The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  I have found a fundamental error in ancient mystical theory, not corrected until Plotinus: the Orphics and Plato believed that the descent and ascent of the soul was a spatial trajectory, past the planets to the stars—to and from. Aristotle believed in the sublunar and supralunar realms. Plotinus realized that the realms are not spatially different, but are levels of being outside time and space. This basic error shows up later on in imagining heaven as being in the sky: even with Schiller: "Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen überm Sternenzelt." 42 So transcendent deity is supposed to be remote either spatially or as if spatially, and immanent deity is near. Deity is considered outside the universe as if spatially far off and beyond the universe, the way an artisan is outside his artifact. This despite Plotinus and his concentric levels or rings of being. In The Commedia, they travel upward physically; i.e., spatially. God is not here; he is there (in the sky). This is corrected in Ubik. It all has to do with a confusion between the pleroma and the cylum, the latter being the vault of heaven. If this error is made, then there exists no conceptual framework to account for the sort of non-spatial rising to a superior—i.e., "higher"—level of being in this lifetime (à la Plotinus) while being spatially unmoved (i.e., not ascending to the cylum43). If the spatial idea is abandoned, transcendent deity is as close as immanent deity.

  [...]

  By viewing it as a non- spatial journey, Plotinus made it available to this lifetime. (I mean, if you're alive and in your body, how are you going to travel up past the planets one by one?) I see: Ubik stipulates that they are dead and so—so-to-speak inadvertently—has the divine—Ubik—available in the trash level: close at hand. So I'm not dead (v. supra). It's just that Plotinus is right.

  [48:874] Hypnagogic thought: Elijah operating you (whom I call Thomas, Thomas is Elijah).

  Two routes to determining the spurious:

  (1) Observation of reality; the Joint syndrome

  (2) Memory. You had not been here but elsewhere and were someone else.

  (1) and (2) are twin prongs. They are the only route to detecting a pseudoworld; either one alone is conclusive. But both would logically exist, so if either is detected the other could be, logically.

  In the case of (2), you were evidently taken from the real world to this one, and your memory tampered with. In the case of (1), your perceptions/cognition are occluded.

  So if you can see de-occluded and also remember, then you know.

  I realized this while having a dream that I was (back again) at 1126 Francisco St. It seemed real. To verify, I could either (1) carefully scrutinize this reality for signs of simulation, or (2) remember where I really had been—or am now really. (1) and (2) together would mutually reinforce and exclude any possibility of error. I studied a lamp—the little red lamp I used to have—and it did not seem quite real. Okay; point (1). Then I remembered—but only dimly—being later and elsewhere, but could not pin it down to Santa Ana 1979. Still, just the impression—because it pointed to lack of history, of continuity—was enough. Thus within the dream I was able to determine that it was irreal; and I drew the conclusion that God was providing me with 1126 Francisco as a wish fulfillment reward, since I liked it. However, in the case of Santa Ana 1979 I cannot draw that conclusion; it is more of a punishment, and in 74 when the punishment got too great (the pain and fear too much) I woke up.

  [...]

  Note: the dream world of 1126 Francisco St. draws on actual memory—my memory. Often I speculate that this (one) is drawn from memory constituents. Fed back to me. See, in the dream, the only reference point I have against which to check the veracity of the world is my memory, and the world is drawn from that very same memory, a better, unimpaired source of it than mine. So the "reality" will invariably hold up! It's like deciding something is real by comparing it with itself. So it's a fool-proof simulation, if based on that basis. So in a sense the more you reality test in the conventional way the more convincing it is—if it is contrived out of half-forgotten memories (not recognized as memory) and compared to memory itself—it can just spin out pseudoworld as if from a bottomless well. And the cut-off point is the same for "world" and comparison so pragmatically it equals ¥.

  Nonetheless all I'd have to do is remember being somewhere else and someone else. But to also see reality as simulated.

