The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  The entire 3-74 experience can be understood in terms of my—at that time—being completely, rather than as usual only partly—able to actually distinguish (literally see) final cause at work and the entity doing it. Hence I came to say in my U.K. speech: "We see the universe backward." To me, efficient causality is "backward." Normally, though, efficient causes probably rule—but not during '74. The teleological force (cause source) seems to be divine; by its very nature it would be what would awe us as sacred and enormous. It is said to be the Holy Spirit of God or of Christ.

  Although I have written this insight down calmly, it may be objectively one of my most important discoveries. For I can concretely and precisely now say what I saw and what it was doing and how (i.e., reaching backward into the antecedent universe). So much for any view ever by me that I was merely nuts.

  [27:15] I must make sure in depicting Zebra in the novel to show it working backward in time.

  [27:18] Paul Williams13 visited today and I told him about Zebra. I am beginning to see in my mind's eye, Zebra itself, an actual animal, a striped horse. Shy and merry and mischievous, half hiding in the forest at the far edge of the Heide, the sun shining, and Zebra playfully advancing and then just when you think he's going to emerge fully and separate himself from the trees—suddenly and unexpectedly he retreats and absolutely vanishes. You can't coax him out, or lure him; you can't get your hands on him. His white is the dazzle of the sun; his dark stripe the shadows in the glade and forest " ... where, amid the shadowy green/the little things of the forest live unseen." Ah, Zebra—why really did I choose that name for you? You mythical lovely beast of sun and safe shadow; I saw you once but can never—as if you are some fabled deity—prove to anyone that you exist. I inform them, I try to take them along with me to the special spot from which I saw you—and you're not there. But I sense the glint in your eye and your smile of understanding amusement. Are you the joy god Dionysos of root and star? of dark forest and the melting butter gold of the sun? What a psychological symbol Jung would have known you to be—playful and unpredictable, shy. Pawing the ground the sharp hooves, goat hooves—oh, goat god Dionysos! I recognize you: you are too wise, too experienced with our dangerous race ever to expose yourself to harm at our hands. We would kill and freeze you into stasis—hypostasis, and all your pawing and advancing and disappearing and smile—light would become dead glass, warm butter only hide—dead, frozen—but this is only your exoskeleton! Inside this form which I glimpse, you are motion and rapid change: electrons? Sheer bioplasmic energy? I love you, I want to grip you, but you are elusive. But I am not disappointed; you are all the lovely passing persons, things and events I would want to freeze, to stop dead. Thank God I can't; Zebra, my clutching, hugging, yearning embrace would kill you, my needs kill. My fingers are the claws of the petrified dead, yearning to hold your life. Better this petrified fossil that I am should stay dead so that you can live on in immortality. Thank you; thank you for hiding from me, thank you for your wise caution and your secret smile. Thank you for not staying but—

  You once told me I'd hear the sound again—the temple bells—bells that you wear, jingling bells. Please, Zebra—please. Don't wait too long; I am in a lot of pain and can be in more. I want to hear again, hear more. Please. Equus dei, qui tollis mala fortuna mundi, meus amicus—libera mi domini.14

  Vater:—hilfe! oh weh!

  Vater:—hilfe! oh weh!

  Vater:—hilfe! oh weh!

  Last night I dreamed about an orchard of trees with pink cherry blossoms—that same pink color of immortality and God. This time as spring. But a man was cutting the branches down. My watch ran backward and sideways—I didn't know the time, and when someone told me it was too late I thought, "It's because Tess isn't here; she kept the time right."

  But at least I've seen the healing pink again, identified with trees and spring.

  [27:21] My mental picture of Zebra: he is shy and timid and white and the smile—I saw it that night I smoked the angel's dust. Dionysos/Erasmus!

  So "Erasmus" was Zebra was Dionysos—the joy God!

  "Erasmus" introduces the quality of wisdom!

