The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  There's no way I can sort the true ideas out of all the infinitude of equally plausible (mere) possibilities. Somewhere in a near infinite bulk of ideas lies the truth. But which? But this device is necessary. Who and what I am—the actual situation—is hopelessly occluded off from me ➋ by this scramble pattern of endless self-negating dialectic idea-permutations at infinite velocity. Hence, as I realized a couple of weeks ago, although I may know the truth and even speak it, I am doomed not to know which of the many conflicting truths generated in me it is. It could be any of them. So I know (the truth about myself) but due to this device paradoxically do not know: thus the idea computer conceals itself by its own idea-generating capacity. Its basic function is its own camouflage—ah; hier ist Zebra wieder.10

  Another way to camouflage itself. This shows up not just when I try to figure out myself but when I try to figure out—conceptually pin down—Zebra. I can't give the same account twice re 3-74, re Zebra and re myself. We're interwoven, I guess, but here again the camouflage device—this time an idea scramble—works, analogous to its physical camouflage.

  This suggests that I and the life form Zebra are one. No, we may just be related, etc., etc. See? See how it works?

  I did have one insight not based on thinking but on my feeling toward the animals: that I am the (a?) Buddha, but must conceal my identity as Siddhartha even to myself. My whole thinking is just a cover for my real nature: my feeling—regarding those who suffer. I am a feeling disguised by mere flak thinking.

  My feelings are reliable but my thoughts are not.

  ➊ This is why all the ideas in the world—millions of them, and conflicting—get served up simultaneously as a protective smokescreen; this is why they don't stabilize. They have a practical purpose—as a cloud of mental ink. I'm not to know the truth about my identity. So any and all ideas I get as to my identity, nature, purpose and origin is just scatter, random flak, each idea as real and unreal as the next; like white noise. And the closer I get to knowing, the more scramble of conflicting ideas: ultimately an infinitude—including this idea. Hence the endless paradoxes, and the fact that I can't finalize or stabilize my exegesis—it's for my (and our?) protection: a scrambled device—like code.

  ➋ Hence from others: since I can't write down the truth in a novel or speech; this is how 3-74 could occur but secrecy still maintained.

  [13:6] My powers came from the other side, because of my sister.

  AI Voice. And "plugged into an idea computer." Audio and video. Pictures: I saw my abstract ideas graphically. Is Valis a computer? I think I've solved it. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the dialectic represented a computer. Are we in a computer program? And stationary? As Zeno proved, motion is impossible. All is thought.

  [13:9] Perhaps my most important realization while loaded is what is implied in the way of paradoxes if the statement, "Every idea thought of is true but for no measurable length of time because it—i.e., its truth—is instantly negated by an equal and opposite idea, and so forth," is true. The infinity of the first part ("every idea thought of is true") is dialectically balanced by the null infinity ("but for no measurable length of time" [because it] is inexorably replaced by the dialectic generation of its opposite). What such an infinity countered by an antithetical infinity would lead to is (1) an infinite number of universes of (2) no measurable duration—from outside; but in each universe there would be what I must regard as a pleroma of spurious (subjective) time, sufficient within the universe, but not there when viewed from outside that universe. What I deduced from this is that each self passes through an infinitude of universes or "frames," each with laws—truths—of its own, but the permutation being so fast (instantaneous), no memory of it is laid down by the self, whose entire "memory" is instantly derived from situational cuing generated within and by whatever frame he is now in. However, some truths could (in the intrinsic statement of them) contain as part of their definition that of ubiquity, in which case what I call sustains would be created which would lay down memory, but since other aspects of the frames would differ one from another, one's true memory would be of serial disjunctions along the linear time axis without any apparent explanation. (E.g., "I was born in Chicago in 1928 but an instant ago I was living in first century A.D. Rome"—viz: first century A.D. Rome and USA 1974 both contained the same sustain—the Golden Fish sign—but no other sustains; nonetheless the self passed from first century Rome directly to USA 1974 due to the Golden Fish sign but drew ersatz "memory" of life in modern USA generated by situational cues in this frame.) There is an explanation and it lies in what I call sustains, which resemble the form axes I described in Ubik and which do not lie along linear time, but rather "sustain" time, which is my word for Plato's "eternal forms." For consciousness of this to open up (true memory)➊ the self would discover that it had existed for an infinite length of time in/through (the permutations of) an infinitude of different universes, and knew ideationally everything.

