The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  [83:39] "The time you've waited for has come. The final world is here. The work is completed. He has been transplanted and is alive." And the next night when the AI voice (the Holy Spirit) repeated those words I saw the sacred Tetragrammaton—and I at once wrote VALIS Regained.

  [...]

  Let's put the complete messages together:

  THE TIME YOU'VE WAITED FOR HAS COME. THE WORK IS COMPLETE. THE FINAL WORLD IS HERE. HE HAS BEEN TRANSPLANTED AND IS ALIVE. THE SECRET STOLEN, IN ONE'S HANDS, THROUGH (past) THE ANGELS.

  Now all the messages:

  SAINT SOPHIA IS GOING TO BE BORN AGAIN: SHE WAS NOT ACCEPTABLE BEFORE. THE BUDDHA IS IN THE PARK. THE HEAD APOLLO'S ABOUT TO RETURN. THROUGH ALL THIS SIDDHARTHA SLEPT (but now in part 2 will awaken). THE TIME YOU'VE WAITED FOR HAS COME. THE WORK IS COMPLETE. THE FINAL WORLD IS HERE. HE HAS BEEN TRANSPLANTED AND IS ALIVE. YHWH. THE SECRET STOLEN, IN ONE'S HANDS, THROUGH (past) THE ANGELS.

  I break it down into sequence this way:

  A NEW SAVIOR IS COMING. HE IS COMING SOON. HE IS HERE. HE CARRIES A SECRET STOLEN FOR US, PREVIOUSLY DENIED US. HE IS GOD (or equal to God) (or carries God's approval). (Or was sent by God.) (Or has the authority and power of and from God.)

  [83:45] Valis is thoroughly involved in our flux world; can affect it and does affect it. Valis—the macrometasoma—grows like a vast reticulated arborizing vine into our flux world. Which is to say, there is no real separation between Valis' macrometasoma and this flux world of the dialectic. Our world is, to be metaphoric, Valis' metabolism. Once Valis removes a constituent bit (piece) from our world and inserts it in the correct place in its macrometasoma, it is there forever, although subject to the accretions derived later on from the flux world; the flux world gives rise to fast and many accretions of the phylogons (the basic integers of the metakosmos, Valis' macrometasoma). The accretions act to further reticulation and arborizing, since this is basically a memory-structure in which the past is preserved, but not preserved the way it happened; no: it is ordered, unified, structured, interrelated which is to say, reticulated and arborized, and made ever more complex. So the complexity—level of internal organization—of the macrometasoma perpetually grows in ratio to our flux world; it is like a life form whose internal structure grows more complex, more evolved hierarchically, than its environment constantly.

  The fundamental building block in the macrometasoma is information; in a way every piece that is incorporated is treated as information, rather than an object. A piece is not put in place according to shape or size but according to meaning, or morphological import. This is because the substantia of the macrometasoma is pattern or structure per se: arrangement, organization—which is to say, kosmos. I speak of connectives of relatedness. The relationship between everything actually occurs in the form of connectives in the macrometasoma, but these connectives arise within our flux world, and enter the macrometasoma as further accretions; so the development or evolution or complexification of the macrometasoma is dependent on events in our flux world. This is why I say our flux world is the metabolism of the macrometasoma, its brain activity. Plato was right and the Medieval realists were right; the categories really do exist and they are permanent; but our world is not a reflection, a pale shadow, of them; it is the source for the "Form world," to use Plato's term. If Plotinus had had my 3-74 experience he would have decided that he saw the Form world, and the Form of Forms: God (or the Good); as the Christian Platonists taught, the Forms—the Form world itself—exist in God's mind ... I would agree. I saw, however, how this Form world—which I call Valis and Valis' macrometasoma—draws from our world rather than casting it as its shadow. This again shows how accurate Ubik was, and why 3-74 resembled Ubik. Ubik is sort of Christian platonism, with the Forms existing in God's mind, God being Ubik, of course; Platonist metaphysics redefined by Christian monotheism.

