The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
Page 65
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[13:45] Christianity is a cruel religion—yet accurate. It recognizes and conveys the true picture of this world: inglorious death, the beauty of which exceeds the weight, the burden, of the tribulation.*
Only when reality is experienced as the body (onto) of Christ, and its life process as the sacred blood, are we really home.
What, oh what, if it were true that in 1945 at Nag Hammadi the actual sacred living (information/logos) blood of Christ was unearthed, and through it, he was restored to the world (the "plasmate" which I describe in VALIS)? That blood having recreated the mystic Corpus Christi which (rational) is now growing within the old irrational universe?
I just realized I've seen Christ in micro forms—as in the death of the cockroach and rat and Pinky—and in macro form: the universe, flowing with his blood. And what if he is Thomas and became (replaced) me, as well?
[13:46] Pythagoras had a strange cosmogonical belief: a seed (male) inserted into the boundless (female) which then progressively grows by incorporating more and more of the atelos (incomplete or unbounded) into its carefully limited (telos) structure—a process "like inspiration with the boundless called 'breath.'" This view of careful limitation (boundaries) being the essential basis of kosmos sounds like the linking and arranging I saw Valis doing, and this "seed" sounds like the rational Valis invading the greater (boundless) irrational or non-kosmos. Also the term "kosmos" is used by him to mean an ultimate beauty, more so than order. [...]
I'd say at this point that 3-74 was very Pythagorean.
"... The principle that like is known by like; hence, an understanding of the divine universe would bring man's nature closer to its own." "An organic whole, particularly one that like the universe lives forever, must of necessity exhibit limit and order in the highest degree."
Empedocles: "... for these teachings grow of themselves to be part of the individual character ... but if you go after other things, wretched things that blunt the concern for thought, then after some time these teachings will all at once desert you, in their desire to regain their own kindred. For you must know that everything has thought, and a share of intelligence. You shall learn all the medicines that keep all illness and old age—," etc.
He makes it clear that the revealed Gnosis of Pythagoras is alive. We are dealing with thoughts (e.g., wisdom, knowledge, concepts and ideas) which have thoughts or life of their own, and which decide on their own whom to come to and whom—and when—to depart.
A thought-entity, like Ubik. Has it ever occurred to me that the info—especially the great written pages—which I saw had life and volition of their own, and that they themselves decided to come to me—"like to like"? Decide to come and decide to depart.
Folder 39
March 1979
[39:1] The 3-74 miracle began in 1971 at the time of the "taco stand" trip into "Mexico"—actually Orange County. Time and space began to be rewoven then:
I know: "Thomas" was taken directly to 2-74 and Orange County, bridging '71 to '74—arcing across. My "taco stand" experience was the other half of "Thomas" taking me over in 3-74.
The "taco stand" experience was of being in 1974 in Fullerton and Placentia. Not April 72 but 2- or 3-74. And then (maybe) returned to 71 in Marin County, at the end of the approximately 8 hour RET15 "taco stand" experience, which really lasted weeks (in 74!), while I lay on my bed in Santa Venetia. Why? To supplant a dying me (in 3-74), like a graft from another part of the physical body in an operation:
Infusion from the more vital past, where there was enough psychic energy.
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[39:4]
[39:5]
[39:6] Orange County was certainly the replacement reality. There's no problem in establishing what the replacement reality is, or my replacement personality; obviously it's what we have now. What can't be established is what track A was like (Thomas was the Track A me), or even how extensive the change was. I feel it reached the White House. Factions were brought into being ex nihilo which would cause Nixon to be deposed. This was the point of it all. So—in Track A the tyranny must have been unassailable; it must have been worse. Would you believe Tears?
