The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  [28:19] That Gnostic narration about Christ being seen simultaneously as a child, a man, a little old bald man, a short man, a vastly tall man—it resembles the "will-o-the-wisp" UFO sightings and contacts.36 And Zebra has a little of that playful, mirthful quality—very much so. "Look, I am here—no, there. Look, I am this—no that" (e.g., from the past, the future, another planet, an alternate universe, etc.). Riddles and pranks—we are being charmed and beguiled and entranced ... and, by this process, our fear of the unknown, the fremd, abates; and also, we become enthralled children—absolutely fascinated by the emerging pattern of what we see. Continually, we are given the option of dismissing what we are shown by the master magician/prankster.

  [28:21] Am I saying that the basis of reality is words (or the word) (v. John 1:1), as in Time out of Joint? (e.g., soft drink stand, words = ideas = concepts. Ideas in the mind [of God]).

  [28:27] Everything points to time travel. And my reconstruction of the fish sign as Crick and Watson's double helix DNA molecule tells me who in the past these time travelers (undoubtedly from the future) presented them selves as. The Christian theme is a constant thread through time—with the "Christ as child, little old man, bearded youth, tall, short, etc." showing the "St. Elmo's fire" "hologrammatic" quality I saw in Zebra—i.e., the ability to cause us to either see it in any shape it wishes—or not at all!! That's because in a certain real sense it isn't there—it's a projection—some kind of plasmic electrical conduction.

  However, let us not err; the whole world is irreal in the same sense, and this projected beam can "melt" the obvious (and deceptive) solidity of the world like a soldering gun. It's one hierarchical step up from matter both animate and inanimate: it's an "element" unknown to us but suspected by Heraclitus ("fire"), related to ball lightning. As thinking electricity it can reweave reality.

  My novels and stories have never presented it, but they have done yeoman work in depicting reality—not as it is to us—but as it is to Zebra: totally "soap bubble" and plastic, mere dream stuff which is imagined and then re-imagined differently; i.e., transformed by psyche or noös.

  [28:28] The cardinal mystery is, who is projecting or weaving reality—which I caught not just weaving but reweaving. I believe the pre-Socratics (cf. Xenophanes) grasped it—that which wields or steers or shakes by its mind, as such. If it is noös, then the physical (empirical or phenomenal) universe is irreal; if psyche it is soma (cf. Spinoza). My writing suggests noös (or Brahman, who either is the universe, or assumes the disguise of—ach!). That is closest: the universe is as mask to visage, layer upon layer. A.D. 70 was a deeper layer but not the final one. The final one is probably the abyss: totally not. "Is" is a disguise which "is not" hides behind. Under the masks there lies nothing, but how gentle and warm and unblinking.

  Yes, I am an acosmic panentheist, and I saw the deity change its mind and hence our reality along its entire temporal axis, not successively but as a simultaneity, like digital watch numbers changing.

  [28:29] Then the fight is transtemporal—with both sides forever at combat—which generate linear time; until Christ/God is victorious, and the black iron prison destroyed. But that moment came. Then is it the case that no more linear time is generated? What we have now is a conflict-less consolidation—a vast silence—as we await the coming of the king? Yes, this is so. We are waiting in a silence; the enemy has been eradicated. The dialectic interchange of forces concluded in victory for God.

  Right—I said to KW last night, "There's something wrong, but not in terms of what, but rather in what is lacking: a spiritual quality has gone out—our material wealth does not quench our yearnings." What do we yearn for? Why, the rightful king.

  [28:31] The concept that I'm a time-traveler from 70 A.D. completely explains Thomas. The PKD personality is a memory-less mask, and Thomas is the authentic personality of the time-traveler, and hence Thomas is really myself—the actual me who was sent here: like a cuckoo's egg. I am not PKD; I am Thomas—there was no theolepsy; only anamnesis.

  No wonder I could read and write Latin under LSD. That was not—I repeat not—a former life but my real life and real time, place, self. It anticipated the Xerox missive; that was no incidental matter but the crux of my mission here.