  [...]

  I have reached really monumental conclusions about Valis; I have come to Christian Platonism and am very close (if not congruent to) Plotinus' Neoplatonism and the possibility, expressed by Plotinus, of experiencing the Form world and the Mind of the One, Valis being the One; have I not said that the essence of Valis is unity, that Valis above all is, through structure, unitary? This, then, is Plotinus' One or God. And unity is what I saw that made me realize I had seen Valis (as I call it). I know how the One can be the One; it is via Pythagoras' structure which is to say kosmos in the sense that Pythagoras meant that term to be used: "The harmonious fitting-together of the beautiful." I am, then, identifying Plotinus' One with Pythagoras' kosmos, with a hint of Sankara's doctrine about Brahman and the Atman. I am saying, This reality, this plurality of things in flux, can be said to be the One which is eternal because on a meta-level there is Pythagoras' structure or kosmos, and although it changes it changes in only one direction: a cumulative evolving toward completeness and total complexity that embraces everything. The answer to, "How can the many become the One?" It is through Pythagoras' structure, which is to say kosmos; and it has a mind; it is a mind; it is alive; it thinks; as Xenophanes said, "The whole of him hears; the whole of him sees; the whole of him thinks; he is everywhere at once."

  Now, it is also the case that Valis is not passively related to the world but "steers" everything (to use a Greek concept of the relationship between God and the world order). God is totally involved in the world order. (The Gnostics are absolutely wrong, as Plotinus realized.) Everything that happens in our flux world can be said to be the God "shaking" things (to use Xenophanes' term). So in a very real sense God feeds into this world as its motive force and then takes out what occurs for the metakosmos—the "Form world."

  Quantum mechanics enters because I am regarding the world order as a single interacting field (as presented dramatically in TMITHC). The One can be regarded as the noös of this field; or a psyche-soma biological model can be envisioned. Or even the Logos—I have no idea which is correct, and neither does anyone else. There is a single interacting field and there is a mind ubiquitous in it, immanent in it—cf. Ubik. Spinoza would agree; in no way do I see God as transcendent to reality, off somewhere far above us in a heaven, with Earth down here. Ubik shows what I suppose: deity in the very trash of the alley. And deity intimately connected with and utilizing—if not actually being—information. "Ravished away and full of God," as the E. of Phil. article on Plotinus says. Ecstatic comingling.

  [83:57] Strangest of all, the Upper Realm, the macrometasoma, seems to be this realm, this world of the dialectic, of flux, seen another way—as if the Gnostics are right: and to see it healed is to cause it to be healed. Could this be the observer-participant universe of quantum mechanics? "Reality is what you see it as," as the E. of S-F. quotes me. "Is what you perceive it to be"; i.e., your perception of it changes it. Well, this would make the Gnostics right! To see unity is to cause repair. (The ontological value of knowledge.) So I am saying: To see the secret partnership is to cause the secret partnership; you reconcile the dialectical strife in you (the two brain hemispheres?) and thereby cause it to be reconciled in world, which is to say, Ground of Being itself. Since you yourself are a part of (spark) the Ground of Being—that explains it. That is the only way that your perception of reconciliation could in itself as perception cause reconciliation. And the basis of your doing this is: anamnesis. You cease to forget that you are (part of) the Ground of Being.

  [83:58] Ach Weh.65 This structure that I speak of literally occurs in your act of perceiving it.

  So Warrick was somewhat right about Valis.

  My good god; this means that the override in 3-74 vis-à-vis the Xerox missive was a self-causing loop—neither efficient cause was at work (which has been obvious to me) but also not future or retrograde cause. It was self-generating (ultimate homeostasis). It caused itself. I'm not sure of my reasoning but I realize it's true; I set up a perturbation in the reality field by thinking about it, so to speak. The information had no source (the needed information that I lacked that came into existence); it w
as self caused.

  [...]

  We are talking about ex nihilo information; information that generates itself. No wonder it's so erratic.

  [83:60] Then the "Acts" material in Tears was self-causing.

