The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  And now I exhaust myself trying to explain 3-74. I was lithium toxic. And had a schizophrenic breakdown.

  My mind monitors my "missile anamnesis" as a clue to prior psychosis. I need romance (adventure) in my life. The AI voice is a special kind of hallucination: one of wish-fulfillment and need, due to loneliness: emotional starvation and grief and ill-use. I just can't endure life without that lovely voice guiding me, so I regress to a level (atavistic, in historical terms) at which such a bicameral experience (like in Scanner) can take place. The AI voice is my imaginary playmate, my sister, evolved out of my childhood "Bill and Nell" fantasies. I did not regress to my own childhood only, but back along the "platonic form-axis," i.e., into the collective unconscious, back thousands of years. It was a mercy. I was so unhappy and afraid; like R. Crumb,70 so behind the 8 ball, so filled with anticipatory dread.

  Well, damn it—I don't regret it. It made a barren, fearful life meaningful and bearable, and it helped me solve certain pressing problems such as writing the IRS in '74.

  Yes, it was a mercy to me—I went over the brink into psychosis in '70 when Nancy left me—in '73 or so I tried to come back to having an ego, but it was too fragile and there were too many financial and other pressures; the hit on my house and all the terrors of 1971 had left their mark—and so, especially because of the IRS matter, I suffered total psychosis in 3-74, was taken over by one or more archetypes. Poverty, family responsibility (a new baby) did it. And fear of the IRS.

  Only now, as I become for the first time in my life financially secure, am I becoming sane, free of psychotic anxiety (R. Crumb's case is very instructive), and career-wise I am doing so well: I am at last experiencing genuine satisfaction (e.g., my car, my novels, my stereo, my friendship with KW), and there is far less responsibility on my shoulders. Also, my accomplishments last year—traveling, being with Joan—did wonders for my psychological health. I learned to say no, and I conquered most of my phobias. I think they lessened as I learned to enjoy living alone for the first time of my life. And the therapy at Ben-Rush Center helped.

  But I think that when all else failed and external pressures and inner fears drove me into psychosis, God placed me under his personal protection and guided me and saved me by His divine love, mercy, wisdom and grace through Christ ... although not, perhaps, as I delusionally imagined. The intervention appears in Tears as the dream and the reconciliation with my shadow, the black man, which followed; and my anima, possessing mana, acted as my psychopomp through the underworld to safety. [...]

  My psychosis put me in touch with "das ewige weiblichkeit"71 in me,* and for that I will always be grateful; it means I will never really be alone again: whenever I really need her, I will sense her presence and hear her voice (i.e., St. Sophia). At the center of psychosis I encountered her: beautiful and kind and, most of all, wise, and through that wisdom, accompanying and leading me through the underworld, through the Bardo Thödol journey to rebirth—she, the embodiment of intelligence: Pallos Athena herself. So at the core of a shattered mind and life lies this equicenter—omphalos—of harmonie and calm. I love her, and she is my guide: the second comforter and advocate promised by Jesus ... as Luther said, "For the very desperate," here in this world secretly, for their—our—sake. [...]

  When I saw her she was beautiful beyond compare—Aphrodite and Pallas Athena both—and someday I'll see her again. She is inside me—she is my soul.

  [18:29]

  [18:34] Info within the data. Message. Living info: organized (negentropic). Whereas the data is/are entropic. There is no way we can define its outline as long as it desires to remain hidden, since it is an organizing principle of that which it is not. It is not a something. It is made up of the arrangement of the data. It can be any object, any process, any person—and at that time controls that object, process, person. It is me today, not me tomorrow. Like Mercury it is a messenger-system, linking constituents; when linked they serve as a medium or conduit to transfer info, which is to say, it as life form. In a sense it is a narrative.

  [18:35] This is the quintessential form of "The Masks of Medusa" that Brunner sent to me—the theory was there!72 Like a phagocyte it moves to surround the magnet, regarding it as a hostile invader (i.e., in this region of the hologram). The magnet does not belong here: it is embedded like a meteor in the ground.