[39:8] Hypnagogic vision: the Xerox missive seen as enticing red apples: recapitulation of man's temptation and fall (but he saved me). Also something about "healers" and I'm not supposed to understand 3-74. The "healers," who were involved in causing 3-74, are blocking my understanding, and they are benign. So they've scrambled my mind, so I keep going around and around. But sometimes as I fall asleep, the scrambler lifts. So I've just now proved that I can't prove anything. And I never will. And they were reluctant to let me know even this. [...] The other side of this, perhaps, is that underneath the scramble—were it not for the inner scramble—I really know what happened. This may be why I keep trying; I know I know but can't figure out why I can't stabilize or formulate it.
[39:9] Then it wasn't just an overthrow of the Nixon tyranny; it was an overthrow of the world of Tears or rather not overthrow, but it was caused not to have been—and Track B was (ex nihilo) created in its place, and then Nixon was overthrown in Track B. A further lifting of Rome or Babylon (which, as my "2nd Coming Bible" says, occurs just before Christ returns as King).
Obviously when Tears came out, one or more secret real Christians recognized it, knew the truth about it as the track which had previously (sic) been there, and set about to restore my memory—my true memory. Or they may have thought I did remember (I did not), at least not consciously.
As one review of Tears pointed out (which I hadn't realized) ... an alternate—not just future—world was pointed to: e.g., the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties seems to have failed, especially regarding Blacks. And then the dream, God intervenes, and, in the book, the Genocide Laws regarding Blacks have never existed in the world of the book; after the dream it is our world, apparently. The dream marks the switch, and the dream is of God inbreaking into history—not to mention the King Felix cypher. So the book and the cypher don't point (just) to a future intervention in Track B. But to a track switch with synchronized memory switch which has already taken place: "the new heavens and a new Earth" have already come into being, but we don't realize it. So the overthrow of Nixon in Track B is small potatoes, a mere result easily achieved due to the track switch. And this we see and remember. The track switch must precede the Sixties.
Then the causal train melting in 3-74, to be understood, must be viewed as further track switching inseparable from the major overall track switching, and can even be interpreted as prima facie evidence of track switching: I actually saw it (a residual bit) happening in 3-74. But most had already been done, and I had no memory of it.
[...]
... The "Track A changed to Track B" is a projection of Thomas' revolutionary plans, purpose, goals, his reason for existing! He is an agent with a purpose. The PTG is the USA he dreams of setting up; the BIP is how he conceives of it before he and his cohorts act to change it for the better—i.e., by overthrowing Nixon and the whole government—which is the classical CP agent goal: violent overthrow of the capitalist USA government! And they were successful. Code in Tears, too.
[39:14] What I regard as Gnosticism is an anti-establishment Christianity anti-theist view (that of an irrational deity, or world, as in VALIS) in which rationality comes into existence by a dialectical historical process of evolution—this is Hegelian: the whole concept of Valis is rooted in dialectical materialistic mysticism. The irrational gives rise to the rational. I am a major Communist theoretician (v. Peter Fitting, and Richard; Qs about Empedocles).
What I've failed to take into account is the philosophical profundity of theoretical Marxism, especially vis-à-vis Marcuse.
Scanner is an account of what it's like to have a self in each brain hemisphere ideologically on opposing sides of the barricades.
The key to me (Thomas) is: millennialism. Here Christianity and Marxism unite. (The PTG in place of the BIP.) Via Track B (the overthrow of the
U.S. police state). In essence, the real (secret) Christians are communists, and the real (secret) communists are Christians.* The dangerous vision in "Faith of ..." is correct, and only a few on each side know.
[...]
Thomas, as a dedicated Marxist revolutionary, wouldn't be thinking inwardly of himself the way we would regard him; his own inner view would be of a liberator and healer and an agent of God's historical plan—a modern Christian. Would we expect him to view himself as vicious and evil and cruel? Consider Che. No—Thomas views himself as ushering in the millennial kingdom of freedom and peace and equality and justice, and who is to say he's wrong? He is an idealist, but very shrewd (true) and energetic (true). From his viewpoint he is a true, secret Christian, which I never grasped before. And he perceives capitalism as enslaving! I.e., Rome the BIP. This explains why I said what I said at Disneyland about shooting the Watergate conspirators; that was Thomas speaking, and it emanated from idealism. This is a totally dedicated idealist determined to free mankind from the tyranny of the past. He belongs to a covert conspiratorial group which practices violent overthrow of the government and revolution. This is why "Rome (A.D. 45)" and USA 1974 could be syntonically superimposed; they were two divergent views of one reality. He was an intruder secretly in the camp of the enemy, and well aware of the need of codes.