  [28:33] Two elements distinguish Ubik:

  (1) It is original (as a cosmology).

  (2) It perhaps is correct (or more correct than any previous cosmology).

  The Q arises: How did it come into being? On what source did I draw? I don't know—except that by the information-projecting entity described in the novel itself the arising in my mind of this knowledge (gnosis, sophia) can be accounted for. In other words, the explanation as to the source of the concepts in Ubik is presented nowhere else but in Ubik itself. Would this, then, the existence of Ubik, not constitute an indirect proof of its truthfulness? Were the cosmological concepts in it false, Ubik could/would not have come into being—at least not in the way it did—by automatic writing, so to speak. In other words, Ubik wrote Ubik, which makes the novel a form of scripture (which may be also somewhat true for Maze and certainly, as I well know, Tears).

  Again the 3 Bantam novels37 assume a puzzling and perhaps unique importance as vehicles of revelation.

  [28:34] Hypnagogic: (they are) "responsible for low-level decisions which can be overruled." For the first time in months the spirit speaks to me. This sentence—remembered because the phone woke me—refers to 3-74 and (short as it is) it explains it. Admittedly, the "they" are not identified—named—but the structure can be ascertained. Low-level decisions are normal and routine business of the world—the way it customarily functions. But sometimes decisions made at low levels are overruled—it is not stated by whom, but, again, the function is clear: that entity which has the legitimate wisdom, authority and power to overrule, which therefore is the ultimate court of appeal. God is certainly meant.

  [28:35] I suppose this overruling to be staggering in its impact and implication, its irruption into the "horizontal" causal flow. Spinoza and Hume could not even conceive of it. To conceive it, let alone witness it—a vast understanding, and a correct one, of the nature of reality, is required. It is awesome. In a sense it is even terrifying (shock, hex. 51). The core-entity has manifested itself. The inanimate and blind has been rolled aside, like the stone covering Christ's tomb, by the living God. One is perceiving the animate, the purposeful, the aware. The normal relationship between man and reality is reversed, instead of the sentient human viewing the unliving world, suddenly the world is alive and sentient, and, in relation to this, by comparison, man is dwarfed—down to the level of object:

  (1) In (1), that which observes (i.e., man) is superior to what he sees, in terms of objective hierarchical essence,

  (2) but in (2) he is absolutely dwarfed by what he sees. This is well-expressed in "Job."38 Suddenly the ratio is dramatically reversed. The next step is for the amazed man to learn that he is, incredibly, isomorphic with this vast sentient "world" which perceives him and aids him.

  (3) In other words, God is larger than man but congruent with him; we are identical; whereas in (1) this is not the case: man and "low-level" reality are not isomorphic and in point of fact man is the "crown of creation" and stands above it. Imagine his stupefaction when (1) turns into (2)—but then, before man expires from terror at this switch of ratio, (3) is disclosed to him, by God, who desires to reassure. In this process, step (1) initiates as its goal, not (2) but (3); were it to end in (2), man would collapse, being confronted, so to speak, by rocks and stones wiser than he! This is why it is (correctly) said that the ultimate—and real—purpose of a miracle is not to accomplish the act accomplished by it (which, obviously, could have been accomplished "normally") but to reveal God and his Nature to the person or persons involved.

  [28:36] So the overruling (miracle) of 3-74 disclosed an entity behind it, and, in doing so, lifted aside—detonated into atoms and nonbeing—the veil of dokos. I did not penetrate the veil and see beyond it
; rather, he who is behind it obliterated it (the "slice of ham" between me and him), and allowed us then to merge. Merging (i.e., [3]) at that point could and did occur naturally—without effort, once He had atomized the "slice of ham" separating us. [...]

  I will even go so far as to say: "He reserves this disclosure—step (3) in particular—or fusion for those in the extremity of desperation and peril." ("At the absolute core of misery is the greatest joy.")