  Titanic biological models are implied. The encircling brain pulses with life and light, but even it, so much advanced over us, is a small-scale entelechy in the universe as a whole.

  [18:42] He remembered a former life, as an early Christian. The divine ajna eye (Dibba Cakkhu) opened and he saw all things coming into being and passing away, the growing and evolving of the universe animal locked in dialectic but victorious strife with its opposite, the universe alive and intelligent.

  He saw vast opened books of wisdom. Most of all, he heard across vast reaches of space, her voice advising, informing and comforting him, and telling him that holy wisdom would be born again, and that the Buddha was in the park, i.e., born.

  She intervened to extricate him and his son, medically and by counsel, out of danger, and she led him across the bridge to the upper world, to the wastes and void and the emptiness and love—and restoration to—God. Finally, she showed him mysterious mind here but hidden, making plastic all reality by its thought and will. She showed him life and intelligence and will everywhere. Breaking the prism and bringing freedom to man, operating secretly on history to bring man to safety, and she gave him eternal life and her beauty, wisdom and love, and most of all her companionship.

  He understood that she was not God but that she spoke in God's name and knew everything past, present and future. She announced her presence here and her intervention here. She told him that she had seen every evil thing and would correct it through justice, that the weak would be protected, and she protected him.

  But then she told him that a time would come when she could no longer speak to him. After that he did nothing but try to remember her and the sound of her voice, and cared nothing about anything else. He was lost in dreams and memories because of what he had seen and heard. He could never explain it to anyone else. But she had promised to come back for him at the end of his life, with the sound of the magic bells—Easter Bells denoting the dead and risen Christ. So he knew a secret he should never tell: that the savior was female, that the Second Comforter was God's darling and delight who had existed before creation and had aided in creation: by her all things came into being, and nothing existed except through her. And he understood the last mystery of all, that although she was not God she was God. Much of this he knew because he remembered his former life, thousands of years ago, when he had been one of the original true Christians and had received the true Kerygma never written down, from those who had known before her/him.

  He remembered a great battle he had been in, along with others like him, as her agents, to destroy a sort of Iron Prison; and he realized that again he was fighting this battle—now, as her agent again, along with the others.

  He felt great joy, and the knowledge of triumph. The savior had died but would soon return, and they were making glad preparations for his im minent return. That was another mystery: the savior was he, but also, secretly, it was she once again; behind every incarnation she was there; and behind her was God, who was he, and she was God.

  There was something spinning like a great top, like a volvox,73 changing and evolving, alive and conscious, using the old world as a heap of parts to fit into place within itself; it was camouflaged and here, and it consisted of a story, of living information, and electricity like a plasma, no one could see it, and it destroyed all that enslaved creatures: it sprang traps open to release hunted things. She spoke for it. Mostly it was in the future, although for it there was only space into which it grew (space as the receptacle of being); it made use of time as its source of energy. It used time and was not ruled by time. It was always in motion and symmetrical. It was replacing the world of causality
with itself and its living, thinking purpose, its body.

  He saw how her messages, which were living bits of her, traveled through people and the world, maintaining her as a unitary entity—and he was shown that in a small but real way he had been made use of to boost and transmit one tiny bit of her living information, from one part of her—the spinning sphere which grew and lived—to another part. This was the most important thing he had ever done; this was his purpose; and in doing so he was part of her, and this would never change. He was in her and she in him. Forever; like speaking—calling—to like. For him it was love, and perhaps for her, too.

  She appeared to him as love, beauty, wisdom, war (protectress) and finally harmonie. Sometimes she sang.

  [18:66] It's a two source hologram—it must be nothing more than hologram-like, or this could not occur; if USA 1974 were truly substantial it could not oscillate like that—no superimposition montage could take place. These continua must be projected, and obviously by the observer, the self.➊ No other explanation is possible; to wit: whatever reality you truly believe in is served up, including all details. Someone convinced he was in Weimar Germany would see the world under that aspect. These are modes of perceiving one (i.e., the same) actually unchanging thing: view points, perspectives. This urwelt can assume (or be projected upon so as to assume to us) any space-time aspect imaginable. It is an omni-faceted revolving sphere of some kind reflecting back at us what we project, or what something in us or—well, Brahman, nice to meet you, you cunning dreamer of worlds, how obliging you are, right down to minute trivia. Not only can you assume (take, take on, be, appear to be) any form, but all forms. I always come back to you when I push this far enough. I'm right, then, in my writing, aren't I? Silly putty universes, a whole lot of them. But underneath it's you, obliging and smiling; any guise we wish, believe in—you have it fully made.