It suggests to me that Christian revolutionaries may have infiltrated the Marxists the way Rome infiltrated and took over Christianity. This is not a sinister person (even if we were to view him so). This is a secret concealed from the world, the true secret Christians within the Marxist camp, at its core.
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[39:19]* Creation is mind—i.e., Brahman. But beyond that mind (noös) is brain: her.
Yet also she exists in micro form plural in our world. This is the hermetic "as it is above so below." You have to assemble the religions; they're individually pieces. So one encounters her as a human. I'm just saying, Christ is female.
She ultimately is Beauty: Helen of Troy who hatched from an egg. And of course most of all she is my sister; I am a thought in my sister's mind. She is—like Ubik!—she is alive; I am dead. Dialectic push-pull flip-flop.
(A) I am alive and she is a thought (archetype) in my mind
or
(B) She is alive and I am a thought in her mind.
In my dialectic axis, this is the original negation-generating, dialectic flip-flop along which I exist and think. It is the premise/problem posed me as a component in the vast organic circuit board.
[...]
My dialectic problem is a puzzle expressed in a koan-like written piece of wisdom, in story form. Hence Sophia as verbal wisdom—which I saw as huge pages. And eventually the page becomes a page in the book of wisdom which Mr. Tagomi is reading in the park (where he saw our world due to the Golden pin), so our world is a scene in a work of fiction in the book in the hands of....
It's a loop. (1) I wrote TMITHC, in it I create Mr. Tagomi. He sits in a park and stares into a silver pin. Then he finds himself in our world, so our world as described within the product of a work of fiction within our world.
It's fun playing by St. Sophia: the joyous side of wisdom: these ultimate puzzles—little stories, like long parables (e.g., "once a man took a ...," etc.). [...]
One stage in the progressions of reality: a page in the book of wisdom read by a man on a park bench. Wisdom is all. She pervades her creation. I don't have to worry; we'll never be parted. But—she'll appear to me in 1,000 baffling disguises, and I must find her there, and do so when I find (1) wisdom or better: (2) beauty. Wisdom as phosphene graphic: one of ∞.
The bigger (macro) can replicate itself in micro, and so any given bigger can be smaller than anything else. So the hierarchy of levels of truth and meaning themselves enter a paradox, where the higher becomes the lower.
Wisdom as a verbal riddle: its most microform, most condensed so in a sense most esse (onto). Then the smallest form (level) of it is the most real. Size is inversely proportional to hierarchical reality. We assume cosmic = most important = largest. (Cosmos = cosmic.) Wrong. Look for the seed. "Break a stick and there is Christ." Nearest at hand. The cosmic is no more ultimate. "The part is contained in the whole"—no; the whole is contained in the part. There is no hierarchy of meaning; there are alternate models only, each as true as the others. It's not A or null-A.
What I have is my sister. Permeating this cosmos—my kosmos. Her blood and body—my sister; I am in her (cf. Dr. Bloodmoney). I am in her body, and she is in me as my anima: the puzzle of my master (component part) axis. In the computer.
But this is not just a puzzle; it's a dynamism which drives permutating dialectic reality along an infinite path. So (here's not another level but another model) it's a simple machine:
[...]
The dialectic is the yin-yang and Tao. "As it is above so it is below" refers to the microform of yang in yin, and the microform of yin in yang. This is what I saw. A push-pull flip-flop, 2 mutually antithetical propositions are set up. Mine are:
(1) Your sister is the anima in your mind. She is physically dead.