  My revelations are beginning to dovetail: the full gestalt is emerging—but not based on insight revealed in linear order. The whole thing is a vast puzzle which, because of the help, I am working out. [...]

  I had to experience the world as totally hostile before its hold over me could be broken.

  [28:39] My dream last night: Phone book, searching through it, but defeated by my memories being systematically erased. Could not keep in mind what I had found in connection already. That was why the trail petered out: I continued to forget, and so retried the same material repeatedly.

  [28:45] In a sense, my novels trained (prepared) me to have my 2-3-74 experience (and to comprehend its significance—this aspect cannot be overstressed). One could regard my 27 years of writing as a kind of apprenticeship, leading up to the moment when I would be ready for the 2-3-74 experience [...]

  It's as if I suspected the true situation, and finally someone who knew decided to let me see openly the verification of my years of surmise. I certainly didn't crack it on my own. I suppose that what happened with me constituted an ultimate liberation, but I suspect that one is given this gift only after a long painful personal search. [...]

  What I think was accomplished was the breaking of the "Orwellian Horse" script. I would have worked and then died with no reward accruing from the work: I would have died and departed as a mere means, agent, instrument for my writing and children, never truly having been free to choose a time for myself. Talk about emancipation! Even in the act (on me) of being liberated I construed what was happening as a further task, duty and mission, not as a reward (or salvation). I went on, then, to encumber myself even further, after that; I could not comprehend that I had been liberated and that my work was done. Now I could reap the rewards. Since then, my lessons have been ones of saying good-bye to obligations—to my career and family and friends—to duty as such.

  My legal responsibilities are meager and clearly defined. I am not required to take on any new ones in order to justify my existence; it's now a question of what I want to do, not what is imposed on me.

  And what do I want to do? It has something to do with Mexico.

  Folder 29

  MARCH 1978

  [29:1] Cornford39 on Timaeus:

  Plato argues that the universe is an alive organism with a "world soul." But the demiurge (Noös) must persuade—cannot compel—necessity (chance, the chaotic) into order. Therefore, Cornford concludes, there must be an irrational element in the world soul, or there would be no Ananke for Noös to persuade (and it is very significant that the demiurge cannot compel). This chaos did not precede order, but is a constant in the universe.

  The omnipotent creator God of the Jews and Christians is a concept which does not account for this element that Cornford calls "the dark domain of the irrational powers" (p. 210). Also, Plato's cosmology in Timaeus, as Cornford interprets it (probably correctly), coincides exactly with what I experienced in 3-74—except I add him who had not yet come in Plato's time—the Savior, who is the penetration of Holy Wisdom (Noös) into the microcosm.

  Not only does the omnipotent creator God of the Jews and Christians not fit observable facts, it also does not fit my revelation. Plato's cosmology does. (And keep in mind: Plato censured Anaxagoras for believing the Noös "set the world spinning" and lost interest in it—a criticism I would agree with.)

  If I am to be true to what I see both normally and by revelation, I must accept Timaeus, adding to it the descent to the sublunar world of divine wisdom (or divine reason), and perhaps herewith rest.

  The world as living, evolving organism. Yes, I saw that (in 3-74). But its psyche partially irrational? And the demiurge (divine reason) "persuades"—i.e., subdues—it into order?

  [29:2]

  It is this disorder (chaos) of Ananke which shows up in my books (e.g., Ubik) as entropy. Cornford says, "It's always present being overruled by di vine reason" (order). So it is not just the decay of form; it is an element of the irrational: a destroyer of eidos, as I depicted in Maze!!!

  Cornford specifically uses the term "overrule." By divine order over Ananke—the mind disclosed to me. (Persuade = overrule—Cornford.) Reason overrules Ananke.

  [29:3] What a fantastic cosmology: the universe is a living animal ➊ whose soul (psyche?) is either irrational or has an element of the irrational in it—identified with disorder and casual chance happenings—and divine reason is overruling (or persuading or subduing) it as best it can. But it (divine reason) lacks the power to compel!