  ➊ Anamnesis. This true memory perhaps exists in the right hemisphere.

  [13:12] 4:30 A.M.: Valis itself as an experience or an entity in itself generates a multiple or split model parallel-possible explanation(s) dialectic. So it must lie in that realm; there can be only an infinite series of equally true explanations generated.

  Vision: a dark-haired young woman lying in a coffin.➊ She is dead. She is my sister. She is—or she generated—"the perturbation in the reality field," i.e., Valis. It is a projection into this world of her mind, to protect me.

  This vision came in response to my Q: "Who perturbed the reality field?"

  Is the AI voice hers?

  Now that I think of the vision it suggests Ella Runciter in Ubik; perhaps my sister's benign influence over me thus shows up in my writing.11

  ➊ White silk-lined casket.

  [13:13] The Encyclopedia of Philosophy says, "The virtues instilled by suffering could be achieved another way." How does it know that—that they could be achieved another way; here the error lies. These virtues are essential, and there is no other way. A certain esthetically-graphically beautiful heroism is inevitably generated — to all humans—all. All be(come as) Christ, none less than Jesus. All men—creatures—suffer as he, hence are equal to him. And therefore are him, dramatically. As in a sacred ritual drama, therefore us all.

  [...]

  Christ as an Egyptianized Greek Apollo! I.e., very early Greek statues. What knowledge do we get from Jesus' life and death? That (1) we are innocent by reason of our unmerited suffering; and (2) if innocent and made to suffer then heroic; and (3) if heroic, transfigured (resurrected) into Godhood! All of us! As a species—and the beasts too—all life.

  [13:15] All artists know they can't avoid suffering, and out of it they forge their art in defiance; artist or not, they will suffer. Art is the ultimate defiance of Fate. The heroic act deliberately done.

  I saw this in the rat I had to kill: innocence and heroism and terrible beauty—nobility—in a mere rat. Oh God. There is nothing we know that the creatures don't know; they are our equals.

  [13:21] Is it possible that any human or creature could, under the right circumstances, experience anamnesis and recall its Christ-self?

  Tragedy: "the evil seen and the good guessed at"; one senses—but cannot clearly see—the hidden good (rational) invading the palpable evil (irrational) and sees, as the result of this antithetical clash, apotheosis.

  Valis: a mysterious hidden moral order (good and rational) behind the visible chaotic and evil and deterministic, which can be appealed to.

  The slain God proliferates down through the cosmos to each rat and cockroach.

  [13:22] Coleridge on tragedy: "... the greatest effect is produced when the fate is represented as a higher intelligent will" ("the human will was exhibited as struggling with fate"12). So the essence of tragedy is the limited human knowledge, plans, hopes, desires (will) clashing with "a higher and intelligent will" which we understand (or encounter) as Fate—"Fate" defin
ed as that power or those powers capable of arranging our outcome.*

  The plans the protagonist has are not in harmony with a "higher and intelligent will" which has the power to decide the outcome; there is no way the man's plans can win out, so individual plan is forcibly harmonized even if this requires that it be pulverized—i.e., can't be harmonized and still remain intact. The loss of that intactness is the essence of tragedy, the antithetical dialectic between his plan and Fate's plans, with the latter by definition prevailing.

