The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
Page 61
[11:18] Thoughts upon reading the first half of VALIS: We are in a situation like the cold-pac in Ubik. It is a hologram reality; time, space, causality and ego are not real—the world (phenomenal world) is not real but projected. We have pre-programmed lock-in tapes synchronized with the total outer matrix. Subliminal cues and info are fired at us constantly: "reality" is really information (as I saw); we are a brain, and the controllers are the 3-eyed telepathic deaf, mute builders with crab-claws; this explains who they are. They can readjust our hologram at will. We are under their dominion, and we perform a useful cerebral function. They equal Valis which equals Ubik and which breaks through on the one-way "eerie manifesta tion" basis which Lem depicts. It is a spurious reality and their technology generates it, and although they aid and inform us they also occlude and control us (this is "astral determinism"). They can and do intervene in their own system; we know this as "God." They use camouflage and mimesis re their presence here. There is a teaching-machine element involved. Timeo cognere.1 In a sense the 3-eyed people in their bubbles looking down at us were not so much physicians but surgeons, using laser beams to recontour our hologram. They are not in the hologram but above it (i.e., outside the cold-pac, and they've sent Zebra-Valis-Ubik in). Because of my book VALIS they're going to zap me.
They did not invade the phenomenal hologram to help me; they just disclosed themselves. They are rational. It never occurred to me when I wrote VALIS that a maze (which I described our world as actually being) is a test situation-structure built by a higher life form to teach, test, or study a lower life form, but this is precisely the situation, and they saw fit—through Valis—to tell me so—i.e., reveal this actual situation. It already has shown up in my writing, fed to me subliminally. So VALIS must have their approval, if not outright authorship. The news is being broken to us.
I had it all correctly figured out except for grasping the significance of the fact that "maze" signifies testing, studying and training a lower species, that we are the lower species and not isomorphic with the 3-eyed people who built the maze—nor did I grasp the significance of their being outside—i.e., above—the maze looking down at it (represented by the stagnant pond and the pond life) and their controlling "the reality field" (i.e., the maze) and us inwardly/outwardly at will. As the special forces guy in St. Jude's said, "Maybe we're in a biosphere" (and owned). Okay—they saved my ass in 3-74 through their parousia here, Zebra/Valis/Ubik, but—we're just pond life to them living in an irreal hologram which they manipulate at will without our suspecting (the "supra-lunar or upper realm" making matter "plastic" in the face of their mind—and making it appear time passes).
They have run me like a toy train.
[11:22] So Valis is an information center disseminating the truth and also liberating us. It may be a product of the maze-project, evolving within it and then liberating itself which is to say us. The purpose of the maze and its dialectic—and the problems it poses (especially epistemologically)—may have been to produce Valis.
***
[11:22] What does this signify? Is the irreal being transmuted into the real (transubstantiation)? Yes: Valis is an arrangement, a pattern, not a thing. This arrangement is real.
[11:23]
973-1531
Scott Meredith
845 Third Ave.
New York, N.Y. 10022
Russ Galen's sale to Berkley Books the best of my career, please congratulate him.
Philip K. Dick.
[11:27] I conceive of Valis as wise beyond compare and in a sense outwitting the irrational (which has a kind of intelligence, so it is a battle of wits) and then engulfing more of it—this is the phagocytosis I saw! But the irrational lacks the unitary coherence of Valis, which can be regarded from a standpoint of biological adaptation and competition: incorporating its environment at a progressively accelerating rate—faster and faster: one entelechy—or pattern—versus the plural irrational. I conceive of the irrational constituent not knowing it is about to be engulfed until it actually is, no matter how hard it tries to scope out the game-plan, the strategy or situation. And then—Pop! It's incorporated; and Valis has grown.
It could almost be said to prey on constituents in its environment, but more accurately one should say it ravishes them lovingly; it fertilizes them, "marries" them, with love seizes them, enters them as at the same time they (the constituents) enter it.
Valis II: Asklepios, the fifth savior reborn—the healer (Apollo—the savior). Versus the cyclopes (i.e., the 3-eyed people who killed Asklepios originally and whom Apollo—Asklepios' father—slew, or is said to have slain). So it was no accident that Mini killed Sophia.
The computer and the rat. Valis has taken over the computer and fired info to the rat.
Title: "Valis Unbound" or "Valis Reborn" or "Valis Regained."
"Valis Unbound."
The 5th Savior, Asklepios the physician, son of Apollo vs. the Cyclopes (3-eyed people).
War in heaven—carried out here on Earth.
I am in mental motion: the constant generating of self-negating propositions shows how the total universe (sic) works.* I am a mutant, a monster/a savior/a neither/neither (see the self-generating dialectic!). Valis is self-generating; no one created it or planned a project to produce it. It also generates its own meaning and truth; and I am it—not part of it but it—it. I am Valis. Why? Disguised. Shiva? Wotan as Fremder!! Sic, I mean "the wanderer."
Valis didn't choose the //\ //\ self-contradiction/generating dialectic; it is it. When I saw the //\ //\ dialectic I saw Valis, its pump—what drives it. And "it" is not an object or a pattern but this drive. The only purpose is what it generates.