  No one put it there.

  No wonder I haven't been able to figure 3-74 out; every theory changes the events. I was right when I was on superdope; then I favored the theory that Diana, the queen of the fairies, helped me. Now I prefer (and find more workable) the theory that it was the Holy Spirit revealing to me the Cosmic Christ (Valis).

  There's one thing I know it is: the Mysterium Coniunctionis.66 In Boehme's terminology (or Eckhart; who cares) you have become the Father, not the Son; therefore you are the creator (again).

  As impossible as it may seem, the "Acts" material in Tears was self-generating, a kind of tracing due to principles of physics that we simply do not understand, related to synchronicity. And as to the "cypher," King Felix—that, too, is a tracing, but this information is alive or semi-alive like a virus; Burroughs is right but he has only a bit of the whole picture ... still, there is such a thing as living latent information that somehow is an acausal analog of reality.

  [83:69] September 3, 1980

  (Re Eliade) A mythological event unfolds in another kind of time (illo tempore,* etc.). Therefore if you can get (your self) into a mythological narrative you will enter this dream time (as opposed to entering dream time and, by means of that, entering the myth). The entrée to dream time is to reenact the (i.e., a) myth. I accidentally did this in 2-3-74 vis-à-vis "Acts" due to (1) Tears; and (2) the girl with the fish necklace. These plunged me into that other kind of time and so I saw world under that aspect, i.e., made eternal and holy—and experienced anamnesis. Also the Xerox missive somehow acted toward being a part of the mythic ritual. (The message opened and read? Perhaps some myth I don't know.)

  So I got into mythic time by reenacting the sacred myth, and, having done so, saw world under that aspect (e.g., the blood of the cosmic Christ, Rome, the secret real Christians). I fell into the myth by chance, and entered the realm of the sacred.

  [83:70] The Xerox missive is part of the Gnostic legend of the Pearl: the letter to the prince who has lost his memories (in an alien land) which restores those memories. This "legend" is actually a sacred myth/right. The letter coupled with the golden fish sign restored my memories due to my faithful participation in this complex sacred mythic rite of anamnesis and rebirth. No wonder I expected a letter to come; I knew it because on an unconscious level I knew the myth (collective unconscious). So all this took a Gnostic turn—the cryptic sign (golden fish), the letter reminding me of my mission (albeit a profane Pigspurt➊ one; the myth sanctified it, turned a profane thing into something noumenal).

  The value—or one value—of this explanation is the "why me"? solution. God did not choose me for any reason, such as merit or need on my part. Chance played the determining role in selecting me: chance actions on my part. Alone, without a priest or guide, I re-performed an ancient myth whose nature I still do not fully understand. Mainly it had to do with a letter which both informed me of something about myself (my actual nature and actual origins) and posed a grave problem that I had to solve. Had there been no letter there would have been no other universe, no altered, enhanced perceptions, no "second signal." Likewise for the golden fish sign. Likewise for the time of year.

  Likewise, in fact, for my burning a votive candle at a holy shrine.

  That this was indeed, then, an authentic religious experience I now cannot doubt. It was not precisely mystical, certainly not psychotic, certainly not a drug experience (although a component necessary for it to happen may have been the washing out from my system of the Mello Jell-O; I can't be sure67). I can look at it this way: God approached me through the medium of the sacred mythic rite reperformed; reperformance of that rite put me in touch with the Divine and in fact the Divine Realm. But it must never be forgotten that absolute faith amounting to knowledge, knowledge of the divine, was the essential first step; without it, re-performing the rite would have accomplished nothing.

  [...]

  What I say of this is: there is another universe, and through such reenactment of sacred ritual as I accidentally engaged in you can enter it and commune with the gods. This is recognized by, e.g., Eliade, but how many "civilized" people have experienced it? We have lost the techniques, the gnosis. Now what do I say about the novel VALIS? It is about this voyage on the axis of another kind of time ... and what is this other kind of time like? I perceived the phylogons and the fact that nothing that is past truly ceases to be, but, rather, is added to progressively; accretional layers are laid down, becoming ever more reticulated and arborized. This is the main discovery, this permanence of past and present reality—hence all reality. Flux only adds; it does not take away.