  I do not see that his (1) learning by reason of this or, contrarily (2) failing to learn adds or subtracts from the manifestation of the truly tragic, since to me the latter is more pitiful and the former more constructive; in fact I see the latter (2) as more tragic, if either is, which violates classic notions of tragic drama. I say, disproportionate suffering (pain, disappointment, loss) is the essence of tragedy because its disproportion renders the victim however evil or guilty veridically innocent: made spotless by the overbearing quality or quantity of suffering. Tragedy is when the punishment is not just. And I say every living creature is punished disproportionately so every life is a tragic one; disproportionate suffering is the ubiquity of the condition of having lived. Yet a mystery is hinted at: a rectification of this disproportion—not through the vile lie that man (creatures) are sinful and deserve their suffering, but rather—but this precisely is the mystery: the invasion of this irrational system by the rational in which an invisible and elusive mitigation of tribulation is injected according to some hidden order of theodicy not directly seen. Thus whereas the disproportionate tribulation is directly seen, and its reality not open to conjecture, dispute or denial, the mitigation or even transmutation of the tribulation into something proportionate, just or even beneficial must be guessed at. And this intuitive guess is the kingpin of religion and the religious solution to implacable tragedy as it exists ubiquitously in the real world and not in art.

  "Tragedy as an interim reading of life between religion on the one hand, and Satanism, or pessimistic materialism, on the other. Basic to tragedy is the equilibrium of the evil that is observed and the good that is guessed at. What is central is the balance between an intense awareness of pain or evil, which is clearly revealed, and an intuitive apprehension of a transcendent realm of values. In each case evil is affirmed, but it is transcended by a higher good which induces exultation, not despair or faith. The balance is destroyed when evil is denied or seen as remedial or is affirmed as ultimate."13

  I suppose in terms of what Coleridge says, the "higher intelligent will" which we call "Fate" is proved right in the end. I.e., it is proved to be just that, a "higher intelligent will" and not fate in the sense of blind or malignant evil or purposelessly cruel force or forces as such; it is the revelation that Fate is not Fate but a wiser ("higher") and more powerful will contending with—overruling—man's will out of its higher intelligence. It disagrees because it knows more.

  But this does not inspire faith and is not accepted (known) on or by faith. Exultation comes not from faith, which would provide only passive acceptance or resignation, but from an encounter with "fate" seen in the aspect of higher and (more) intelligent (i.e., sentient and planning) will; the exultation is derived from knowledge of, not faith concerning.

  That which had masked itself as fate (in mimesis) reveals this camouflage and in stepping forth acts in revelation of a deliberately hidden, different, even opposing nature. It is not fate at all. "Higher intelligent will" is not fate, if the term is to retain its correct meaning. Something or someone has mimicked fate, perhaps supplanting it invisibly: replacing it perhaps by insidiously devouring it and substituting itself for it in perfect imitation, at its source. This is a staggering mystery, but mystery it is, since the stipulation of capacity for perfection of imitation when desired is attributed. It will look like fate as long as it wants to look like fate, but if it cares to disclose itself as actually being a "higher intelligent will" (if it even does so) it then can, and the problem is solved. (By the way I define "Fate" and "higher intelligent will" in that I see no tragedy in bowing to the latter. For me, to find that I had been broken by the latter and not the former would, by all means, induce, specifically, exultation.)

  The mystery of the "guessed at" reality would certainly deepen—but become even more reassuring—if I suspected that in some supernatural fashion this "higher intelligent will" could be identified or equated with my own covert enlightened will: a web of harmony underlying or transcending the antithetical clash which had pulverized my conscious plans.

  Exultation is precisely my response to my direct knowledge and experience of Valis, of my awareness of its authority over the irrational—which I identify with "astral determinism" or "fate." I especially exult in my sense of Valis having invaded the irrational as a conqueror.

  [13:41] I found a typed page starting: "VALIS' activity is a binary system of off-on. We see only the 'on' of the off-on arrangements. We do not see them as arrangements but merely as change."