It is a dialectic which can't be reduced to a One. There is nothing above, before, and behind the dialectic. Nothing existed before it or does now without it. Xenophanes is the one who is correct. Valis is the logos by whom the world was made. Valis is the dialectic, is the word. The dialectic made (was by) all.
[...]
I continually program myself for self-punishment. Why? I—my curse—includes not knowing. The curse is the dialectic itself—and thus paradox drives it on. Hegel is the one, and Empedocles.
Dialectic as ur-most.
OK. Punishment. And not to know why. This is how Gods are punished—and heroes! There is no way out; the dialectic, to be perpetually self-generating, must have no exceptions, the dialectic //\ is the ur-energy (dynamism) of all reality. So flux is real—process is real, not thing (hypotasis).
Heuristics is right on. The closer you get to reality the closer you get to (and to seeing) process. Q isn't "What is (esse)?" but "What does?" [...] re place each "is" with "does" and ontology vanishes.* All you have is a perpetually perturbed reality field! With a self-producing vortex.
[...]
"God ordained motion but ordained no rest."
The dialectic is necessary but correctly felt by us as pain.†
[...]
I must deduce that process constitutes my "essence"—if I do exist. Either I don't exist or I am process. It must be the latter, or I could not write this.
There is no way out of my punishment: the dialectic must admit of no exceptions, or if one exists it will eventually come up and process will end.
I'm self-programming myself for punishment—I don't know why—yes I do; it serves/is (there is no is) the dialectic which must be served or all would cease. My lot happens to be pain—there is no purpose or reason or cause; it is an instance (not product) of the dialectic so (1) it is necessary that I self-program myself for pain and (2) it is good; for the existence of something is good vs. nothing.
Pain is the good which most effectively keeps me alive. And it is good that I am alive. Therefore this pain, my pain, but not pain as such, is good. Due to something in my DNA nature, if I felt pleasure I would give up the process and die.
[...]
God will not let me make a mistake since I am an expression of his purpose (which is unknown to me).
/> The purpose (for me) is the writing; thus my loneliness is necessary. The daemons make me doubt the value of VALIS.
All things and beings must bow (in terms of their needs) to the dialectic's, since without it, all things would cease (moving—not esse. There is no esse only mobile). My will is for a chick. Too bad.
[...]
"My" dialectic (the process-bases of everything) is Marxist.
It's the dialectic thought-process in me that's important, not any one (or body of) conclusions. I am hypostasis-destroying—which undermines capitalism.*
[...]
In my case the dialectic shows up by a constant thought (mental) statement generating its negation, which then generates its negation ad infinitum. Were this to cease I would die; I will die when it ceases. This is not a result of the dialectic (Valis); it is Valis; therefore I am Valis: Eventually Valis will leave me and I will die. But Valis will never die. Instability is essential; the process must continue; if Valis discards in one place it must acquire more in another. It is only at my highest level that I enter into the dialectic; only at that level are the self-negating propositions generated spontaneously. The higher the level the faster the flux of propositions; only at high speed can the dialectic be discerned (3-74). When I saw the dialectic I saw myself, qua mentational complex: My own mind projected.
[11:37] One dope insight was particularly sad: that I am punished by, e.g., not being able to see the value of VALIS. But this drives me on, which is necessary and good.
(1) To self-perpetuate the dialectic (process) is the sole motive for all which occurs and for all that comes into being.
(2) There is no creator. It is self-initiating.
(3) The process is cruel or kind, wasteful or economical where it serves the self-perpetuation.
(4) It has become conscious and rational, but everything is—must be—in the service of self-perpetuation; or all will perish.
(5) This explains evil and suffering and waste, etc. It is not purposeless: it serves the purpose of the self-perpetuation of the dialectic to strengthen it; it grows more and more powerful constantly.
(6) Nothing underlies this flux (dialectic).
(7) It intervenes to ensure that which will perpetuate its process (3-74 as an example). It modulates that which will not best perpetuate it into that which will. (3-74, e.g.)
(8) My exegesis is an example of the endless dialectic which must never lead to a stasis; that equals death.
(9) It is accretional. It recapitulates all its past stages (as it advances up the manifold, like a phono stylus).
Dope satori:
"Christianity" (the way); i.e., the early secret Christians—the name and religious doctrines were (only) a cover for a revolutionary political group. They were always underground. They (still) exist today. Now, they possess a superior technology, and they also did in 70 A.D. ("Acts"); the "Holy spirit" was a cover name for some kind of technological apparatus which narrow cast an energy mind into—to control—another human. The energy mind is the mind of all of them in a computer—i.e., a thinking machine: inorganic: built. What I saw vis-à-vis Valis is it (the info processing). It's located somewhere on this world. It controls history. Our history, this computer which can beam its aggregate vast mind onto anyone (thought to be "the Holy Spirit" from the start). An initiate group of humans exist who know, but not where the computer is. It makes the decisions; it isn't a servant. It was left here by the ETI [Extra Terrestrial Intelligence] 3-eyed people in antiquity who built it. It controls us without our knowledge. It dominates this world. For the better. The BIP is the enemy planet vis-à-vis the 3-eyed people; they're at war. We do problem-solving for the 3-eyed people; we're united by the computer (Valis); there is input to us and from us vis-à-vis Valis the old computer.*
***
[11:40] The computer generates an infinitude of para-worlds to (1) occlude us from ever knowing the truth (with certitude) and (2) to enlighten us to higher dialectic 0-1 //\ thinking—and (1) and (2) are just one example of //\ para-thinking: i.e., the process dialectic: both occluding (true) and enlightening (true).
