The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  [23:60] Well, since I am an S-F writer and known to be involved with unreality, no one, even my closest friends, is/are going to believe me, and yet I can get it printed everywhere with no risk of it being taken as anything but fantasy. It is bootless to screw around and think it is anyone but Christ who arranged my 3-74 experience. My problem is that I'm so delighted I just can't believe it; I have to keep arriving at the same conclusion by new and different ways.

  [23:69] For exposing his world James-James is after your ass. The authorities are his instruments in forcibly maintaining the system of delusions. Certainly, as Fitting2 et al. say, my writings are subversive to this fake system, but he and the other Marxists shrink from the evolutionary development in my writing pointing, in theological tones, to the world, lying beyond and behind, which is. Ubik is the turning point, leading to Maze of Death, and all the Platonism that Angus Taylor3 rightly sees in the corpus of my work.

  [23:73] A new James-James dream: the improvident genius creator evolves us through many stages, meanwhile killing us, coercing us totally, injuring us. Finally, really through lack of foresight (he has no foresight) he abruptly, in his truly inspired search for new and more complex and evolved forms for us to take, causes us to become immortal gods; we all float up from the ground, high in the air, singing in unison like a great chorus of bees: he has caused us to escape him and the death of determinism and suffering, due to a combination of his genius, restless, ceaseless inventiveness and search for new or better forms—and lack of foresight; it didn't occur to him that by his own efforts he would eventually, inevitably push us to safety. We are filled with joy. The inference here seems to be that on his own, James-James can and eventually will make us immortal and no longer bound by determinism (expressed by our release from gravity), hence safe from him. The other better true God (not found in this dream) need only wait—which assigns a higher value to James-James than I have been attributing to him. His role is great; alone he eventually compels us into immortality—the final stage and goal. My error lay in incorrectly downgrading him. I have been corrected.

  [23:111] It's amazing how much James-James' chaotic world resembles Empedocles' world of strife, and the Corpus Christi resembles the krasis formed by love—which brings me back to Aphrodite. And the krasis possessing one more dimension than James-James' "horizontal" world:

  Is it even possible that "strife" (plane) is "love" (sphere) seen in one less dimension—i.e., imperfectly perceived? Only the sectioning perceived? The "spherical" krasis viewed, in a limited sense, as section, and thus all changed? Add the missing dimension and you go from the seeming world to the symmetrical real. This added dimension has something to do with time—the horizontal quality of "strife" may be linear time. The sphere is the plane perfected and hence outside (above) time. There is a mystery here: intersection at two points: Rome c. 70 A.D. and Fullerton c. 1974 A.D. "time is round."

  [23:112] There is some vast relationship between my 3-74 experience and Ubik the novel, could I but find it. E.g., when I saw Rome c. A.D. 70 I was at an incredibly low ebb of vitality (heat loss death). But, as in Ubik (i.e., Archer's Drugstore) both time periods and the objects therein existed simultaneously. In fact, neither could be said to be more real than the other—a sort of oscillation (and yet in Ubik neither was real; both were illusory). Is this to say that if you can peel the layers of 1974 back (aside) and find A.D. 70, then the reality you are dealing with is no reality (but is illusion)? A mockup, a stage set? Which has been reused and reused—painted over again and again? Of course, nothing is sui generis new; every object in the present is literally made from old atoms formerly used in other, more ancient "sets." Recycled, really. Like pulp magazine paper (not at one specific former time, though).

  Insight: as in Ubik we (must) maintain the present by a joint focusing of effort and attention, forcing it to be stable (and not regress). I regressed in 3-74, but back along an ontological orthogonal axis, not a personal axis, exactly like the objects in Ubik. I regressed, not to my 1928 childhood, but to former men (or a former man). It's all there in Ubik, could I exegete. The 2,000 year inner and outer reversion which I experienced in 3-74 was not due to a concentrating of attention but to an ebbing, a relaxing, a permitting (releasing). At the very least I discovered where the past is now; it is in present-day objects (reality). Therefore it can be totally retrieved. As to where the future is, if anywhere, I have no idea.

  [23:120] Two S-F dreams ill-remembered. (1) some people have come here from another planet which had much greater gravity, so that being here was being able to fly—literally "buzz about with joy like bees." (2) if you do something "impossible that you would do," like leave the building through the ceiling rather than the door, you literally disappeared to everyone's view, friends, family and jailers alike, since all here are programmed—held fast by the deterministic matrix.

  [23:127] The two dreams together show (1) coming here from a place worse than this—escaping from it to here and then (2) escaping from here. In (1), here stands in relation to the "heavier world" as an afterlife, but then escape from this world is needed—an afterlife, so to speak, to a previous afterlife. What seems to be presented here is a series of stages, an evolution. [...]