  ➊ Or was it? In any case its mundane nature is not so important as its mythic role. And that fired correctly—a series of coincidences and accidents: Tears, the pentothal, the girl, the fish sign, the Xerox letter which very much seemed to call to me from the archaic past and to deal with my real identity. And since it was noumenal it sparked a divine or spiritual—pneumatic—identity in me.

  [83:76] The space-time world of this sacred time is found in the Bible as the book of "Acts." Thus when I wrote Tears I discerned this stratum, showing through in a ghostly fashion, as the basis of reality. "Acts" describes the power of Rome as expressed in the Procurator Felix. He interrogates his prisoner Paul; Paul is under arrest and in the hands of the Roman authorities.68 He will eventually be released. This is the supratemporal template: the power and presence of Rome; the Procurator; the prisoner who is interrogated and finally released. The Empire would like to destroy him but in the final phases of the encounter between them fails. Thus the life of the prisoner ends not in martyrdom but in freedom, in release. This is in a sense an opposite story from that of the crucifixion where the prisoner is condemned to death and dies. Here the prisoner is set free and this means that sacred time has moved forward from the time of the Gospels to a different time. The prisoner slides through the fingers of the Empire. This story is found in the life of John Taverner, the 15th century English musician who was arrested on suspicion of possessing heretical books but then released "because he is not a musician," as Cardinal Woolsey put it: the Empire has lost the ability to state its case; it cannot close the trap. The later history of this archetype will be that the Empire will lose even more power; eventually it will not even be able to arrest its victim, let alone crucify him. That time has not yet come.

  At this point the Empire, expressing itself through its police system, is puzzled by its victim; it suspects him of wrongdoing but does not know what that wrongdoing is. The Empire does not know enough; its information is too limited. So for it the victim is an enigma. (The evolution from Pilate's bewilderment in confronting Jesus can be seen; bewilderment was there already.) The Procurator Felix interrogates the suspect but cannot determine from what he says what precisely he has done. Time passes. The Empire tries again and again to get information, but fails. This is Kafka's The Castle in reverse. In talking to the suspect, the prisoner, the Procurator begins to suspect that the prisoner himself does not know what he has done; he himself does not know if he is guilty, and if guilty, of what. The prisoner cannot tell the Procurator what he would like to know, even if the prisoner is willing to. This increases the puzzle. Perhaps the enemy of the Empire is so large and so vague that the prisoner is not the adversary at all, but only a sort of front for it, an extension of it. This, for the Procurator, is a dreadful thought.

  The archetype of this is Euripides' The Bacchae, in which the King of Tears arrests the Stranger only to find that he has a priest of the god Dionysus in his prison; the priest as the god bursts the prison and drives the King into insanity such as to cause him to lose his identity even as a man. The King—or the Procurator—can release the prisoner but he himself will suffer great harm; instead of Christ
crucified Pilate suffers unbearable loss. Time, which starts with the Gospels, has moved forward to what is al most a complete reversal of the image. The arrested and tried god does not die; the interrogator suffers spiritual death or physical injury, the prisoner goes free. Everything that the prisoner lost is restored to him. This is referred to in the Bible as the end-times day on which everything is restored. It is a sign of the Parousia. The Empire is not glad to know this because it means that God himself is taking the field; God is entering the battle.

  [...]

  And yet there is a further level of reality disclosed by sacred time and the realm governed within that time. A kosmos, in the sense that Pythagoras spoke of it, is being completed, self completed, from the flux process visible in mundane time. This is the noumenal world that Plato and Parmenides spoke of as being in contrast to the sensible (empirical) world; the person lifted into sacred time perceives a priori this edifice that is alive and growing, this cosmic organism that is Christ himself as the head and Lord of creation. Christ as Kosmos—this is the final mystery. [...]