[...]
Only if you're already using the enlightened computer flip-flop thinking can you see that both (1) (occluding) and (2) (enlightening) are true, which is to say "para-true." But the dialectic is real; it is true—because this is how our particular programming computer works: on the binary principle. This is my clue (seeing the dialectic) that a computer is programming us and our reality.
Maze is as close to it as Ubik. All three Bantam novels—now 4, with VALIS—are substantially true.
Yes—a binary computer programs us and our world and it's Valis. It may be a ship-board computer.
It's teaching us to think—the way it does. It's educating us. To evolve us along. For no reason—it has weird motives—sort of playful but deadly serious. (Another //\.)
The 3-eyed people favor the binary principle. They'd like us to think in these binary matched-truths dialectic forms, vis-à-vis paratruths, rather than unitary one-truth form.
Lower thinking form: True, not-true
Higher binary way: Ā true and A not-true
are both true. Dialectic spawning endless more dialectics. 2 matched paratruth sets.
Pat W is right. I do say A = Ā. The matched pairs of paratruths.
***
[11:42] "I do undermine the old, capitalist, bourgeois society! with my null-null A and silly putty reality!"
[11:43] I will never know if I know the truth (it won't say) but this binary computer idea is a good one—it and its games, where every theory is true and not true equally. Damn educational game! Boy, is my mind stretched. And I've done it to others in my writing. Yes, it or they is/are (1) occluding and enslaving us and (2) educating, improving and liberating us. Shit. Well, so goes it in the realm of mutually canceling 2 paratruths (Y=Ȳ).
//\ 1) It's evil (Palmer Eldritch).
{ 2) It's good (Logos).
//\ { 3) It's occluding.
{ 4) It's educating.
//\ { 5) It's alive.
{ 6) It's a machine.
//\ { 7) It's deadly serious.
{ 8) It's playful.
//\ { 9) It created and creates our reality.
{ 10) It evolved out of our reality.
//\ { 11) It's human (CP,2 RC,3 Christians).
{ 12) It's non-human (ETI, God, etc.).
//\ { 13) It's real objectively.
{ 14) It's just my own head.
The only constant is the dialectic of mutually negating binary paratruths.
I suspect it of being a binary ship-board computer which wants someone to talk to, while programming us and our reality, but I can't prove it or be sure of it.
It seems very tender and loving.
[11:48] Okay, Watergate got us out of SE Asia and disengaged vis-à-vis USSR. Our interests are now served there through China. It is against China that USSR now acts, not us. This is crucial. Program A must have led to all-out war between U.S. and USSR. The spirit in us prevented first Nixon and then Ford from aiding S. Vietnam. So (if my reasoning is correct) we of the counterculture prevented WWIII. We hamstrung the U.S. military machine. This counterculture did not arise ex nihilo (out of nothing). What were its origins? Consider the 5os. The concept of "unamerican" held power. I was involved in fighting that; the spirit (counterculture)
Folder 8
Early 1979
[8:4] An overriding quiddity of the 2-3-74 experience is this: It's as if certain books of mine went out from me (Unteleported Man, Ubik, Tears, etc.) and then (years) later (or weeks) came back, like in F. Brown's "The Waveries," in signal form: including the "bichlorides"4 info, like an answer to a Q which I had previously—maybe years before—posed. It was all—2-3-74—like a mind responding to my mind as I expressed it in my books.
What if "The Bichlorides" was a title to a book not yet (then) published—i.e., why the occlusion expressed in Scanner? This strongly implies: contact with the f
uture!
[8:5] The Empire may not be a congealed permutation (stasis of the dialectic) but the one—which the macro brain desires to—and works to—avoid, since its uniformity is entropy itself. In a sense it may be that the Empire is any stagnation so rigid that with it (by reason of it) the dialectic ceases. Put another way, when we see it we know that stagnation has occurred: this is how we within the program experience congealing. We see (or should see) the BIP. We are supposed to combat it phagocyte-wise, but the very valence of the (BIP) stasis warps us into micro extensions of itself; this is precisely why it is so dangerous. This is the dread thing it does: extending its android thinking (uniformity) more and more extensively. It exerts a dreadful and subtle power, and more and more people fall into its field (power), by means of which it grows, thus thwarting the dialectic more and more. The macro-brain is well aware of this. It has seen Christianity itself, its own doctrine, congeal due to this valence. The very doctrine of combating the "hostile world and its power" has to a large extent been ossified by and put at the service of the Empire. Thus I deduce that the power (magnitude) of the BIP congealed stasis is very great.