talk ... as he himself becomes (since no one would believe him—and he's to help overthrow the tyranny, which adds this to the VALIS-Abendsen plot, of the tyranny overthrow!!!).

  This superimposes the two plots: Valisystem A and To Scare the Dead. Wow!

  Plot: from inside he learns the Albemuth whale's mouth sign and how to fashion the ideograph.46 A mysterious organization imperils him; he's taken over and subjected to psychological testing to acquire from him the contents of his mind. The psych tester of it draws the whale's mouth sign under duress, in a "trance," later finds it and doesn't remember having made it. Protag cannot figure out if these are his powers, or Theirs. But they work in his behalf.

  He keeps seeing the sign ... like emblem for beer company, used in their ads on billboards; he sees little kids gazing at it, or like emblem for Kentucky Fried Chicken places, where kids always go.

  Nobody else can discern it but him (and there must be others like him; this is main plot element; his conviction, his search). They call it "an eye, with a pupil." (The fried chicken designer swears this.) A scientist, when asked to analyze it as a symbol, decides it's the Earth within its magnetic or electrostatic plasma, which is blue. No one but God's Own know it as it is built up, in layers.

  Men become what they are not, are transformed; but this doesn't mean into their opposite. What they become can't be predicted (I guess the best bits from each, the ideal pieces, are all retained and used to form the new pattern, plus pieces never used but needed, even if contrary to the person's ego and values as they were). Like, his friend could be one who has changed who was/is a Nazi; the best parts of that: the remnants in that person to be preserved (micro paradigm of mankind).

  One of the most long-lasting and major plot ideas comes when the head of the mysterious organization commissions the building of an observatory like place to screen incoming signals from VALIS; work on The Project begins. It orbits the earth and will be visible to the world, once the parts are joined ... when they are joined, they form the Albemuth sign, although it was impossible to discern this beforehand (he tried to be sure of that: "the sum is greater than the whole of its parts," etc.).

  But the signals are interchanged throughout and among everything, even on the "mundane" plane. The Trash of the gutter "con-spire" to signal people information. I think reserved for last should be the scene with the little things of the gutter talking to him (to the former or still Antagonist).

  Amazing, how like Tears this is ... the Antagonist must not be desk man, but still, isn't he a cop? Maybe a fanatic of some kind? Maybe never an Interior VP by him, like Buckman was. Always outer, except final scene, when he walks in alley and trash talks to him. [...]

  Nutty Soviet theory: a vast explosion in future, and we are traveling backward in time for limited period. An explosion so that what we see now as movement toward form is reverse of explosion, or implosion; but we see the universe as expanding ... why? Because our perceptions are backward, too. Or maybe space isn't going backward, but must expand to counterbalance time which is running backward, etc. Anyhow, he (Dr. NK) announces, soon we will reach moment of explosion; he's calculated that, by running film backward. Soon all the pieces should be in place. Living in this reverse period, we've learned to adjust subtemporal events to fit. It's total sweep that's backward, not "subtemporal" adjustments which we instigate due to misperception; he carefully discerns and divides these from the sweep; these adjustments are all errors due to our basic perceptual reversal. We have introduced erroneous views and acts stemming from them; however, none of these acts have any effect, we still run away from the explosion ahead in time (actually are now moving—aw fuck). A see-saw. Anyhow, there would be a two way time-motion simultaneously:

  The explosion took place. Everything flew apart. We are in that flying apart (expanding universe) but see it backward, in that already part of the time flow has corrected itself and is carrying us in the correct direction; otherwise we would move away from the explosion forever. But we are moving, or anyhow there is the orthogonal flow within the flow going opposite to the direction we perceive; a mobius strip with time running both ways at once. This can easily be represented in terms of gravity, when a boomerang is thrown out.... at this moment the time-flow is far greater in one of the two directions, but he has picked up the weaker other, and it is the correct one, the direction we were going in before the Accident. This one is the rectifying flow (the Holy Spirit: restoring!!!).* This retroflow, Dr. NK says, must grow stronger, will grow stronger, until it balances the wrong way one (now stronger); overcomes and reverses our direction so we're heading back toward the original explosion which took place in the Authentic Future (the big bang!!!). We must move back toward it, finally. Anyhow, Dr. NK detects with his instruments a growing current of retrotime; this is why it exists; this was the normal flow-direction until the Accident. If Dr. Kozyrev is correct, and time is energy, then reverse time (which throws us "forward" away from the Big Bang) causes us to lose energy, which we call movement toward entropy; however, if we could gather—latch onto—the other time-flow, which also is energy, we (each of us) could regather the energy lost in the "forward" time flow toward entropy! We could get it back because it is gathering in precisely the sense that our regular time is losing heat or energy or charge. This gives us our parity, equilibrium equation for time which it now lacks and should have. (And shows why first it is absurd to say "the universe gains energy," as Dr. Kozyrev says—where does it gain it from? It cannot gain or lose. Entropy is losing energy; energy and matter are the same; it's losing matter.) So: we ha
ve an eternal total double-entry same total of both time-flow energies at any segment of the universe so extended.

  Look how we run-down, wear out, age ... think what charge, what rebirth, resurrection, new life, the retrograde time-flow would give us! All that we'd lost, too: and a keen vision of the past-as-alive, the past not qua past, but past qua future!!!!!!! Heading for it as surely as we normally head toward say the year 2100 A.D. The future in retro would be 100 A.D. just as surely, but gaining energy and life, through retro time as one moved!

  The universe does not go through serial cycles, but moves backward through its own life continually. We are at a point where the thrust backward is vast in comparison to true time, that is, time toward completion of true form before the accident. The universe is in a stall, a doublebind! This may be an anomaly; once it reaches either end point, this may be overcome. One can see that; it doesn't repeat itself. We are now in the process of being thrust back incorrectly, away from form-completion; nonetheless, already the other direction time is somewhat strong and its rate of ratio growth is great. Once the direction is reversed and we're again going in the correct way, then we may take a different destiny line (alternate track) and not come to the original explosion; avoid it.

  And maybe this isn't even the whole universe; maybe we're part of a subsystem moving in this wrong direction. We do know when the Accident took place: about 6 billion years ago. But we could change directions before that; we don't go back to that; we're now moving away from it, and what you and I should look for is not going back 6 billion years and rectifying that mistake, but wrong-way thrown-back time "slowing" and regular time regaining dominance; we should watch for our cosmos moving the proper direction in time, which would be a reverse from what we are used to—in the direction of our past. It is not reaching this explosion 6 billion years ago that is important for us, but slowing our movement away from it and reversing and moving backward into our own past.