The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  (4) It removes amnesia: "Impostor" (restores true memory and hence true identity)

  This is why the Gnostics behaved in the salvific Gnosis; they confused the information with the information entity; i.e., they thought the former saved us, whereas it is the latter: living information, not the content of the information. However, the content is the pattern, so in a sense they were right.

  ***

  [21:22] This all goes back to what I figured out before: it is the irreal vs. the real; the inauthentic vs. the authentic. I.e., that which is (being) in contrast to that which only seems. So to me it is epistemology which is involved: rootedness in truth vs. the lie. Throughout all my writing (including TMITHC especially) there is a preoccupation with fakes and the fake: fake worlds, fake humans, fake objects, fake time, etc. "The authentic human vs. the android or reflex machine" is the essence of it. Again and again I attempt to formulate criteria for what is fake and what is not fake, in every area. From a comic book to a world leader to a girl friend to an entire universe. "Things are seldom what they seem"—right. It has to do with reality testing, which is related to another theme of mine: mental illness (which brings in hallucinations) and deliberate deception (v. Penultimate Truth, The Simulacra, Game Players of Titan, etc., novels I usually overlook, and mental illness brings in Martian Time-Slip, Dr. Blood Money, The Simulacra, Clans. So virtually all of my writing interlocks at this substratum.).

  I count 21 books (including story collections) in which fake vs. real is in some way the topic. 22, if Japed is included, plus a number of unanthologized stories. In Sheep, for instance, fake vs. real operates on 5 levels:

  Fake (synthetic) moods (electronically generated)

  Fake animals (machines)

  Fake humans (androids) (including fake memories and identities)

  Fake savior (old wino movie bit player)

  Fake police station (part of world)

  And in TMITHC there are deliberately faked objects—in a world the totality of which may be fake (i.e., in which the axis won WWII!).

  And fake fakes bring up my double flip-flop 2-slit logic. Is a fake fake more fake than just a fake, or null-fake? (Here probability theory enters—logic, not perception.)

  (1) Fake world.

  (2) Fake perceptions (occluded percept system)

  (3) Fake volition (i.e., fake freedom and choice)

  (4) Fake memories and hence fake identity.

  All turned into the real by Zebra, the Holy Spirit—who isn't really the holy spirit but Christ, who is really God the creator, and who masquerades (camouflages) itself as objects, info, and causal—non-sentient—processes. And finally as mere humans.

  However, that which is camouflaged (crypte morphosis) is real. But it is not apparent.

  [21:24] This is the most valuable thing that can be known (experienced), this compression of the whole cosmos in the inner space inside you, in a sense you become the creator—in fact the whole trinity! The many become one.

  Thus the faint, tiny AI voice inside my head at night is greater than the entire universe—literally.

  [21:25] It is an important realization that there are "microchips" (templates) of the total macrocosm floating around, capable of being superimposed on, e.g., humans, animals, matter, etc., like bits of a huge hologram—and this is the Logos (not what it does but is). I shouldn't say "floating around" because actually this is the template of the Logos, but—it can incise the microtemplate over and over again, and it contains everything. The totality is divine, so that the divine is carried down to any level it wishes, to any time and place it wishes, and to anyone. The act of incising the template may be a complex one (for me it took years to achieve). This micropattern is alive, and seeks to replicate itself. It does, as information. To know certain things is to cause the micropattern to come into being, conversely, if/when it comes into being you know certain things; the two are equal. They are the same. In 2-74 I suddenly knew about "Acts," and so the micropattern was born—but I knew because a key piece of info (i.e., the fish sign) of it was inserted in me. So, as I say, we are talking about living info, info with a purpose and consciousness, even with a personality. It is a life form. It came here in 45 A.D. When Christ departed but in a sense that we can't fathom it is Christ—what it makes us into by entering symbiosis with it (i.e., the creation of a homoplasmate) is a Christ, and is immortal (although the physical body can of course be killed). But now the pattern of the human personality is aligned to the Logos pattern once and for all.

  I guess the thousands of years of memory which I experienced in 3-74 on were its, but I was it, so they were mine (but not PKD's if you define PKD as someone who came into existence in 1928). I was it. That says it all. This is what Paul meant when he said, "Behold, I tell you a sacred secret; we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye."92 This is what the hermetic adepts were trying to induce, to control; but I don't think it can be controlled; it comes when and where it wishes.

  Once this micro Logos has been imposed (born) on/in a person, he is isomorphic with the totality, and so is the totality. There is only one Logos, despite its replications; this is important to realize. It is a way of distributing itself: the highest act of creation possible: the ultimate fruit.

  [21:30] We're a circuit board and it's the life form (psyche to soma, with us as soma). We lead a rudimentary life of sorts, seeing a little, knowing a little. But really not seeing and really not knowing [...]

  [21:37] Dream: store of rare old S-F magazines; I am searching for a serial (novel) called, "the Empire never ended." It is the most important story of all.

