The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

[44:143] Voice 4:30 A.M.: "He died for a few (15) minutes"—meaning me. Obviously referring to 3-74. But look what this says; not just that I died, but that I returned to life! "Born in God, died in Christ, was born again in the Holy Spirit."21 This is what being born again requires: to have died.

  [44:144] That's why when loaded I always write: "ich bin der Retter."22 Christ took my place in 3-74. Then "Thomas" was him. So he died (i.e., accepted the death wound) and I lived on, with stereo vision of both worlds.

  If the domain of natural law did not show teleology, it would not seem to be a living, planning, purposeful domain (cosmos). Thus when it disclosed itself at all to me, in palpability, it disclosed teleology, and hence I called it Valis. Also, upon feeling the structure of limits impinging on me, I sensed personality.

  As I tracked the death trail, it substituted itself for me, died and lived again; so I died in and with it and lived again, but now different: aware of the volitional domain of intent, structure and limit: what I consider to be the true reality or Kosmos, which is to say God. I found myself in the Kingdom, having traveled there by way of death and Christ's surrogation. The ancient powers were deprived of their victim, finding God in the net, to their surprise, and not me.

  Folder 45

  [45:226] At the moment of (Christ's) death the world melts in a fabulous way, taking on the life of Christ in macroform. This is the resurrected Christ, now cosmic. (It resembles Ubik; it is, he is, everywhere.) Meanwhile the person who is renewed lives on past his fated moment of death. Astral determinism, what Paul calls "the old Law" or "planetary powers" has/have been cheated of their victim due to the surrogative divine intervention of God (Christ)23; again they fell for the "hook of divinity hidden in the bait of humanity."24 They cannot keep Christ, their own creator, and release him; so he is inevitably resurrected once more and they have lost.

  This is the mechanism by which Christianity successfully accomplishes what all the Greco-Roman mystery religions sought for and promised: the escape by the initiate from "astral determinism" or untimely death. (It's probably a death strip in the DNA programmed into us. It probably has a bio-chemical clock basis.) In a sense Christ can be conceived of as a super surgeon or doctor attacking (so to speak) the death strip by absorbing its firings himself. At the time the death strip in the DNA is activated, there are two psychoi in the brain side by side, one having entered adventitiously and the strip being tropic to the old or historical of the two psychoi. It kills it and not the other—where the center of consciousness (the soul?) is now located, having been laterally transferred deftly almost (?) by a sort of advanced technology. The new psyche is exempt from the power of the death strip. Gradually the new psyche accommodates to the brain and memories of the original psyche, and the disruption fades as personality continuity resumes. No one really dies; Christ is resurrected and the person involved lives on, now minus a death strip. He can be killed but not on cue (i.e., schedule). Meanwhile he retains a mental symbiosis with his "brother" Christ. "No greater love hath a man than that he give up his life for his friends,"25 Jesus said, alluding to this surrogate death which saves the person, Christ's friend, from literal, actual pre-programmed physical death—and an untimely one; this latter is a crucial factor. He lived on to write 3 more novels, 2 stories, make a lot of money. Buy a new car, own a topnotch stereo.

  And of course have the 2-3-74 encounter with Christ, go to France—all sorts of good things like being with Laura. I am not guaranteed a perfect life but it is extended life and a free life not subject to the death strip which tried to destroy me once Christopher was born. In the five years since 3-74 when I was programmed to die I've become successful, financially secure, artistically active and really very happy. I think, too, I've shown emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth and even psychological health; it has been a busy, active, exciting five years—very rewarding; and I have beside me the second comforter whose voice I hear often. The Sonoma episode alone made it worth it. In no sense have I vegetated. My business affairs are in good order; I am very responsible—and I bested my enemies, with God's help. I surmounted, and am publicly known to have surmounted, the dreadful gutter, poverty and drug-involved state I had fallen into. I lived to see the fall of the tyranny here and the victory and vindication of the counter culture.

