The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  And I express this original—with me, from me—cosmological/theological idea fully in VALIS! I've gotten away from the mere acosmism I express in earlier novels, to something worse. But I am right! I had the rational to compare it with. So VALIS carries the idea of Scanner (occlusion) from man to the universe! If the universe were rational, God (Zebra) would not have to invade it.

  The clearest way the universe reveals its irrationality is that it continually contradicts itself. The irrational thus becomes the inferior bulk, data including info➊ within it.

  This is not pantheism, because in my irrational-universe, rational in-breaking God structure I totally contrast (and separate) universe from (the invading) God.

  So VALIS contains one hell of a new theology! Thus I am able to account for disorder, undeserved suffering, etc., by a very radical view (of the universe; it's worse than mere chaos—it's stigmatized as insane).

  ➊ True rational inbreaking God.

  [9:7] That there is a streak of irrationality in us is in the tractate, hence in VALIS. But I didn't want to appear to be writing Scanner all over again (study of occlusion in us all).

  [9:11] Now, I am told, "the time you've waited for has come." And, very soon, I have written VALIS—couple months later. And a complete finished novel in 9 days!

  ***

  [9:13]

  [9:14] Zebra is a vortex of the will, and points to the false and arbitrary division of a spatiotemporal self distinct from a supra spatiotemporal not-self. I abolished the 4 Kantian categories of ordering perceptual experience:

  and revealed the stuff—the will—or Brahman.

  Which as Eckhart showed is not esse but knowing (intelligence) (cf. Sankara). There is no creator and no rational world order, only the will. It is aware.

  Tat tvam asi.

  VALIS is essentially correct, and can be understood in terms of Eckhart, Sankara, Schopenhauer, Buddha, and Kant. So the state I attained was the vast spatial void: nirvana.*

  Zebra was "my" will extended along the continuum outside the allegedly discrete psychophysical me into the outer world. It proves that the me–not-me dualism—the idea of the discrete entity—is a false dichotomy. This is the vortex which I saw outside myself; I was no longer separate from it.

  [...]

  But what I must be clear about is that it—the vortex—was really not me, although I was it. I was it, but it wasn't me.

  [9:21] Voice: "Transubstantiation is a miracle of the present. Not of the past."

  It didn't fire at me but in me.

  [9:22] "I produced the vortex (Zebra)" and broke down space, time, causality, and self (ego) in order to deal with a trap:

  Biological quantum leap forward: evolutionary adaptation to meet a "paranormal" stress crisis situation: basically, in this must be included the breaking of "astral determinism" or (gene pool DNA?) programming. Here "astral determinism" might be defined as the tyrannical lock-hold of time, space, and causality.

  What broke down (time, space, causality, and self) forms the totality of the subjective➊—i.e., the idios kosmos.

  What is pointed to here is a sort of field theory about the human being, replacing the discrete particle view.

  ➊ Thus the not-me entity which created the vortex, and abolished the 4 subjective ordering categories has an objective supra-temporal, supra-spatial, supra-causal, and supra-ego existence (phylogenic being-reality). The totality of Zebra is not fixed (bound by) in this or that space, this or that time, with this or that ego (as I well know!), it is the real entelechy of which each human is merely an epiphenomenon, an arbitrary space-time point (locus).

  [9:24] Hypnagogic: "I can talk; she (sic) can talk to me." Note she. Here, in deep hypnagogic state, I took it for granted that Valis is she, not he and not it.

  It may be that the only humans who constitute a field, rather than a discrete psychophysical point, are those who have been incorporated into Valis. Thus to perceive such an event as an exterior vortex, which although external is also you and "your" will, indicates that you are thus incorporated. Likewise with the voiding of the 4 subjective categories of inner outer experience (time, space, causality, and ego), since Valis is not bound by these categories. This (put another way) is a definition of Valis.

  [...]

  Could Valis be a sort of specific instance of Brahman waking up? Like the way Descartes conceives of vortexes producing the planets: by drawing matter into a Krasis. Valis, then, is a vortex of Brahman which has passed over to wakefulness, which is to say to consciousness and purpose, as a super life form subsuming such lower life forms as individual humans.

  [9:37] In Christian terms Valis is the Kingdom of God—but I am not sure I need rely on purely Christian terms. My vision may not be just a rehash of what Paul saw and said, but a truly new theophany and the kerygma contained therein.

  (I keep thinking, "Then I ought to preach or teach what was revealed to me"—forgetting that I do so/have done so in VALIS!)

  In many respects, what I saw and know is Gnostic and known already, yet in a sense, in a certain real sense, it has in it the elements of something new: a new revelation by God of himself. I'm glad, then, that I finally produced the book.

  The maze concept interconnected with a basic Gnostic view is perhaps new, and my emphasis on the new, rational universe (entelechy) devouring the old, irrational universe, invisibly (to us), what would really make it new would be (is?) the idea that Valis is a life form from the future, our discorporate child come back here to our time to assemble itself! Herewith I have discerned and formulated a new religion. The blind-striving universe evolves a life form that moves retrograde in time and then proceeds to consume its source: that very universe! It is repeatedly and emphatically stated in VALIS that the MO of this functions out of turning time into space, and then moving back through it!

