The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  It is grid-like—the past is deeper, toward the center; the present is the edges.

  [27:102] When all illusion is shaken off, we, without intention or premeditation or intention arrive by this route to him: he is the end point—omega, and it is not a question of pistis, faith or conviction, but (as I experienced finally) an actual inner and outer empirical encounter with him, not belief that he exists (however correct such a belief would be) but Gnosis—direct knowledge.

  Is this the victory of Gnostic Christianity over faith Christianity? A return to the correct historic course? After all, he will be returning—doesn't this pave the way for that? He is/will be not our absent king anymore (deus absconditus) but our actual king returned. What most of all my 3-74 experience reveals is that again (after the lapse of almost 2,000 years) it is possible for man to know and hear God directly again, as in the days of the covenant-makers. The long silence by God is over; we can be caused—if properly led—to regenerate our lost—as Calvin put it—supernatural powers and regain our lost state; the prophesied rectification has begun.

  [27:103] Below is a new model of my journey:

  Starting at tilt point A (BIP 1974) I moved retrograde to 70 A.D., the actual point of intervention, and then returned. Not to B, but to rectified point A, the replacement world. For me to cross over from B to A, I had to move back to X and then advance again along the replacement 4th axis track.

  Perhaps the model should be drawn:

  If this model is correct, I as "changeling" or "cuckoo's egg" floating on the raft toward London, past Scotland Yard, am from another world, all right, with [blocked] memories of it, but where that world is is that it's an alternate world, not the far past (although I was briefly there), not the cyclum, not the future, not another planet, etc.—any of these.

  So my entire extraordinary 3-74 experience can be understood as a complex miracle: I was moved retrograde on my 4th (time) axis to a crucial juncture and then advanced (by our time three days later) back forward into what for me is not the same present but an alternate present, with memories to match. This is complex, but the experience was complex. I was taken on 3-18-74 and restored on December 16, 1928, in the alternate world.

  [27:106] If you insert an absolute event into a relative system, no matter how much the relative elements change, the absolute event is still there.

  In which case the value of my published writing is that it teaches us to look beneath (behind or below) the palpable landscape, to regard it only as a cunning veil, and to detect at last the absolute event—the 1st advent—which is the true landscape around us. Except in such works as Ubik, "Faith of Our Fathers," 3 Stigmata, TMITHC, "Electric Ant," Tears, etc., where is the concept (worldview) found in which another reality is found when the surface is peeled back layer by layer, exposing at last the absolute world? And in 3-74 I reached that absolute world; time and space peeled back—thousands of swept out layers peeled away in a matter of hours, and there lay Rome and the disciples: the true hidden persecuted despised [early] church which Luther speaks of. As the Greeks knew, the truly real does not ever change or depart—it always is.

  [27:107] Everything hinges on whether the 70 A.D. landscape is just a prior landscape or the prior one.

  Folder 34

  JUNE–JULY 1977

  [34:6] I am really in error when I talk about distinguishing, experiencing or recalling 3 worlds; there are 4:

  (1) The black iron prison (Rome/USSR/Fascist USA)

  (2) This our normal world.

  (3) The Garden world.

  (4) The experience of (2) under the "revealed" guise in which Zebra or the Logos was seen, including the set-ground separation into mundane versus holy; e.g., the "illuminated letter" (color) passage in Tears.

  What does that signify? Our world (2) is woven—by Zebra. It is not normally seen for what it is—a 3-D web by Zebra in which Zebra is (i.e., Zebra is not outside or above it but rather is concealed within it). Ah! The worm metamorphoses into the butterfly; that's what I saw: the old "worm" corpus of Zebra is being re-woven into the moth or butterfly transformed final state. This is the cocoon stage—these are not analogies! This is what I saw that I correctly sensed as a reweaving. It was not reweaving a construct by it, but its own physical body (self)—reweaving itself; this metamorphosis we see as the sum total of all change, which means: we see as the category (process) we call time. Thus Paul correctly—and significantly—says—"the universe is in birth pains." Something is being born; what we see is the embryo stage of a living entelechy, but I add more precisely, it is not just growing and developing, but undergoing what we know of (in the strict sense) as insect metamorphosis.