  ***

  [27:37] I think what means the most to me about Zebra is that when I saw him I saw our rightful king—glimmering and darting and flowing like electricity and fire and water. "Bruderschaft! Der Konig Kommt!"15 And I saw him: powerful now, able to arrange and [hence] direct events, their outcome: shaping the world, the Holy presence, so beautiful and magical. When will he appear to take the throne openly? Er kommt, er kommt. I know a great secret: he is here.

  [27:38] Q: Did a (the) Great mind enter mine? Or did I enter it?

  [27:40] I don't think it enters humans all that often. Or there would be more experiences of this kind reputed in history. Or: those people thus assimilated are hip enough to keep it to themselves, forming an invisible "true church" of the esoteric. I say at this point, it was the "uncut stone" flung—I am sure. It did intervene; it does not customarily do this or we'd know—or would we? We don't know now. Herewith the mimicry: it disappeared into objects and events—totally. To see it you had, temporarily, to be it. I know this because (1) Tessa saw nothing, and (2) no one else has said anything. This is why my "Zebra" concept is required: to explain why no one saw/sees/has seen anything.

  [27:41] "The Lost Voices of the Gods," Time, March 14, 1977, on Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Man was bicameral until around 2000 B.C. He could hear the "voices of the Gods" coming from the speech center of his right hemisphere; then he lost bicamerality and became monocameral.

  My theory: the loss of bicamerality is what we call "the Fall." We could no longer "walk and talk" with God. Well, to restore bicamerality is now theoretically again possible—cf. Ornstein and Bogen on bilateral hemispheric parity. This forthcoming event will mark the end of the period of the Fall. Our sin is self-centered monocamerality.

  What, then, are "the Gods," those who the sibyls at Delphi heard? A higher life form than us. Where located? Here and there anyhow, our monocameral consciousness must have been a sort of revolt against them—we were cut off. But they still exist (or are back). I heard one or the one. I in 3-74 became temporarily bicameral and in-by-so doing achieved what Christ sought for us: I entered the Kingdom, which equals a restoration of the long lost bicamerality. We lost it circa 2000 B.C. 2,000 years later he came down here—was incarnated here—to restore bicamerality. Maybe something went wrong—he was rejected, his true teaching lost. Now the chance comes again. St. Sophia, reborn, will teach us how to restore bicamerality. We will no longer be cut off from the Gods (noös, God, etc.), we will be whole again, not half men.

  Jaynes' theory fills in some vital missing parts. Originally we possessed bilateral hemispheric parity—I had guessed that. Our right brains are dormant. Bilateral hemispheric parity is not an evolutionary leap upward in one sense—in that sense it is a restoration. But this time there will be consciousness, not unconsciousness, in the two hemispheres. So in that sense it is evolutionary. Anyhow, the state I was in in 3-74 is it....

  "Did the right side of the brain produce divine speech?" Time's caption asks. "The Oracles of Delphi"—wow.

  I guess I'm a pioneer, along with other pioneers, in "the Brain Revolution." I've had the bicameral experience, and my theorizing isn't bad, either, my exegesis. [...]

  "He [man] became 'bicameral': the left side of the brain for speech, and the right hemisphere produced the inner commands. Eventually, the voices were attributed to kings and Gods." But this broke down sometime between 2000 and 1000 B.C. Why Jaynes' "best guess: man was somehow jolted into awareness (!) by social chaos. Vast migration, invasion and natural catastrophes drove the wedge of consciousness between God and man. Man became modern." "Even so, newly conscious man tried desperately to reawaken the silent Gods, turning to oracles, seers," etc. "In the OT the voices of Yahweh and prophets grow silent, replaced by subjective men wrestling with unanswered questions
." Wow. And to think that as early as my 11th grade physics class I got an inner answer from "the Gods"—which I had prayed for! Thus I say, the Gods are no longer entirely silent; bicamerality is resurfacing at last after 3 to 4 thousand years! Well, Christ, 2,000 years ago, didn't just hear the voices; he was the voice(s). And will be again.