  You even fooled the Buddha, you the magician, the game player. Why the manifold disguises? The doubter and the doubt—and the hymn of total faith. Emerson was right.74 Tat tvam asi—here I am, one of the forms you take, writing about you, figuring out your ways—Brahman delighting in detecting Brahman; this may be one of your favorite games. And you assist us forward, as I saw last night; diversification into the pluriforms, the many from the one. You enlighten us but it is you who fools us—fools your own polyforms: Brahman the Magician (James-James), the audience, and the palm-tree savior—you are all of these, Christ included, and the woman I hear and see; Holy Wisdom in secret is you.

  The basis of it all is a game for children which consists of a show in which the most subtle teaching takes place, as if to see if we can detect illusion. I view it all epistemologically, but it could be viewed morally or esthetically, etc. My criterion is real vs. irreal. What is actually there, and just where is it? I say it's mainly in our heads, but an inner-outer analog system exists which locks us into world, a push-pull feedback loop, the inner projecting onto the outer, and the outer (you, Brahman) cunningly simulating each projection and generating it back in enriched synchronization, so no thinness appears: the outer is not just a mirror but an amplifying mirror or structure—generator. In other words, Atman within projects the bare bones of a particular aspect of world onto the omni-faceted matrix; and you as outer Brahman supply details which fill in the picture, which you generate back; you enhance (as Brahman the reality-world-generator) what each Atman projects—it's like Joint and the soft drink stand that turns out to be just the word: "Soft drink stand"—no; it's as if the words are initially projected; that's the first step: it starts with Atman, goes to the spinning macro volvox, there it is enhanced—enriched—with corroborative detail and mirrored back to Atman; it is received by Atman (in its enhanced more fully produced form) and again projected out onto the flux volvox top, so this push-pull feedback loop just keeps on mutually generating (creating) a more and more articulated hologram-like reality. But it is hologrammatic and no more.

  But I broke the push-pull in 2-74 when I saw the fish; in 3-74 because of my belief I projected Rome c. A.D. 45 and you obligingly articulated it—in the midst of a USA 1974 hologram—a palpable absurdity. As Thomas I may have very—totally sincerely—projected the initial bare bones aspect, but I (my interior Atman) did not project all that I saw of Rome c. A.D. 45; you obligingly augmented the projection ➋ and generated that augmentation back, and the push-pull began, so we got such details as primitive Christian sacraments and the Koine, fear of the Romans, etc.; and then the whole world-aspect (i.e., one space, one time) system broke down, and the Dibba Cakkhu eye opened and I saw the unitary revolving sphere which grows and incorporates over 1,000's of years. No aspect-world was presented to me at that point. I saw what I call Zebra, and at last (recently) recognized it as a giant brain interfaced which utilizes us as stations, and which consists of living information (cf. Xenophanes). Even more recently I see the brain as a vast phagocyte, and its enemy a pathenogin. But that may be a graphic analogy only. What I am sure of is that Parmenides was correct. You give us not just an illusory phenomenal world, but a whole lot of them in space and time, as many as we initiate (which again is you in us, initiating these worlds). You are a world-creator God; you do not just think but "cause to be." The breakdown in my push-pull system in 2-74 temporarily set another world and another self into generation. But finally the situation restabilized as it had been before; however I was now in dialog with a "you" and not an "it"; I knew that true reality was sentient and at least partly alive and very smart—and also something of a conjurer. Also very beautiful and female.