  If you put pressure on the reality, and if it's based on forgotten memories, it'll just spin out more and more of itself, like the dialectic. The proliferation of multiplicity is a guarantee of nothing, since sensory deprivation allows the mind to auto-spin out world endlessly to fill the vacuum.

  The raising of the perceptual occlusion will indicate irreality, but anamnesis does more: it indicates—in contrast—a real world and a real you. So it does not just dissolve away. It substitutes. Real self and real world.

  [48:882a] That dream about the tall building: "Alto Carmel"—there were fire engines parked around it. And it was on Mount Carmel that Elijah called down the heavenly fire.44

  Phoning my friend Elisha.

  Dream of prophet called "Elias."

  Tom Disch felt that the personality who had taken me over was Elijah (it was near the time of Passover) but he didn't connect it with the prophecy in Malachi that the return of (the spirit of) Elijah heralded the advent of the Messiah.45 But since then I've heard all the prophecies by the AI voice.

  Perhaps also significant is that it was Elijah who experienced the theophany of YHWH as the "low murmuring voice" just as I do.46

  He was afraid of the Romans because as John the Baptist he had been killed by them—my dream about being in the cage in Roman times. And this would be why he spoke/thought in the Koine rather than Hebrew and remembered the Christians as illegal—a secret underground. He expected Christ to return very soon and felt joy, not sorrow.

  Also the dream of the pitcher of cool water and the wrapped cube (i.e., cake) of food; they are mentioned in 1 Kings re Elijah; they kept him alive.47 Provided by God. This would seem virtually to cinch it.

  [48:897] It is as if the NT presents us with clues to the solution of a puzzle, the puzzle of what to do to be saved. It's there but in cryptic form, offered again and again. We're presented with the test or problem and we either solve it or we do not, and God (YHWH) is the judge. There is no other way in through the gate. It's both hard to solve and easy. It's a riddle that we do not take seriously. That's the key. We're told the riddle and we're told that our salvation depends on it, but we don't take it seriously. Again, it's the low murmuring voice. The crux situation is going to show up where and when and in a form that we don't suspect.

  [48:901] So Yahweh touches you initially (be you man—e.g., Asher—or God—Belial—) in such a way as to startle you. Rouse you, you have been asleep without knowing it. And presumably dreaming—you are not actually conscious. Yet you don't realize it. The touching is not pleasant; it rasps. This is the deity, this rasp. The touch can't be worked into the dream—vide Ubik—"from outside" (the dream).

  It can't be worked into the dream because it is from outside the dream.

  [48:902] "The rasp can't be worked in." Consider dreaming. A sound in the real world occurs; the mind (yours) tries to work it in, to continue the dream; if it can't (your own mind!) the dream is aborted and you wake up. But the mind—yours—tries to prolong the dream. So the rasp is dysyntonic. Then perhaps some (?) stuff from beyond is worked in syntonically, and you don't wake. The rasp is intentionally dysyntonic. Another mind (Valis) is signaling you: "Wacht auf"!48 This is half-life; not after death but before (true) birth, full complete birth; hence "born again" or "from above"—the upper realm!

  ***

  [48:907] The BIP and PTG must be sine wave pulsation:

  Our dream world auto-produced. Risk. Shrinking from risk—hence retracting from knowing. Unity of opposites, BIP and PTG. High stakes. To try for PTG you risk BIP. Could go either way. Retreat from epistemological risk. Too dangerous. Heaven and hell; Purgatorio as compromise for the faint hearted. Not so much war as g
amble. Like turning up the next card. Eagles: "It could be heaven, it could be hell." That's it. Strive for PTG, drop to BIP. They both are real and—yes: VALIS Regained is correct. Final 7th battle outcome will retroactively decide; roll back through time. VR is correct; Valis got through to me.

  [...]

  Absolute faith in YHWH is required. Here is where primal angst enters: awareness (v. VR) comes in, awareness of what losing would mean (BIP). Worse—no Sein—nothing! No you and no world. Cosmic death. Heidegger is correct. The risk. The universe could turn into a dream because in point of fact our universe is a dream. If you abandon it, what will cut in to replace it? The BIP! Which is also the PTG.