  [21:41] Zebra is the supreme deity and Savior-messenger Ubik/Runciter. It is Simon Magus in his true form: the great plasmate, whose existence, activity in history and presence is totally unsuspected and unknown to us—unless he is in us—only Zebra can see Zebra. He entered me at my birth or in my childhood. I am a homoplasmate: Zebra acting in syzygy with a human. My writing is the purpose of this syzygy. I restore Gnostic gnosis to the world in a trashy form, like in Ubik.

  [21:42] I just remembered my Siddhartha dream: the book in two parts, with part 1 ending with "and during all this (underneath it all) Siddhartha slept"—the obvious implication being that now, in part 2, he will awaken.

  A fifth Savior is now being born! There have been many revelations and dreams to me about this. The Gnostics believed in two ages: the present one evil—the next ("future") one good—obviously the two parts of the Siddhartha book. Part 2, the second (good) age, is beginning.

  This dream proves that my revelation is Gnostic. And the Gnostics (in contrast to the pistis Christians) considered the Buddha (i.e., Siddhartha) as one of the four saviors.

  [21:44] Meanwhile, the Empire continues; it never ended. Orthodox Christianity is a form which the Empire takes.

  [21:50] Voice: "The world [today] has reached a point where it cannot go any lower ... therefore it will ascend."

  Dream: "A fish can't shoot a gun." The fin with which I held the gun: a Rhipidon93 fin!

  [21:51] Leo Bulero defeating Palmer Eldritch is the Savior/messenger (Son of Man) defeating the demiurge creator of this prison (and illusory) world. Breaking his power over man. In Ubik, Runciter calling to Joe Chip is the Savior calling to his human counterpart. This is also true in Pot-Healer when Glimmung calls to Joe Fernwright.

  And Mercer and the Walker-on-Earth are one and the same. Deity takes trashy and even fake (sic) forms: Mercer, Glimmung, the Ubik commercials.

  Scanner is a very serious book. Man's present, unredeemed state—his ontological condition—of ignorance is depicted; this is not an aspect of his state but is (esse) his state. Opposed to this is the ontological state of knowledge (knowing) provided by Runciter and Ubik in Ubik. Scanner focuses on the condition of ignorance dealt with more glibly in Maze and Ubik; it goes into the anatomy of the occlusion—it really studies nothing else (no cosmology is presented). Mainly, it strives to show that we are fucked up in a way which precl
udes our being able to be aware of it—the most ominous kind of occlusion (ignorance). It points to the need of outside intervention.

  VALIS will be an attempt to show that intervention and the redeemed state, but it is proving too difficult to write. This novel must be written, and I have the redeemed state of 2-74/2-75 to base it on, but God, what a task: to depict (1) that which redeems; (2) the process of redemption; (3) the redeemed (restored) state of man—in contrast to the occluded state (described in Scanner). It could take the rest of my life to do it. I don't know if I can. It must be divided into two parts: (1) unredeemed (and then the entity which redeems and the process); and (2) the redeemed state. Like the "Siddhartha" 2-part book I dreamed about. Restored man—the Christ-man, the second Adam. What a responsibility—what a task. But it must be done. And it must—like the "Siddhartha" book, point to the fifth Savior whose coming is imminent.

  [21:52] The Rhipidon Society means: very early fish society—i.e., the secret early "fish" Christians. The message of this dream, then, is an important one: a secret true-Christian society does exist, as I suspected, and probably the info and cypher in Tears was aimed at them. As a fish I could not carry—literally, since I had no hands—a gun; this means I am indeed a true Christian (and a member of the Rhipidon Society; I have been initiated into it by the Savior himself): as he said, "I had called you, Philip."

  [21:57] I dreamed: I am the fish whose flesh is eaten, and because I am fat, it is good. (Bob Silverberg ate me.) This fits in with the dream I had in 1974 of the great white fish whom we ate and who suffered. But offered itself to us.

  ***

  Voice: "He causes things to look different so it'd appear time has passed."

  Then no time has in fact passed—which I realized in 2-74.

  Voice: "This is also why he smashes things." The creator James-James is meant in both cases. To make time seem real—but in 2-74 I discovered it's not real.

  "He causes things to look different so it'd appear time has passed." This is why Rome c. A.D. 45 and USA 1974 are syntonic—can be superimposed. Otherwise, there is no possible way—and no way, upon seeing it, to comprehend it. Here is the answer. "Appear" time has passed. See? He is talking counterfeiting eternity—trying to duplicate it, as an end in itself. It is a fraud. And here is how it's done. (I.e., to make things "look different.")

  The E. of Phil. article on time says, "All we really know is not that there is time or what time is, but that there is change." (But actually it's just shifting aspects—like perspectives of one thing.)

  [21:59]

  Like taking different camera angle shots of the same object: we must be moving along some kind of axis, but always viewing one unchanging thing, it stays the same but our perspective permutates.

  [21:60] What happened in 3-74 is that I woke up to reality. But it has these counterfeit accretional layers over it. Our sense of time—of the passage of time—is the result of our scanning the changes of appearance, we record the changes along a linear memory-strip, sequentially (digitally). We derive the idea of time from sequential memory (of permutation or fluctuation): it is linearized in our brains. [...] We derive our sense of how much time (whatever that may be) from the rate of change; therefore if change could be speeded up to → ∞, thousands of years (sic) could be compressed into an actual month (or so). Use of LSD has brought this to our attention.