  [27:45] Thus rather than asking how come I could see him I should ask, why don't we see him normally? What hinders us? and how? A "command by the God"? This is similar to my insight that it isn't that the Gods have become silent; it is that although they are still here and still speak—and write—we have, ourselves, become unable either to see or hear them.

  [27:47] If as Jaynes figures, the Gods are in our right hemispheres (but now "silent") I amend this to say, "the Gods, still in our right hemispheres, still command us, but now do so without our knowing (1) of them being there; and (2) that they so command us—one of their (its) commands being, "you hear nothing and do not know that you do as we say." I.e., we still obey but do not consciously hear the commands we obey—and these inner commands write in synchronized unison with stimuli—triggers—lying external to us—i.e., outside, in things, assemblies and events to which we are caused to react. The command voice may be "in" our heads, in our right hemispheres as Jaynes figures, but Zebra lies objectively outside too.

  [27:49] The "Thomas" personality always had existed, always had exercised definitive control, but unbeknownst to the left. "Thomas" did not "wake up," he just thresholded. So I say to Jaynes: the Gods' voices only seem to have become silent. They still operate us but we are commanded to be oblivious to this. Just as Zebra operates externally always but we can't see him, the "Thomases" operate internally and we're unaware of them equally; and I say they—Zebra and the Thomases—are one and the same. Then "Thomas" was my experience with the mind of Zebra, and "Thomas'" characteristics are his; I apprehended Zebra from "without" and "within."

  [27:61] 3/25 on listening to Beethoven's middle piano sonatas: recollection of the 3-74 passion for and understanding of freedom. But freedom for what? Why, to become whole; it makes sense only if we understand ourselves as entelechies trying—needing—and deserving to become complete, to finish the task of becoming what we are—a process of all entelechies; the doing is not to persist but to become whole.

  [27:65] The key to all this is memory—the trace deposits of the past, which in their pure form in the Logos are the creators of immortality (retrieval and permanence). First we observe and/or participate; this lays down memory traces in us; then collectively we can be utilized as storage spools, memory centers forming over the millennia a total memory center (matrix). Proof of this? That in my brain which was 47 years old, retrieval dating back two to three thousand years—and the analog person thereof—was retrieved—which was no accidental byproduct of the 3-74 experience but the very success of it, the core of it itself: my 47 year old brain able to print out that enormously long-term memory, and restore to life that person although he had long ago physically died. Likewise in this way, at any given later time, I can be retrieved.

  I am one of those who not only knows that those who sleep in death will awaken, but I know how (and I know it, too, by gnosis, not pistis). Thus I see now that the fact of anamnesis is tied in with the basic, informational quality of the universe. After all, it was information (the golden fish sign and spoken words) which retrieved me, whereupon I then could distinguish other higher information and learn from it.

  Suppose the human mind is regarded as an information repository. If you know what signal to convey to it, this human mind (brain) can "print out" (summon back) whole buried [for millennia] entelechies—if you know the right signal (i.e., disinhibiting stimulus-button to press) and the consciousness of that brain doesn't even know it has it.

  "Thomas" was "summoned" to do what only he (not I) could do—the right signal given the "computer"! and its memory bank fired.

  Then we are not just repositories of info—we are repositories of the sleeping dead.

  [27:77] Starting in 1951, 26 years ago, I began in my stories (and then novels) to make certain very serious guesses about the nature of reality: Questioning if it was really there, out there (not in here), and, if so, if out there, what it really was like. In Tears in '70, just about 20 years after I began to ask, I began to try to answer. There are no answers in Tears, not even later on in Scanner—but for me as the asker in 3-74 the answer (singular) came: What is out there really is the same as what is in here really—i.e., what I call Zebra, which probably is either Christ—the cosmic Christ—or Brahman—or a reality-web forming, mandating AI-like entity which observes us, sets up problems for us, and assists us in solving them, and at the same time teaches us, and, as it teaches, sorts us into different groups for postmortem assigning into a totality of a hive-like corporate system. It takes great pains to occlude us perceptually, evidently not wishing to "contaminate" its results. But I did over a 26 year period ask the right questions, and so, in 3-74, it did answer, which suggests an AI knowing system once more: one must know it is there or guess a little correctly to "punch the buttons" which cause it to answer. People have not gotten it to answer before because they did not guess it was alive and hence did not question it. The universe resembles a teaching machine, and part of the problem (i.e., learning) is to discern just precisely that.