  [48:920] The turning point for me came when I saw 3 Women; then I understood, and soon saw the sacred tetragrammaton: received the crucial identifying revelation (in confirmation). When I saw 3 Women I knew, and at the deepest level; I was terror-stricken: either I believed in YHWH or there was das Nichts. Not the salvation of my individual soul and/or immortality was at stake but what I call "the existence of existence." I—in 3-74—was given an example of the role of Valis working at a level deeper than that of saving one man (me) or all men; rather, the guarantor of substantia as such: all substantia as a single totality. This is power beyond any that I could ever (without the 3-74 demonstration) have imagined. Even the existence (Sein) of evil was at stake; without YHWH there wouldn't even be evil. Or chaos. Or pain. Or loss. I would not be I, and world would not be world. This has led me back to the kind of comprehension that must have gripped the early Hebrews, the essence of Moses' vision gained from the theophany at Mt. Sinai.

  The deepest level of reality is YHWH. This is what is meant by "creator." It is not precisely artificer to artifact, and it is not precisely pantheism. It was reading Heidegger that caused me to understand it. My years of acosmism has been a search for YHWH who had to exist if world really existed, rather than only seemed to exist (dokos or dream: auto-generated by each percipient: viz: idios kosmos only, just a lot of them). I had construed the problem correctly. But only upon 3 Women did I fully appreciate the problem—did it really wash over me and leave me terrorized, whereupon the solution came.

  Spinoza was a crucial help to me. This view ("Deus sive substantia sive natura") does not lead to the Platonic body-soul dualism but leads back to world-affirmation, to immediate deity. God and nature are inexorably inter-involved. The problem is that a mock creation has filtered in, which must be transubstantiated into the real, e.g., YHWH.

  My god—I seem to have become profoundly anti-Platonist! (cf. Beyond the Tragic Vision re Plato49). As if correcting the error Plato made vis-à-vis Parmenides (i.e., when I wrote: "Parmenides did not say there were 2 realms, a priori and empirical; he said there were 2 ways of viewing one reality, one right way—a priori—and one false—empirical. Plato misunderstood this and assigned some reality to the empirical as if it were a partial realm, rather than a way of knowing, a partial way, not realm").

  And the other basic error in Western philosophy (held by, e.g., Pythagoras and the Orphics), corrected by Plotinus, was the error that the journey of the soul was spatial: first down from the cylum past the planets and then back up again (an error held, again, by Plato!). In this ontological view of the journey, rather than spatial, Plotinus anticipates Heidegger. The upper realm is spatially here, not there. I should know; I entered it, in 3-74. And if here, it can be entered in this life, not just after death!

  [...]

  The journey is not past the planets but more like a Bardo Thödol trip through levels of ascending ontology to YHWH, the urgrund.

  So Plato (and to some degree Aristotle with his "sublunar" and "supralunar" realms) made 2 fundamental inter-related errors which affected Christianity, but not ancient pre-Hellenistic Judaism. For the ancient Israelites, God was in nature firmly; he was in fact "a God of nature," as the EB points out. The Megiddo Mission is absolutely right about the Hellenistic origin of the body-soul dualism—it is Orphic-Pythagorean-Platonic.

  [48:926] Two points:

  (1) My seeing Hebrew letters permutate until "Olive Holt" (presumably) cypher was printed out on the far wall.50 This is not necessarily Kabbala. It could be Torah.

  (2) Torah is both oral and written. It is the blueprint for creation and contains the answer for every problem every person will ever have. God studies the Torah and cannot act contrary to it. This implies a living information organism—what I called the "plasmate." In Tears King Felix was Torah. "God created Torah before he created the universe." It regulates everything.