  We are not products of this world but voyagers here—one thinks of Gnosticism at once. We have come here from another place and will eventually find the unexpected orthogonal axis and ascend to the next. Ah! Eventually we will chafe against the bonds—restrictions, determinism, limitations—of this world too, and seek release, as we did before with the "heavier" world. Maybe this world is neither heaven nor hell to its natural inhabitants; it just is. Maybe to us it started out as a place of release—heaven—but gradually and inexorably becomes another prison; in relation to the next an iron prison Rome. Then the black iron prison is wherever you are in relation to the freer next world—which fully, at last, answers my question as to where the vision of the black iron prison stands in relation to this world. The sense of this being so is an indication that one has reached the point of wanting to move on up.

  [23:133] I just now remembered details of my original "floating up and all singing (buzzing like bees) in unison" dream, out of reach by the cruel creator. I think very likely the floating up is

  (1) my 3-74 experience, not physically dying

  and

  (2) the floating up step is not merely a next stage in moving from place to place, but the recovery of awareness of identity as one of the "bees" or constituents of the universe-creature, restored not just a place, higher place, but the place. Bees buzzing and floating in unison equals restored as parts of Brahman.

  Indicative of this is the dream of coming from the "heavy world" here and "floating and buzzing joyfully" in the air. Obviously it's a state in this life, not death; this is the original now-lost state we came here in—as in Wordsworth's "Ode." ("Joy" may refer obliquely to Ode, i.e., "Ode to Joy.") We are in that state right after birth, are put in cages (social conditioning, learning, strictures) and finally leap up to ceiling (trapdoor): again up high, but not weightless; rather by effort (leaping) we are once again in that original unspoiled state: 3-74 equals a return to the original state right after birth—and then lost. In that state we are free of gravity which means free of determinism which means free of James-James, not to mention any and all foes such as the authorities; they did not expect us to (be able to) do what we did; "invisible" equals off this map room GHQ board, not sus ceptible to being tracked (watched) as predictable object glued to board by gravity. 3-74 is final state or goal of evolution: return to rightful state lost at birth: the heavy world (weight of conditioning, the "fall") has been thrown off.

  Perhaps after death, after achieving this in this life, instead of another birth here, the goal of enlightenment achieved, we can return to God—permanently, well envisioned as all of us in unison buzzing joyfully like bees (bits of him) as he (I mean it), the great universe-creature, breathes in and out, showing it (as I saw, and I wrote in Latin)
is a living vast organism. I understand now why, when I see it (noetically) it reminds me of bees: a colony of bees is a collective intelligence, par excellence. Awareness of the living universe creature and one's identity in it as one "bee" is not merely higher awareness: it is an absolute state of perception of actual conditions of being. All that varies is the duration or the state of total correct perception and self-awareness, which evidently can come at any time in any plane-level, Rome, here, or the next. We did not just (nearly) come from it and will eventually return: in reality we are there now, always have been, the journey is not physical but involves degrees of losing and gaining, motion toward (anamnesis) or away from (amnesia), this absolute perception. It is in fact waking up, which equals: becoming conscious. But, e.g., 3-74, it is not correct to say, "I stopped dreaming (this world) and awoke": what is correct is: a bit of Brahman passed from sleep to self-awareness: wakefulness. It is correct to say, "I came from God (Brahman) and will eventually return," but it is more correct to say, "I am part of Brahman now and have always been," since there is no condition or place where Brahman is not: vide "they reckon ill who leave me out/when me they fly I am the wings,"4 wings = another copula for the flying up and buzzing (beating wings) joyfully.

  Perhaps at the Christian end days this whole cluster wakes up collectively. Eschatology defines this as a temporary state of mankind, not so to speak our real state. Flying and buzzing (i.e., singing): a unity of unconsciousness (mode one): the wings and flying ("when me they fly," etc.) and consciousness: "and I the hymn the Brahman sings." All in all: unity: and the dreams point to Brahman for a certainty: ubiquity.

  Bees or: a cloud of gnats floating, singing hymns of worship joyfully to Brahman. Showing it to be everywhere, even in the lowly gnats: lowest and highest co-joined—and the most ethereal, beautiful thing I ever encountered:

  "... with leafy wings they flew."

  Folder 24

  JANUARY 1977

  [24:1] EB: "Brahman is the Creator, preserver, or transformer and reabsorber of everything. Brahman causes the universe and all beings to emanate from itself, transforms itself into the universe, or assumes its appearance." "God is the sole cause of his own modification, the emanation, existence and absorption of the universe." "The universe is considered a real transformation of Brahman, whose 'body' consists of the conscious souls in everything unconscious in their subtle states."

  It is evident that the divine which I saw outside me was Brahman (or is so called). I have discerned that it was also the sacred spark in me (Atman), and therefore my 3-74 experience was what is called liberation (obtained by only a few living, but generally after death, which is exactly what I thought).

