The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  Viewed one way, this structure was information—not just verbal but—there is no term to express it (verbal, symbol, graphic, etc.). One can talk of message or picture equally. Actualization of knowing—that might be it. Transformation from potential to actual, utilizing anomie as the raw material, with order being equal to actualization. Arrangement and coherence—no human word expresses it. Nothing lost, nothing wasted, nothing in vain, nothing without purpose, nothing random or accidental. It was like a film clip of a vast explosion of a unitary entity run backward, with teleological cause everything. Everything was receptive to the plan (intention, will) of the mind directing the change process, hence I am led to panentheism, but not panpsychism.

  Confronted by my vision no religious system properly serves. The cosmic Christ, the mystical Corpus Christi comes closest. Yes, it will—as expressed by Paul—suffice, if interpreted in the vastest sense.

  I had the Dibba Cakkhu vision of all things coming into being and passing away,➊ that was what I had: the ajna eye of discernment, I became Shiva temporarily, the destroyer of the extant world in the service of the next.

  Viewed this way, my vision indicates that I am a Buddha—one whose eye of discernment has opened. And I recalled my former life as an apostolic Christian (which fits in), what I was I am: the regaining of true self. Vision of all time and space: the totality. (In other words, microcosm completed and, simultaneously, macrocosm completed, both in terms of my awareness, inner [micro or Atman] and outer [macro or Brahman].)

  There was nothing I did not know, and nothing I did not perceive.

  This transcends any given religion—transcends any partial, culturally-determined view, or way of knowing. The hermetic cosmology serves best inner space, mirror, memory—Bruno and Paracelsus.

  This was absolute knowledge and absolute wisdom.

  And, like an alchemical transmutation, Zebra turning the irreal into the real. The totality of reality, micro- and macrocosms seen in alchemical terms, in alchemical process from lower (base) to higher (noble). Hence the info about mercury.

  If a human mind was involved it was/is one of the greatest minds in human history. Were I to pick one I'd pick Paracelsus, but this is only a guess. My homoplasmate theory posits an accretional mind, like a vast spiritual dungball rolling up the inclined plane of human history, acquiring person after person, starting with, e.g., Zoroaster and Siddhartha, a gather ing, growing, refining—and refined—supra personal human Noös linked through Christ with the macromind, yes, this is it. Diagram to follow:

  ➊ The absolutely ultimate process (of the process philosopher, Heraclitus, Whitehead, Bergson). And the great sphere of reality coming into being, which Parmenides intuited.

  [22:55] I conceive of the totality as a vast slowly spinning globe which, each time it revolves, is more completed; this is an accretional process. It is alive; it is driven by its own mind; and it includes everything; and, despite its unitary nature, it is infinitely complex—and I mean infinitely—facet—upon facet, calm and combination of parts without repetition or end; and in a certain beautiful sense it, like a top, makes a musical sound, a chord of fixed intervals (but this must be a metaphor for geometric ratios, such as the Fibonacci constant). The sound—the ratios—are an exponent of Joy (Freude). A triumph through (by) and over the dialectic which brings it to completion. It has harmonized everything into its unitary, complex self.

  [22:72] [Editor's note: These fragments represent early runs at the material of VALIS .] "The satellite—Valis—fires information down to them?"

  "It does more than that, it controls them. It can override them."

  "Did you notice the pot?" Kevin said. "On Brady's desk. The little clay pot—like the one you have, Fat."

  "No," Fat said, "I didn't."

  "I didn't the first time I saw the film," Kevin said. "The pot shows up several times. It shows up in different places. In the Lamptons' home—in the living room."

  "And once on Ferris Fremount's desk," I said.

  Kevin said, "It also appears as a pitcher. Full of water. On the parched field, when the film opens. Off to one side—you only notice it subliminally, a woman is dipping it into a creek."

  "It seemed to me that the Christian fish sign appeared on it once," I said.

  "No," Kevin said. "I thought so the first time. This time I looked closer. You know what it is? The double helix DNA molecule. In the form of a repeated design."

  We remained silent for a time and then I said, "DNA memory. Gene-pool memory."

  "Right," Kevin said. He added, "At the creek when she fills the pitcher there's a man fishing. It flashes just for an instant. But it's there."

  "The early Christians—the real ones can make you do anything they want you to do. And see—or not see—anything. That's what I got out of the picture."

  "But they're dead."

  "Yeah. If you believe in the reality of time."

  [22:74] What did he intend to do when Sheri died? Maurice had shouted that at him in the form of a question. Would he die too?

  Not at all. Fat, pondering and writing and doing research and attempting to salvage his own life, had decided to go in search of the savior. He would find him, wherever he was.

  This was the mission, the divine purpose, which Zebra had placed on him: the mild yoke, the burden light. Fat, a holy man now, would become a modern-day magi. All he lacked was a clue—some hint as to where to seek. Zebra would tell him, eventually; the clue would come from God. This was the whole purpose of Zebra's theophany: to send Fat on his way.

