The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  It certainly is odd (i.e., an odd coincidence) that in Maze I assign to the mentufacturer the power to roll back time, though. However, a closer scrutiny of the Delmak-O world in Maze would show that he has that power due to the illusory quality of that world. Perhaps if it were real, time (even by God) could not be rolled back; put another way, if you discover that, in your world, time can (I guess by God) be rolled back, you can correctly deduce that your world is illusory. And then: what is exposed when that time, by the deity, is rolled back? I discerned a landscape of apocalyptic [biblical] archetypes. Presumably that world (like the control room of the spaceship Persus 9) is the real world; it is not just an infinite series of illusions.

  Level ➊ (the Logos) generated a world so substantial (so to speak opaque) as to conceal it—➊—totally.

  If I am correct about all this, then I say, the 1st advent was a palpable breaking-through of the supreme entity (mind—i.e., Holy Wisdom) of level ➊ into level ➋, the sole time it took place conspicuously. But in 3-74 I was shown—in my own novel Tears a breaking-through of info from level ➊ right on past ➋ and into level ➌! In level ➌ there is such a vast component of (verbal) information that info properly a part of level ➊ blends invisibly in. All the "Acts" and "Daniel" (the dream) stuff in Tears is a perfect example of that. I virtually conclude that level ➊ deliberately evolves ("programs") level ➋ forward toward oral speech, then writing. And at last the sort of titanically verbal (informational) construct world of the computer, etc., level ➌ becomes more and more like ➊. It is thought producing thought through the intermediary stage of flesh/body/material/nature—a replication, a giving birth. Is this not a description of the 1st advent and more so the 2nd advent? Level ➊ thrusts through ➋ and manifests itself in ➌: foremostly, in the Scriptures. But not limited to them (as Tears testifies to, and as Ubik depicts, and now I'm beginning to include Maze). Holy Wisdom exists before all creation (i.e., the material universe). Then it creates or helps create the material universe—i.e., level ➋. Then it incarnates in level ➋ but expressing itself verbally—in terms of thoughts, words, concepts, etc., all of which add up to Holy Wisdom which is its essence. But level ➋ does not find it acceptable; it is killed and returns to level ➊ from whence it came. However, it will try (incarnate, be born) in level ➋ again as a means of raising level ➌ into an authentic replication of level ➊.

  Zebra, which I saw undergoing metamorphosis, invisible to us normally, is evolving on level ➊ but will eventually invade level ➌, assimilating it to itself and infusing it with essence (reality). This means that level ➋ is nothing more than a means to an end. A sentient being (Brahman) is giving birth to sentient being, ➌, which ➋ is not. ➋ must be regarded as a womb ("receptacle of being"), a kind of hatching "egg." The living, sentient product of this "egg" replicates the "parent" of the "egg." Thus I say, the ubiquitous immanent being, of level ➊, does not divide (e.g., binary fission, etc.) but creates an intermediary—and perhaps temporary—state which in a certain literal sense is not truly real, except as a source for what ultimately will be real—level ➌. This level ➌ certainly resembles Teilhard de Chardin's Noösphere. We can expect level ➋ to be generating progressively more replicatory aspects of its own source: level ➊. The ultimate true birth is exactly what is depicted in Ubik: the wise information breaking through reality (through ➋ from ➊), thus ➌ will more and more resemble ➊, level ➋ will be effaced by the ➊ qualities of ➌. I foresee in all this eventually a final absorption of ➋, entirely, by ➌, so that ➊ and ➌ are joined [directly] as a monism. Our first intimation of this elimination process would be the abrupt first incarnation into our ➋ world of the embodiment of ➊ itself, a sort of leap "over" ➋ (more breaking through). This can be expressed two ways:

  (A) A weakening of the reality of ➋, i.e., the natural environment or world.