(2) You are physically dead and live in your living sister's mind as a thought (for mind read brain read macro body and blood), and she is in plural microform in your world. So she is in her own thought!
"The part contains the whole." (The micro contains the macro.)
"The whole contains the part." (The macro contains the micro.)
Such a 2-proposition flip-flop dialectic is put forth as the riddle in Ubik: (1) are they dead/Runciter is alive? Or (2) are they alive and Runciter is dead? And it pulses (oscillates) back and forth endlessly. Ubik is the most important book ever written. Ubik the entity is the Tao. And the Logos or Christ or Sophia. Ubik is true; it deals with the (1) dialectic basis of all process; and (2) with the Tao.
My two propositions pulse (oscillate) back and forth. I am alive/I am dead/I am alive/I am dead.
She is alive/she is dead/she is alive/she is, etc.
As soon as something exists it turns into its opposite which then turns into its opposite, etc.
In Ubik they find out they're dead and are in a postmortem life/world and don't know it. 3-74 resembles Ubik in many ways. Last night I realized I'm dead and don't know it. Like them. Or am I? Or are they? Certain clues point to it for them, and for me.
The ultimate (best, most accurate) system is Taoism. The yin-yang dialectic, and the Tao is Sophia or the Logos—and the whole thing is a component in a binary computer which she (the Tao or Sophia) designed. The answer to the riddle in Ubik is cycles, in which first (1) is true, then flip-flop to (2), then flip-flop back to (1): palintropos harmonie which creates, sus tains, or palintonos harmonie. (E.g., in my case in either [1] or [2] of the flip-flop I am with her; that is the sustain.)
Now I know why Ubik is true.
And now I know why 3-74 resembled Ubik and Valis resembles Ubik. It is the Tao, which is a very mysterious entity (cf. Lao-Tzu).
Once you have the idea that "the whole is contained in the part" you're onto it.*
(1) Our universe (world) is a scene in TMITHC. A place where Mr. Tagomi goes.
(2) Mr. Tagomi is a fictional person contained in a work of fiction produced in our universe.
Our world contains TMITHC which contains our world which contains TMITHC which contains our world which contains TMITHC which contains.... I set up another paradox flip-flop and another "the whole is contained in the part" and "the part is contained in the whole."
How about: "Acts" contains (is) our world (i.e., our world is really "Acts"). But in our world is a book, a novel, which contains a fictional world which is (contains) "Acts."
"Acts" can be retrieved in microform from a novel within our world; i.e., "Acts" can be derived from our world in microform. ("Acts" in microform. But "Acts" is the macroform which contains our world.)
Put another way, "Acts" is a book (part) within our world (whole). But our world (part) is contained within "Acts" (wh
ole).
[39:30] I have finally made a quantum leap breakthrough into pluriform model theory: oscillation truth. Oscillating between self-canceling models. As soon as you think it up it cancels (negates) itself and leads to the next self-canceling (but temporarily correct) model. And then back. Discarded model reinstates itself, and so eternal oscillation is generated. We're trapped in a vast loop—which is good; otherwise reality would run down and end. The key is: reoccurrence. Reality can be regarded as an infinitely long number which repeats itself.*
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[39:37] So I may be dead, as of 3-74. My cosmological concepts are so terrific, so advanced as to be off the scale. I create whole religions and philosophical systems. The very fact that I honestly ponder if I may be dead and in heaven is prima facie evidence of how happy and fulfilled I am.
[39:39] I love epistemological riddles. And so now I've got one, a superb one. It's ultimate. Just theoretically, its formulation couldn't be beaten. I love it. I'll solve it.
I regard the two-proposition formulation about "am I alive or...," etc., as a brilliant application of the Ubik puzzle to my own self. But I can't take credit for formulating it; it was presented to me. Whoever the funning player is, she is a delight. Sophia, I think it is you.