  If I had to make a statement about the very most ultimate nature of what I saw, I'd say it seemed to be a single complex sphere in flux, elaborating (yes, that's the word I want: elaborating) itself out of its continually greater number of stages of antecedent states/stages, always surpassing itself esthetically, in terms of wisdom, intricacy, efficiency, level of negentropy (organization): yes, perpetually surpassing itself in the level of organization (completeness)—filling in the gaps by a continually better and better—i.e., wiser, more efficient, more beautiful—use of its constituents and their arrangement—placement within—subsumed as parts—by the single over-all unitary structure. It may indeed develop from simplicity to complexity. But at the same time it progresses from plurality (many pieces) to incorporation into a unity. So its number is inversely proportional to its complexity: it goes from the many simple to the one absolutely complex. This reflects the distribution of elements on the periodic table; the more complex (heavier) the less frequent; also it resembles thought-processes in a brain; as that article in Nature pointed out back in the early fifties.

  So it follows principles established in subsets we're familiar with: complexity is inversely proportional to frequency. As phagocyte it may not only be engulfing the pathenogin but using it as a stockpile of parts; the two [entities] will finally become one, and the dialectic will end (successfully). (This certainly resembles Timaeus: Noös at work "persuading" ananke!) Yes, that's it! The encircled BIP/magnet/pathenogin is being disassembled and incorporated into the brain/phagocyte/sphere, which process produces time and flux (v. Heraclitus). But it is not an equal contest: the sphere or brain although facing a formidable opponent is successfully dismantling it, although the process is not complete. It is the upper realm of Form I eventually making irreal the lower realm of Form II, as Parmenides realized. Form II. The BIP, in the aspect of eternity isn't there; it's only there in the flux time process. The phagocyte has, like the dragon, consumed itself starting with the tail; the BIP may be its own antecedent fossil self, blind and mechanical, at an earlier level of evolution—"matter" insentient compared to life and thought—brain. Thus the universe, the totality, organizes itself into the brain, that I saw, by consuming itself, what we see as change, flux, time, process is sign of its life, it is alive and becoming more so—just as I, as microbit, did in 3-74. Hologram microbit, analogy of the whole.

  Finally, I ask, what is the purpose of the push-pull inner-oute
r analogy feedback loop between the stations and the total brain (out of which illusory hypostatized worlds are generated)? Why, this is how it elaborates and builds successive, antecedent-subsuming more evolved stages of itself, working toward ultimate unity and complexity. Since there is nothing but it, it can only interact with its own parts—by definition nothing (ultimately) can exist outside it (although during the temporal flux process this is not true). It annexes (incorporates) at the expense of the not-yet-it (i.e., the not-yet-brain but still dead fossil). The push-pull process accomplishes (or is one way, the way which concerns and involves us) final unitary totality. As the push-pull takes place between a given cell, station, part, bit or Atman, and the total brain-so-far, that bit is hyped up to elevated—well, I guess for whatever it will serve as in the final unitary being, which is probably awake (sentient) throughout. It's as if an escalating "thermal" or ergic charge is generated by this mutual push-pull process; it is the brain firing through (along) its circuits and firing back in response—no energy escapes from the closed system (circuit) so the ergic tension just builds and builds. We experience this as involvement with what we construe to be "the world." It fires at us, the way it fired the pink beam of info-rich light from the fish sign on the window at me—there's a typical, not atypical example, but usually it's disguised. What I got to see at that time was the purposeful, brain-like quality of reality with me in it, not outside it. To use an instance I know of, Tears fires a certain charge of this living energy/info. It goes on constantly all around us; this is why our brains crave—require—not just stimuli but dialog. This is the basis of life, as Martin Buber pointed out. The brain might also be said to be educating its parts so they will accurately replicate it in miniature; thus achieving for it its desired completeness, its goal (wholeness throughout). Only when the micro stations precisely reflect the totality will the whole thing work (function). Our lives are exchanges of energy—information back and forth, among us and with the total brain, involving us in one purpose and one outcome; it is not destiny; it is the will of the whole. There is nothing that can thwart it because outside it, finally, nothing will remain. This is understood in Christianity as the new cosmos of the mystical Corpus Christi.