  (B) As ➋ becomes less real and more dream like, less substantial, fragments of ➊ would appear in (break through into) it: surfacing, as it were: swimming to the surface of ➋ but not actually being part of ➋. These bits would be: (x) contours of ➊'s topology; (y) verbal bits, which would be closer to the heart of ➊.

  (A) and (B): the combination of these two processes would produce a stability of the so-to-speak amount of ontological essence of the empirical world, but continually there would be a cryptic or subtle metamorphosis of the world as ➋ aspects lessen and ➌ grow, the ratio continually changing irrevocably in the direction of ➊ intruding and ➋ diminishing. Our life spans are too short to experience this metamorphosis, except that the rate of acceleration of ➌ is now conspicuous. We are not aware that ➌ is not merely a product of ➋ but rather/also a thrusting through ➋ of ➊. ➌ must be regarded as ➊ ultimately restated; the material universe is a temporary expedient, the egg between hen and hen, ➌ finally will be identical to ➊, as near as I can discern, whereas ➋ is a "polyencephalic delusion" (at least it is becoming so [now]).

  When ➌ is completed it will be the "new heavens and new earth" and that "which will never enter the mind nor come up into the heart" will have been ➋. It is interesting that the Corpus Christi (completed ➌) must pass through ➋ rather than springing directly from ➊. Not only the things (objects of ➋) are turned into a womb by ➊ for ➌ but the sentient beings of ➋ are so used: i.e., the Holy Spirit possesses them the way externally Zebra transubstantiates objects and processes.

  What I saw in 3-74 (Rome) is a vivid example of ➊ showing through ➋ to ➌, if by ➌ you mean me: the new self within me perceiving—finally—its origin, its home: ➊. And even the B.I. Prison: I had been/was there, too, as an early Christian. The Atman fusing with the Brahman: ➌ fusing with ➊ and bypassing ➋—so ➋ is identified as Maya. So I ask, where, in ➌, is ➊ being primarily born? I'd have to answer: most likely in the most sentient parts of ➌, which could well be human minds (insofar as this planet is concerned). This makes of each of our heads a receiver-transducer of emanations from ➊: if we evolve far enough we—perhaps suddenly—hear and see past ➋—thick as it is—to the words, books and pages of ➊. However, I am speaking of conscious reception; in point of fact, bits of ➊ are forever ubiquitously reaching us subliminally imbedded in and indistinguishable from info in ➌ deriving out of ➋.

  What must be remembered is that the vast gulf between ➌ and ➋ is equally great between ➋ and ➊. In certain respects ➊ would resemble ➌ (i.e., verbal material) but: it would seem to be nuts. Crazy, cryptic verbal material—as inscrutable as the punched tape intrinsically in Maze.

  Under very unusual circumstances a person might lose contact with ➋ and relate directly to ➊, but this would amount virtually to a trip ahead in time, because the delusional ➋ is still with us, still a barrier between ➌ and ➊; if for any reason a person saw through ➋ and related to ➊ he would be in the strange position of experiencing the distant past and future simultaneously: (A) he would see as still extant ancient archetypes hazed over in ➋ and (B) he would in his own time experience what for other people would only come later when ➋ peters out entirely. At first he would recapitulate the past, then phase over into prophesized events: i.e., to end-time events. The whole story being narrated (or thought) by the deity would disclose itself to him. And, oddly, he would be deluged with books and pages of writing, since the apparatus he was plugged into is primarily computer-like (teaching machine and library like).

  The Bible is a fusion of ➊, ➋ and ➌, of most use is that of a doorway to ➊, available to minds locked into ➌, read in a way excluding ➋ to which it unceasingly relates. The time rate (flow) of the Bible is the true time rate; that of ➋ is not—is deluding in fact, giving a spurious impression (record) of a great deal of passing time. Piercing by ➌ to ➊, or by ➊ upward into ➌ it is between 70–90 A.D., i.e., just following the 1st advent and just before the 2nd.

