The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  [15:36] Clearly, we have fallen into the hands of a puppeteer, and it is not God. We act upon a contrived stage. This is why I must never lose sight that Zebra is an invader, secretly here and camouflaged, freeing us from the scripting—a sort of waking up.

  This is one quality of our experience of this spurious interpolation that makes it seem not dreamlike, this script controlling our actions. It goes a long way in creating the semblance of veracity. Our dreams are products of our own heads, our own wishes and desires—but in the interpolation an external will mandates what we will do. We interpret this as an indication of hetero command (not homeo command) and this is a correct view, but we do not carry out the logic which shows what this implies. We labor under and for an alien power; solipsism is voided, but the alternative is not reality but enslavement. All that's real is mere power.

  To fall under the power of an alien will—that is an odd touchstone by which to locate reality in contrast to dream! It has become our very definition of reality!

  "Reality is dreaming under the control of the object."52 He almost had it right.

  [15:38] What/who is this faint (i.e., "still small") voice which informs us? Maybe our condition is merely local—not the complete universe but only one part—so the voice is from outside (beyond this planet).

  No. It is our own (authentic) voice. I can't explain it, but that voice which I hear is the restored—and hence all knowing—us.

  [15:39] The purpose of the "Acts" dream and Felix material in Tears—and hence the real purpose of Tears—is to set off an anamnesis, to cause people to remember, to dispel the power of the artifact and its phony world.

  I've got it! The "AI" voice that I hear: we built something (AI system, living info, VALIS, Zebra, whatever) to remind us. That is its job. We must have known that the artifact might take over and try to rule us (and remove our memories). So we created Zebra just in case. And so it came to pass!

  [15:43] I can't take any credit for perceiving Zebra, the adventitious savior; he/she/it/they enhanced my vision (i.e., removed the occlusion), and then I naturally saw Zebra and understood that it had invaded the construct and is camouflaged—mimesis. If the construct is regarded as an organism (which it is not) Zebra is like a cancer, replacing "natural" or "healthy" cells, but in truth it's exactly the other way around: a criminal entity has been invaded by life giving cells which it can't detect, and so it accepts them into itself, replacing the "iron" ones. Zebra gets in past its "biological" defenses. It is watchful, but to no avail.

  [15:44] If the universe is a brain the BIP is a rigid ossified complex, and Zebra is metabolic toxin (living info) designed to melt it out of existence by restoring elasticity to it, which means to cause it to cease recirculating the same thought over and over again—experienced by us as 2,000 years of what is in fact spurious time, in as much as the same thought is endlessly repeated: being rigid the BIP has ceased to grow (in the sense of evolve).

  [15:47] It is essential that the person on his own initially rebel. He is presented with (without him knowing it) a puzzle, which he must solve: i.e., by balking (which is just another word for rebelling). (Balking = rebelling against.) The original myth, as Milton tells it ("of man's first disobedience and his fall from that celestial state ...," etc.), must be turned upside down. Man, to be saved, must commit an act of disobedience to this [fallen into slavery] system of things to restore his pristine state now lost. The accusation is in fact the clue not to what he should avoid but to what he should do.

  Can it be said that the initial rebellion in itself starts into motion a breaking of the programming which comprises (1) [editor's note: a few pages earlier, Dick had defined (1) as the state of being imprisoned but not knowing it]. That this imprisoned state can be fought—and once cracked a little ("In Anfang der die Tat"53)—starts into motion enormous processes of intervention and redemption (freeing totally)? It's as if once the "tape" is diverged from ever so slightly, the rest follows naturally as the two tracks diverge continually more and more—they get out of synch. This means that at least at certain critical times (or one time) in state (1) true choice is possible (perhaps with divine prompting).

  [15:48] The hologram universe: each bit, no matter how tiny, contains (reflects) in microform the totality (of Being). The ruled is that which rules. Salvador salvandus.

  Then that which came to my rescue in 2-3-74, that supernatural entity Zebra, was me; and Thomas was me, and only when I actually understand (and experience this as real) will I really have the answer—but I have not yet reached that point. It is still impossible for me to grasp the AI voice as my own true, secret voice. "Now Christ has no body but your own." There swam up into my eyes, looking out, the Lord of the universe in this microform (me). Then it was not an invasion of me, but rather a surfacing in me. This is what (in me) rebelled, and, in doing so, passed over into ultimate actualization—the sacred second birth, "of the spirit"—"born from above" in me.

  I gave myself away in Tears and so they knew, and came to help me. In several ways.

  To see if you will balk against your script.

  [15:50] It wants to see if we can perceive a fallen and deranged order against which we must rebel.

  Voice: "The physical universe is plastic in the face of mind."

  [15:51] God is then seen as a higher, sentient order (with world as blind lower order which the higher can overrule) to which man can aspire. By and large the world separates man from God; via theophany man can experience God at places and/or times in which God (Mind) "melts" (makes plastic as opposed to rigid) the physical world. It is not normally God-infused.

  I derive all this from revelation; it does not fit the model I want to believe in.

  Mind (God) can irrupt into the world (invade it) at any level he wishes, low or high. I like low.