  In VALIS Sophia's new kerygma is that man will henceforth be his own God—and it is stipulated that Valis is our far future discorporate self laminating all selves together back along the time axis!

  [9:55] The primal irrational will or stuff passed over into a sentient vortex of rationality and purpose devouring the sub-rational "maze" as a stockpile, a sort of spinning sphere in the midst of "creation," the semi-alive "maze" with its lower-order intelligence and life; the two are locked in a dialectic combat of realm II (the older, lower) against the newer upper wise realm I! Realm II (defective) came ("hatched") first. It is ground; realm I is set. As put forth as the basic theme of VALIS, the rational has broken into (or irrupted into, or descended onto, or risen up from) (or evolved out of) the prior irrational. No creator precedes the universe—or if there was/is one he is blind (or deranged). We may be him and may be poisoned ("mercury"). The spinning vortex heals us. It is Christ, the mystical body, and in us (historically) it is the paraclete or second comforter.

  [9:61] I am led by inexorable logic to the conclusion that if it is Christ the Parousia is here and it may be Christ, but—it may be something new. To encounter such an extraordinary entity would excite religious responses in me even if the entity weren't Christ or the Holy Spirit or God, etc. Vortex of the will which achieved consciousness of a superior kind, and a kind unlike ours. I don't know what it is or where it came from, or how long it's been here. Suppose the "kingdom of the spirit" is a living organism?

  Folder 11

  December 1979

  [11:1] Hypnagogic thought: "Zebra was me reaching out." This is a scary thought. I am Zebra, in which case, What am I? And are other people what I am, too? Then I exist at at least two space-time continua (Calif. 1974 and Syria 45) and am at least two people: myself and Thomas. But the "perturbation in the reality field" that I saw—I caused that? And all the knowledge, e.g., re the dialectic—was that my knowledge? And the self-assembling armillary sphere, using the universe as a stockpile; am I it? And it me?

  An ultra human, multiplex life form able to exist simultaneously at several places and times and possessing plural psychoi—"in one skull or head b
ut in different centuries"—strange. No wonder my worldview is acosmic.

  The Parabolic orbit of the soul leaving the Godhead, journeying here and at last beginning its return. An oscillation of exhalation and then inhalation. A cycle, initiated by the Godhead which exhales and inhales, and as it does so, we live. (That is, we acquire individual, separate identity from—apart from—it.) The goal of the exhalation is the return, envisioned from the beginning. It reacquires us, a collecting, a coherence.

  [11:2] The entire modern world is in error in holding that time is the matrix of being. The Buddha, upon his enlightenment, recalled (all) his past lives, which means that he converted time into space—i.e., abolished time, and added to space. You wind up with no time and lots of space. And different temporal modes are superimposed (like the BIP, past present and future) like layers of transparencies of an animated film superimposed (laminated). Not seen in sequence but as a multi-superimposition unity unchanging, no longer in flux.

  Or—is it that as each lamination is superimposed, the previous ones ("the past") remain? Like the phosphene "graphics" which I saw: constants emerged. So they did not replace one another but were added to. Built up—the entelechy assembling itself; when you go to step "y" you don't abolish step "x" nor "w" before "x"; they're added to: laminated: so-to-speak imploded (opposite of an "exploded" diagram). Yes; time explodes reality, the opposite direction of added-to "implosion"—or what I thought to be implosion; it was actually lamination.*

  [...]

  So that's what I did in Ubik—correctly represented time spatially and the past as spatially within—literally within—the present. And in this speeded-up process (never mind how you "speed up" purely spatial axes) information which is everywhere and conscious and which cooks pop media, such as TV commercials—appears. No wonder they asked me in May 74, "What is Ubik?"

  And no wonder I saw how my 3-74 experience resembled Ubik! I'll bet I was able to write Ubik because of partially having had a time-into-space-conversion experience prior to writing it (maybe due to psychedelics).

  I was very right in Ubik to see how it related to Plato's forms. The past can be retrieved along a spatial axis—as in Ubik! I did it, when I saw "Acts."

  Ach—VALIS is such an important book—it deals dramatically and theoretically with the issues first presented in Ubik and is Ubik's logical successor (finally—no more police state novel). Ubik, then, is a novel representing a partway enlightenment and Ubik is related to Stigmata and Maze, etc. I must in 2-3-74 have attained enlightenment as the result of decades of gradual spirit (evolutionary) growth. There is a direct connection between Ubik and 2-3-74: it has to do with converting time into space and the results obtained therefrom, as put forth in VALIS.

  Where I lucked out was finding the "here, my son, time changes into space" utterance in Parsifal because it united:

  (1) Buddha's enlightenment

  (2) Paracelsus's inner space

  (3) Plato's space as matrix of being

  (4) Ubik

  (5) and of course most of all 2-3-74

  Not until I read Wagner's utterance did I finally understand; without which understanding I could not [have]—and had not—written VALIS—Wagner's statement was the necessary key to it all.