  Our friend, upon being told of this, asked, "Will it be Christ?" His Roman Catholicism showed in asking this.

  "It is a 5th savior," Fat said enigmatically.

  That's why you thought you saw the first sign—because you picked up the sight of the man fishing, saw it subliminally.

  [22:81] Tractate: cryptica scriptura.*

  ***

  [22:82] Parsifal: "Here time turns into space." Is this what I saw in 3-74? Time had either rolled back, or aside, or departed (a "dysfunction") and I saw an augmented (i.e., enormously greater) space. The realm of the sacred? Is this how death is overcome, and eternal life bestowed? By turning time into space? And through space, one can move in any direction. So, if you left the mundane world and entered the sacred (lower realm to upper?) maybe this is what you'd notice: time (whatever that might be) turning into space—vast dimensions, as with the void which I experienced: pure, total space.

  My noetic hypnagogic vision of Willie Mays in the 54 series did not show his throw—the ball thrown: i.e., the heroic efforts; it showed the catcher at home plate and the ball received. I.e., success, not [just] heroic effort, but success; vollbracht. The tractate received in New York? The emphasis shifted from the throw to the receiver.

  And it also says: my work—the throw—is over; I did my part, successfully.

  The ball which I threw so far has been caught. I can rest now, for a while. I'm sure this was the message: not [just] the throw, the effort, but the catch: it's out of my hands now, as I later said in the mailgram. You market it. It's in your hands.

  [22:86] In the tractate I have put forth a theoretical framework in which the manifestation (theophany) of Zebra (Christ) not only comes into existence by logic, but by necessity, as a confirmation of the framework (world view). The framework explains the epiphany (who, what doing, why) and the epiphany verifies the framework. Perception (of the epiphany) and cognition (the creation of a theoretical framework) dovetail—a masterful achievement. (And experience!) It took me 41/2 years to construct the 3,000-word framework.

  How the tractate could be used re VALIS: there is a secret or quasi-secret religious group who holds to the "ideology" (theology) of the tractate, and the protagonist experiences the epiphany which I experienced—i.e., true—not cargo cult—Christianity. It is secret, but contacts the protagonist. For fictional purposes, it could be the church of Simon Magus102 (and Bruno and Paracelsus, etc.) or it could expose the establish
ment churches as being those of Simon Magus. Either way would do. Or it could go back to Asklepios—and Julian the apostate. (This novel is set, after all, in an alternate world.) What about this? Simon's church is the legal, approved one, and Christianity is [still] as it originally was: religia illicita.➊

  ➊ Maybe it's not illegal, just hidden; and the NT is nonexistent, now; the letters and gospels either never got written or were destroyed or lost—with maybe the exception of the 4th gospel; and Paul remained Saul and didn't experience his conversion, and continued to persecute Christians—with apparent success. And joined Simon, became a Simonite—Simonians? And Jesus is historically-theologically known as "the pretender" or "imposter"!

  What is missing from the tractate is the info that the true Christian church is still a hidden and underground (secret) church. In VALIS Jesus could be as obscure an historical figure as Simon is to us. Mentioned once in the Simonite texts (as Simon is in "Acts"). An heretical precursor to the "real Messiah": Simon.

  In VALIS this is presented as an alternate world which branched off almost 2,000 years ago; but actually it (VALIS and Simonism) is our [true] world!

  Here is a good touch: Beethoven was a political figure, not a musician, who surfaced as a member of true, illegal Christianity; and it is recognized that he was black.

  I feel a lot of anxiety writing this down, because I am really saying this is true: the establishment churches are [covertly] the Church of Simon Magus, and Christianity is totally secret—in our world!

  But the Christians in VALIS hold to the theology and views of my tractate, tracing their religion back through Elijah to Moses to Ikhnaton to the Dogon to the three eyed invaders from Sirius.103 It is known as a black African religion!

  Simon, à la Klingsor, has cast a spell on the world; his wizardry remains (does he, in secret?). Yes—the Christians teach (re the tractate) that a long spurious-time interpolation was stuck in, specifically by Simon.

  If all this is so, it is very scary.

  [22:95] We—all creatures—are the immortal man, and, as I put forth in the tractate, that "immortal man" is not a man at all but living information.

  [22:110] My statement in the tractate "that the anguish of the one (over the death of the female twin) pervades the cosmos to its meanest level, but will be turned to joy when hyperuniverse I divides" amazingly fits the NT (Paul's?) or Christ's himself? statement that the "universe is (like a) woman in birth pangs whose suffering now later will turn to joy"! Incredible similarity! Of course Parmenides says Form II (yin) doesn't really exist (Empedocles' strife); the woman is dead.

  [Editor's note: On [>] of this folder, Dick suspends work on the Exegesis and begins VALIS .]

  PART THREE

  Folder 9*

  December 1978

  [9:1] Fat later developed a theory that the universe is made out of information. He started keeping a journal—had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time. His encounter with God was all there on the pages in his—Fat's, not God's—handwriting.