  I have entered into a vast spiritual quest and adventure to understand the ways of God centering around the mystery of the suffering of the innocent and the need to understand how it can be. (This quest is by no means accomplished.) (But at least I am able to state the problem. It is epitomized in my "the man who ..." story! What evil is and how it is to be combatted—note "combatted" rather than "understood."

  [45:259]

  The unbroken line expresses what appears externally as an uninterrupted psyche's life line, since at the point—moment—it failed (c. 3-74) it replaced itself! Based on information acquired later than 3-74; I suddenly reckon that I did not die in 3-74 but lived on to learn what the Xerox missive was: it succeeded, as I learned belatedly, but then after my death (whenever that was) I was able to go back and underlie my conscious pre-mortem earlier self. This could still be the situation; I could be the earlier self again, and the AI voice, as before, is my later post-mortem self, having died and returned.

  [45:273] Hypnogogic thought: it (Valis) does not incorporate what it does not need.

  In 3-74 I came to touch another mind for the first time in my life, and now I'm alone again.

  ***

  [45:276]

  [45:358] I did not merely see the divine in the trash; by an act of will I put it there. This was a divine transcendence of world as material and inanimate. It was an act of divine creation re-enacting (and hence being) the creator's original act of creating the intact kosmos. Thus I was no longer son (v. Eckhart) but Father.

  What must be realized is that the normal bipolarization of the divine and the trash is a partial madness. To reintegrate them is actual sanity. When reintegrated the two realms turn out to form a language: "hieroglyphs of God," which is a surprise. The divine element arranges, and the trash element is that which is arranged.

  [45:370]

  Q: Who won? Christianity or the Empire?

  A: Ostensibly, Christianity won, but covertly underneath the Empire won.

  Q: You are wrong. Underneath the Empire lies the secret victory of the Fish: true Christianity.

  Vast spaces and time. [...]

  These are not temporal or spatial layers but ontological layers. The least real is the ostensible surface victory of Christianity over the Empire; under it, more real, is the Empire victory, which is deliberately concealed, and no one realizes it, eine Geheimnis.26 But most real of all, is the innermost layer of victory by the fish which means fish teeth: viz: The fish fights back. But, paradoxically, the fish fights back by being sliced up by the metal teeth (i.e., the Empire); it feeds the faithful when the Empire cuts it up.*

  Folder 46

  [46:400] Since I don't think I really pulled down the tyrant or anyone, 3-74 must be understood as mythic identification (esse) and ritual (drama with personae). It was a holy (sacred) ritual drama enacted outside of time. The salvation was spiritual more than pragmatic, then (and hence more important). I participated outside of time in the God's arrest, humiliation (persecution), the trap, then triumph (reversal from innocent victim to agency of doom). But it was mythic, ritual, holy, re-enactment—the trapped turned out to be a trap (bait and hook), resurrection in divine (transfigured) form. Unity (by adoption?) with the god who goes through it always—ah; the God was there in 2-3-74; I became the God by ritual identification. Christ, obviously.

  [46:426] I was prepared and trained all my life for 2-3-74. Viz:

  My whole life has lain under the jurisdiction of Valis. It is the God by and large of Spinoza, but it does plan like Aristotle's unmoved mover which inspires goal seeking. Valis is too close to a fusion between Spinoza's immanent deity and Aristotle's unmoved mover not to be God. It is Xenophanes and Aristotl
e's deity but it is Christ.

  I have thus pursued the ETI explanation as far as it will go, and must let it yield to the theological: viz: the decades of planning and the use of chance, natural events to prepare (program) me persuades me, since I can see how the deity inscribed all creatures without their knowing:

  The inscribing is below the surface, and, with me in 3-74, it was made to surface.

  ***

  [46:427]

  [46:430] If 1963 is 2,000 years earlier than 1974—what does this mean? It's like time is on acid. 82,000 years have passed since 1963!

  [46:431] 4:30 A.M. insight: we are deceived, but no one does it to us. Our own brains recirculate forgotten memories in/as a feedback loop, thus locking us in—locking that brain in—more and more to self-delusion. The holy power desires to wake us, not to occlude us. Why do we recirculate memories as world? Maybe to maintain a continuity of self identity. We are not masters in our own houses.