  What is important about this distinction (between mere growth versus metamorphosis) is that in such a metamorphosis, (1) constituents are fitted in newly to perform functions they didn't before; (2) some parts are discarded, and the change process exerted on the parts remolded may be subjectively experienced by them—not as growth—but as pressure, as pain—loss, stressful alteration. I'd almost say that what I saw was a "cannibalizing." I've got it now, though, this pinning down what I saw as a form of what we see in insect metamorphosis. Jesu! And to think I got the concept of Zebra from a book about insect mimicry! Is Zebra insect-like in other ways than this metamorphosis? Two insect qualities: camouflage mimicry, and morphological metamorphosis—the breaking down of the old to produce the new eidos! (morphe).

  And "St. Sophia's" voice: neutral, dispassionate. Neither male nor female.

  How much of our universe is involved? Just this planet? Not "the cosmos is—" nor "the universe is—" but perhaps this is just a world phenomenon (entity). No—I guess it to be trans-planetary. Very large. (A bit like the trans-system entity which was Palmer Eldritch.)

  The pulsing plasmic laser light color: its blood, so to speak.

  I must turn here to the Logos doctrine.

  It is not human but also not mechanical nor artificial—it is dispassionate insect-like—a benign one it is not pure energy; it has a physical body (insofar as anything is material or physical).

  This explains what Christianity cannot: pain and suffering; this is all part of its grand metamorphosis process.

  It thinks. And its thoughts have the force of will, to affect—"warp"—the outcome of physical causal processes.

  Deus absconditus—Ich sah es.

  Look at the positive—negentropic—value which change, all change, acquires from this "metamorphosis" discovery! Heraclitus was right; change is real, all right. But there is a theos, as Parmenides realized, an it which changes.

  Now to connect the Black Iron Prison world and the Garden world to the metamorphosis: the former is what it was; our world is the continually advancing state of the process going on; the garden world the tranquil outcome—the end state headed toward. Basically my speech (Metz17) is correct but not radical enough:

  The black iron prison is the corpus of the great it as it was; our world is the process metamorphosis, interim, of an insect-like camouflaged, mimicking organism. It was this whose "still small voice" spoke to Elijah.

  This breakthrough realization unifies all my themes:

  (1) What is reality really? Not what it appears.

  (2) There are "androids" or "the mantis" among us which appear human but only simulate humans.

  The key linking (1) and (2) is: simulate.

  Here is where I went wrong: the simulation is (1) not evil (as I thought) and it is not less than what it simulates (as I thought) but more: not clever simulacra-reflex machines, but angelic, and not a human here and there but our entire reality (or nearly—it does cast out—reject—parts of what it was and not incorporate them).

  As I said correctly in my U.K. speech, its mask fooled me: I was onto it, all right, when I wrote my U.K. speech. Behind Palmer Eldritch's cold cruel mask lies the visage of a totally harmless and virtually defenseless organism—vide how easy it was to kill Christ, it born into human form, which it is about to try again with hope (ex
pectation, knowledge) of success this time!

  [34:11] Insect characteristics:

  (1) group mind ("hive of bees")

  (2) metamorphosis of insect sort (chrysalis into final form)

  (3) "neutral" (or "AI") voice ... dispassionate

  (4) mimicry

  (5) very old

  (6) programming

  (7) fierce mask (especially in O. Test)

  This "insect" metamorphosis which I saw is precisely that which God refers to when he says, "Look! I am building a new heaven and a new earth, and the memory of the former things ..." etc.

  In insect metamorphosis, contrasted to entelechy growth, you have a continual breaking down of the old—which we do experience! This is precisely where the things we don't understand come in: pain, loss, stress.

  It is a moth—the luminous "moth" descending. And moths are precisely the life form which mimics (the Palmer Eldritch fearsome mask).

  What we call "time" is the metamorphosis—change of the moth as it passes from what it first was to what it will finally be. From our standpoint, it could reach its final state suddenly and unexpectedly at any time—hence all the eschatological aspect of our religion. The parousia is very precisely the moment at which it ends its in-time change process, its becoming, and abruptly is (in final form).

  State one: the black iron prison

  Now: this middle world

  Later in time: the palm tree garden

  Finally: the sky and sea and Aphrodite world, which may be a primordial state lost (the fall) to which the metamorphosing moth is returning. Guess there really was a fall, so this metamorphosis is a repairing.

  Folder 33

  AUGUST 1977

  [33:7] The other night as I was going to sleep I was wondering who could "de-stegenographize" the hidden material in my writing—and the spirit responded with "[those who are] conscious."