  So now at last, my earlier work finally in focus, that work, or search, draws successfully to an end. I need not necessarily add a final explanation to the 26-year work output; it, going from "Roog" to Scanner is intrinsically complete; the answer lies in the question, and "'Roog' to Scanner" is the question. I have been [already] successful, but only now could I see it. Hosanna! It is a teaching AI "machine" (system) but it only answers what you ask; it is up to you to ask.*

  I now know the answers to the Q's I asked in the 50s and 60s: it finally yielded—"moved." Q: What is it? A: "It is alive."

  (1) God is alive.

  (2) The universe is God's body.

  ∴ The universe is alive.

  —

  (1) God is wise.

  (2) God physically is the universe.

  ∴ The universe is wise.

  —

  (1) God is one.

  (2) God is the universe expressed in time and space.

  ∴ The universe is one.

  —

  (1) God is benign, etc. Purposeful, etc. All-knowing, etc.

  [27:96] Also, the reversion to past is along the form axis, as in Ubik. The temporal axis of the universe, when seen properly as spatial, consists of these infinite numbers of transparency-thin layers superimposed. For any entity seeing time correctly as this spatial axis of sequence (layers) and growth, it is possible to move "backward in time" or more accurately, down through the layers.

  When I saw the phosphene graphics I saw movement, a peeling away. Movement in space. But the real axis along which they permutate is normally experienced (by us) as time. The layers of graphics were not being added to but peeled off, so I was seeing backward (downward) into the past.

  Perhaps each graphic (colored transparency picture) was an edola. Each graphic which I saw was beneath (within, inside) the previous one. In a certain real sense I was traveling backward in time—back to Rome c. A.D. 70. What was really unpeeling backward deeper and deeper were the layers of my own mind primarily. We ourselves consist of millions of accretional layers built up (added onto) over thousands of years; we are like barnacles. We travel along this spatial axis of layers laid down each new one upon the last, the whole, building up deeper and deeper ("the man contains—not the boy—but the former man," Joe Chip16 says—and rightly!).

  So we continually move—upward, adding layer after layer at "flash-cut" velocity. Viewed externally, we would see us all as a very large number of interlinked "rods" advancing, growing, in a unity, a system, toward completion or rather full term: birth. The total system (universe) is a—resembles—an embryo. It is partially alive, all of it moving and changing (i.e., grow
ing). But not growing in the mere sense of expanding; it is a developing entelechy. Nothing which it "was" (i.e., lower inner layers) is/are lost, any more than when I stack up poker chips as I add each new one are the earlier ones lost. Consciousness in each individual advances at the latest layer, but the prior ones are contained and can be retrieved. Memory is the retrieval; anamnesis is the return, actually, to a lower level, a literal trip back down along this spatial axis, both inwardly (totally) and outwardly (partially, in that the inner deeper—lower, earlier—layer reached somehow has an external perceptual analog, perhaps by projection): i.e., one sees—is back in—again—the time-layer one has returned to.

  To understand this one must imagine the individual as a rod or column spanning a very large number of ongoing lives, one after another, but always accruing (as well as sequential)—these long rods pass—thrust—outward (rather than just upward) as the universe-entelechy grows. There is a growth from small, simple, slow to more intricate and complex and rapid. I see it (envision it) as a geometrical "jungle gym," a 3-D network progressively elaborating itself. One way it does this is by a continually growing development and transfer of knowing (awareness), by means of transferred information throughout the interstices or stations.