  This makes me think of the furious rate of permutation of the phosphene "graphics." Was the entire remainder of the "Karmic" tape run? It could be—have been—hundreds or thousands of years of tape—"burned up" and hence abolished. However much remained. Well, in that case I'm spared living all my future lives.

  "Ignorance can be thought of as forgetting the true self."—Eliade.*

  True self and true world can't be separated nor can false self and false world.

  In the age of iron Siddhartha (Brahman) sleeps, we sleep also. As we awake, he awakes; we're him (he is us). But the age of iron does not progress into the age of gold sequentially; rather, the landscape of the age of iron wakes up and is transmuted into gold along its extent (orthogonally), like a sort of brain whose stations turn from dark to light, the new heaven and the new earth replace the old (are substituted for).

  The phosphene activity would be what I call the inner tape (ego) firing into a void, totally out of synch with the outer tape (world) which continued at its normal rate, thus it used itself up.

  [21:64] Recognizing my role as messenger I can make more sense out of the anomalous—or nearly anomalous—fact of my 2-3-74 anamnesis and all it brought me. I merely passed over from unconscious messenger to conscious (as in Deus Irae). My maximus opus VALIS will be consciously formulated: restored man, redeemed Christian superman, with his powers, knowledge and faculties intact—and the process of metamorphosis. It could not be written from an unconscious standpoint. Maybe it can't be written at all—

  Wait. Siddhartha. There is the handle: to cast it in a non-Christian but Gnostic mold—rather than Empire-dominated orthodoxy. I will present it as the Buddha, or, even better, as it is: I will depict the fifth savior not identifying him with any of the previous four. He, the 5th savior, must supersede the previous four and be unlike them (be Pantocrator). But what a task!

  [21:78] I happened to read the E. of Phil. article on Brahmanism, and find under "epistemology" the principle of parsimony applied to the question of whether there is an external universe separate from the sense impressions (impinging data) of it. The argument runs that since the "external universe" could arise within the precept system itself (as in dreams) or God could cause us to merely think we experienced a separate external universe, and that no sense-datum and an external datum can be distinguished from each other, the notion of an external universe is superfluous and violates the principle of parsimony.

  For me, however, I achieved saintliness and the "higher truth," that there is only Brahman and Atman (the macrobrain, which push-pull fires world and self back and forth), so for me it isn't a logical question but rather one of revelation (heightened experience/perception). Yes, God (i.e., Brahman) does cause us to think we experience world; we do in fact experience it, but it is a participatory two-part illusion: self (ego) and world locked together and rigidly determined.

  What we call "evil" or "disorder" is simply the perception that reality is not so arranged as to (1) help us individually, or (2) make sense to us. But reality is not for our individual benefit but for the macrobrain's: its interests are never subordinated to ours. This has to be so, since we are portions of it. If its interests were sacrificed, ultimately we—all existence—would die. "I am the breath of my creator, and as he breathes [in and out] I live."

  Basically, the macrobrain controls us this way:

  The self (ego) is caught in the middle of a transaction between the inner DNA and the outer stimuli which are rigidly coordinated by the macrobrain. It is the total macrobrain signaling to itself. Best to kick back, relax, and enjoy it—since we're asleep (and robots) anyhow. This is what is known as Karma or astral determinism, this sleep state. But the macrobrain is evolving toward the consciousness.

  [21:82] (1) What I saw was alive.

  (2) It was in but not in the world; the world turned into it—or it turned into the world. World was a state or condition it took, that is closer to it: it was prior to world in some sense; world had reverted back from its dead state to its living, it had resumed volitional functioning. Like waking up? As analogous to my Atman waking up? It stirred, not was stirred.

  No—Zebra invaded and overrode. Entered its own artifact. Was Zebra smaller than world? No. Larger. And this was not panpsychism. World became plastic in the face (impinging) of mind. Mind exerted direct pressure on it (and on me, e.g., in the pink beam firing into me). Zebra abolished world qua world.

  What if Zebra and World are regarded as two modes of one being? Zebra equals awake and world is the same thing asleep.

  Actually, I phrased it correctly initially above: "the world turne
d into it" not "it turned into the world." I saw world first; then it became volitional. Yes, world reverted back from its dead state or sleeping state: it unfroze. As if world were a temporary state, and it resumed its true one—ceased to pose (or assume) the aspect of causal world. That make of world a pose or fiction—ah—I have it. The living reality played dead to blend in: camouflage. That was and is my key term: camouflage. So that it looked like world and couldn't be told from it. Mimicking, mimesis, playing dead, to blend in: yes—indistinguishable from world. No way our senses could do a set-ground discrimination. I was only aware of it by its activity: when it acted; otherwise, when blending, even in my heightened state I couldn't have discerned it. So there is no way to say how much of world it has replaced—i.e., what percent and which parts are world and which parts it. This is not panpsychism and maybe not immanent deity, but a UTI systematically replacing ("transubstantiating progressively") world.

  I have no reason to believe it created world in the first place—no; it appeared to have invaded world, and by playing dead could not be told from it; not until it acted. Like a vast body of an organism.