  [46:432] Q: Why are so many—very many—of the elements of 2-3-74 found in my corpus of writing? A: The "world" that I inhabited in 3-74 was a mind. It was my own projected unconscious; i.e., it was a mind in me that was not my conscious ego. [...]

  Therefore there is a cosmic divine mind in me, which generates the writing and was the "world" I inhabited in 3-74. Therefore the basis of my mind, first experienced by me in 3-74, is deity. I will admit to projection. What I will not admit to is mere subconscious. This was Hagia Sophia herself—projected as "world." It was holy. It was beautiful. It was thousands of years old. So I am willing to locate Valis and all else of 3-74 as being in me (projected). But this was God-consciousness which woke up.* Then—who/what am I? When stoned I always write with total certitude, "ich bin der Retter." I have even more to gain by locating Valis in myself than locating it/him/her in the outer world.

  [46:433] I've got it all figured out. Now I can quit. Viz: if you believe in the Christian universe—really believe—a miracle (truly) occurs: that much vaster universe with the elements with which it is populated replaces the regular smaller universe. How can this be? (1) Did something people made up become real? And if so how? (2) Or was it really already real? And we couldn't see it? If so, why not? Either alternate is impossible. You must become like a child at a ride at an amusement park—and the miracle occurs. This is what happened to me in 2-74: I believed (i.e., had faith) and that universe and everything in it became truly real—a universe vastly richer and more beautiful and awesome, the bells, the immense space, Aphrodite, the geometric forms, the hieroglyphs of God, Valis itself, Thomas in me. The AI voice, the healing, the transformation of the animals: this added up to another universe: the kingdom of God. Those sacerdotal constituents which are symbols ceased to be symbols ➊ and became a world. There is a relationship to a psychedelic trip but crucial differences. Mostly, the holy presence was there. Everywhere. It was as if a picture had turned into a hologram, and you entered the hologram and it was real.

  ➊ Pointing to another world: as with Wittgenstein, analogic pictures of it. But world is supposed to give rise to analogic pictures in our mind, not analogic pictures give rise to world. World based on the sacraments, rather than vice versa. But then isn't this precisely the miracle of transubstantiation? [...] So out of some wine and a wafer the vastness that is God is—generated? No—it is a doorway into another—greater—universe (cf. Spinoza).

  [46:436] We are normally not in the largest, richest or most real of the possible universes. Christ is the narrow gate to this vaster universe (the sole gate? cf. the Buddha).

  Could we say it is the real universe, and this one false, like those in Eye? Koinos vs. idios?

  And of course this is what Jesus meant by "the kingdom of God." Another (better) universe. Science fiction provides us with a new way of understanding this: parallel alternate worlds.

  [...]

  I just thought of a possibility that beggars description. In S-F alternate worlds are separate—they are truly alternate. Suppose it isn't that way; they are like in Eye. Somehow superimposed or fused—ah! My matrix theory onto which a variety of worlds are projected (cf. Tears). Then the Christian universe is a way of being in this (which is the only) world.

  [...]

  Q: Are some versions more true than others?

  Q: Is one true and the other false?

  Q: If so, which is true?

  Q: If so, how do we establish which one it is?

  Q: Could it be that Tears is the true one, the one true one?

  Q: How do the others arise?

  Q: Are our perceptions deliberately manipulated?

  A: The real world is the Christian universe (and the secret revolutionary Christian underground) against the Empire. The antithetical interaction shows up in Tears—the Empire is clear; where is the Christian element? Would you believe "Acts" which locates the Christian element in Taverner; viz:

  Buckman = Felix procurator27

  Therefore Taverner has to be Paul (the persecuted church). By means of the grid. The "Acts" grid. The grid is essential. If Buckman is Felix Procurator you can infer by means of the "Acts" grid and only by means of the "Acts" grid that Taverner = (is) Paul = (is) the persecuted church.28

  [46:458] Hypnogogic: "one of us is dead." The two selves in me. It must be me and my sister!