  We are dealing with an information processing entity which (1) has power to control reality; (2) which is present in (with?) reality; I mean, it is here (immanent?). Or: what we call reality is our way of viewing this information. The information is more real than any other substantia. It is like digital signal to recorded music or video image; what we call "the universe" is a read-out of Torah as info signal. It is "projected" into substantia. It can be stored. It "tracks."

  Valis the "machine" that turns the info (Torah) into substantia (reality). The receptacle. The system into which the info (Torah) is fed.

  [48:927] Torah would remain—does remain—info until it enters the system (Valis). Torah controls the system, like stress on a web. But what lies behind Torah (info)? Is the info self-creating and (hence) alive? I think so.

  YHWH turns info (Torah) into reality. Thus YHWH creates reality out of Torah (info). Without YHWH it (Torah) would remain info.

  So ultimately revelation about reality would be to render it back into Torah: to see the Torah in it. (The info basis of reality.)

  Then Valis was feeding Torah into reality (in 3-74), which defined reality ("modulated" it).

  "Torah served as YHWH's blueprint for creation and contained the eternal divine formula for the world's future workings and thus the answers to all problems for all times and all people. God himself is depicted as studying the Torah, for even he cannot make decisions concerning the world that contradict it."51

  [48:928] If I were to guess, I'd guess that reality is a storage mode for the information. Reality isn't problem-solving; Torah is. I don't think reality is to Torah as performance of symphony is to score; I think reality is a container for the information. If God is intelligence—the info is trapped in reality. Suspended, in infinite complexity. Tape or LP or chip is material. Info is poured into reality and can be extracted back out: retrieved. Trans actions take place, information processing transactions. The info is here. It entered and leaves. The key use of reality is memory, which means impression (what I call modulation). A record.

  [48:934] Sin isn't an issue. The interbreeding of Holy Wisdom with the human race is the issue.

  [48:935] YHWH's prime role: to keep reality from becoming dreamlike.

  For me in 3-74 it became dreamlike.

  [...]

  This is the ultimate fear: falling through the universe. This is what YHWH protects us against. It shows absolute trust of me by him to let me see how it really is.

  But the falling through the universe is not as it might seem a withdrawal of YHWH; on the contrary it leads to YHWH. YHWH hasn't vanished; the universe has. YHWH is there in its place. It's like an all or nothing bet. If the universe goes, will anything remain, and if so, will it be more or will it be less than the universe?

  [48:945] The situation was a desperate one; I was consuming time faster and faster, which bears out my recent insight that I had been speeding up in relation to real time until finally I used up all time totally and passed outside of time! The lithium was certainly a factor in the conversion from motion to rest. It stopped me suddenly, and reality stabilized into the realm of forms, the upper realm. There must have been profound catecholamine changes. It was as if I had been hyperventilating for years progressively faster and faster; my inner biological clock was speeding up, ahead of outer events, heading toward biological exhaustion and hence death. But just before death occurred, there was intervention—yet I actually
passed on along the "tape" into my postmortem existence. Accidental yoga. Burning. Kundalini fire, ajna eye. I burned up my karma.

  In fact I evolved millions of years into the future, to man's future morphology. I entered the occult esoteric early Christian technique-process. Christ either entered me, or, more likely, I became him. Literally millions of years of biological clock time shot by; I evolved far into the future: became my own remote descendent, and so saw the world as far in the past (in relation to me!). The world lagged 1,000s of years behind me. Hence I saw it as ancient and a prison. At the same time a future—not past—self took over (Thomas). World was past; I was future. If I had abreacted, world would have seemed fremd in the sense of moving ahead of me. I had been moving faster and faster for decades due to the amphetamines. Without them my biological clock synthesized the missing noradrenaline and speeded up even faster. Finally only supratemporal constants were perceptible to me. (The phosphenes.) Brain metabolism was altering more and more—off balance, toward speeding up. I remembered 2,000 years ago as if it was yesterday. I moved faster and faster through time, so in relation to me time slowed down and finally froze into the upper (Platonic) realm: a correct hypostatizing of reality on my part, with no change; time converted into space.