  More and more this binary computer model of Valis seems to be the correct one. "On" is the linking of two parts which I saw: "on" equals junction; "off" equals disjunction or not inclusion in the vast assembly which I equate with Valis. Put another way I saw high speed linking as the primary activity of Valis. This was simply its "on" mode, so it must be everywhere, and what I construed as Valis vs. non-Valis was "on" vs. "off" of a binary computer. Then everything is the computer whether linked or not—whether the assembly (what I called "Valis") or not.

  These are neural connections in a brain. "On" is "connect" and "off" is "disconnect." There is an evolution toward connection: toward a developing macrothought in which everything is connected: worked in as relevant. Then there is something other than just a binary on-off computer. "On" more and more predominates over "off"; it seeks "on." Its goal is "on" as a means to developing a total all-parts interaction. "Off" could be regarded as a lack, a failure, a defeat, an impediment to be overcome. We still have a binary system, but priority (plus value) is given to "on."

  Then there are two orders of reality (set to ground?). The "on" or junctions (which is higher or set), and "off" as disjunction (which is lower as ground): this might explain, then, the discrimination of set to ground which I achieved: on to off. Linked to unlinked, Valis to not-Valis—and even more ultimately, the ultra-thought to the not-yet-[part of]-ultra-thought. What I call "Valis," then, is a thought, or rather the thought.

  This sheds a whole new light on

  (1) The set-ground which I saw

  (2) What "Valis" is (a forming thought)

  One could say that "the rational invading the irrational" which I construe as going on is the deliberate, purposeful formation by a computer brain—using a binary system—of an ultimate thought which can be regarded (1) as activity or process; or (2) as a thing: the thought as network of interlinked "neurons" in a particular pattern (which has as one attribute that of absolute beauty, and perhaps should ultimately be so regarded).

  [...]

  My God—the causal train melting! The ultra-thought was (seen by me) forming before my very eyes. This is the override I saw, the modulation—the changes in reality including me. I was incorporated into the ultra-thought which I have termed "Valis." The "St. Elmo's Fire"—the vast knowledge all at once available to me—this is the ultra-thought. All that "Hermetic" transtemporal Gnosis is contents of the ultra-thought. Reality as knowledge. This "Hermetic" knowledge was physical reality which I could see and touch. Physical reality went through a transform and became knowledge. The thought could be said to have changed. It changed, and no one remembers that it had been formerly different; again, every thing I experienced has to do with anamnesis. I remembered that things (the thought) had just an instant before been quite different.*

  [13:44] I am building a terrific system here, with the binary computer, macrobrain, and ultra-thought, and the frames through which we move (prior thought formations objectified giving rise to new b
elief systems, etc.), reality—physical reality—as knowledge, and the form axes, the inner other universe of the immortals, the supermen who are trans-spatial and trans-temporal dwelling in the inner universe and hence outside of clock time B, and who emerge into the exterior universe repeatedly (and undetected by other people) and Ormazd vs. Ahriman being the "on" and "off" of the binary computer, and the nature of true memory (anamnesis) vs. current frame clue false "memory."14 Plus the possible misuse of the computer by someone, and its designer guiding us as a "low murmuring voice" against the misuse by this irrational "operator" or "demiurge"; i.e., Satan who has taken control of "creation" and the rational (thought) forming and growing and complexifying in the midst of the irrational (i.e., misuse of the computer program): the antithetical strife between the rational (thought) and the irrational, with the former "cannibalizing" the latter to self-construct, until finally it is—has incorporated—everything. And the orthogonal leap from track A (Tears) to track B (this reality) being a quantum growth—leap of the rational ultra-thought or Valis; and the dialectic of the binary computer inevitably driving everything along: the logical antinomies in sequence. And the possibility of seeing Valis (the ultra-thought) as set to ground, and its activity of self-construction. And "salvation" consisting of being incorporated into it, and thus experiencing reality as information, absolute information which ultimately is beauty, not information at all; i.e., a picture of the slain—dying—God: i.e., tragic.