  Folder 35

  JULY 1977

  [35:3] Something I never considered before is this: since—not if but since (as I know from my own experience), this divine entity can transfer knowledge to our minds, of the most complex and deep sort, why doesn't it clear up these mysteries about its nature once and for all? (1) to all Christendom; (2) or just even to me? I learned from it all sorts of things, but—such mystery remains. Or does it? Is not the [only] limitation that of our own limited conceptualizing faculties? It is not intrinsically mysterious—it is only a mystery to our limited minds and experience. That which reveals, and confers knowledge, can't be accused of creating mystery. What it does, I guess, is disclose the existence of mysteries—in the sense of the deepest core of meaning at the ontological heart of reality. It points to, as one points to or out, say, a sculpture—the thing which is. Not a mere verbal explanation but directly at the thing itself, to be contemplated as the final is. (Cf. Heraclitus: "the Oracle does not answer yes or no—it instead gives a sign [Zeichen] meaning."18)

  [35:6] In Time Out of Joint the world is a fake, and specifically the real world is another time-segment. My initial revelation in 3-74 was that the time was really around 70 A.D.—not later but earlier, a reversal of Joint. Yet, the basic intimation is there, fully, in Joint; this is all a cunningly fabricated delusion, the world we see, and the basic delusion has to do with the true temporal locus. Since Joint was S-F I naturally put the real time in the future, not the past. Damn it, I've overlooked the extraordinary parallels between Joint and my "it's really 70 A.D.!" experience. E.g.: the dream I had of the dark, old-fashioned house with the archaic window shades, the cracked mirror—and realizing I couldn't get out of that world without God's help. My incessantly-recurring dream of the 1126 Francisco St. house—that's where I lived when I wrote Joint—that was the fake world of the novel, and resembles the miserable old house in Placentia dream. Is there some clue in my 1126 Francisco St. dream? It was with Joan that I so recently saw it again, after many years. Maybe I have a soul which leaves my body in sleep and goes back in time (and, as in 3-74, forward).

  Back in the 50s when I lived at 1126 Francisco St. actually, as expressed in Joint that world seemed unreal; in actuality, "it was decades later" (in Joint). But now that it is decades later, that past time and place seems real (or anyhow the past somehow) and this a fake. And, as I say, it is also astonishing how in '74 I foresaw the Sonoma events of the past three months! What is my real relationship to time? I experience the near past, the near future, and the very far past; a lot of my soul or psyche seems to be transtemporal ... maybe this is why any given present space time seems somehow unreal or delusional to me. I span across and hence beyond it; always have—and the transtemporal is the eternal, the divine, the immortal spirit. How long have I been here, and how many times? Who or what am I, and how old?

  Reality outside confronts me as a mystery, and so does my own inner identity. The two are fused. Who am I? When is it? Where am I? This sounds like madness. But when I read the Scriptures I find myself in the world which is to me real, and I understand myself. The Bible is a door (3:5?19).

  Folder 36

  AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 1977

  [36:18]