  [46:529]

  Folder 47

  October–November 1979

  [47:602] You know, there is really so much of 2-74 to 2-75 that I've been unable to remember, despite my notetaking—but of all of it the sight (contact, encounter) with Valis seems the most awesome.➊ And of course the overthrow of half a dozen tyrannical governments, starting with Nixon.

  ➊ And takes it out of the realm of a psychological experience. Either I was nuts or I saw what I saw.

  [47:617] Two systems of information intersecting one as set ("Ahura Mazd") the other defeated into ground (being only approximation), and, in their act (process, like the moth descending) of intersecting, creating (like a 3-D hologram) spatial reality: vast space, geometric forms that are alive. Not religion but as in Beethoven's later music, turning time into space. (This is what Beethoven did: enclosed—hence created—vast—hence absolute—space; hence nontemporal reality.) Hence restored man (me in 2-3-74) to Adam Kadmon (defined as man filling the whole universe and hence [as subject] identical with object [reality]29: Atman—Brahman as the same: Atman revealed as Brahman [i.e., microcosm identical with the macrocosm]).

  [47:626] Music is normally a temporal process, but Beethoven, uniquely, uses it to enclose space, the most vast volume of space possible. Thus Beethoven literally expanded the hologram for anyone understanding his music, and he was part of a historic movement involving the abrupt evolution of the human being in terms of so-to-speak relative size vis-à-vis his reality. This is the inner firmament of Bruno (or Paracelsus—whichever). Ah! The microcosm is transformed briefly into the macrocosm; and a slight but permanent expansion of the person, the microcosm, occurs: perhaps an altered relationship to the macrocosm, in terms of identity. Beethoven's music as a means by which the alchemical Verklärung can take place: thus it is directly related to the Hermetics.

  Expansion out of the prison: escape from the prison by extension, like an insect expanding out of his exoskeleton during/via his metamorphosis. "The body is the tomb of the soul"—half-life. The BIP as a sort of exoskeleton, hence a kind of rigid (iron) body. This is the "second birth by the spirit."

  This is a radically different way of experiencing the self (microcosm) and reality (macrocosm). Memory and inner space. There is some relationship. Memory involves vastly augmented time which is then converted into space. "A long time ago" becomes a very large spatial volume, with the result that the past still exists—e.g., my seeing the world of "Acts" in 2-74 and finding it latent in Tears. So my seeing the distant past (in 2-74 and experiencing it overtly in 3-74) was due to the conversion of time into space—which I saw as the vastly augmented spaces. But I see now that the two phenomena are actually one.
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br />   [47:627] Therefore the hologram (reality) is in truth one huge volume of space with no time involved, in which all "time periods" are spatial "onion" layers as (again) in Ubik, where the past lies inside (i.e., along a spatial axis) objects and can be retrieved.

  Time, then, is actually spatial expansion, layer upon layer. So the hologram is quite large—it is ubique; yes; here is the ur-significance of the word "ubique": it occupies all space.

  [47:628] By using his music to enclose huge volumes of space for the listener Beethoven committed the ultimate political act of liberating—expanding—the individual. Likewise, my space phobia is connected with my own rebelliousness! Unable to deal with external space—i.e., unable to rebel—I have turned to inner space, to exploring it, which, too, is a political act; so my writing, involving inner space, is covertly subversive: it teaches secret ways to rebel (mostly by evasion: escape). This is why the whole psychedelic movement of the 60s was a threat to the authorities; this was the area of the subversive threat I posed—my studies of inner space—in fact—my conceptions of inner space differing from person to person is very radical and politically subversive, I now see, even when it didn't involve drugs. Viewed this way, then, 2-3-74 represents a total political victory by me, in that I broke through into absolute space such as is not even known about following the disappearance of the Hermetics. 2-3-74 can be understood politically if the significance for the nature of the individual in terms of his enclosing space is recognized as basic (e.g., Beethoven's music). This absolute space involves absolute (i.e., a priori) knowledge and power over time in that time can no longer extinguish the person. This relates to authentic Christianity. Hence there really is something very subversive about Ubik, as well as Eye and Stigmata and Martian Time-Slip.