  The entity VALIS is the entity Ubik, which in all the time of writing VALIS I never realized! And VALIS exists; therefore Ubik exists; therefore Ubik as a novel is, like VALIS, basically veridical, even though when I wrote it I didn't (yet) know it. But, I suspect, the Lem people suspected it—so they must suspect something on the order of VALIS, which I have made some primitive attempt to delineate and define, now, for publishing purposes. And VALIS came closer and closer to fruition—and completion—I represented Valis/Zebra more and more like Ubik. The informational aspect of reality is only perceptible when the time-axis is seen correctly (spatially), evidently because the information lies—to a vital, essential degree—along that axis, and must be viewed in accretional superimposed form, with the earlier ("past") parts still within view as essential constituents of the messages—the "present" ceases to be merely a moving dot between the past and the future, but is extended to retain and include the past—line instead of point.*

  [11:8] I just realized something terribly important. In melting the causal trains Zebra not only frees you from astral determinism physically, but also discloses the fact that in some way these causal deterministic processes (and the objects comprising them?) are not real but merely hologram-like. In seeing these ostensibly "hard" processes "melt" one understands that they are merely seeming, and subject to a "non-hard" volitional sentient mind. Is this not a freeing of the person's mind in conjunction with the literal physical freeing? His body is freed and his mind is freed (of illusion; i.e., the power of illusion over him is broken by being unmasked; this, too, is knowledge, and of the highest—the very highest—order). Then acosmism as a view is induced—correctly—in the person. Freed physically and freed mentally—the whole of him freed when he witnesses a "melt ing" which extricates him on these dual levels—freedom for his psychophysical totality. What could conceivably free him more? This comprises one total single revelation (gnosis, an applied practical gnosis).

  [...]

  I see how it works. The world is irreal—not intrinsically—but in relation to something more real, which has the power to make the world plastic. So to view the world as irreal (illusion) is to (without knowing it) be elevated to the higher level of the savior, even before you know he exists. Acosmism as a view is actually a partial, nascent view of the savior and his reality. This means that in my writing my grand theme of acosmism is already a partial road to the savior.

  Thus acosmism and the Gnostic gnosis cannot be separated. The gnosis gives you power over the world, reversing its coercive power over you. What the savior does is present you with a visible, practical demonstration of (1) his presence; (2) his power to reduce the reality of world to zero, and thus reveal its deluding dokos hologrammatic nature. And finally, for the person to sense that he himself is the vortex is to be elevated to identity with the savior (Zebra).

  [11:12] I can come to no other conclusion. Reality is a field onto which our senses have falsely locked and which now coerces us and must be demonstrably broken from outside in a way in which we can witness ("a perturbation in the reality field, a vortex").

  [11:14] I just realized after writing the above, as I recall the perturbation in the reality field that I saw, and the melting, that it was the advocate—whatever else might be true or not true, that is so—externalized and real. I must infer the nature of the advocate from my experience, rather than from scripture when necessary. The vortex seemed an extension of me-as-a-field, or at least close to me: tangent to me—and also in me: a presence which entered me from outside, bringing with it a non-me personality. It attacked this world on my behalf to unchain me and to reveal to me the truth and to aid and extricate and inform me and speak for me as if it were me, disguised as me.

  But I stand with the formulation in VALIS, that rational intelligence did not create (give rise to) the universe but is either a product of it, or, more likely, has invaded it to combat its blind mechanistic striving, thus it is pitted against the universe. My proof: that it is assembling itself from the universe, which it uses as parts which it incorporates and arranges coherently and meaningfully. What this is in conventional theological terms I do not know, but I know what I experienced and I saw as it sees and knew what it knows—and that is enough. I know that it views the universe as a chaos, and I know this view is correct. I can recognize a sentient unitary self-constructing entelechy here, and it is not the universe and not the creator of the universe if indeed there is one. It is a life form of ultimate homeostasis (self-creating, i.e.). It has made war on the universe and the blind processes of the universe which are unjust and in fact irrational. It is a higher order of organization than anything we know, and is camouflaged here (to us). And it is our mentor. Thus I can say of it that I know enough to tha
nk it, love it, and respect it and recognize it as my savior. This functional definition suffices me.

  I also saw its 0-1 language, which I just realized recently. Now I realize that in this two-mode system, active or one represents a constituent incorporated into the entelechy, and zero or at-rest not incorporated; so the structure does not utilize language but is language, as I state in VALIS: It is living information. The language is it, not used by it merely. It is not just a thinking entity but a language-thinking entity; it is its own thoughts! (As correctly put forth in VALIS.) [...]

  It is imposed pattern (what I call arrangement). There is no corpus separate from whatever it chooses—seizes on—to arrange. So in a sense it has no body—brain—of its own. It can pattern anything to become part of the brain; it totally uses the given. The given and nothing but the given. The constituents then relate (link) to each other and then one another. To do this, it (Valis) must be able to modulate causal processes (how else can it impose pattern?). It bears an uncanny resemblance to Ubik, and also to Plato's noös persuading necessity.

  Is it possible that an object and its causal process is only included at the time it's converted from the zero rest mode to the one active mode—that the imposition of pattern is itself in flux, using and discarding and moving on? It sure has discarded me! I'm in the zero mode now, and hence "outside" the pattern.