  Dream: opening huge carton and taking out large electronic artifact. Below it is a solid wall, a rectangle of beef. Under it is every kind of religious (Christian) writing imaginable, even sentences covered (stegenographia) by a glued-in paper strip with a replacement sentence. I try to interest everyone in the theological material, but they are like the harness bull who preceded Sergeant Kelly: totally uninterested. It is as if the religious material is crazy. There is no reconciliation between the world (of nature) represented by the huge rectangle (wall) of beef and the layer of religious information under it: the implication is that if you believe in the reality of the wall of flesh (sarx?) you can't see any sense in the religious info below, and the wall of beef is certainly real—you have to believe in it. But on the other hand, what is the relationship between the wall of beef and the great electronic artifact? As between the religious writing and the wall of beef, there is no reconciliation between the wall of beef and the artifact. I am sure that the religious writing equals the computer punched tape in "Electric Ant" and the computer of the Persus 9 in Maze, which can't be read intrinsically but which gives rise to the world of flesh or nature which again in turn gives rise to the artificial world of mechanical/electronic constructs. 3 levels or layers are represented. No one wishes to take seriously the deepest one (except me). The logos, the word, is represented; that which is written gives rise to the living world (creatures, nature) which in turn gives rise to our artificial environment. If we place ourselves in the top world (artificial construct) we are totally walled off—have no knowledge or contact with—the logos substratum, nor, if it is called to our attention can we see any merit in it: if ➋ is real and rational, ➊ is not. It is even hard, if not impossible, to comprehend ➋ (when one starts with ➌), which is given in the dream as the starting point of view. ➋ itself is difficult to explain: how does it relate to ➌? But at least it isn't "crazy," the way ➊ looks. But put another way, ➊ gives rise to ➌ via ➋, a fascinating thought. So the origins of the technological world—the manufactured, the constructed, lies ultimately in a sort of hidden punched out tape just as the false world of Delmak-O arose from Persus 9's computer. ➋, the world of flesh and nature, totally hides the true origin of ➌. It is by a thorough study of the relationship between ➋ and ➌ that the relationship between ➊ and ➋ can be understood. As ➊ is to ➋, ➋ is to ➌. We live somewhere between ➋ and ➌, never (as the Persus crew never suspected while in polyencephalic fusion) suspecting ➊. What the dream reveals is not just that we, like they, have a punched out computer tape programming us, but tells, too, that it is Christian, in fact Biblical in essence: i.e., Christianity is our punched out tape. All the thousands of large written pages of books which I saw—the books themselves—were our "punched out computer tape"—i.e., the source of our natural/living world, which totally obscures its origins (causes). Given a random fistful of th
e ribbon of info, we can make no sense out of it.

  The fascinating thing is that a glimpse of our "punched tape" exhibits (to us) nothing that makes sense. We do get glimpses of bits of it; e.g., the Bible and apocryphal books.

  Even more revealingly, as TV image is to human, human is to logos. I should examine the profound implications that the Maze model of punched-tape programming simulating a shared reality is an accurate model of our own world. Such a model (with Christian archetypes as the punch-outs) would go a long way to explain what I saw in 3-74 on. Plato's Edoloi theory must be modernized. Put another way, Plato's concept of the real world (of forms) was a primitive pre-technological attempt to describe what is more accurately described by the logos theory which resembles what I described in Maze.

  But look: ➊, the punched out computer tape, resembles the world of ➌ more than it does the intermediary (separating) world of nature, ➋. As in "a chicken is an egg's way of producing another egg," ➌ is ➊'s way of replicating itself. It could even be argued that we—all living creatures—are primarily carriers of information: the DNA coding. The 3-2-1 layers dream suggests not just that an informational world underlies the opaque surface of the natural world but, even more specifically it is the Christian Holy-Spirit-inspired scriptures. These texts are not a description of events, past, present and future (i.e., of or about reality) but the cause of reality. Evidently this verbal information consists of a series of ideas (cf. Plato!) which, when thought by Zebra, are printed out in our world throughout its [linear time] "length," not at space/time x and/or y but throughout: i.e., as always enacted (i.e., always present, being from outside time). I have the impression that a particular story is being told (repeatedly?), that which Daniel tells of Babylon, and the giant with feet of clay, etc. In this apocalyptic book the basic archetypes show up, but there are additional themes in the NT as well; this is why material from "Acts" as well as from "Daniel" show up in Tears. The deepest level of reality (an informational, verbal one) is what is shown in Ubik; helpful, guiding and informing words rising as it were to the surface (➊ rising up into ➋). Is it not a super extraordinary idea that the deepest level of reality is verbal? But the reason for this can be found in the Hindu view of immanent mind: the words are the thoughts of the immanent deity. Then were the great pages of writing which I repeatedly saw in 3-74 the thoughts of Brahman? (i.e., Zebra). Human history is the story which he/it is thinking. But the real human history is that of salvific activity, especially the 2nd and 1st incarnations which consist of the thinking deity entering his/its own dream/story as a (as the) protagonist, and, once in it, he/it falls victim to its laws, including injury and death. If Maze is retained as the paradigm, he is the only one of the 14 members of the settlement on Delmak-O who remembers their pre-polyencephalic fusion, and hence who knows that Delmak-O is a totally illusory world (Maya, Dokos). This certainly indicates that my anamnesis was due to the active intervention (and theolepsy) by Christ. Taken over by him (at 3-74) I saw level ➊ penetrating up through and into (and to an extent replacing) level ➋. The landscape of level ➊ is biblical (e.g., Rome, early Christians, God breaking through into time, etc.). I did not see an earlier form of ➋ but the timelessness archetypal landscape of ➊.