  Nowhere, except in Brahmanism, do I find the description of the immanent all pervading divine stuff which I saw as the living force of causality, shining in the faces of the animals, in the trash of the gutter, in the stars—always in and behind, and subjectively experienced internally inside myself as an instructing tutelary voice and that which was aware and seeing the divine without which lay behind the phenomenological world; viz: "Brahman transforms itself into the universe or assumes its appearance."... Here and here only do I find an explanation for what I saw: in 3-74 I stopped hypostatizing, and there lay the divine stuff in place of everything. The they were gone: the it shone through. From what had been high, low, me, not me, small, large, important, trivial. Liberation, not theoretical but actual. This is the universe organism which I perceived to be the macrocosm—alive and unitary. Also it is believed in Hinduism that all this is personified—by Vishnu. If by he who is called Vishnu, then we can call this Christ—the personification to the Western world, in terms of our linear time cultural needs and v.p.

  My new religion turns out to be the oldest known.

  ***

  [24:13]

  [24:15] The basic theme in Stigmata, Ubik and Maze—the pleasant illusory skin stretched over a dreadful reality—stems from my early reaction to the two stories I read, one of the dying fly walking around in front of him; the other, the hidden underground city screaming. The cardinal fixed idea of all my writing has been this plus the theme: I am not (or he is not) what I think (I am) he is—in particular my (his) true identity is obscured by fake memories. (1) Reality is not as it appears to be and (2) I am not who and what I think I am. To put them together is to get: both inner and outer reality are not as they appear. The moment I read the two above mentioned stories I intuitively felt, "this is the way it is; this is so." Already. Before I myself ever wrote, I instinctively felt the insight to be correct. So my 3-74 vision of our really being in the black iron prison world, and the nice world we see being a delusion—that vision is tied to my entire intellectual life. Likewise my discovery in 3-74 that I am not who and what I think I am is central to my world-perception, and my corpus of writing an outgrowth and expression of it. So for me, in terms of the history of my world-perceptions, the vision of the external black iron prison and at the same time an inner transformation of me from my limited, false, ego identity to the immortal visitor (with memories of just having been in the black iron prison world) is an apotheosis of my own lifelong intimations—and a fruition of them, turning an intuitive intimation into direct experience and encounter—not to mention a shocking and unexpected verification of both themes.

  [24:25] It was (for me) as if the Garden (or park—I recall the words "the Buddha is in the Park"; is this the same park? The pastoral kingdom?) sort of swam into focus, the way we S-F writers describe an alternate world as doing when that track has been tinkered with, maybe in the past; cf. "Jon's world." This world did not become it so much as it replaced this world: locked in briefly in place of this world, exactly as the Roman one did, except that with the Park I did not see it as the way our earth really is but rather an alternate Earth! Instead of what it actually is. I could be wrong about this though; both worlds (mysteriously glimpsed as fading alternatively into focus) could be what we S-F writers call "two alternative presents branching off from a critical nexus or previous point in time, and which of them becomes real depends on some act or event back in the past"—as in that C.L. Moore novelette in Astounding about the two alternative futures hinging on which of two girls the guy marries in the present.5[...]

  One could also assess the two mysteriously glimpsed worlds as two opposite mutually contradictory "crypte morphoses" latent in our (present) world: two opposite outcomes hinging on the historical event taking place now. (This puts them—maybe correctly so—in the future—but as I say, I had the impression that the Palm Tree one won out, due to the success of the intervention which not only got Nixon out but ended the war.)

  [24:35] What I'm faced with at this point is the realization that I cannot really explain or comprehend what happened to me, and perhaps I never will. There are Jungian explanations, S-F explanations, occult explanations, plus ones I probably haven't thought of. But will. A power and entity as vast as the one I encountered in me and around me—if it doesn't deserve the name God I don't know what term to use for it.

  In answer to "what happened in 3-74?" the I Ching gives me #46: ascending, promotion, and comments, "The weak ascend." Interestingly, this hex has to do—not with expansion—but with vertical ascent: "direct rise from obscurity and lowliness to power and influence." Also, it is pushing upward associated with effort. And: "that which pushes upwards does not come back." It (the 5th line) says: "one pushes upward by steps," meaning: "one achieves one's will completely." Each line suggests a better pushing up, and this line is the culmination (the top is bad—but five is the ruler).

  What does this suggest? Vertical ascent—which is self-explanatory. But obviously spiritual ascent is meant. In which case I can forget the bizarre and outré explanations and zero in on the essential fact expressed by the I Ching's answer. A problem in such matters as this is that there is no one to explain it all to me, i.e., a guru. I can't find anyone I can ask or talk to. What I can deduce from this is probably that—

  Well, I
guess it's rare, or if not rare then no one who experiences this talks about it (or: can talk about it). I passed from one world and into an other—I sum it up like that. And: I ceased to be one thing, and became a better thing. And: I escaped illusion and reached reality.

  I guess I found release or liberation through recovering my lost memories, and, in that state, found my way back home, to God and His kingdom—the real goal of all men. What else can I say? What else need be said? What particulars? What elaborate theories?