  Is it possible to say that the universe-organism is insane or partly insane? And doesn't this fit in perfectly with the Gnostic revelation?

  ➊ Constantly changing, like all living animals. So this disorder is always underlying—as a constant—not prior to order but "under" it.

  [29:4] Plato would have been amazed to learn that 400 years after his death, divine Noös (reason) was born—incarnate—as the man Jesus—and that it's going to happen again, at which time divine reason will achieve total order and absolutely subdue the disorder (chaos) of the [partly] irrational world soul (who we may know as the creator of this world).

  Finally, for the first time, the component of disorder will be eliminated—i.e., the world soul healed (made sane).

  [29:5] The "joined," random messages and information (as in Ubik) are the visible and audible thoughts of divine reason, ➊ the invader (Doctor) into this partly irrational universe—organism or cybernetics-like. The organism, in contrast, does not think.

  ➊ Zebra/Christ.

  [29:7]

  Re the Black Iron Prison vs. the Palm Garden World:

  A mere shift of say 10% of pattern (very slight but skillful accentuations and suppressions) produces these "alternate universes."

  And what about Tagomi in the park with the piece of silver jewelry?40 Slight shift, and he is in our world. Like Jacob Boehme seeing the sunlight on the pewter dish—

  [29:9] Burroughs in The Ticket That Exploded says of the Nova Mob parasites that as they move from one human host to another they give themselves away (to the Nova police) by the continuity of their habits, such as tastes in food (in Hamburger Mary's case a taste for peanut butter). This was exactly true about Thomas. And I've subjectively felt myself as a female, a womb into which something like an egg (Firebright) was deposited—like a cuckoo egg. Was Thomas a saprophyte turned parasite, and deposited his "egg" in me? Does this mean that Burroughs is either intentionally or unintentionally describing something which is true? And he's into those pasted-together subliminal messages, too.

  KW has noted a resemblance between several things I've described and what Burroughs has written—e.g., my conviction that as a race or even planet we are "sick"—i.e., occluded perceptually, and that a divine doctor-entity is restoring us—

  Coincidence? Burroughs speaks of a virus—a word became a neural-cell virus, infecting us.

  After reading Burroughs, I dipped into Ubik. It certainly would be easy—and reasonable—for a reader to think that both Burroughs and I know something, and we want our novels to be taken as at least partly true. They have a strange ring of [revealed] truth about them—I feel it about his book, about mine—is, as Katherine Kurtz41 says, something writing through us!?

  Isn't Palmer Eldritch a kind of parasite, replicating himself or itself using humans as hosts? But my sense about Thomas was of a benign, not evil, intrusion. Still, it was an intrusion into my psyche, a taking over. Are such intrusions always to be deplored?

  Or was I beguiled? Didn't it—he—get me out of trouble?
<
br />   There is just no doubt of it: such passages in Burroughs' novel as the "Do it—do it—neck" message within another message—words that weren't originally there but are like the inner trigrams of an I Ching hex—that is one absolute "triangulated" element with (1) Ubik and (2) what I saw in 3-74. Plus the parasite criminals and Nova cops, and the infecting virus.

  [29:11] The virus (of Burroughs) is an information (or word) virus, but in this sense: it blocks the reception of information. So it is an anti-informa tion virus. And then it substitutes false (homeo) info (die messages inside your psyche) that replaces the genuine information, auditory and visual.

  Information-blocking, as represented in Maze symbolically by the erasure of the instruction tape. This tells us what kind of info is blocked: our instructions as to our purposes or tasks: all that the term "instructions" imply. And where do the instructions come from? A satellite: in other words, another "planet" or world from this. And also somehow relatedly, we are not really where and when we think we are. The "erased" instructions include needed accounts and full info as to where we are, as well as what our job is. We are cut off from and not receiving verbal transmission. We can no longer hear what we're supposed to hear.