  [15:52] Voice: "Perturbations in the reality field" (i.e., theophany—explained).

  Voice: "The God has granted me his voice, to hear it, to speak it."

  Perturbation: "variation from the normal." An astronomical term: " ... by some force additional to that which causes its regular motion" (e.g., planet, moon).

  EB: "Perturbations in a planet's orbit have often given clues to the existence of previously undiscovered planets; e.g., Neptune and Pluto."

  EB: "Perturbation. Method for solving a math problem by comparing it with a similar one for which the solution is known. Usually the solution found in this way is only approximate."

  (A closed system into which perturbations are thrown must contain yet undetected elements—or: something outside the system has created the disorder, confusion, etc.—i.e., lack [disappearance] of its anticipated orderly motion.)

  The implication of the "perturbations" I experienced in 3-74 could be due to either of the above. Of special interest is that one can now rightly suspect the existence of previously-undetected—undiscovered—"planets" (i.e., body or bodies).

  What is conveyed by the term "field"?

  "Probability fields, which are discernible as a statistical probability of occurrences, such as the state of an electron in an atom.

  "A field in physics may be defined as a continuous distribution of some observable quantity in space and time."

  The expression "reality field" takes it out of the more conventional astronomical concepts of bodies and directs us to Einstein's work and quantum mechanics. The basic definition of field, however, fits with a notion of reality as, so to speak, a subform of totality, not totality itself. Reality is a field out of fields plural. So we are talking about—well, as I said, there are two possibilities: (1) as yet undiscovered "bodies" in the reality field or (and I favor the second, because of the inclusion of the term "field") (2) something outside [the] reality [field]. You could not have stated this if "field" had been omitted. "Something outside of reality" makes no sense, in view of the customary meaning of "reality"; had "field" been left off, it would have to be "undiscovered body in bodies" in reality which causes the perturbations.

&nb
sp; Really, the concept "reality fields" means something quite different from "reality," which is the all-in-all. The voice's sentence is quite technical and quite precise and complete. I am sure that something outside the "reality field" is pointed to, and "reality" is reduced to a field among fields plural. We are getting a statement here by an entity which can look down into reality as a subspecies of the totality. I get a distinct impression of a web, a sort of—well, consider the definition of "field." ("A continuous distribution of some observable quantity in space and time.") What we call "reality" is a fucking field. Not just a field but a field. When we talk about reality this is what we're talking about: a field—and now the significance of "perturbations" can be appreciated: something more, in the field or (more likely) beyond the field, disturbing it. If reality were the all-in-all there could not be perturbations from outside.

  I think that the whole truth is in this short—but not simple—sentence.

  [15:55]

  These 4 revelations interrelate.

  [15:60] If we humans are part of the generated reality field, and in a certain sense it is not real, then in that same sense we are not real (vide "The Electric Ant"). Not just our free will is illusory, but also our very substance. We are no more than points-of-view, mere loci. We are provided a space-time here and now; fitted into one locus of the field, and are compatible with that specific space and time. But, if moved to another space-time locus, we take on appropriate customs, memories, desires, identities: we are, so to speak, plugged into the new milieu. We are as it is, and are not what it is not. This is because we are not separable as set against background: it is all one continuum. I do not reason here that because I became a citizen of Rome c. A.D. 70 I perceived Rome A.D. 70, but the other way around—or, more precisely, neither is cause and neither is effect; it is all of a piece. What is destroyed here is the notion of individuality. I am inseparable from my space-time continuum, and that continuum is generated by an entity or construct more sophisticated and complex (and faster) than it (i.e., than us the continuum, us and our world). Literally I am generated by it, not just my world, and if that world is transformed the process equally affects me as part of that world.

  [15:71] We are corruptible sheaves around divine sparks.

  [15:83] Real time has to do with a sacred ritual-process. The progression of that real process was halted by a crime, of which we have received an incomplete report. The reintroduction into the world and its affairs of the divine woman is the substance of the matter. But in the Bible no mention is made of the dead—and resurrected—divine woman. The construct moving retrograde has the purpose built into it of restoring that woman, who is nothing less than God's holy wisdom. The ossified matrix of the NT [New Testament] must be melted. Tears narrates the revision which will come to be. Eventually, the narrative in Tears will be the correct one, as the construct successfully accomplishes its work. Tears contains the Logos or form to be imposed. It is its punched tape, à la "The Electric Ant." A new, true story is being written, different from the old true story.

  [15:85] In The Morning of the Magicians it's conjectured that if superhumans (mutants, etc.) live among us undetected they would use such things—carriers—as popular novels (and I suppose music and films) to "communicate"—keep in touch—with one another. Whether such "superhuman mutants" exist is not the issue; the issue is that the authors of that book saw the utility of pop or trash novels as vehicles of cooked, freighted messages.