  My God—the Bible is the story which the punched computer tape of ➊ is printing out via ➋, directly fulfilling ➌
! I can deduce this from the biblical elements in, e.g., Tears. It is ➊ incising onto ➌ via ➋. Tears is a mixture of ➊ and ➌. The only other way the elements of ➊ could appear in my writing would be racial memory, but the "racial memory" would deal with realm ➊ underlying ➋ anyhow, so just the why, not the what, would be changed (i.e., the reason I linked up to ➊ directly, bypassing ➋).

  To sum up: realm ➋ is being spun or woven into realm ➌ which is a replication of realm ➊ which is doing the spinning and weaving.

  So the material universe is a womb in which a single but 3-aspect VALIS is replicating itself; that which the material universe will give birth to is the offspring of the original sentient entity but probably the entity and its offspring will constitute one single realized organism, not two, since it is self-generating. That (entity or offspring) which it will produce, then, is itself. We see the universe backward: the creator lies at the end or Omega point: forming (directing) creation teleologically, from its outcome backward.

  [36:29]

  Folder 31

  OCTOBER 1977

  [31:18] All these instances I've found of "divine" (logos or Gnostic) truths (material) inserting in my writing—it's not inserted; this is just one elongated instance of the natural process of the orthogonal Koinos thrusting up from within/below, such books as Ubik being both instances of and accounts about the upward thrusting which is going on—for me, the supreme moment arriving in 3-74. [...]

  Had my 3-74 experience not occurred, I might suppose my 26 year writing theme to be vain, empty and foolish. I now for the first time see my writing as half I and my 3-74 experience as half II of a total experience: a surmise and search—then, abruptly, a finding, as the veil lifted (even though briefly). What happened in 3-74 was that the real, the thrusting-through world which I intuited, proved actually to be there, and not only that, to be accessible (under certain circumstances); not only could it be looked for, it could be found. Rome c. A.D. 70 was nothing more or less than the Persus 9 of Maze, and this linear time world of 1976/7 A.D. proved to be nothing more than such pseudo worlds, taken to be real, as in Ubik, Joint, and Maze and 3 Stigmata. Yet, it has taken me literally years since 3-74 to see that as Persus 9 is to Delmak-O, Rome c. A.D. 70 is to U.S. A.D. 1974. I never anticipated such a tremendous payoff (breakthrough), despite the fact that the corpus of my writing is a map, an analysis, and a guide. The 26 years of writing, without 3-74, is a map of nothing, and 3-74, without the body of writing, is conceptually inexplicable.

  [31:64] On the Doonesbury TV special the overthrow of Nixon was spoken of, by a child, as "the revolution," and the counterculture adult who participated in it said, "Even the trees agree." Pure (undefiled) nature has cast away its hull of that which is dead, which halts growth, which stifles and kills the life-spirit within. The bushel basket over the lantern—the mystery and paradox is that at the very innermost core of what seems to be evil lies a pure burning light—"the light of the world" which the rescuers from outside—beyond—the farthest ring have come (penetrated) to liberate—and to reunite with themselves, as the source of light. [...]

  Rescue, then, in the final analysis, is a healing, reuniting of that which was originally one but which somehow broke apart when bits or a piece of it fell down here and was forthwith imprisoned. The sparks which fell were coated by layer upon layer of the inert, the opaque, the dead and death-dealing-rinds which caused forgetting and loss of identity. Suppose we take this forward from Gnostic terms into the strictly modern world: we say, then, that a vast proto-organism existed (embracing at the least several star systems) and ours fell out—was severed from—the giant proto-organism, which I saw in my nitrous oxide revelation as a vast vine (Christ) pruned by the father as Gardener. Many cuttings feel no loss, but some do, and these latter the Savior (the original cosmic organism) seeks reunification with, upon his initiative, his "growing downward," so to speak, into the otherwise lightless realm into which we, cut off into bits, descended thousands of years ago. The keystone is restored memory, which is a recollection of ourselves not as separate entities but as "stations" in a quasi-computerlike* proto-organism, a vast incorporeal energy which thinks, and whose thoughts are the physical cosmos—we are, each of us, microanalogs of it: just as each cell of our bodies contains all the information to retrieve the whole human, each whole human psyche contains the aggregate information—is the information—topologically congruent with the macro proto-organism. (In other words, the macro proto-organism can be—is—contained within each of us as total individual human psyche, just as each individual human cell contains complete information from which that human can be retrieved.)