  The term "journal" is mine, not Fat's. His term was "Exegesis," a theological term meaning a piece of writing that explains or interprets a portion of scripture. Fat believed that the information fired at him from time to time was holy in origin and hence a form of scripture.

  One of his paragraphs impressed me enough to copy it out and include it here.

  "Summary. (etc.—v. tractate)"

  Fat developed a lot of unusual theories to account for his contact with God, and the information derived therefrom. One in particular struck me as thought-provoking. It amounted to a kind of mental capitulation by Fat to what he was undergoing; this theory held that in actuality he wasn't experiencing anything at all. Sites of his brain were being selectively stimulated by tight energy-beams emanating from far off, perhaps millions of miles away. These selective brain site stimulations generated in his head the impression—for him—that he was seeing and hearing words, pictures, figures of people, in short God, or as Fat liked to call it, the Logos. But, really, he only imagined he experienced these things. They resembled holograms. What struck me was the oddity of a lunatic discounting his hallucinations in this sophisticated manner: Fat had intellectually dealt himself out of the game of madness while still enjoying its sights and sounds. In effect, he no longer claimed that what he experienced was re ally there. Did this indicate he had begun to sober up? Hardly. Now he held the idea that "they" or God or someone owned a long-range very tight information rich beam of energy focused on Fat's head. In this I saw no improvement, but it did represent a change. Fat could now honestly discount his hallucinations, which meant he recognized them as such. But, like Gloria, he now had a "they." It seemed to me a pyrrhic victory. Fat's life struck me as a litany of exactly that, as for example the way he had rescued Gloria.

  The Exegesis Fat labored on month after month struck me as a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one—in this case an attempt by a beleaguered mind to make sense out of the inscrutable. Perhaps this is the key to mental illness: incomprehensible events occur—your life becomes a bin for hoax-like fluctuations of what used to be reality, and not only that—as if that weren't bad enough—you, like Fat, ponder forever over these fluctuations in an effort to order them into a coherency, when in fact the only sense they make is the sense you impose on them, out of the necessity to restore everything into shapes and processes you can recognize.

  The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar and what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The madman experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know.

  In the midst of his shattered landscape Fat imagined God had cured him. Once you notice pyrrhic victories they seem to abound.

  Either he had seen God too soon, or he had seen him too late. In any case it had done him no good at all in terms of survival. Encountering the Living God had not helped to equip him for the tasks of ordinary endurance, which ordinary men, not so favored, handle.

  Men and the world are mutually toxic to each other. But God—the true God—has penetrated both, penetrated man and penetrated the world, and sobers the landscape. But that God, the God from outside, encounters fierce opposition. Frauds—the deceptions of madness—abound, and mask themselves as their mirror opposites: pose as sanity. The masks, however, wear thin, and the madness reveals itself. It is an ugly thing.

  The remedy is here but so is the malady. As Fat repeats obsessively, "The Empire never ended." In a startling response to the crisis, the true God mimics the universe, the very region he has invaded: he takes on the likeness of sticks and trees and cans in gutters—he presumes to be trash discarded, debris no longer noticed. Lurking, the true God literally am bushes reality and us as well. God, in very truth, attacks and injures us, in his role as antidote. As Fat can testify to, it is a scary experience to encounter this. Hence we say, the true God is in the habit of concealing himself. 25 hundred years have passed since Heraclitus wrote, "Latent form is the master of obvious form."

  At "y," the entity including me, evolves into its ultimate state (self), the info-firing quasi-material, quasi-energy plasmatic non-humanoid life form I call Zebra—from perhaps thousands or millions of years in the future. By then ("y") it is virtually pure knowing, pure information (and firing it back at/to me). It has died for the last time and now invades from "the other side" (upper realm) as well as from the future. [...]

  Fat's obsessive idea these days, as he worried more and more about Sherri, was that the savior would soon be reborn—or had been already somewhere in the world, he walked or would soon walk the Earth, once more.

  [9:1a] In 3-74 that which was in me was that which was outside me.➊ This is not the Holy Spirit; the only theology which describes this is the Eckhart-Sankara Atman-Brahman or Spark-Godhead—the division between me as microcosm (inner) and the macrocosm (outer) was abolished. This is not "theolepsy"—this is the Eckhart-Sankara concept
of moksa, God born in the person and the Godhead outside. Only my ignorance of theology has prevented me from realizing that only the Eckhart-Sankara concept can explain this experience.*

  I have confused "theolepsy" with this inner-outer identity (unity) of the divine. Its holiness was indubitable.

  ➊ and that which was outside me was not localized (i.e., a part of reality but was the totality, viz: cf. Xenophanes).

  [9:2a] Thus I say, "There is only one rational reality: God inside us and outside, all else is irrational."

  This resembles Timaeus.

  Thus I state, as I do in VALIS, an irrational (and irreal) cosmos, into which God (the rational) breaks. This isn't ordinary pantheism or the usual concept of immanent deity.

  The only way we could see that our universe—and us—are irrational is when God the rational bursts in and we have something rational to compare the irrational with. This is my contribution to Gnosticism, Eckhart, etc.