  Why would they make good vehicles? (1) They are unlike TV and newspapers, international. What else is? (2) Exact wording could be employed. (3) Detection of the cryptemorphosis material would be difficult because there are so many pop novels, films and songs. (4) Ah—here's a good reason: the receivers (proper ones) of the info could not be discerned ➊ because anyone can and does hear, read pop culture stuff. Heavy shit might fall on the author by the intelligence people—an effort to find out all about him and who he's mixed up with—in fact that'd be the only recourse: investigating the author. The trail would lead back to him, not to the receivers. Maybe he would know whom it was for. So let's see what group(s) he belongs to (in interception of direct messages, they'd be able to pinpoint the receivers, which is what it's all about, especially if the author consciously knew nothing but merely dutifully wrote down his "dreams").

  In the Bowie flick54 he puts coded material to his ETI wife on an LP which radio stations play.

  So it would be ideal, then, if the author knew nothing, was subliminally cued. Of course, if/when the heavy shit came down on him, if the "mutants" were ethical and not exploitive, they'd rescue him. And they'd know when he was in trouble by means of the same paranormal powers by which they got their material into his books in the first place. They would have to be more or less continuously linked to him telepathically. The only way he might ever come to know about this tutelary telepathic link would be if/when he heard a voice inside his head thinking thoughts he couldn't or wouldn't think himself—including foreign words—and have strange quasi-dream experiences. A particularly telling clue would be if he dreamed about evolved mutant-like people talking to him, especially from far away.*

  ➊ Even if the code was detected and decoded.

  [15:87] Eye, Joint, 3 Stigmata, Ubik and Maze are the same novel written over and over again. The characters are all out cold and lying around together on the floor mass hallucinating a world. Why have I written this up at least five times?

  Because—as I discovered in 3-74 when I experienced anamnesis, remembered I'm really an apostolic Christian, and saw ancient Rome—this is our condition: we're mass hallucinating this 1970s world.

  What's got to be gotten over is the false idea that an hallucination is a private matter.

  [15:100] What if the proto-story in Tears is a sort of living DNA? That guides an entelechy through its growth steps? Are we the intended entelechy? Bateson's55 immanent mind that narrates information to each living entity ... Tears—the latent story therein—shows "bench marks" of the mind that fashioned me and all other life; it is mind perhaps, exerted directly on the novel (incised form) as if not through me—it is direct arrangement. (Like tea leaves, or animal entrails.) (Cf. Burroughs' cut-up message pieces latent meaning-extraction method.)

  This being replicates itself through—as—information. [...]

  I think it acted as a booster—i.e., first received, then transmitted. It acted like the divine wafer, the species of the eucharist. A living word-entity is here with us, taking us over via messages we receive; we act as hosts to it (perhaps temporarily). We become it.

  ***

  [15:113] We are going to have to deal with propositions which are simultaneously both true and false; my corollary is that mutually contrary propositions may be equally true.

  [15:114] The Voice: "Words control reality," i.e., the secret narrative will cause itself to be true by affecting the plastic universe. Words = thoughts.

  The narrative comes first.*

  [15:116] Voice: "God is looking for balking as a criterion." [...]

  Some kind of nonlinear "onion" time is represented, as hinted at in Ubik, in which entropy allowed former layers to be exposed, much to everyone's surprise. Ubik presented the "paste-up" model of reality—very much a laminated time-continua model: the accretions are laid down in circular passes (circumference) and then read orthogonally (radii).

  There is much in common between the cosmology of Ubik and my "lamination" explanation of 3-74. Question is, how does one get above the circumference tracking so as to experience several layers as a simultaneous entity—as I did in 3-74? Evidently by mentally being bonded to a supratemporal life form (i.e., Zebra).

  Is Zebra Ubik, the anti-entropic energy/mind/word? Which narrates? And whose story is the growth of the organism? ("It tells it what to do next"—Bateson.)

  Then each laminated layer is the laying down of a new growth stage, as in the spiral of the conch shell. For example, the 1974 layer superimposes over ancient Rome in such a way as
to convert the illegal power into voluntarily resigning.

  Then no single layer can be read, lacking the one below and above it. In our lives we track the circumference which means we experience only one layer. We can't read it orthogonally; we're part of the mechanism and not above it. But a written statement of the narrative could fall into our hands, or we could hear it, etc. This would be the "DNA" (metaphorically) of the developing organism and could tell us what we can't see.

  [15:133] My writing is salvific in terms of this one road—one dharma of several, the dharma of knowledge. An epistemological path, not a moral path, is put forth (not "the world is evil" but "the world is irreal"). This is Gnostic, not pious. But the act—the crucial act of balking was, for me, moral. It develops out of an awareness of the counterfeit: viz: "it is wrong ethically to collude with the deceitful and fake."

  No assertion is made, though, that the world, irreal as it is, cannot inflict punishment for balking. These are the demons of the Bardo Thödol existence—journey—which I experienced. At the end, I was reborn.

  [15:141] I rather suspect that my transfer of assent in 2-74 was itself programmed and not truly an unanticipated malfunction. I was programmed to discover I was programmed. And in a very dramatic way—specifically one which brought me to a confirmation of the epistemological doubts I'd expressed in 27 years of writing. I certainly hesitate to claim I did it. My will—no. Accident—possibly. YHWH's will—very likely. Best to assume a "spark of Brahman in each of us" view so that my quest was God's quest really, to know himself, etc. (cf. Jacob Boehme).