  [31:77] As I realized about the cover of the paperback of Scanner it really shows the dealer and law officer as the two halves of one person, with no hint of "warring" personalities: visually, they gestalt into a syzygy, two sides of the same coin.20 Your dealer is a cop. Your cop is a dealer.

  I feel as if the scales have fallen from my eyes, and I'm seeing lucidly. From Frolix 8 to Tears to Scanner: a logical progression of an in-depth study of jail, tyranny, dope, slave labor camps, and irreality related to lies (this last point mostly in Scanner). Something of this seems hinted at in "Faith of Our Fathers," too: lies, delusions (induced by drugs), tyranny.

  What is shown in Scanner as the lies-enslaving-tyranny axis is not simplistically identified as "the government" as it is in Tears and Frolix 8—in Scanner it becomes paradoxical and elusive, with the government perhaps or evidently producing the drug, and the clinics and rehab centers perhaps or evidently being deliberate slave labor camps. The drug is there; the work camps are there; the feds are alluded to, but—the reader must unravel the puzzle for himself. If it isn't the government, who is it? Is not the definition of government "that which is actually in control"? And the makers of SD, which turn out to be the slave labor camp owners, are one and the same; it is a de facto government—like the Mafia, and look: why are scramble suits necessary? Crime (the Mafia? identified as dope elements) have penetrated the authorities deeply. As is said again and again in the novel: "all is murked over," things are not as they seem (as is always the case in my writing). Arctor is not what he appears to be. Nor is Donna. Nor Barris. Nor Mike Westway. Nor New-Path. The sides cannot be clearly drawn as "good-bad," or "us-them," or even "pro-dope—anti-dope."

  Folder 32

  NOVEMBER 19, 1977

  [32:3] In Feb. of 1974 I momentarily withdrew assent to the reality of this world; a month later this world underwent visible changes, and its true nature became perceptible to me: it is, as the Gnostics said, a prison. It is there, but it is not as it appears to be. The immediate reaction to the anomie in the world is to say simply that it is out of control. If it is there to reawaken us to our divine origins, however, its malign aspects serve a good purpose. What each of us must do is repudiate the world, which is to say, deny it while at the same time affirming a sanctified alternate reality, which I did vis-à-vis the golden fish sign; the false quasi-cosmos was denied and the true sacred reality was affirmed. It was a single act, a movement away from the first to the second. I think I've figured out the basic move necessary: an ethical balking.* That is how the world-denying begins. That is the first step in unraveling the counterfeit quality of the world. The Gnostics stressed such a "metaphysical strike" and pointed out that the archons (who rule this prison world, the wardens) can only harm the body and mind but not the divine spark. It is a refusal to cooperate with a harmful world, which, once one has balked against it, reveals its ersatz quality. [...] It probably is of extraordinary significance that repudiation of the mundane reality and acknowledgement of the transmundane is a single event or act, rather than two. The two realities cannot both exist, evidently. They are counter-realities. This is what the Gnostics believed: that the world stands between man and God, and must be eliminated. Who would expect that disavowing the world would instantly expose the divine on the far side of it? "Man and God in essence belong together against the world but
are in fact separated by the world, which in the Gnostic view is the alienating, divisive agency" (E. of Phil.). Well, then this being so, look what my writing tends to promote: it promotes a sense of the counterfeit quality of the world; it promotes a repudiation of it which dissolves it by assisting the withdrawal of assent to it; and finally, by so doing, obliterates the alienating agency and brings man and God together. I can claim this for my work, on the theological level.